New CITY in ENGLAND! Why?

Sometimes two stories appear in the press which need to be considered together.
Take this one written by Sir Andrew Green:-

"At the beginning of March Migration Watch published a short paper summarising some of the key facts about the impact of immigration on our population, jobs, housing and education.....
Amid the welter of detail on immigration, it is vital to keep three points firmly in mind:

The first is that immigration on the present scale is an entirely new phenomenon in Britain’s history. Talk of Britain being 'a nation of immigrants' is simply a fallacy promoted by the immigration lobby. In fact, we are one of the most stable societies in the world. We have had no invasion for nearly a thousand years, nor have we had a civil war for more than three hundred years.
Indeed, there have been only two numerically significant migrations to England since the Norman invasion in 1066. The first was the Huguenot migration in the 16th and 17th centuries and the second was the Jewish migration of the 19th and 20th centuries. Neither amounted to more than a tiny percentage of the population at the time and both were spread over a period of fifty years or more.
For many years, there was a net outflow to North America and to the Empire. Indeed, there was virtually no net immigration to the UK until the mid 1990s. It is only in the last dozen years or so that net immigration has shot up five fold from about 50,000 a year to 250,000 in 2010. If this is allowed to continue, it will drive the population of the UK to 70 million in just 16 years time. That means roughly an extra 5 million due to immigration – equivalent to building a city the size of Birmingham every three years just for new immigrants.

Second, there can be no doubt that all this is the result of deliberate Labour policy. It is impossible to admit 3.5 million people in twelve years just by mistake. This was confirmed in an article in the Evening Standard in October 2009 by a former speech writer for Blair, Straw and Blunkett. He revealed that mass immigration 'didn’t just happen; the deliberate policy of Ministers from late 2000 until February 2008 was to open up the UK to mass immigration'. He added that there was 'a driving political purpose; that mass immigration was the way that the government was going to make the UK multicultural'.

(Third), the scale of this immigration will bite everywhere – on maternity services, primary schools, housing and the health service. We are only just beginning to see those effects. And there is, of course, very little money to tackle them."

Then consider this from the Sunday Telegraph (25th March):-

"“Countryside planning revolution: 'new city' proposed for Midlands
A “new city” has been proposed for the English countryside as radical planning powers are to be unveiled by ministers.
Up to 100,000 homes would be built on green belt in the Midlands near the controversial High Speed 2 rail route as part of a dramatic expansion of housing.
The plan, disclosed by Andrew McNaughton, the chief engineer of HS2, would exploit the new and highly controversial National Planning Policy Framework, which aims to simplify Britain’s planning laws, increase economic growth and provide homes for Britain’s booming population.
If it goes ahead, the development would effectively obliterate the open countryside east of Birmingham to create Britain’s longest continuous conurbation, stretching 40 miles from Coventry to the far side of Wolverhampton.
The planning framework will be published on Tuesday by ministers who want a new age of “pro-growth” planning. It was described by one Whitehall source last night as “the most radical business deregulation there has ever been”.
Meanwhile, new official figures analysed by The Sunday Telegraph show that two million homes are expected to be built by 2020 to meet demand fuelled by a massive population rise.
Most of the growth is predicted to take place outside major cities and will see England’s population rise by 4.4 million — the equivalent of more than half the population of London.
London itself would have a “second Docklands” development in the west of the city, said Prof McNaughton.
Details of the proposed new city close to the HS2 rail link were revealed in a speech in Derby by Prof McNaughton, who is the chief engineer of the company set up by the Government to force through the high-speed link from London to Birmingham.
A Whitehall source confirmed that the proposed new city close to HS2 was a “strong contender” for substantial development as it would be “extremely central and well-connected”. The development could be 20 times the size of the abortive “eco-towns” considered by Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, and axed by the Coalition.
Prof McNaughton, who holds posts at Imperial College, London, and Nottingham University, also raised the prospect of a major expansion to Birmingham Airport, which could be rebranded “London Birmingham” because the travel time to the capital using the high-speed link would be shorter than the time taken to travel from London to Stansted.
The population forecasts, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), show the UK population rising from 62.3 million in 2010 to 67.2 million in 2020.
The bulk of the increase, 4.4 million, will come in England. Of these, one million will be in London; 600,000 in the nine next biggest cities; and 2.8 million in smaller cities, towns and the countryside.
Based on an official Government estimate that the average household size will be 2.2 people by 2020, it means that two million homes will be needed throughout England, of which 1.3 million will be required to be built outside the main cities.
To meet demand, 59,000 new homes would be needed in Essex; 55,000 in Kent; 49,000 in Hertfordshire; 37,000 in Lincolnshire and 26,000 in Cambridgeshire.
The forecasts support the Government’s case for a shake-up of Britain’s planning system, which has faced heavy opposition from the National Trust, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and environmental groups.
The population forecasts suggest that the annual supply of new homes needs to double to meet demand. A breakdown of the forecasts from the ONS shows that rural towns in the east of England and Midlands will see the most rapid population growth. Boston, Corby and Northampton are all set to grow in size by between 17 per cent and 19 per cent by 2020.”"

So there we have it! The British Government is planning massive concreting over of English Countryside to satisfy demand caused by mass immigration.

But what is the profit in this for the Conservative leadership? We have had a clue over the weekend but here is the dirt on that! (If the link isn't active copy and paste this >>> http://robintilbrook.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/planning-laws-re-written-to-benefit.html)


But, given the current back-tracking caused by the "Cash for Access" scandal, it is also worth bearing in mind the famous quotation from another Cameron, who once said:- "An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought"!

Where does that leave our "Right Honourable" 'Dave' Donald Cameron PM?

DE PROFUNDIS?

When the news of the appalling massacre of Jewish school children and a Rabbi in Toulouse broke, I was sitting watching the BBC news with my family. We were all shocked and my younger daughter asked who would have done such a thing. Given the upsurge in Islamist attacks on Jews across Europe, especially in France, I replied that I thought that it would turn out to be an Islamist.

I had no sooner said this than the BBC went onto report that it suspected that it was French ex-military Neo-Nazis and that they had previously attacked Muslims.

I felt somewhat shamefaced as I thought I had been shown to have leapt unfairly to conclusions. Over the next 24 hours there followed a flood of articles on the mainstream media linking this incident with the Norwegian mad man and the upsurge of "Xenophobia" and "Nationalism" across Europe. Imagine the schadenfreude that I felt when the highly efficient French police cornered the guilty mad man who in fact turned out to be an Islamist!

There is however some real potential geo-political significance to this incident as it occurs in the midst of the French Presidential elections in which one candidate is standing who, if elected, might make a seismic difference to European politics.

Now I appreciate that it is not traditional for an Englishman to have a great deal of interest in anything French (with the possible exception of their wines!), but in this case one possible outcome of the French presidential election does make the contest well worth watching.

Marine Le Pen has followed her father’s footsteps to become the Leader of the Front National (which despite the similarities with its name has nothing to do with the National Front). Unlike her anti-semetic father whose unacceptable views led to even relatively right of centre Frenchmen voting against him when he got into the second round of the French Presidential election, Marine Le Pen has cleaned up the image and the policies of the Front National to the point where even very well connected French Establishment figures are quite openly willing to say that, if the second round is between her and the socialist Franciose Hollande, then they will vote for Marine Le Pen. This gives her a real chance of winning the French Presidency.

If Marine Le Pen wins the French Presidency one of her key electoral promises is to take France out of the EU with all possible speed.

So at one fell swoop, we English may be delivered from the chains of our EU serfdom by a modern French woman who models herself on Joan of Arc! Enjoy the ironies!

The reason why I mention this in the context of this appalling Islamist motivated massacre is that there can be little doubt that the political significance of the actions of Mohammed Merah is that Marine Le Pen’s chances of winning this election have been immeasurably increased - as she is the only candidate who has a track record of warning that the French authorities have failed to tackle Islamic extremism.

Is English Nationalism for Unionists?

In the last few months we have seen increasing evidence of a rising tide of awareness within political media, academic and official circles that English Nationalism is, in the words of John Redwood, the Conservative MP for Wokingham, "the new force in UK politics".

In tune with this rising awareness, the very able Deputy Leader of UKIP, the North West MEP, Paul Nuttall, launched a proposal for a version of an English Parliament to be adopted as UKIP’s manifesto policy. A flavour of the viscerally anti-English reaction in some parts of UKIP to this quite modest proposal appears here on the UKIP Wales website.(If the link is not active click here or copy and paste to your tool bar >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmYiD6M1G0g)

Perhaps even more graphic was the incident reported to the English Democrats’ Spring National Conference, of a UKIP member who twice deliberately kicked one of the Campaign for an English Parliament’s volunteers. A volunteer who had given up his weekend to come to the UKIP conference in Skegness to support their Chairman, Eddie Bone. Eddie who ably argued for the English to be at least offered constitutional fairness, within the UK.

I have previously indicated in this blog here (http://robintilbrook.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/if-ukip-adopt-proper-english-parliament.html) that I would welcome the conversion of UKIP but we certainly don’t want the type of aggressive vitriol shown by UKIP’s supporters to the mere idea of any expression of Englishness or the visceral hatred which was no doubt at the root of that double assault!

In the past I have always tended to give UKIP the benefit of the doubt, although several of our UKIP defectors have warned me against them. One well known Yorkshire man assuring me that they are all as “mad as a box of frogs”!

While I am not quite sure of the origin of that expression, I think this level of grossly inappropriate behaviour indicates that, if UKIP’s leadership were to push through the adoption of, what I gather Nigel Farage is now referring to as, “Paul’s Proposal” (as he distances himself from it), it seems clear that it would split that, already fractious, Party wide open!

I think the results that UKIP have recently obtained in two hard fought local elections in Nottinghamshire demonstrates that in the end, whatever stunts UKIP pulls, its name and profile forever brands it as a single issue Party. Indeed a Party that would vanish if ever the Conservative Party were to genuinely become Eurosceptic.

Here are those local election results.
I quote from Giles Farrand's (the UKIP election agent) comments on Facebook:-
“(Chilwell & Toton By Elections. 22500 leaflets posted by hand. Good Look to Lee Waters and Keith Marriott tomorrow
=======================================================
the arrogance of the liberals. UKIP are a non-event. The Tories are worried but I think it is too close to call.. Well david watts i think you will find it is the liberals who are now a none event in UK
========================================================
Chilwell & Toton By Election Results. Borough: Keith Marriott UKIP 228 con 860 lib 300 lab 285 13.6% of the vote County: Lee Walters UKIP 682 con 1958 lib 1375 17% of the vote
Well done to all the team inc Rushcliffe, mid derbys and Broxtowe branches for all there support in helping keith and lee. Lee its been a honour to be your campaign manager”

The greatest hope of success in those all important Westminster parliamentary elections that UKIP’s leadership could have is that the Conservative Party splits under the stresses of coalition. In that case UKIP would be able to join forces with the Eurosceptic Conservative “provos”!

Despite my respect for Dr Matthew Goodwin, who invited me to speak to his students at Nottingham University, and despite this violence at UKIP’s conference, I am still inclined to be sceptical about how similar the UKIP membership is to BNP members. Nevertheless his report is an interesting read!
(http://www.channel4.com/media/c4-news/images/voting-to-violence%20(7).pdf)

What do you think?

BRITISH GOVERNMENT TO ASSET-STRIP ENGLAND’S ROADS

The British Government has just announced plans to sell off England's (and only England's) road network to Chinese Government and other Sovereign Wealth Funds!

These proposals only apply to England, (just as with the ongoing sales of English Forests). The money raised by these sales is nevertheless intended to be used across the whole of the “United Kingdom”.

So yet again England is being sold out to help keep the massive unionist electoral bribes flowing to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland! (Quantified by the House of Lords Committee in 2009 as over £49 billion p.a.)

Even David Cameron has recently admitted that the Welsh are getting a better deal than "some other parts" of the United Kingdom. Note that in keeping with the general British Unionist’s contempt for England, so widespread within British Government, England is not even named or recognised but is merely dismissed as “some other parts”.

Now with the looming prospect of a Scottish Independence Referendum, the British Government and the Unionist Establishment is falling over itself to offer Scotland even more than they are already getting, again all at England’s expense!

This is why the British Unionist Establishment is determined to appear to allowing England to have its own Parliament. To them, England is merely a sort of colony to be exploited and asset-stripped - which is why they don’t want a democratic English Parliament and Government able to articulate and defend English interests against their depredations.

The first step towards forcing the creation of an English Parliament and of a democratic government for England is an effective English Nationalist Party.

That Party is the English Democrats – join us and help us to campaign for England’s sake!

My Spring Conference Speech 10.3.12

Ladies & Gentlemen

I am very pleased to be here at our Spring Conference in Swanley and also to see you all here today. Welcome to our conference.

I would like to thank Mike Tibby for his welcome to Swanley and also to Steve Uncles and his team for arranging this conference and also to thank David Lane, our tireless conference presenter.

Ladies and Gentlemen before coming here I was told that there was a rumour that Nick Clegg was going to come here this weekend to our conference instead of to Newcastle, but then I heard that he had publically signed a solemn and binding pledge to come to our conference! So I relaxed!

Ladies and Gentlemen, sadly over the last year we have become aware of a campaign against us on various levels. The obvious ones, of a sustained internet campaign of vilification, by various internet trolls, often not giving their real names and using multiple identities, whilst pretending to be supporters of English Nationalism; also of attempts to recruit our members and activists; and of the less obvious ones of deliberately targeting candidates to stand against us simply for the purpose of making it harder for us to breakthrough; and also of entry-ism, where another party’s activists have joined us and then tried to cause trouble. You might think these dirty tactics are worthy of Liberal Democrats, but this ‘black ops’ campaign has been orchestrated under Nigel Farage’s leadership – I must say that I find this behaviour very disappointing. So much for UKIP being a force for cleaning up our politics!

We have tried on several occasions to work with UKIP but they have always done the dirty on us and betrayed any trust placed in them. Given this history I would urge you to be very careful about sharing any information with UKIP and extremely wary of entering into any local electoral pacts with them – it is very likely that if you do they will do the dirty on you too - especially now they have failed to adopt a policy of an English Parliament!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am one of the founder members of the English Democrats and have been Chairman since we launched in August 2002. We are a Party which has grown organically from nothing to nearly 3,000 members.

All the money which we have raised has been spent on campaigning and many of us have put in significant sums of money into the campaign.

Why have we done this? The answer, Ladies and Gentlemen, is that we have done it because we love England and are not willing to go to our graves without having done all in our power to preserve our country.

When the English Democrats were launched England faced being broken up into “Regions”. The Regionalisation Scheme was started by John Major’s Government, after Maastricht, but in 2002 was being pursued enthusiastically by Labour with John Prescott saying “There is no such nationality as English” backed by William Hague saying “English Nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism”. The aim of Regionalisation, as clearly stated, by the then Liberal Democrats Leader, to a meeting like this of Dunfermline’s Liberal Democrats, Charlie Kennedy who said, and I quote, that he supported “Breaking England up into EU Regions because “it is calling into question the idea of England itself”.

We campaigned in the North East Regional Assembly Referendum for a No Vote and we have now seen off any chance of Regionalisation gaining any popular mandate, if the Labour supporting think tank can be believed – and I think they can – they have found a mere 9% support for “Each Region of England to have its own assembly”.

We have also been, from the start, in the forefront of bringing the Barnett Formula, the unfair extra spending in Scotland and Wales, to the attention of the English.

When I first started campaigning I actually had people accuse me of lying because they had never heard of it from the British media. Again the IPPR report shows awareness of this beginning to rise in early 2003 just as we began actually campaigning.

Now the English overwhelmingly want to see action to address this. The IPPR report says that there is:-

“A growing perception within England that the English get a raw deal from the devolution settlement. (It is) clear that there is an increasingly strong tendency in England to believe that Scotland gets more than its ‘fair share’ of public spending. Indeed the number of people who believe this has more than doubled in the last decade.”


The English Democrats have been campaigning on English National Identity and St George’s Day. The IPPR report says:- On National Identity

“The most significant and revealing analysis stems from contrasting the groups that say they are either exclusively English, or more English than British, with those that say they are exclusively British, or more British than English. …The results are striking. Those that prioritise their English over their British identity (40 per cent), outnumber those that prioritise their British over their English identity (16 per cent) by more than two-to-one.

English not British 17 13 17 17
More English than British 23 19 24 20
Equally English and British 34 25 36 39
More British than English 9 12 9 8
British not English 7 14 6 6
Other 6 10 4 5
Don’t know 3 7 3 4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1,507 750 756 750”


And on St George’s Day the report says:

“One indication of the pride in and attachment to England across the English electorate is the very strong support shown in the .... survey to the suggestion that St George’s Day should be celebrated as a bank holiday. … fully 74 per cent of our respondents agreed with this proposition, with 47 per cent ‘agreeing strongly’. … We should not be surprised … that an increased awareness of and pride in Englishness is being accompanied by such overwhelming levels of support to the public celebration of English national identity.”

Agree strongly 47
Tend to agree 27
Tend to disagree 8
Disagree strongly 4
Don’t know 13
________________________
N 1,507

There remains a battle to be fought against the advocates of English Votes for English Laws (aka “EVEL”) and an English Parliament but EVEL, even if it could be made to work, which is a big if, is a red hearing because the key issue is the Government of England, not merely its representation in a parliament, but even with our very limited resources support for an English Parliament is now standing at 36%!

So all in all we are making great progress, even if you focus on the narrow perspective of our core campaigning issues.

But looking more widely for example on our policy of withdrawing from the EU. We started unprejudiced and with a blank sheet but could see that there is no way that an English Nationalist can make a case for supporting the EU. Now our scepticism has been proved by the failures of the EU itself.

Also consider, unchecked mass immigration which can now be undeniably seen as undermining the living standards of ordinary people and also a threat to our own culture. Put thoughtfully and carefully this is a very important issue with huge political potential.

Also I cannot miss out the potential for gains to our Party in the coming 1,000 days before the Scottish Referendum. The British Unionist Establishment is all over the place on this, seeing it just as a Scottish issue but again the IPPR report shows that English people are increasingly assertive that we to have a right to be consulted on what should happen for England. The English Democrats are the only voice for England in this debate.

As you can see from my recent appearance on the BBC’s flagship political show, The Daily Politics, the coverage that we are getting over this weekend and this News item:-



Ladies and Gentlemen I think that both for English Nationalism and, with your help also for the English Democrats, to re-use a New Labour phrase “the only way is up!”

We in this Party have often had debates on how to ensure that people pigeon hole us in the right category, of nice nationalists, and therefore are prepared to listen to what we have to say.

I thought you might find it interesting that once upon a time nationalism was always thought of as being nice by well-meaning people. I would mention the name Garibaldi to you – I know what you are thinking – why is he talking about biscuits – does he want his tea already?

No, I am talking about a mid 19th Century superstar – Garibaldi was an ‘A’ list celebrity of 19th Century popular democratic nationalism, when the very word nationalist meant democrat – when the whole purpose of the so-called Concert of Europe, no David, not a musical concert. The Concert of Europe was the name of the organisation of the anti-democratic front of the outright tyrants of European autocracy - the whole purpose of which was the extinction of nationalism and democracy.

Garibaldi was a very colourful character and he lived to see his life’s dream of the unification of Italy into a single nation state. Our task as English Democrats is difficult, but fortunately not as difficult as Garibaldi’s was and I am hopeful that it can be accomplished peacefully and democratically.

At a time when the Equality and Diversity agenda has reached the point where the Leader of a Party that claims to be Conservative can claim to his own Party Conference that he supports gay marriage, “not in spite of being a Conservative, but because he is a Conservative”, it may be time to take stock on what the purpose of the State is.

In my view a State needs to mean something. Consider the experience of the Roman Empire, which became a sort of Ancient Secular State, by which I mean a State which has no other purpose than the maintenance of itself – by the 3rd Century this Roman experiment could be unequivocally described as a catastrophic failure. There had been a generation of civil war and of 29 Emperors in a period of 80 years whose shadows flickered across history, and almost none of whom died of natural causes, but then along came a Dalmatian peasant, the Emperor Diocletian, who tried to make the purpose of the empire the enforcement of paganism.

In that aim Diocletian failed and in AD 312 Constantine the Great triumphed under the slogan ‘in hic signo vinces’ – in this sign conquer, which he claimed he had revealed to him by Christ in a dream and thereafter the purpose and mission of the Empire was Christianity, as well as the enforcement of Order.

That mission, introduced by Constantine, survived in the shape of the Byzantine Empire for another thousand years. It is no exaggeration to say that the resistance that the Byzantine Empire put up to Islam is the main reason why we didn’t start today’s meeting with the Call to Prayer!

Our State needs a purpose today. The English State was a Christian State, then a Protestant Christian State, indeed, a specific and unique type of Protestant Christian State. It may have founded its mission in the shadow of Henry VIII’s tyranny but during the reign of Elizabeth I, it came to stand for Protestant liberty, a view which was cemented by the English Civil War and the 1689 Glorious Revolution.

Gradually the Protestant mission changed into the Imperial mission, at the heart of which originally had been profit, but this gradually changed into a mission to bring Christian civilisation to much of the world outside Europe. It was at the beginning of this Imperial context that the Act of Union took place.

That vision of England has gone - but we still need a State with a purpose. As a nationalist I suggest that the vision, our vision, our mission, should be for our State to be the voice of our nation of England - of our English nation. To be sure that nation is a nation whose culture is shaped by Christian traditions but it is also a nation which respects private opinions. In the words of our great Queen Elizabeth I, “Not to make windows into men’s souls”, but to tolerate differences of opinion and of robust debate in a fair and democratic country. By democracy I mean a country where the will of the people, the will of the English nation is sovereign.

After the Imperialist British State’s global power had decayed, after the 2nd World War, there was for a time the Welfare State and the imposition of multi-culturalism, sustained a mission for the State. But now the multi-culturalist British State is without any purpose other than its own maintenance – and a very expensive maintenance it is, as any tax-payer can tell you!

It is now likely that the Scottish National Party is going to be instrumental in the final break up of the British State. This gives us in England the chance of renewal and of a new English Nationalist politics. Already in Scotland, all the parties, and I mean all are Scottish Nationalist. So there is the Scottish Liberal Democrats – recently busy proposing schemes for yet more English money to go to Scotland! The Scottish Conservatives are talking up the same idea! Even more so the Scottish Labour Party and then, of course, there is the Scottish National Party itself.

In Wales it is the same picture but there, even the self-proclaimed Party of Welsh Independence, Plaid Cymru, wants more English subsidies!

In Northern Ireland you have a more tribal type of politics, with their politicians representing their own communities, but even so with their hands held out for English subsidies – I might say, even more so than in Scotland!

But in England what have we got? None of the parties care for England, none of the parties even call themselves English parties! None of the parties have English manifestos! And none can bear to mention England’s name! – Did I say none – well of course there is one – one glimmer of hope! One beacon of renewal! One chance for England to arise! One English Nationalist party! What party is that ladies and gentlemen? All together! The English Democrats!

Ladies and Gentlemen let’s work together to make this year a great year for English nationalism and for The English Democrats!

Thank you.

My News Interview (9.3.12)

Here is my BBC TV news interview done on Friday, on my way to our Spring Confderence in Swanley.



What do you think?

Here's how the BBC reported it on their website:-

"English Democrats: England's voice must be heard, says Tilbrook England's voice must be "properly heard" if Scotland votes for independence, the leader of the English Democrats has said.

Ahead of the party's spring conference in Kent on Saturday, Robin Tilbrook told the BBC the biggest parties were unwilling to address the issue.

The party will launch its local elections campaign at the conference. Mr Tilbrook, who is standing for London mayor in May, said other parties were "not interested in England". The English Democrats say they have about 3,000 members and Mr Tilbrook has said the party has a "big task ahead" to raise the £10,000 deposit, and 330 signatures - 10 from each borough and from the City of London - required to stand as mayor in London.

The party also plans to stand candidates for mayoral elections in Liverpool and Salford and in local elections in England. They are also campaigning for a "yes" vote in referendums in 12 English cities on whether they want directly-elected mayors.

Ahead of the conference, Mr Tilbrook told the BBC: "The political parties are not willing to mention the word England. "You have only got to look at the fact that none of them came up with even a manifesto for England. They are quite happy to have a manifesto for Scotland, a manifesto for Wales and then they have a UK manifesto." He said politicians were happy to talk about "our country" or the "United Kingdom" - even when they were referring to policies that applied to England only, like the NHS shake-up or university tuition fees.

"In the discussions that occur after the SNP have their referendum, if the vote is as we expect it may well be, in favour of independence, then obviously English interests have got to be taken into account."

He said the Acts of Union had joined the two kingdoms: "If the kingdom of Scotland goes, the UK has gone and at that point, we have got to have England's voice properly heard."

The English Democrats currently have one elected mayor - Peter Davies in Doncaster - one county councillor and five district councillors."

Here's the link >>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17317432

What the Greek Rescue is Really About

This Article from 'The Daily Reckoning' is such a good analysis and so topical that I reproduce it in full:-

What the Greek Rescue is Really About
Dan Denning
In today’s Daily Reckoning, we’ll do something we can barely stand to do: we’re going to write one more time about Greece. If you can stand to read it, you may come to the same conclusion we reached.

That conclusion is simple: what’s going on Europe has nothing to do with solving a debt crisis and everything to do with preserving a corrupt system based on limitless debt and growing government power. The sooner you understand that fact, the sooner you’ll be able to prepare for what happens next. There are two options for what happens next, and we’ll get to those shortly.

First, though, doesn’t it strike you as strange that all of Europe can be brought to its knees by tiny little Greece? Greek GDP is just 2.4% of Europe’s GDP. In economic terms, Greece doesn’t matter. Its lack of growth or economic competitiveness shouldn’t be factors that can destroy Europe’s 13-year single currency experiment. Yet, Greece obviously does matter; otherwise the European financial markets wouldn’t be celebrating the latest €130 billion bailout that’s on its way to Athens.

So here’s our question: Why do Greek finances matter to anyone outside of Greece? If you rule out the obvious things that don’t matter, that leaves everything else. Or as Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

First, let’s see why the possible explanations for Greece’s importance to the world are actually impossible. Take the issue of debt reduction. As we wrote last week, the deal before Europe would reduce Greek debt to 120% of GDP by 2020. The IMF says that level is sustainable.

Back in a universe where common sense prevails, you can see that the plan is a joke, at least in terms of debt reduction. A plan to reduce Greek’s debt to 120% of GDP...EIGHT YEARS FROM NOW...is not a serious plan about debt. Therefore, the plan cannot be about debt reduction.

Will the plan make Greece more competitive in the long run? Well, probably not. In order to get more money by March 20th, the Greek Parliament had to agree to certain structural reforms. Some of those reforms might even be a good idea. But cutting the minimum wage isn’t going to be popular. And with Greek GDP shrinking by 7% in the fourth quarter, years of austerity won’t make Greece more competitive. The lifestyle of the Greeks will be destroyed and the debt will remain. Therefore, the plan cannot be about making Greece more competitive.

Does saving Greece save the euro? Not at all. The euro would be better off without Greece and Greece would be better off without the euro. The Germans are even planning for a euro that doesn’t include Greece. With its own currency, Greece could default, devalue, inflate and start over. Argentina did it in the last 10 years. It’s not rocket science. Therefore, saving Greece is not about saving the euro.

If saving Greece is not about saving the euro, and if it’s not about reducing Greek debt, and if it’s not about making Greece a more competitive economy...then just what IS it about? Well, now that we’ve rule out what’s impossible, let’s look at what’s left.

Saving Greece means preventing a technical default...even though Greece has already defaulted in a real-world sense. So why is avoiding a technical default so important to the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? The current plan certainly looks like a default. Under the plan, €100 billion worth of Greek debt would disappear, thanks to a debt swap agreement with private sector investors. The ECB has twisted enough arms to get creditors to accept a 70% haircut on their current Greek debt without actually calling it a default.

And yet, bizarrely, Greece’s creditors could be forced to accept this not-a-default default losses recourse to the credit default insurance they purchased. That’s right; they might lose 70% of their capital and still be denied a payout on the default insurance they purchased. That would be like an insurance company refusing to honor a fire insurance policy because only 70% of your house burned to the ground.

It gets kind of wonky here. But really, it’s about who gets to make the rules. To you and me and everyone else in the universe where common sense prevails, a non-voluntary 70% loss on your government bonds is a default. But you and I don’t get to decide what constitutes a credit default. That honour belongs to the International Swaps Derivatives Association (ISDA). The important thing to keep in mind here is that the ISDA is a trade group made up of banks and financial firms. Those are the firms that have the most to lose if Greek bonds default. It’s in the interest of the members of the ISDA that a non-voluntary credit event in Greece NOT be called a default.

It gets even murkier here. The ISDA essentially represents the global banking system. In Europe, the banking system is full of government bonds. Those bonds are nominally assets. If Greece defaults, it sets a precedent for how other countries might deal with unsustainable debt levels. This imperils the collateral of Europe’s entire banking system.

If you want to put it in simpler terms, let’s say that Europe’s banking system is full of rotting meat. Some investors bought that meat thinking they were going to get prime rib. But they can smell the stink of the meat from a mile away. They want to be compensated for the bad meat. The ISDA, which owns the freezer in which the meat went bad, says, “Well, we’ve decided the meat isn’t bad after all. And you have less of it than you thought anyway, as of now.”

This is a crude analogy. But this is exactly what happened last week. A “determinations committee” of the ISDA ruled that Greece’s default is not a default. The committee determined that “no credit event has yet occurred” for holders of credit default protection on Greece.

You can see the basic problem: everyone else knows that if Greece defaults (officially), the value of other government bonds in Spain and Italy and Portugal will plummet too. A Greek default wouldn’t be important because of the size of the default (although French and German banks would stand to lose a fair bit). It would be important because it would begin the process of blowing up bank balance sheets all over Europe.

When you realize that the ISDA and the ECB and the EU are in league to save their financial skins, you realize that the Greek rescue plans is about preventing other countries from realizing that default is an option. In fact, it’s not even about preventing the realization. It’s about making it impossible for a country to default on its obligations...even if it means erasing the word “default” from the English language.

If the centralized European Welfare State model is to survive, banks must not take losses on their government bond holdings. Individual and private investors, on the other hand, will be forced to take losses through a “collective action clause.” This clause allows your securities to be revalued without your consent if a majority of other bondholders agree to it.

Now we’re coming to the real nuts and bolts of what’s at stake. The technocrats in Europe are at war with private investors. The members of the ISDA are in league with the technocrats to preserve their system. That part is easy to understand.

The technocrats are employed by government and get to spend your money. This system is good for them. It’s good for the members of the ISDA too. Loaning money to the government is good business. Collecting rent off the expansion of credit is easy money. They want the system to last as well. Who is the system not good for? Everybody else who’s on the outside looking in. Investors who want their capital to be productive are out of luck. And taxpayers who question the value of austerity measures and debt reduction plans that don’t really reduce debt are also out of luck. No wonder they are angry.

We’ve come a long way, then. Greece isn’t about saving Greece. The only reason something so small and insignificant could matter so much is that it matters in a way no one is willing to say. It’s about the subversion of sovereignty and democratic processes by removing decisions from people and giving them to trans-national financial elites. It’s about preserving a global system that’s based on the accumulation of debt and growing government power because there are two groups of people who benefit tremendously from that system, even if most people don’t.

This is simply the latest example of corrupt government operatives colluding with the financial elite to steal money, liberty and big chunks of “the pursuit of happiness” from “we, the people.”Regards,
Dan Denning, for The Daily Reckoning

So now what do you think about membership of the EU system (let alone the FU)?

Tory Nationalism!?!

As this is, politically speaking, the Spring Conference season, here is an extract from Dave Donald Cameron’s Spring Conference speech to the assembled few Tories and many lobbyists.
It will be of some interest to all English nationalists:-
“There’s another cause I want this party to rally behind…
…and that is keeping this Kingdom – our great country – united.
Now, of course, that’s not entirely in our hands.
Before long, there will be a referendum in Scotland.
It will be Scotland that votes. It will be Scotland’s choice.
But let me say here in London.
I am not going to give up on our shared history…
…the wars we have fought…
…the freedoms we have won…
…the wealth we have created.
These things matter…
…the literature we have written…
…the arts we have performed…
…the sport we have played…
…the blood we have shared…
…I’m not going to give up on those things without the fight of my life.
Those who think the Conservative Party is somehow relaxed about the future of the Union…
…or would even be relieved about its break-up…
…they just don’t get us.
Our patriotism is not a narrow English nationalism…
…it is a broad, proud and generous love of our whole United Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland.
We’re stronger together…
…and let’s do everything in our power to make sure it stays that way.”

This from the man who told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that he wasn’t going to do anything about the unfair extra subsidies in Scotland because:- “I am a Cameron and there is quite a lot of Scottish blood flowing in these veins”!

How generous does he intend to be with English money then?
What will people who care about English Interests DO?

THE ENGLISH QUESTION – HOW IS ENGLAND RESPONDING TO DEVOLUTION?

WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF RACHEL ORMSTON’S INTERVENTION IN THE DEVELOPING ENGLISH QUESTION DEBATE? A COMMENTARY ON THE ENGLISH QUESTION – HOW IS ENGLAND RESPONDING TO DEVOLUTION?

Rachel Ormston, as her biography shows, is the “Co-director of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey”, she has “a particular interest in measuring and exploring attitudes across a wide range of areas, from discrimination and prejudice to constitutional change”. Ms Ormston “joined Scotsen in 2005 from TNS Social Research” and she has “a First Class Degree in Philosophy and a Master (with distinction) in Policy Studies from the University of Edinburgh.”

Here is a link to her report >>> http://www.natcen.ac.uk/media/816007/the-english-question-final.pdf

Looking at her report, on the positive side Ms Ormston’s study does at least refer to the question as the “English Question” rather than the usual British Unionist Establishments “West Lothian Question”, (no doubt in the hope that no ordinary English person will understand that they are talking about England’s Constitutional position!).

Ms Ormston does however nevertheless fall into the common error of Scottish commentators many of whom seem to suppose the only issue arises from Scotland. Thus Ms Ormston discusses the question of the rising support for independence in England by reference solely to the election of a majority Scottish National Party government in Holyrood and finds that support for independence in England has not risen dramatically between that election and the date her figures were collated (which seems to be quite a few months ago, in some cases more than a year).

I don’t find it at all surprising that there hadn’t been much of a rise, as up until that time Alex Salmond had not made much noise that was audible in England about his moves towards having a referendum on independence and much of the British national media had downplayed the idea that independence for Scotland was a meaningful option.

However the interesting thing is that, if the full range of her figures are looked at there has been a very significant rise in support for the independence option in England, rising now to 26% (from 14% in 1997)! When we talk about such percentages, even though independence is not yet a majority preference in England, nevertheless 26% is a significantly larger proportion of the population than gave Tony Blair his last landslide victory in the 2005 General Election (when he received the votes of 21.6%).

It is often instructive, when trying to consider the aim of a paper, to look carefully at its conclusion. Interestingly the conclusion of Miss Ormston’s paper appears to be focussed on attacking her commercial and academic rivals in the Institute of Policy Public Research (IPPR) which recently produced a report entitled ‘The dog that finally barked – England as an emerging political community’. That report showed that there was a striking emergence of English nationalist sentiment which was giving rise to an increasing demand for reform of the UK’s constitution to adequately reflect England’s interests.

Interestingly for a balanced consideration of Ms Ormston’s paper, it is her approach which seems to be out of kilter with the many opinion polls that have been done in the last four or more years which have consistently shown over 60% support for an “English Parliament” in some form or another.

NatCen Social Research claim on page 3 of their report that the difference between their findings and other recent surveys reflect a lack of consistency in the methodology and question wording used by all the other studies. On the contrary, the odd man out is the NatCen survey. What is more, the true state of English opinion is being made very clear in the research they have made but they are either blindly or deliberately misinterpreting the data.

The Report actually concerns English attitudes to Scotland, Wales and presumably Northern Ireland. However it chooses to concentrate on Scotland owing to there being more data specific to Scotland. Nonetheless it is probably fair to assume, (as they seem to), that attitudes towards Scotland also broadly represent those towards Wales and Northern Ireland as well.

The report says that there is "some evidence of an increasing 'backlash' in English public opinion" with regards to the excessive public spending in Scotland. Given that the numbers holding this view have more than doubled from 21% in 2000 to 44% in 2011 it brings into question the impartiality of the author’s of the report in being so keen to downplay what any neutral observer would describe as a significant and growing change in public opinion.

We also learn that by 2009, 82% of English residents thought that Scotland ought to raise its own budget. This is then dismissed on the grounds that the level of resentment does not appear to have grown further since 2007, even though their own figures actually show it to have risen by another 10% (from 75% to 82%). To achieve a further 10% growth when three-quarters already hold this opinion is actually quite remarkable. With 82% of English residents expressing their dissatisfaction one has to wonder exactly how high this figure is supposed to rise before they will finally take notice.

As for attitudes to the 'West Lothian' (actually English) Question, it appears from Table 13 on page 15 that 66% of English residents believe that only English MPs should make laws that affect only England, (Table 7). Moreover, the number who strongly agree with this principle has now risen to 31%, almost a third of the electorate. When asked of those who are specifically English, this figure rises as high as 77%, (Table 15). Despite this, the Report blithely concludes that "debates about devolution do not yet appear to have translated into ... majority demand for other changes to the way England is governed" (page 16). Given the figures quoted before are clearly well in excess of 50% it is hard to understand in what way they should not be accepted as "majority demand".

But the really egregious misrepresentation of the data can be seen with the (mis-)interpretation of the data concerning how England should be governed. We have already learnt that respondents believe that only English MPs should make English Laws. The Reports goes on to admit in the quote highlighted in the bottom of page 11: "Devolution does not appear to have weakened commitment in England to being governed from the House of Commons. However, people in England do want changes - most agree that Scottish MPs should not be able to vote on England only matters, and strength of feeling on this issue has increased."

So why were respondents not given the opportunity to express this preference?

The authors made much of the fact that "only" 25% of respondents chose the option "England as whole to have its own new Parliament with law-making powers" - despite the fact that the location and make-up of a new, separate and presumably additional English Parliament were not made clear, nor indeed what would happen to our existing Parliament in its traditional English home at Westminster in England's capital city. Despite the lack of clarity with regards to this option, and also that it is an option that has received no support from the three main parties nor the media as a whole, it was nevertheless chosen by fully 25% of respondents. Why is this not evidence of significant public feelings?

Ms Ormston talks about consistency in the polling approach, but of course what might have seemed a sensible and reasonable question years ago may no longer seem to be relevant. In addition we don’t know either the location or social profile of the people who have been polled in this case, so therefore such difference as she claims from the IPPR Report might not reflect any real difference in English opinion. Certainly to the extent that Ms Ormston does differ from the IPPR Report, I would say that that difference is strikingly contrary to my experience, and that many other English Democrats’; in talking to people on the doorstep. Indeed, it is not even necessary to knock on doors to realise there is a rise in English nationalist feeling, you merely have to look at the numbers of Crosses of St George flown from flagpoles across England and also the dramatically increasing support, largely despite official discouragement, of St George’s Day. The English Democrats have of course been at the spearhead of promoting such change. We are however part of this sea-change in English National identity rather than its authors.

In any event, one of the striking aspects of Ms Ormston's findings is that despite all her efforts she is still forced by the incontrovertible facts to concede that there is a significant rise in the demand for constitutional change to properly reflect the interests of the English Nation and it is to that extent that I welcome this report, imperfect and partial though it may be.

UKIP – just a Conservative Party splinter?

Last weekend saw the UKIP Spring Conference in Skegness.  There were two developments of interest to English Nationalists.
 
First UKIP’s much trumpeted English Parliament Policy ran into a storm of diehard Unionist opposition, even though Nigel Farage and Paul Nuttall had reduced the agenda item from a policy proposal to a “workshop” – so much for those UKIP attack dogs who assured anyone foolish enough to listen that UKIP was ready to be a home for English Nationalists!
 
Second UKIP had a great success in recruiting the high profile Conservative MEP, Roger Helmer to defect to them, this rights the balance after David Campbell-Bannerman’s deflection to the Tories last year. 
 
Roger Helmer is an old Eurosceptic campaigner and his recruitment is a great coup for UKIP -  in its role as a Tory splinter party, lobbying to get the Tories to become ‘True Blue’ Eurosceptic (instead of pinkish Europhile??).
 
Here is what the BBC had to say about Roger Helmer’s defection:-
 
“CONSERVATIVE MEP ROGER HELMER JOINS UKIP
MEP Roger Helmer has defected from the Conservative Party to the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
The East Midlands MEP ….. told BBC Radio 5live that his new party was more in tune with the concerns of Tory voters.
"UKIP better represents the views of Conservative voters than David Cameron's Conservative Party," he said; on a wide range of issues:
"Take Europe, take climate change and energy, take immigration.
"On all these issues, UKIP presents the sort of policies that Conservative voters believe in and David Cameron's Conservative party sadly does not."
"Conservative voters instinctively know what the right thing is but unfortunately the Conservative Party doesn't."” 

Here is what Simon Richards from the ‘Freedom Association’ says about Roger Helmer’s defection:-
 
“The decision of Roger Helmer, the Conservative MEP for the East Midlands, to defect to UKIP, represents a massive boost for Nigel Farage's party. I've known Roger - and worked closely with him - for many years, so can vouch for the fact that he is a politician of conviction,ability and integrity….
If the Conservatives have any sense, they will treat Roger Helmer's defection as a wake up call which may help them stave off a surge in the UKIP vote that could cost them victory at the next General Election....
As well as being a boost to UKIP, the Conservative Party, too, will have reason to thank Roger Helmer, if it will only heed the warning he has given - namely that the patience of Eurosceptic Tories is not limitless. If it fails to listen, many other disillusioned Tories will follow in Roger's footsteps.” 

It is often observed that Coalition Government leads to the boundaries between parties blurring and shifting – maybe this is what we are seeing here.  If so we may have the development of two Tory parties.  The Unionist Eurosceptics and the Liberal Europhiles.
 
This is what Left Central’s, Tom Bailey, had to say:-
"There has though been a different shift to the political right occurring: the transfer of support from the Conservatives to UKIP, a development that could be of vital importance come 2015. Labour can benefit from this fracture amongst England’s political right much in the same way that the SDP/Liberal/Labour divides in the 1980s aided three successive Thatcher governments. Defection of votes from the Tories to UKIP helped Labour squeeze past in marginal seats in 2010. This effect seems only likely to increase as right-wing dissatisfaction deepens with this government….
The problem for Cameron is that many right-wing voters and politicians see his coalition government as weak on issues of core importance….
Their aims are not being met, dissatisfaction is rumbling ever louder and UKIP’s policies are looking more attractive.
The anger is not about ephemeral issues but ones of vital importance. The anger has been evident amongst the rebellious 2010 intake of Tory backbenchers who, in the words of Conservative Home, are a political ‘generation that cut its political teeth under Margaret Thatcher’. The perceived policy failures are in areas which Thatcher herself prioritised. She called for reduced state spending, rallied against the EU and warned against the UK being ‘swamped’ by immigrants. To many Tory MPs and right-wing commentators, the government continues to spend too much despite the cuts. They believe that the UK remains strangled, both economically and politically, by the EU. Although Cameron’s veto last December had eurosceptics delighted with his leadership, this week’s developments have demonstrated that veto’s non-existence and highlighted the widening chasm between the Tory leadership and the eurosceptic political right. Tory MEP Danniel Hannan complained ‘so now we know: no repatriation, no renegotiation, business as usual. December’s ‘veto’ turns out to be nothing of the kind; at best, it is a partial opt-out.’ Even if the veto had been meaningful, Cameron believes Britain should remain in the EU and supports eurozone fiscal union. Further to the EU problems for Cameron, immigration hit a new peak last year despite a promised reduction to ‘tens of thousands’. EU immigration accounts for almost half of all coming to the UK. As we cannot restrict EU immigration as part of the EU, those opposed to immigration would surely prefer UKIP to the Tories. The coalition government Tory party is not matching the expectations of the eurosceptic, Thatcherite right on these central issues.
The consequence has been that UKIP’s electoral support has been growing considerably. One YouGov poll put their support at 7%, a number familiar to the Lib Dems. This could benefit Labour immensely. If this level of support for UKIP remains in 2015, it could divide the right wing vote in essential, marginal English constituencies. Indeed, Peter Oborne argued that ‘it goes without saying that a Tory leader can never win an election so long as the broader Conservative movement is so painfully split.’ In response to the UKIP challenge, Cameron could shift to the right. However, this seems unlikely. Cameron’s leadership was centred on ‘decontaminating’ the Tory brand. Lord Ashcroft’s research found that this process remains incomplete and was an electoral hindrance in 2010 against winning floating voters. Given the restrictions of a coalition government, it seems unlikely that Cameron could satisfy the discontented eurosceptics. Consequently, the Tories risk haemorrhaging support to UKIP. This development will certainly not win Labour the 2015 election, but it will give Miliband a boost. With eurosceptic papers raging that the present crisis of the euro represents a “’once-in-a-generation’ opportunity to claw back powers from Brussels”, the divides within the Conservative party over the EU in particular are being stretched to breaking point. If there were a major Tory loss of Eurosceptic support, the rise of UKIP could help Labour back into government in 2015."

Now throw into the mix what happens if Scotland then votes for Independence!

This is how the Guardian puts it:-
"But Ukip is aware of one looming irony. For a party with its raison d'etre it knows that Alex Salmond's campaign to break up the UK must be a growing priority. On the conference fringe in Skegness the most heated debate was between those who advocate an England-only parliament to match the devolved assemblies, end the English backlash and save the union – and those who argued fiercely that such a strategy will "do Barroso's job for him" by breaking up Britain."

English Parliament argued on Daily Politics - "Soapbox"

Here is my little item about the need for an English Parliament, which was shown on Wednesday after PMQs, on BBC2's 'the Daily Politics' in their "Soapbox" slot.

What do you think?



Please have a look and pass it on to your friends and family!