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Wednesday 17 October 2012

British Politics – Incestuous?

In the Telegraph Blog on the 8th October the article which I produce below was published. This article gives some very instructive facts about the extent to which politics in ‘Britain’ today is self referencing and divorced from the People. There is now an increasing distance between the British Political Establishment system as it stands and the way in which you would envisage a properly functioning democracy operating. 

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Leverson Enquiry into the Media was the extent to which we saw how incestuous also is the relationship between the top of the British Media and leading British Establishment politicians. It is so to an extent far beyond anything that would be tolerated in the United States or indeed any other country where democratic values are genuinely prized. 

In short, not only do we need an English Parliament, First Minster and Government, but we need a renewal of the way that our democracy works – a genuinely huge task about which the words of the Chinese Philosopher Lao Tzu come to mind:- “A journey of a thousand miles starts with but a single step”! Are you willing to step forward too? 

Here is the article. See what you think?

Explaining how politics really works
Perhaps this is important, perhaps it isn't. But what is interesting is what it tells us about how politics works today and about how we are governed.
So who is this Aldersgate Group? They're a civil society group: a voluntary organisation coming together and attempting to make the world a better place. Nothing wrong with this at all: freedom of association and lobbying of government is as vital to a free society as freedom of speech.
However, there is a problem when we look at the actual organisations which are members. The Environment Ministry itself is a member. So is the Forestry Commission and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Then there are various more or less taxpayer funded organisations like the WWF, Woodland Trust and so on. Even those organisations that we might think are properly private sector, or at least voluntarily funded, seem to be less than completely so.
Take, almost at random, Bioregional. Page 42 of their accounts lists the sources of their income. Out of what looks like around £1.5 million in income, there's some £200,000 from the Department of the Environment and Rural Affairs, near another £100,000 from DECC, £160,000 from the London Waste and Recycling Board (yes, that's government of a kind again) and even £60,000 from WWF.
It's very difficult to think that this is some independent group of concerned citizens making their case. Rather, one can see at least the glimmerings of government lobbying government by cycling money through supposedly independent groups.
As my sometime colleague Chris Snowdon has so vividly outlined in a report for the IEA:-
New research, released today, reveals the true extent of government funded lobbying by charities and pressure groups. Having back-tracked on the charity tax, George Osborne now needs to tackle government funding of charities.
This report argues that, when government funds the lobbying of itself, it is subverting democracy and debasing the concept of charity. It is also an unnecessary and wasteful use of taxpayers’ money. By skewing the public debate and political process in this way, genuine civil society is being cold-shouldered.
It has been said that Friends of the Earth Europe receives some 50 per cent of its budget from the European Union and that 100 per cent of Friends of the Earth Europe's attention is on lobbying the European Union. This may indeed be how the Continentals do it, but it's a practice that we really don't want to become engrained here. For it is a distortion of that very civil society which is so vital to a free and functioning democracy.
Perhaps we should have a carbon target for 2030, perhaps we shouldn't. But it's an outrage that our tax money is being used to fund those who would lobby government for their preferred policies. Everyone has a right to combine, to cooperate, to lobby, most certainly we all do. But we have to do it with our own money, not with everyone else's taxes.
(Tim Worstall is a Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, and one of the global experts on the metal scandium, one of the rare earths. His book, Chasing Rainbows, on the economics of climate change, is available at Amazon.)

7 comments:

  1. The eu longs for the post democatic age, if it isn't here already.

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    1. I think it is here already. There was due to be a meeting of leaders of EU nations today in Brussels, including our own Slippery Dave Cameron who has once again promised us a referendum on EU membership ( not in or out just a further renegociation of the terms ). The theme of the meeting seems to be further integration, something therefore Slippery Dave seems to be quite happy to go along with. However, it seems to be specifically with regard to the eurozone and now the bankers seem to be really showing their hand as it is about further economic, fiscal and banking integration.

      The President of the Czech Republic has already warned us of the resulting removal of democracy and sovereignty on the Continent but the peoples of the various countries, or perhaps they are now merely to be regions, seem powerless to do anything about it. It is decided by the Marxist elite in Europe and the banking and financial elite elsewhere ( those people that JFK spoke about and who were probably responsible for his assassination ).

      Even if the various countries were to demand referenda, as in the past, the result would either be ignored if they voted no and they would have to vote again or the result would be circumvented behind closed doors. But don't forget the EU is just the first stage. In time the plan is for the whole world to be a Marxist totalitarian multicultural police state, a sort of Brazil everywhere, ruled over by a plutocratic elite.

      As for England, I reached the conclusion today that we are Normandy's first and last colony. They then went on to colonise the other nations of the British Isles and then were the driving force behind the British Empire. Make no mistake we are still under foreign domination.

      They became the aristocracy and the monarchy. William the Conqueror was described as an excessively greedy man and his descendants seem to have carried on in the same vein. Just as William and his crony knights plundered and subjugated Anglo-Saxon England so Henry the Eighth plundered the monasteries and gave the spoils to his cronies.

      But now we have reached a situation where anybody who wants to plunder England from anywhere in the world can join the club. So we have Russian Oligarchs, rich Greeks, anybody queueing up to launder their money in the English property market, whether they are straight or bent and successive governments having forced the indigenous cockneys out of London through mass immigration, this government and its predecessor are forcing the English middle classes out of London as they are unable to compete with foreign money launderers. Boris Johnson, for all his faults, has told us this and that they are having to commute into London over vast distances.

      So this is it, the heirs to William the Conqueror, foreigners plundering England and enriching themselves with the government's blessing. But so it has always been with the British/Norman establishment for a thousand years and the English can go hang for they are nothing more than serfs, useful idiots who will go along with the rape of their homeland.

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    2. Well put. My sentiments exactly. To further compound the issue the English people get the blame for everything whilst our thieving foreign elite, from 1066 onwards, aided by a requisite amount of indigenous greedy traitors have consistently flown under the radar to collect the spoils - what true mugs we've been. We all thought/told we were being progressive but all we are is weak/controlled subjugated fools. Now we are starting to pay for that weakness. That's how Human nature/societies work. The solution? I don't know. Is there a peaceful one? Never mind peasants there's always strictly come dancing or X Factor to look forward to at the weekend - be grateful!

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    3. We always knew that this banking crisis was a con to make us all impoverished credit slaves but I think the agreement on banking ingegration with the ECB on the Continent has shown how it has worked. First you create a banking crisis by selling sub-prime mortgages in the US to people who will never be able to repay them and also using money that never existed. By so doing you lead to the collapse of the whole banking system which then sucks in the taxpayers' money to keep it going.

      When it reaches rock bottom, you say the only solution is for a complete banking union - my bet is the the ECB and the Fed in the US will shortly be joined up ( a pity that bloke didn't manage to blow the latter up ). So you then have us all dominated by a banker's elite which can move our money wherever it wants. Protest! impossible, they have pulled the democratic rug from under you in the name of the total destruction of nationalism and racial integrity in the name of world peace.
      They have got us by the short and ..... and it is only going to get worse.

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    4. The Norman elite continues its attack on the English language through the BBC. True 'New English' derived from Old English must be taught in English schools as Welsh is taught in Welsh schools as our national language. Our language is the basis of our national identity - we must bring true English back from the grave where the British establishment has put it.

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  2. Forget British ! What about English Charities ? do they get funding ?

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