ENGLAND SCOT FREE OF UK GOVERNMENT DEBT?

I recently came across the origin of the expression ‘scot free’ which turns out is nothing to do, as I had idly thought, with Scottish reivers (border raiders) getting back across the old border with their ill-gotten gains before they could be brought to face English justice. In fact the origin is as follows:-

'Skat' is a Scandinavian word for tax or payment and the word migrated to England and mutated into 'scot' as the name of a redistributive taxation, levied as early the 10th century as a form of municipal poor relief.

'Scot' as a term for tax has been used since then in various forms - Church scot, Rome scot, Soul scot and so on. Whatever the tax, the phrase 'getting off scot free' simply refers to not paying one's taxes.

It seems that people have been getting off scot free since at least the 11th century. The first written reference in to 'scot free' is in a Writ of Edward the Confessor (who died in 1066!).

This, funnily enough, is a more relevant, if somewhat less amusing, insight into the quoted remarks of Dr Matt Qvortrup http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/cds/staff/qvortrupmmatt.html, which as the report below shows has built on the comments that I reported quite a while back of the North Western constitutional law professor, Professor David Scheffer , who had already pointed out that if the UK Government were trying to insist that they were the successor state and that Scotland was a wholly new state then it logically follows that the Scots could achieve independence without any of the liabilities of the UK. That opinion is now confirmed in this report.

If Alex Salmond deliberately lured Goerge Osborne and Michael Moore on so that he could judo throw them into their own elephant pit, constructed of their own arrogance, ignorance and folly, then this result could not be bettered.

The additional significance of course is that there is a new race on because it is the first of the nations of the UK that get away with being new states that could get out “scot free” from under the massive debts that the profligate and spendthrift British political Establishment have built up for us.

To use another expression ‘what is sauce for the goose is certainly sauce for the gander’, so if Scotland could avoid the debts by becoming a new state so could England.

With over a Trillion pounds (£1000,000,000,000) worth of UK Government debt at issue getting away scot free from the debt mountain sounds quite appealing!

Independence for England anyone?

Here is the article from the Scottish version of the SUN newspaper. Could there be any agenda behind it not appearing in the English version?

Expert: Scotland can legally leave the UK and be debt free Split ends ... Dr Qvortrup says successor states took on liabilities in past break-ups

By ANDREW NICOLL, Scottish Political Editor

SCOTLAND can legally walk away from its share of the UK’s debt mountain and start independence with a clean slate, according to a top constitutional expert.

Lawyer Dr Matt Qvortrup says the nation could begin its life outside the union unshackled from a £125BILLION overdraft — equivalent to four years’ spending at Holyrood.

And the world-renowned academic believes his findings, based on studies of historic state separations, could have a massive impact on the independence debate.

He said: “Imagine — ‘vote Yes and send the bill to David Cameron’.

“Of course I am neutral and just an observer, but the world deserves to know the facts. Personally speaking, I think this could be a game changer.”

Dr Qvortrup’s explosive findings are published in a report that looks at national divorces dating from 1830, when Belgium left the Netherlands, until the break-up of Yugoslavia and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the Nineties.

His research found countries that split equally have historically shared the debts built up during their union. But if one partner continues as before as the ‘successor state’ — keeping its position on international bodies such as the United Nations — it shoulders the debts.

Westminster has already claimed that the remainder of the UK would carry on in that role after a Yes vote in the 2014 independence referendum.

It would hold on to its seat in Europe as well as at the UN and military alliance Nato — while Scotland would have to start from scratch and apply for admission to those bodies.

Dr Qvortrup — an academic at Cranfield University near Swindon, Wilts — said that would reduce Holyrood’s UK balance sheet to zero.

He said: “If Alex Salmond doesn’t want to share the debt and is happy to reapply to Europe, the default position in international law is that Scotland would not have to pick up the debt.

“That has to be known to the people before the vote next year so that David Cameron will know we are starting negotiations from the position that UK (remainder of UK) is the successor state. That has consequences. The one that pays the debt is the successor state.

“If you want to be the EU successor state and be in the UN Security Council, you can. You take all the spoils — but you also take the baggage.”

He added: “In Yugoslavia, Serbia Montenegro wanted to be the successor country but they were deemed not to be — which meant they were not landed with the debt. The position Scottish Secretary Michael Moore and Prime Minister David Cameron have is that as long as they are the successor state it’s all good.

“But the understanding about them having to pay the debt could be a good argument for the Yes campaign.

“All other things being equal, Scotland does not have to pay its share of the UK’s debt.”

The findings in the Qvortrup Report tally with the opinion of Professor David Scheffer of the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, US.

He believes Westminster’s reading of the post-indy situation is a “bold presumption that rests on very thin ice”.

And he says that negotiating a slice of the UK’s financial burden after a split would give Scotland bargaining power in talks.

However, the Vienna Convention treaty states: “When part of the territory of a state is transferred to another state, the state debt is to be settled by agreement.”

But only eight countries signed up to the convention — and the UK is not one of them.

A report published by Michael Moore in February said that a new Scotland would have to start from scratch as a new country — loaded with 300 years of UK debt. The analysis pointed to “the overwhelming body of international precedent including Irish independence in 1922”. It said: “In the event of independence, the UK would continue and Scotland would form a separate state. There would be an expectation that an independent Scotland would take on an equitable share of national debt, to be negotiated.

“The continuing UK would need to seek to ensure that a fair settlement applied to assets and liabilities.”

Finance Secretary John Swinney has already hinted he could be ready to walk away from the UK’s monetary liabilities if the SNP wins next year’s referendum.

When Chancellor George Osborne visited Scotland last month, he warned that he was unwilling to keep sharing the Pound with Scotland after independence. But Mr Swinney warned he was “playing with fire”.

He said: “The Chancellor argues that the UK would be the successor state, would hold on to the Pound and we couldn’t get access to that.

“If that’s his position, then the UK is obliged as a successor state to hold on to all of the debt.

“We would be liberated from a population share of the UK’s debt of £125billion.”

http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/scotlandfeatures/4924051/Expert-Scotland-can-legally-leave-the-UK-and-be-debt-free.html

An EU snake in the queen's speech grass?

Tucked away near the end of the Queen’s speech there is a significant EUish item. An example of our political elite not being totally honest with us?

There buried in the detail are some deceptive and bland comments about the European Union Approvals Bill which allows for authorisation for the UK ‘to support measures and programmes in the European Union’. Among three programmes listed, it includes Europe for Citizens which according to government briefing notes ‘aims to develop understanding of the EU, its history and policy-making processes and encourage civic participation in the EU’. It also aims to ‘promote remembrance of Europe’s history, particularly the wars and totalitarian regimes of the 20th century’.

If anyone wishes to know what is about to happen with matters EU in the UK, one place to start is at the European Scrutiny Committee website (ESC). What do we find there?
 

A ”Europe for Citizens” Programme with a budget of €229 million for the period 2014-20. It seeks to ensure continuity of funding for a range of activities already supported by the EU under the current Europe for Citizens Programme (2007-13). When did our press and politicians tell us about all this?

So just as David Cameron blows hot and cold over an EU referendum – signalling that he may “propose” a bill and then backtracking – we find that his British coalition government actually supports the objectives of the Europe for Citizens Programme, citing the fact that it has “synergies with the Government’s “Big Society” agenda and youth policies, as well as the focus on “localising action at the lowest possible level” and empowering individuals.” This is no more than brainwashing.

We also it seems have a Scrutiny Committee prepared to issue a conditional “scrutiny waiver”? And we have a parliamentary system that is supposed to scrutinise the government of the UK?

Here is the link to the official briefing note on the Queen’s speech. Click here >>>

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/197434/Queens-Speech-2013.pdf

 

There were 9 UK wide Bills proposed, and 4 Great Britain only Bills, and one each for Wales and Northern Ireland and 3 for England and Wales only; These are: the Water Bill, the Offender Rehabilitation Bill and the Anti-social Behaviour Bill. 

There were also 3 bills with England only jurisdiction; one closing the Audit Commission, a Bill to enable HS2 and a Care Bill. 

There is also to be a new National Curriculum and exams reform for England only and Teachers pay arrangements and apprenticeships reforms all just for England only.

What real democratic mandate from the English Nation to reform our schools etc does a Scottish Minister in the British Government actually have? It would be good to have an English minister in an English Parliament decide these things after being elected by an constituency to represent the English nation!

PETER DAVIES – SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI (so ends worldly glory)!

As I am often asked about what happened with Peter Davies I will set it out here and then leave it. Peter was our party's first great electoral success and if that had been followed up then our Cause would have been helped greatly. It is disappointing that this wasn't possible.

Most of the details of Peter Davies’ life can be seen here in his entry in Wikipedia. Click here for the details >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Davies_(politician)

For my part, my first awareness of Peter’s existence came about because our then Yorkshire organiser, Michael Cassidy (who had met Peter in UKIP and then the Referendum Party) where we had got him standing in a local election in Doncaster.

Peter had automatically become a member of the English Democrats on the basis of having previously been a member of a UKIP splinter party, Reform UK, which had recently merged with the English Democrats. I then got good reports back during and after the election that our message had gone down very well and that Peter was delighted with the fact that he had more than doubled his best previous performance.

I do not think I actually first spoke to Peter until Michael Cassidy brought him along to a National Council meeting. During the course of the next few months, with my active encouragement the strategic plan emerged to stand as much as our resources would allow in Doncaster and to start spreading our message and create brand awareness so when it came to the Mayoral election we would be in a good position to challenge. This plan went well with Peter standing in local elections and Michael Cassidy standing for us in the Parliamentary election.

Incidentally for those who think that it is practical to do a deal with UKIP, Michael Cassidy’s experience is telling. He had been, I think, the Secretary of the Regional Party of Yorkshire for UKIP and personally knew the organisers of UKIP within Doncaster. He wanted to stand in the Don Valley constituency which would have supported Peter’s local election candidacies, but UKIP’s local branch told him that that is where they wanted to stand. Michael therefore agreed that he would stand in North Doncaster, but when the nominations were announced by the Returning Officer, it turned out that UKIP had not stood in the Don Valley at all, but in North Doncaster in order to try and spoil our vote!

By the time of the run up to the Mayoral election and also the EU Parliamentary election which was to be held on the same date, I was aware that Peter was opinionated and seemed capable of making a good speech and dealing with question and answer sessions in a robust and mostly sensible way. I do not think, even with hindsight, that I had any information which should have led me to be wary. In any case it was probably either to put Peter up as Mayoral candidate or not to put up a candidate at all. I was keen to put up a candidate in Doncaster and mostly funded the election. We not only stood Peter as our Mayoral candidate but also put him on our Yorkshire EU Parliamentary list so that we would get a double mailshot and we used the EU Parliament election free delivery to mailshot the whole of Doncaster. I paid for this and for the Yorkshire EU Parliamentary deposit.

During the election campaign Michael Cassidy did tell me that things seemed to be going well and he did not need any further help. We were of course standing in the EU elections across England and therefore I was at full stretch.

I have since been told that even during that election campaign Peter threatened to resign. I understand that this was over the question of whether he could go off for a week during the campaign to go to the horse racing festival at Perth in Scotland. It was only when Peter came back from that and had the confirmation from Michael that we were doing well, that Peter actually began to do any serious campaigning.

We then had the sensational result that he was elected by a squeak on the second preferences. It was obviously a very exciting, if lengthy and drawn out count, with lots of re-counts during which all sorts of stunts were being played by the more partisan counting officials (including 600 BNP votes being mysteriously put in hidden amongst the Labour votes!).

Immediately after Peter was elected the first sign to me that he wasn’t going to be a “safe pair of hands” was when he gave an interview to Toby Foster for which he was totally unprepared and from which he flounced out in the middle of. When I discussed this with Peter, far from being sorry about it, he maintained that it was all the interviewer’s fault and that he would not give any further interviews with either Toby Foster or Radio Sheffield.

I did my best to repair the situation and did an interview with Toby Foster myself the following week on my way up to Doncaster to our new Mayor’s invitation.

At this time we were getting lots of media coverage and Peter was getting a flood of people saying how delighted they were that we had got him elected. Far from helping us respond to these letters and emails, he had his Council staff delete all of the emails and we never got any of the letters either. That was the first indications that things were not going to go smoothly.

Peter invited some of us up to Doncaster to celebrate and during our meeting we talked about the things that Peter could do to implement all relevant parts of our manifesto and the need to appoint a political advisor as his Chief of Staff. We had a National Council member available at the time, David Lane, who was willing to do the job. The second indication was when Peter initially said he would do it but didn’t in fact appoint him and became evasive about the reasons in the following weeks. At that point I thought it might be that he did not want to appoint David Lane, so I then invited him to appoint his close friend and agent, Geoff Crossman. He would not appoint him either. 

It was also becoming clear to me at this point that Peter was very disorganised and had a very poor memory for detail and was very inclined to make snap decisions without fully considering the situation, whilst also having no tolerance for those people he was dealing with in the Council who didn’t scurry obsequiously around him.

These were worrying signs and it was frustrating that we had got somebody elected to a high profile position of actual power, but yet he seemed to have no interest in implementing any aspect of our manifesto. I had become aware that Peter was volatile and headstrong, and it was unlikely that I was going to be able to get him to do anything that we wanted him to do.

I continued to try to get him to set up St George’s Day celebrations in Doncaster, but he would not do that; to focus the substantial community budget more on the English community, but he wouldn’t do that. He did not seem to have any strategic view as to what he was going to be doing in the Council, which was also frustrating. Having seen that the previous Mayor of Doncaster had fallen out with Labour and been independent for several years before the end of his tenure, I knew that I could not actually order Peter to do anything.

As a result of Peter’s election a significant number of people had joined the Party in Doncaster, but the reports that I was getting was that he was often falling out with individuals and the numbers were gradually dropping off.

In the first three years after his election we did nevertheless manage a significant number of candidates and have continued to regularly get the kind of votes that Peter had found he was getting once he started to stand for us.

There was then a highly critical report by Government Inspectors into the operation of Doncaster Council , which whilst it concentrated the heaviest fire on Doncaster’s Labour Party and Councillors, it was also clear that Peter was failing to respond to the situation in any sort of constructive way. I wasn’t entirely surprised by this stage. We nevertheless did our utmost to support Peter in what could have been a potential crisis.

We continued to lose good members of the Party in Doncaster, at least in part because of Peter’s behaviour but the next crisis was that Doncaster’s Labour Councillors decided that they would trigger a referendum on whether to keep the mayoralty. Peter had left dealing with this right until the very last moment and he then rang me in a panic asking me to help. I did and we produced a leaflet which won the day.

All the while Peter was being attacked on websites and in dishonest, utterly contemptible emails and blog entries from various sources including one particularly repellent individual called Jonathan Snelling, who is a failed Liberal Democrat candidate. It gradually became clear that many of the other attackers were people who had been pretending to be English nationalists but who were unmasked as being UKIP internet trolls (“UKIP’s Black Ops Team”).

When we won the mayoral referendum it was clear that we were in a good position to win the mayoral election again with Peter winning a further term. We now began to pick up indicators that Peter’s egotism had disturbed his sense of proportion to the point that he thought now, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that he had been elected entirely because of himself rather than as a result of any input from the English Democrats!

I suspect the Labour Councillors who he was regularly mixing with were astute enough to realise that Peter’s greatest weakness is his egotism and had played on him to try to divide him from us so that they would have a good chance of winning the mayoral election.

By this point it was becoming clear to me that there was a danger that Peter would spin us out long enough so it would be impossible for us to find an alternative candidate before Peter became an Independent. I made it clear to him, not only in conversations but also in writing, that if he did not stand as an English Democrat we would nevertheless stand. Perhaps as a result of this crystal clear warning Peter then started working on the active members of our Doncaster branch to get them to stay with him if he stood as an Independent. It was also becoming clear that he was openly trying to de-stabilise the branch and on at least one occasion he flounced out of the meeting, hoping that the branch would collapse.

I then invited him to a selection meeting by our National Council indicating that we had another candidate and there would have to be a selection. At this point he resigned and immediately began to attack the Party. He claimed that his resignation was something to do with BNP members, although there were no ex-BNP members in the Doncaster branch and he was well aware of the few people who came over from the BNP to us had done so 18 months or so before. In short Peter’s conduct towards us was not only a great let down and unwillingness to follow our manifesto, but also devious and disloyal.

Perhaps I should have immediately been put on my guard when he kept telling me that he was “loyal”! These words from his interviews in the media after his resignation show just what that meant:-

Peter was asked about his refusal to help us get St George’s Day properly celebrated in Doncaster by the Local Government Magazine and he said, and I quote,: - “I have never celebrated St George’s Day. I certainly think, in a racing town like Doncaster, that meeting fraternal colleagues in Perth is a far better use of my time than dancing around with a bunch of Morris dancers”.

Peter’s commitment to English Nationalism was not even skin deep.

Peter told the BBC last year that he had not been mayor very long before he “realised that being an English Democrat was a total irrelevance”.

Peter told ITV that:- “A good Mayor is a Mayor without a party. English Democrats policies have never played any part in my running of the town.”

By now Peter had become an ex-supporter of six political parties, having, as he had told me at one time, originally been a supporter of Labour and then for a longish while Conservative, Referendum Party, UKIP and Reform UK and finally the English Democrats.

If Peter had been willing to maintain even the façade of loyalty, even though he was never actually going to do anything that was English Democrat, he would nevertheless now be starting on his second term of office as Mayor of Doncaster as can easily be seen by the results, as together we would have had a majority of over 4,000.

Peter’s tenure office has been a disappointment but our troubles with him are by no means unique for any political party in dealing with egotists. Those of us that actually care about the Cause and are campaigning to make a difference for England for the better will carry on and in Doncaster we are already looking forward to the next elections. We saved our Mayoral Election deposit and again we showed that we are the second Party in Doncaster after Labour. This result shows that our support is good even in such difficult circumstances.

I am glad to see that out of the 43 candidates that we stood this May we have had a further 10,083 votes (plus an uncounted number of second preference votes in Doncaster).

UKIP - the earthquake?

I would like to congratulate UKIP on its 139 Council seats won in the recent local elections. It is sensational turn-out for a Party which had previously only had a small number of councillors - if you exclude the parish/town councillors which UKIP's figures often used to mention. It is not so long ago that they were getting tiny votes despite their huge EU resources.

 But the newspapers have been reporting remarks along the lines that it is an “earthquake”, a “seismic shock”, a “body blow” or the “death knell” of the British political Establishment. 

 To establish a sense of perspective and balance on this, I think it is worth pointing out that overall there are 20,680 councillors throughout Great Britain and therefore talk of body blows, let alone of anything fatal for the British Establishment is well and truly over-blown. 

An interesting and carefully worked out  and sobering analysis on the imapct that UKIP has had has been done by Nigel Farage's former right-hand man here >>> http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83861

 If we want to use an analogy or simile, then because the media have been so vocal about it, it is clearly a blow to the face and perhaps even a black eye to the Establishment, whereas the less well reported numbers of Green Councillor candidates elected would perhaps also be a bruise, but hidden under the clothing. In neither case could it sensibly be said that the British Establishment’s skin had been broken, let alone any bones! 

Having recently shed Peter Davies, our “maverick” mayor of Doncaster, who was an ex-UKIPer, to my personal relief, given his vain and egotistical character and unwillingness to do anything at all in our manifesto, I do not envy Nigel Farage’s coming job in having to deal with perhaps 147 Peter Davies’, let alone having to deal with fire-fighting all the scandals and ructions which will now develop amongst those of UKIP’s new Councillors, who never expected to be elected and who in the nature of a previously small party, as Nigel Farage candidly admitted, had not been properly vetted.

Despite all this I congratulate UKIP and Nigel Farage, in particular for having greened up the ground on the so called populist right vacated by David Cameron’s Conservatives and his Coalition. Many of us feel very much the same regarding the EU, immigration and law and order.

The big difference between the English Democrats and UKIP is of course on the question of England, which UKIP has no interest in at all, as amply demonstrated by their failure to mention England or the English in their two recent Party Election Broadcasts.

I fully expect that as we move towards the Scottish Independence Referendum, questions relating to England and the English Nation will gather greater momentum in the way that troubles within the EU have helped UKIP’s recent progress. I look forward with relish to the English Democrats’ getting coverage then.

Our County Council election results 2013

Our County Council election results have now been compiled. Many thanks to Stephen Morris who did so. 

Overall we got 5,468 votes (3.53%) including both those County Council electoral divisions where we made an effort and those where we were merely paper candidates. Our best result was for Stephen Goldspink, in Cambridgeshire, second with 29.32%.

In Doncaster we got 4.615 first preference votes (7.5%) and came third. We also saved our deposit (unlike the Conservatives and Lib Dems). In difficult circumstances we have confirmed that we are the second party there. We are now preparing for the next election there.

Well done to all those who stood and across England and also all those who helped. 

As the following item shows, although we have been successful in getting people aware of our Cause, we have not yet had nearly as much success in getting ourselves identitfied with its solution. 

Click here >>> http://networkedblogs.com/KUMl6. 

This report, from Labour's IPPR, is despite UKIP rejecting even Paul Nuttall's modest move towards an English Parliament and also despite UKIP's recent Party Election Broadcasts, during English Local Elections, not even deigning to mention either England or the English Nation once. On the contrary they asserted that UKIP is 'Proud to be British' and has signed up to vote NO to Scottish Independence.

More work to do! Per Ardua ad Astra! 

BBC = BRITISH BIAS CORPORATION?

The day before St George’s Day I was rung up by ‘Penny’ from the BBC’s flagship political show, Daily Politics, and asked if I could go on to the show to talk about St George’s Day. I said I would be delighted and arrangements were then made for me to be picked up the next day and brought into the studio. 

On St George’s Day itself the BBC car duly arrived, driven by a delightful and interesting Afghan, so the journey in was spent in interesting conversations about that country’s troubles. He also assured me that he had been to many countries in the world and, so far as he is concerned by far the best that he has ever been to is England, in his view, for our amazing tolerance, but also how much free-er we are than almost any other country he has ever visited and how relatively un-corrupt we still are. 

I was then dropped at the BBC Milbank Studios for my interview and taken straight in to follow on after the SNP’s Treasury spokesman had finished being savaged over details of how an independent Scotland’s monetary system would be organised. (As the hundreds of new states have emerged in the space of the last 100 years can attest the Unionists’ attacks are the stuff of political theatre rather than addressing the philosophical basis of Scottish nationhood). 

It was then my turn and, as you can see from the BBC’s web page and the video clip on it, I wasn’t really invited to discuss St George’s Day after all, rather to be attacked for the Party having dared to allow ex-BNP people to join us.

Click here to have a look >>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22268414

Do look at the link and see what you think, but in my view, this attack, given that we have only stood 43 candidates in these elections, suggests that the BBC is worried about our growth.

Given the BBC’s transparent pro-Labour bias such concerns can only mean good things for us.

The idea that ordinary people are worried about previous political affiliations of converts to our or for that matter any other Cause is not borne out in my experience. The only people that seem obsessed about it are Establishment political hacks and jobs-worths and those within the prevailing media, politically correct, mind-set.

RADIO LITOPIA INTERVIEW FOR ST GEORGE’S DAY

 

RADIO LITOPIA INTERVIEW FOR ST GEORGE’S DAY

 

For St George’s Day I was interviewed by Garry Bushell by Radio Litopia. Radio Litopia is an internet based radio station that broadcasts to a worldwide, but quite intellectual, audience. 

 

For a change the interview wasn’t conducted in the usual BBC format of a few minutes of attack with very little opportunity to talk about the real issues. 

 

Here is a link to the interview >>> http://litopia.tv/-7vo

 

If you look at Radio Litopia’s website you will see that Garry also has recently interviewed Nigel Farage.