I see Argentina is making noises again about the Falkland Islands, or rather Falkland oil.
Suppose the Islands did choose to severe ties with Britain – why should they automatically be Argentinian?
The distance between Argentina and the Falklands is greater than the distance between London and Berlin. The islanders have no ties to the South Americans. If they ever have a desire to leave they surely deserve the right to independence.
Back to dirty business as usual for the press then. One rule for journalists and one rule for the rest of us.
Is an “urgent review” a euphemism for “someone’s been caught with their pants down”?
#JournalistsBreakout
What the CPS has taught us this week:
Journalists are above the law.
MPs are also above the law.
The CPS stinks to high Heaven.
I find myself within the gravitational pull of the frustrating conclusion that since I can’t vote for myself (having suffered a wee cash-flow problem here on the Immaculate estate) I have no suitable candidate whose box to tick on polling day (or any other day).
The No2EU party – a promising left-wing alternative to UKIP – seems to have vanished since the death of Bob Crow, and the TUSC appears to have gone rather vague on opposing the EU’s empire-building. That kind of bottle job will not do for me.
Any yea for No2EU would have been unequivocally anti-federalist in nature, whereas backing UKIP is always dismissed as a protest gesture (and besides, knowing how the dust will settle after the election, giving Nigel the nod would be too much like voting Conservative, which I have never done and never will).
I certainly can’t vote for Labour, Green or the endangered species Lib Dem because we differ on the most fundamental issue of a federal Europe. That leaves me in a void which will be familiar to millions – so many options and so little choice.
Nicola Sturgeon won tonight’s debate, I think. It was another surprisingly below par performance from Nigel Farage, who until recently had had the gift of the gab when it came to public discussion. As for the others, they are play-pit politicians, how on Earth did they become party leaders?
Ed Miliband spent much of the time doing a rather weak impression of a sullen schoolboy refusing to apologise to a teacher. Someone needs to tell him his enthusiasm for public speaking is misplaced, or Labour will get swept aside on polling day. Leanne Wood once again seemed to have no game-plan beyond trying to score cheap points against UKIP, looking fashionably revulsed at every opportunity. Attention then switched to the studio, where oily Hague got to wax lyrical for a while despite his boss having shirked the event completely.
Most revealing moment of the night came when Farage suggested the audience was mostly left-wing, as these BBC affairs often are, and most of the audience booed, which audibly proved his point.
As the campaign against UKIP has shown, it is still impossible to raise questions about immigration without being accused of racism. ‘Capping immigration’ is willingly misheard as ‘banning immigration’. Open border enthusiasts start spreading wicked rumours about repatriation plots.
So perhaps the only fair way to temper the argument is to link the amount of immigration to the building of homes, hospitals, schools and surgeries. You get the number you are prepared to pay for. Surely no party leader could argue against that and retain any credibility?
If you want net immigration of 300,000 (last year’s figures) annually, get the appropriate infrastructure in place annually, don’t put it off until never. If you haven’t built the homes, hospitals, schools and surgeries you don’t get your target. You receive exactly the scale that you can accommodate. What mechanism could be more sensible? If the Ed Miliband’s of this country had to wait as long as us riff raff to see their GPs the system would soon shape up.
I suspect the burden of practicality would eventually change the stance of those who want to keep our population rising exponentially. Reality would assert itself. The Tories and Labour won’t want to spend billions on new hospitals. The Green Party will lose credibility if they advocate concreting over the countryside to balance their open door policy.
However many people come here – and long may they keep coming, in reasonably-sized waves – precedence must be given to those fleeing from danger and starvation, and skilled workers, and creative talents. Sadly we can’t take everybody. Some worthy hopefuls will lose out (thankfully for them there are roughly 200 countries in the world, and many of them are not in such great demand), but we can damn well make sure their places aren’t taken instead by bad candidates. It should be obvious, but we have yet to start refusing entry to those with violent criminal records; even sex offenders are allowed in. Nobody is screening for extreme religious views. A few undercover workers in the reception halls could weed out some dangerous individuals. But I guess that kind of attention to detail would upset the same factions who won’t even tolerate the debate.
Since y’Lord Immaculate is unable to stand at this particular election (a slight funding mishap relating to a horse called Nude Nelly, which broadsided this beacon of virtue on his merry way to the recruitment officer), I will offer my devotees a glimpse of the future. I must warn you it is no improvement on the recent past.
You might expect, in a fair and just world, that the Conservatives would be punished for imposing five years of austerity on the rest of us while ensuring their rich buddies laugh all the way to their banking jobs, but in this world the only realistic opposition is Labour, and they have chosen to saddle themselves with a wet lettuce on legs for a frontman.
The living embodiment of a posh drip schoolboy, stepped out from a Beano comic strip, Ed Miliband is a curious choice of leader for those who seek power. He’s dislikeable, which means he must rely heavily on policy, and unfortunately for all of us he has no idea what real people want from politicians. Even if he did manage to sputter the right words, he is haunted by the spectre of the Blair and Brown era, who reduced trust in their party to a new low (in the 1980s people only questioned its competence, but at least everyone had a good idea whose side old Labour was on. (“The Soviet Union’s”, ventures a wag.)). Oh, you’re the champion of the NHS, are you? We’ve heard that one many times, from many different charlatans. We all know corporations will call the shots and no matter who resides at 10 Downing Street the corporations get what they want. Familiar false claims of loyalty to the NHS will not win Egregious Ed the keys.
Miliband’s intransigence in the face of popular issues, and his consistent dismissal of UKIP’s successes as nothing but protest votes rather than – God forbid! – a comment on the precious federal dream, do not sit well on the lips of an awkward, often obnoxious self-caricature.
Inexplicably, he believes his arrogant refusal to permit the hoi polloi a referendum on European Union membership (Why? The ruling party always wins a referendum, as David Cameron has reminded us twice.) is a vote winner. Good luck with that, Edward. Heaven only knows what percentage of the electorate this willful blindness will set up against him. It can’t have escaped everyone’s attention that Labour has been one of the driving forces behind an EU-phile campaign against UKIP which, although hugely successful with certain demographics – the young and gullible, the trend-conscious, Twitter comedians, BBC employees – has been guilty of slandering UKIP’s ever-increasing sympathisers as bigots and dolts (although the greatest achievement of the EU-philes’ massive indoctrination exercise has been erroneously convincing large numbers of immigrants and ethnic minorities they are in danger of deportation, thereby scaring the daylights out of the very innocents they claim to care about. Congratulations, bastards. The true aim of course has been to protect the EU, and playing the race card was an efficient way of tarnishing their rivals.). This is no way to make friends with the riff raff, Ed.
Labour is doomed to ignominious failure, a trouncing so severe even the SNP won’t be able to save them, and that will leave us with the ingredients for another Conservative coalition. Not with the Lib Dems, who will surely be annihilated for betraying their followers when they jumped into bed with the Tories. The balance of power will lie in the hands of the aforementioned UKIP, much derided and libeled anti-federalists whose band of misfits has grown more popular the louder the ad hominems have been hooted. There’s nothing the public hate more than being told what to think, and in that sense the anti-Kipper campaign has been spectacularly unsuccessful. The mobilisation of TV programme-makers against the Euro-sceptics, with shows such as UKIP: The First 100 Days, The Great European Disaster Movie, Meet The Kippers, and no doubt EU-funded Channel 4’s forthcoming Ballot Monkeys (Ofcom appear to be on holiday) may cower handfuls of UKIP voters out of backing them at the polls, but while some in society go with the flow (I’ve seen people who I know to be racist sharing anti-UKIP material, which demonstrates how shallow the fashion for knocking Farage is), most Britons are far more stubborn and will feel inclined to spite the propaganda-peddlers. I’m almost tempted to do so myself, and cock a snook at the bullies driving the bandwagon, but I can’t because my trusted tea leaves insist that UKIP will join their Tory siblings for another half-decade of applying economic thumbscrews to the common people while lining chums’ pockets. Common sense agrees. Once you have eliminated the impossible – Ed Miliband running a country – what remains is the reality. A Con-UKIP reality.
Farage will take a senior role. Perhaps not Deputy PM, in deference to the pariah status which has been accorded UKIP’s smooth-operating orator by media shepherds and the sheep. The referendum will be a fudge of some kind, and regardless of the options on that little piece of paper, Nigel Farage will learn, as Nick Clegg did, that the establishment does not lose referendums. There would be no ballot if a pro-EU result could not be guaranteed. Every ‘news’ outlet will be marshaled, all but the strongest brains battered into submission. If any actual evidence exists regarding the frequent and unsubstantiated allegations of racism against Nigel Farage that is when it will emerge. Saved for the most damaging moment. Personally I hope it is not true, because I’ve loathed watching a smear campaign based so far on nothing but his belief in an immigration cap (not an end to immigration, not repatriation, not bloody death camps, just control where there is presently a shambles…ie. the Home Office) and those who’ve thrown the mud without possession of any proof don’t deserve to be vindicated through sheer luck.
I share UKIP’s contempt for the EU on the grounds that our own MPs and civil servants are bad enough without subjecting ourselves to those on the mainland, many of whom make our lot look like sparkling Samaritans. A referendum under a pro-EU PM cannot be won by the antis. So, those of us who don’t want Britain to sleepwalk into a United States of Europe will actually find ourselves worse off than before – by hook or by crook the EU-philes will finally have a mandate to carry on with what they have been doing anyway. Whether Farage will remain at his post after that democratic disaster or stand down from his vanity office and trigger another election is the only mystery. As much as I despise Tories, and make no mistake he’s an old-school Tory at heart, he is the most talented talker in the game today. It would be a shame if he disappeared from politics and left us with dull Blair-impersonators as far as the eye can see, or worse if he is unmasked as genuinely being all the things the EU and Labour defamed him as. Then again, he’ll be a lot less easy on the ear when he is defending Con-UKIP behaviour. But a coalition will not get us out of the EU, and UKIP in its current form can never be the majority party (nor should it be, so long as it has a tendency to accommodate unreformed Tory loons with outdated attitudes. We can’t have nutters like the ejected Godfrey Bloom in parliament).
So buckle up for a series of disappointments (unless you’re a federalist, in which case deploy a smug grin), and prepare for another round of working your arses off to make the rich richer.