tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2863845769370453822024-02-20T12:34:01.471+00:00Odin's RavenThought and Memory fly forth over all the worlds each day, and whisper their knowledge to the High One.
Others call them Boldness and Desire, Battle birds, and feeders on the slain.
If that doesn't appeal to you - don't stay to meet His wolves Greedy and Ravenous.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-45959854541648818752009-07-24T14:59:00.057+01:002009-08-07T00:25:05.794+01:00High CrimesHigh crimes were political offences against the country, such as abuse of office or failure to carry out obligations, or treason or bribery. They were 'high' because they related to the state and could only be committed by people in 'high' office. <div><br /></div><div>According to Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanours">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanours</a> </div><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:-webkit-sans-serif;font-size:13px;">"High" in the legal parlance of the 18th century means "against the State". A <i>high crime</i> is one which seeks the overthrow of the country, which gives aid or comfort to its enemies, or which injures the country to the profit of an individual or group. In democracies and similar societies it also includes crimes which attempt to alter the outcome of elections</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:-webkit-sans-serif;font-size:7;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:48px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:-webkit-sans-serif;font-size:7;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:48px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia;font-size:16px;">High crimes were the basis for the impeachment of unsuccessful politicians before Parliament in medieval and early modern England, and for the American constitutional provision to punish the President and other office holders for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours.</span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>As explained by <a href="http://www.constitution.org/cmt/high_crimes.htm">http://www.constitution.org/cmt/high_crimes.htm</a> <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'times new roman';">Under the English common law tradition, crimes were defined through a legacy of court proceedings and decisions that punished offenses not because they were prohibited by statutes, but because they offended the sense of justice of the people and the court. Whether an offense could qualify as punishable depended largely on the obligations of the offender, and the obligations of a person holding a high position meant that some actions, or inactions, could be punishable if he did them, even though they would not be if done by an ordinary person.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>The recent media exposure of the venality of our expense troughing MP's certainly showed their behaviour to be offensive to the sense of justice of the people, although it is doubtful that many, if any, will be exposed to the sentencing of a court. Fiddling their expenses is not something that could only be done by high officials, it's well within the capacity of common people, who are all the more offended by it's banality in defining how the public increasingly regard their 'representatives' or rulers - as common thieves. Of course fixing the rules to give themselves special latitude in claiming expenses, and setting their own salaries absurdly high, offends the public's sense of justice, and can only be done by 'high' people; so it might be regarded as a high crime, particularly as it reveals their disposition to abuse their positions of authority and public trust.</div><div><br /></div><div>Indeed, the normal conduct of Parliament is open to the suspicion of constituting a series of High crimes against the people that MP's are supposed to represent. They fail to execute their office faithfully, by passing legislation which they have not even read let alone pondered it's principles and likely effects so as to come to an honest opinion on it's merits. They prostitute their opinions and votes to the party system. In most cases they abase themselves to their party leaders in search of ministerial preferment. In many cases they all too obviously lack the moral and intellectual qualities suitable for high office and indeed, especially on the Labour side, are clearly selected because of their lack of capacity, which makes them servile lackeys of their leaders or leftist lunatics working to destroy anything worthwhile. It's nauseating to see the parade of sleazy riff-raff and shady characters given places in our legislature, and even in the cabinet. British politicians, especially on the left, have loved to pontificate about Britain's moral leadership in the world. Such pretensions must now be laid aside, as foreigners such as the Iranian leadership have been able to criticise the Prime Minister for allowing financially corrupt ministers to remain in his government. The House of Lords is likewise stuffed with placemen and shameless influence-peddlers. Neither leaders nor many followers have been much concerned about the progressive cession of British sovereignty to Brussels. This treason is obviously a High crime, but there is no way of holding them to account. </div><div><br /></div><div>The state can function as a criminal enterprise. There's a famous old story of Alexander and the pirate according to which Alexander the Great asked a pirate if he had anything to say in his own defence before Alexander passed judgement upon him for troubling the world with his crimes. The pirate replied that he had done nothing which Alexander himself had not done on a far greater scale, but that because he had had only a single ship he was called a pirate, whereas Alexander's vast fleets and armies enabled him to be called King of Kings. </div><div><br /></div><div>It is said that under Communism the rulers of Eastern Europe and their intelligence services engaged in massive looting of art and valuables for sale abroad and actively engaged in all sorts of crimes, and cultivated criminal groups to assist their money laundering, forgery, spying and subversion of other countries. It was rumoured in <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Assassination-Robert-Maxwell-Israels-Superspy/dp/1861056427">The Assassination of Robert Maxwell</a>, who seems to have been involved with several intelligence agencies, that he made a lot of his money through such contacts, including money laundering for communist leaders under cover of publishing their dreary speeches in the West. The governments of much of the world are almost routinely expected to be involved in crimes such as drug trafficking or theft of natural resources and ill treatment of anyone who objects. International indignation is very selective. We hear some condemnation of governments such as those of Burma or North Korea which are not major powers, not floating on oil, and not on Israel's hit list. The media soon becomes bored. We don't hear so much about Zimbabwe now - and that's not because things there are getting better. Occasionally a maverick critic such as Craig Murray gets some publicity for the oppressive rulers of Uzbekistan and <a href="http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/07/afghanistan.html">drug smuggling</a> from Afghanistan, but the British government is embarrassed by his well informed accusations that it condoned the use of torture by third parties in the hope of gaining useful intelligence. He has now ceased to be employed by the government and is almost ignored by the media. It's interesting to see how criticism of the Chinese government has diminished as those in charge enriched themselves and created opportunities for Western companies to share in economic development. The slow genocide of Tibetans and destruction of their culture and religion as they are replaced by Han Chinese who loot the resources of the country and degrade it's environment, (as they have already done in China proper), the use of slave labour and the other oppressive brutalities of Communism no longer attract much media exposure or political opposition from Western governments. Scale of operation continues to matter - and, oh yes, China is now the greatest creditor of the American government which is very dependent on their continued purchase of still more of it's IOU's. </div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, people in official positions may misuse them to commit crimes on their own account. That's more or less what laws are meant to detect and punish. It gets more difficult when there is widespread corruption and collusion between officials and politicians and outside media business and political interests. Honest officials may then be punished or prevented from doing their jobs properly to expose and remove the corruption. Here is a very recent reference in the Lew Rockwell blog to the intimate connection between politics and crime, especially drugs and money laundering and the complicity of the agencies of the state, which the author calls the <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/31853.html">Narcosaurus</a>. It is partly based on the account of <a href="http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/narcoDollars.pdf">Catherine Fitts</a> who was hounded by the American government for trying to expose this sort of thing. She lists an extensive bibliography concerning corrupt dealings by governments and their intelligence agencies. It's not just the state apparatus that can be hand in glove with crime. The most shocking part of her revelations is on page 18 of her 23 page account, where she recounts the story of a lecture she gave to about 100 people. These people were supposedly "committed to contributing to the spiritual evolution of our culture", yet only one would agree to decriminalise narcotics trafficking and prevent money laundering if he could. The others agreed that they would rather have an underclass continue to sell drugs to their children and grandchildren than risk a reduction in share values or government payouts. That was before the financial slump started. Now they'll get both. There may be some justice in the universe. </div><div><br /></div><div>Madcowprod is a website which has for years exposed such connections between criminals and lobbyists and politicians and officials and spies; especially where drugs and 9/11 associations intersect in Florida. Here's one of their articles about the extensive criminal and political connections of one, <a href="http://www.madcowprod.com/10272005.html">Jack Abramoff</a> , who was in trouble a few years ago. They also advertise a book about Barry Seal, someone who as a CIA agent was apparently involved in flying small aeroplane loads of cocaine into Mena airport in Arkansas when Clinton was governor. Indeed <a href="http://www.madcowprod.com/archive.html">here</a> is a whole page listing their articles about similar scandals.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another similar website is <a href="http://www.almartinraw.com/index.html">Al Martin Raw</a>, whose <a href="http://www.conspiracydigest.com/doublecrossed.html">author</a> was involved in the Iran-Contra affair, but fell out with the major figures and has been spilling the beans ever since. Years ago, about the time of the invasion of Iraq, he had a whole series of rumours about massive corruption at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, from which vast amounts of American military equipment were said to have been secretly sold to foreign buyers. Senior officers were allegedly most lucratively involved and it was not clear how much might have been known and connived at by top officials. His informant, the 'Friendly Colonel', explained that equipment such as tanks or artillery would be re-labelled as spare desks or surplus furniture, and sold.</div><div><br /></div><div>When Iraq was occupied there were many stories about the corruption and waste and theft of money which followed. <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2007/02/baghdads-missing-billions-rediscovered">Here</a> is one from Mother Jones reprising the tale of the billions that went missing under the rule of Paul Bremer. <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2008/05/billions-dollars-unaccounted-iraq-pentagon-ig-reports">Here</a> is another about the lack of proper accounting and justification for more billions of dollars disbursed by the American military in the Middle East. The auditors of the Inspector General <a href="http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20080522103143.pdf">reported </a>that about 95% of over $10.7 billion expended in a particular programme was not supported by proper documents. It is perhaps understandable that an organisation dedicated to 'killing people and breaking their stuff', might not be the most ardent of record keepers; but this is an age of bureaucracy, and the Pentagon is a vast bureaucracy, so such failures seem to go well beyond incompetence. However, even Alexander had similar problems. He was not a man to cross, but his Treasurer, <a href="http://www.pothos.org/content/index.php?page=harpalus">Harpalus</a>, twice managed to steal vast sums before finally absconding when he feared punishment for his life of debauchery in Babylon. Is it something in the Middle East that encourages corruption? Or is it the vast opportunities and the political connections? Is it the people or is it the Pentagon?</div><div><br /></div><div>Indeed, the Pentagon seems to have only the most feeble grasp on its money and assets; one of the stories buried in the rubble of 9/11 was the fact that they simply could not account for what had happened to trillions of dollars! This is exceedingly hard to believe, but if investigations had been seriously pursued, investigators would have had some tough questions for the man who had been the Pentagon's financial controller at the time, Rabbi Dov <a href="http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1047.shtml">Zakheim</a>, who appears to have had some interesting and extremely influential business and political connections. </div><div><br /></div><div>Only recently, after many years of alleged corruption, a whole lot of New Jersy politicians and officials were arrested along with a <a href="http://news.scotsman.com/world/The-Kosher-Nostra-is-trapped.5493135.jp">'Kosher Nostra</a>' of rabbis who are accused of organ trafficking, money laundering and corrupting state officials. Hmmm... this '<a href="http://newsfromthewest.blogspot.com/2009/08/hillary-clinton-said-mishpucka.html">family</a>' wasn't Italian, but perhaps there may be a relation between perpetrators and victims that isn't entirely explained by 'reasons of state'. Perhaps it's the relation between predators and prey, or parasite and host. Could there even be a '<a href="http://newsfromthewest.blogspot.com/2009/08/culture-of-deceit.html?zx=233e3f4ef0561406">Culture of Deceit'</a>? That would overlap our original concept of High Crimes, because such opportunities would not be available to ordinary people, and they would be facilitated by favoured access to officials of the state.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another aspect of High Crimes could be terrorism perpetrated or sponsored by the state. Unfortunately this may not be restricted to totalitarian regimes. Phillip Coppens wrote an <a href="http://www.philipcoppens.com/stateterrorism.html">article</a> in Conspiracy Times, summarising allegations about terrorism perpetrated by Russian and Western government agencies who were supposed to be fighting terrorists. It's not altogether a new idea that something may be the disease or problem of which it claims to be the cure. It may even have been a medieval academic joke about philosophy. Of course, there are those who apply this notion to our modern War on Terror. One enthusiast, who made a series of videos on You Tube, picking holes in the official story about the London tube and bus bombings on 7/7 and blaming the authorities for the atrocities, and sent a copy to a judge, is now - predictably - in trouble with the law. See <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY2NXPl625A&feature=related">Ripple Effect</a> and associated spin offs. </div><div><br /></div><div>It is hardly to be supposed that political leaders or senior bureaucrats would issue clearly criminal orders - but they wouldn't have to do so. In the country of Thomas Becket and HenryII, David Kelly and 'King Tony', there's no shortage of ambitious would-be knights eager to please their bosses by finding ways of preventing inconvenient persons from troubling them, or to 'sex-up' dossiers to tell the media whatever will please their masters. Americans can remember Oliver North and 'plausible deniability'.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, although there may be rogue elements within security services, it is difficult to imagine a Western bureaucracy officially proceeding with clearly criminal actions, such as causing explosions in public places. On the other hand, if all the requisite actions were segmented, 'need to know' security would prevent people from seeking the overview, and it is equally hard to imagine them failing to carry out specific tasks ordered by their superiors. If some of those superiors were disloyal or suborned, and if the more suspicious activities were contracted out and overall control was outside the normal channels, it is easy to imagine that the power of the state could be manipulated against the interests of the people it was supposed to protect. After all, that's what seems to have been happening slowly on the cultural, social and political levels for decades, as the culture and identity of the natives has been subverted and their institutions turned against them; so it would not be surprising if it was also done on the level of physical violence. The official leaders could be ignorant of the plan, shocked, and themselves actually believe the cover-up and propaganda fed to the media. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's not only Western countries who may have trouble with rogue elements and subversion within the intelligence services and other state agencies. Turkey, for instance, has had troubles and suspicions of plots, labelled <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state">Deep State</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Things can get extremely weird in the area where politics, intelligence agencies, crime, secret societies, personal ambitions, delusions and sheer insanity meet and mingle. For instance, there is a set of interlinked blogs apparently run by ex-agents of British Intelligence, who appear to be assisting each other to recover from horrific torture, allegedly inflicted upon them in the course of their training as spies, intended to make them docile mind controlled slaves. <a href="http://www.mi5andmi6exposed.blogspot.com/">MI5 and MI6 Exposed</a> is an entry to this maze. <a href="http://www.mi5andmi6exposed3.blogspot.com/">MI5 and MI6 Exposed3</a> explains the torture in more detail and has thousands of supplementary comments, some of which make very strange allegations about public figures. Seemingly some of their torture training took place in exotic locations such as in excavations under the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and a Templar castle in France; and it involved perversion of religious and masonic symbolism, and remote viewing. Presumably the underlying idea would have been that if a spy carried information sub-consciously, it would be difficult to make him reveal it, until exposed to the correct trigger. It may be nonsense, but if any of it is true, it shows that agents of our Western liberal democratic states are capable of abominable crimes, and are unlikely to be punished. It also raises questions about the sanity and fitness for office of officials in responsible positions, and their political masters. Any quirks and mental twitches will be concealed from public view, doubtless under the rubric of 'security', which it would not be 'in the public interest' to question. Our elected representatives will be too busy claiming expenses or cringing to their masters to subject them to any robust scrutiny. The parties don't pay more than lip service to their members and the public they purport to represent, which may partly explain the shrivelling of their membership. They do pay attention to those who <a href="http://radioislam.org/islam/english/jewishp/britain/how_mossad_controls_our_political_parties.htm">pay </a>them, and who control the media which shape public perceptions of them. The similarity in those who finance all the mainstream parties, and are close 'friends' of their leaders, may have something to do with the similarity of the parties policies and of the 'politically correct' attitudes they all enforce.</div><div><br /></div><div>Indeed, the rule of the 'Political Class' is proving to be in their own immediate self-interest, and not in the long term interests of those they purport to represent. Communism with better Public Relations. This may be regarded as a High Crime. The public they rule is not blameless. Ordinary people are not in a position to commit High Crimes against the state, but they can still influence their rulers, and if their attitudes are selfish and short sighted, it's not surprising they get representatives and rulers who are even more so - but more cunning and energetic than average in hypocritically advancing themselves at the expense of the country. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Highest Crime may be considered to be betrayal of one's own identity and potentiality, and that of one's people, although it will not be found on any statute book. People and rulers are guilty in their varying degrees. The Biblical tale of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for a mess of pottage is grimly relevant. The rulers have done so, and their people shall pass away, displaced by strangers, not understanding what wrong they have done, ignorant of what was and what might have been. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-3734373322520486972009-05-27T10:35:00.024+01:002009-05-27T16:48:52.228+01:00Public Service"<a href="http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Derivation+of+Ask+not+what+your+country.htm">Ask</a> not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Famous words from the inauguration speech of John F. Kennedy, but it would be hard to persuade the public that they constitute the guiding principle of their rulers, or even of themselves. Apparently derived via a sentiment from Rousseau, "As soon as any man says of the affairs of state, What does it matter to me?, the state may be given up as lost", from the Platonic idea that all citizens should be involved in the political life of their state, it may be questionable how practical it has ever been. Certainly the current scandal over MP's expenses makes it seem as if the guiding principle of our politicians is to grab all they can and make their country pay for it all.<div><br /></div><div>Calls for constitutional reform are emerging from the uproar, and are being taken up by politicians, especially by David Cameron. Although some hanker for proportional representation, the preferred tinkering is to make Parliament function more like the American model, with stronger and more independent committees and petitions to recall MP's who have become unpopular. This overlooks the fact that the problems lie more with the people than with the mechanism, yet it conforms to the common delusion that utopia can be achieved by a bit more social engineering of the populace and 'reform' of institutions and mechanisms. This of course is all the more strange because American politicians are not noted for honesty, economy and ascetic living. Instead, it's well known that they are permanently running for re-election and desperately striving to collect money for their hugely expensive campaigns, which dwarf the costs of British elections. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's not clear that those famous committees, attractive though they may be to grandstanding politicians, are really effective in scrutinising the activities of government and limiting public expenditure. The cut-down, whipped and government dominated British select committee version have been better noted for pompous bullying of witnesses such as Dr. David Kelley than for incisive investigation and scrutiny of government policy. </div><div><br /></div><div>Indeed the recent bailout of Wall Street by the American taxpayer, cast a cold light on American politicians. Those that appeared before the world made a poor impression, looking ignorant and shifty. They received a tremendous amount of mail and phone calls from voters, almost entirely opposed to the expenditure, and after a brief hesitation they obeyed the instructions of the money-men and ignored their voters. Interestingly, their political judgment was sound, as apparently most of those who were up for re-election retained their seats! Follow the money.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the political system whose lack of control over government expenditure, produced the famous quip, "a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money", popularly attributed to Senator Everett <a href="http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_emd_billionhere.htm">Dirksen</a>. Things have moved on, and billions now have become trillions. The Pentagon is responsible for about half the defense related expenditure on the whole planet, but they are very bad at keeping track of it. Their auditors reported that <a href="http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1047.shtml">trillions</a> of dollars have disappeared and simply can't be accounted for. That's amazing and disturbing, but the bad news was buried along with thousands of people on that archetypal 'good day to bury bad news' in 2001. Considering the record and connections of the Pentagon Comptroller at the time, and the realities of power in Washington, there's a very broad hint as to what happened to the money, and why such little fuss has been made about it. Then there's the billions of dollars stolen and wasted in Iraq, with little oversight. The representatives of the people don't do a very good job at preventing such outrageous peculation and waste.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not only are American politicians failing to control and follow up government expenditure, but they may be making things worse. George Crile's book <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1489385/posts">My Enemy's Enemy</a> recounts the strange story that was the basis for the film Charlie Wilson's War, of how a minor congressman changed American foreign policy towards Afghanistan and it's occupation by the Soviet Union. He was able, with the aid of other shady politicians to vastly increase expenditure on weapons for the Afghan guerrillas, with very little attention. </div><div><br /></div><div>It may be doubted that holding the government to account for policies and expenditure really forms a large part of politicians' interests and activities. They are not selected for any such competence, and little encouragement is given for them to develop it. Some of the more conscientious MP's complain that any outside knowledge they may have acquired is ignored in appointing them to committees. Ministers are bereft of knowledge that might be expected of those at the head of large organisations, and by the time they learn much, they are likely to have been removed or moved on to somewhere else. There remains a belief in some quarters that political representatives should have experience of life outside politics. That would have been fair enough in days when legislation was less, and it could be discussed at greater leisure, so it's general purport and practical implementation could be given more discriminating attention. Indeed that may have been more common when affairs of the nation were settled before a Witan or Senate, whose members were chosen at least in part because of their distinction and seniority in other areas of life. Now, however, we increasingly have professional politicians, for whom politics is the only life they have ever known, and in many cases they would be unfit to participate in anything else. We need not imagine that professional politicians do a better job of promoting good legislation and sober, competent, responsible government. Clearly they don't. They do conform to the current expectation that everyone should have a well defined full time job in this bureaucratised, mechanised and routinised society. Parliament becomes a factory for legislation - that's it's purpose, so it's expected to produce lots of output, regardless of necessity or quality. There's little concern that the legislators often don't bother to read the legislation they pass, let alone study it's details and understand it's implications. They take care to exempt themselves from any onerous provisions. The professional politicians are not proficient at devising good laws, but they are proficient at self promotion, media presentation and vacuous public statements. Not the most worthwhile skills, but essential in politics and it's ancillary activities. They are not representatives of their voters, they are a Political Class, who are turning their seats in Parliament into family fiefdoms, renewed versions of rotten boroughs, and sources of income for as many family members as possible. They're not worried about loss of sovereignty, nor about becoming rubber stamps for legislation favouring special interests, and even drafted by them. Their world of politics is plush, prosperous, gossipy and full of busy-work, so they feel they are working hard and doing a wonderful job which deserves even more money and perquisites, insulated from the people who provide this comfort, except via the media of political communication - downwards - which they dominate.</div><div><br /></div><div>This Political Class does not have the best interests of their people at heart. They parrot mantras about helping the poor, improving education or health or whatever is the flavour of the moment, but it's the opposite that is achieved. That's not altogether surprising. Parasites don't improve the health of their hosts. They are not even representative of the natural upper class of the local people. Several years ago I saw a brief mention that the majority of the advertisers A class people in Britain - the people who own and run things and whose decisions shape the future of the country, are no longer British, but Indian and American. Our Political Class does not represent the British people, but a collection of aliens. Even those who may be British by blood, are mentally alien, adherents of socialism working actively to destroy their country and turn it into just another Third World hellhole which the Political Class will administer of behalf of the very rich and powerful. </div><div><br /></div><div>There's no perfect political system and politics has always been somewhat rough and selfish. Bismarck famously remarked that it was better not to enquire too closely what went into the making of laws and sausages. It does not have to be degraded. Equally, one can recognise that being close to power has always been an excellent way to acquire wealth. William the Conqueror's Norman knights did pretty well out of Hastings. Clive and Warren Hastings did pretty well out of India, in the accepted manner of the time and place. The victory of Blenheim led to public appreciation on a Ducal scale for Marlborough. Government contracts have often been the source of considerable wealth, sometimes at the expense of the forces and the public. Gordon's pals seem to be doing nicely out of public-private finance initiatives. Expenses padding MP's can't claim to have provided any significant public services, and the public mood is hostile to their infuriating but relatively minor self enrichments.</div><div><br /></div><div>Currently MP's are providing the unintended public service of being a focus for public anger and frustration. People can now vent some of their discontent over their powerlessness and lack of recognition by the political establishment. This shows a potential for re-invigorating Parliament, and gives agile politicians the opportunity to claim that the roar of the crowd is in support of their particular plans. It's a bit like the story from one of the 19th century French uprisings, where someone stops a disconsolate figure trailing after a mob and asks why he is following them. "I am their leader, therefore I must follow them" came the reply. </div><div><br /></div><div>To an extent Parliament gives the public a reflection of it's own face, and the piggy visage now on view is not attractive. It's a bad fall in the public image from a Great Power and Empire, to a mean-spirited, grubby talking-shop of minimal importance. </div><div><br /></div><div>Politicians serve the purpose of concealing the real sources of power. The public did not ask for the massive social changes of recent decades, such as mass coloured immigration, uncontrolled borders, abolition of the death penalty, denigration of Christianity and any form of civilisation and of local institutions and standards and promotion of homosexuality. All the evil nonsense spouted by depraved lefties, and infiltrated into the Political Class came via the media and 'educational' institutions fronting for very powerful interests hostile to traditional British culture. Those who voted for them were probably not even aware of their brainwashing, but felt a clear common lefty liberal interest as a Politically Correct Political Class, against the most basic interests of the people they ruled and supposedly represented. </div><div><br /></div><div>It does not seem likely that the current popular anger at politicians will result in changes sufficiently radical to eliminate the deeper causes of the problem, resume sovereignty from Brussels and extirpate the socialist scum and their beneficiaries, generate a strong national consciousness and leadership loyal to the best interests of the local people. More likely there will be a change of personnel within the Political Class, from Brown to a somewhat better Cameron, before the public relapses into it's usual supine concentration on personalities and trivia, content with some cosmetic changes to the political system.</div>Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-74933172327191666162009-05-18T11:42:00.041+01:002009-05-18T18:18:38.382+01:00Upside DownThere's an apocryphal tale that when the British forces at Yorktown surrendered to the Americans in 1781, they marched out to the tune of a popular song called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Turned_Upside_Down">The World Turned Upside Down.</a> One story is that this song went back to the Civil Wars of the 1640's when the old style of disorderly celebration of the Christmas midwinter season was passing away as a remnant of Merrie England, and Puritan sobriety of worship and conduct was replacing it at the behest of Parliament.<br /><br /><br /><br />Now it seems as if it is the world of Parliament that is in disorder and in danger of being turned upside down, as the press and populace demands an end of their recently publicised profligate and disorderly greed. The effect is sobering for our politicians, but it remains to be seen how deep-seated their repentance will be and whether there will be a long-lasting change of heart and a righteous Godly reformation of their conduct. Considering that the tirade attributed to Cromwell on closing the Rump Parliament, (which remains very apt and is being increasingly quoted, and was mentioned in my previous post,) was addressed to people who appeared much more Puritanical than our current raffish crew, one may doubt that the effect on our politicians will be very deep, sincere or long-lasting.<br /><br /><br /><br />Interestingly, there is an American aspect to this upset of the Westminster world, since it was made possible by the courageous and persistent efforts of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Brooke">Heather Brooke</a>, a noble American lady who successfully fought through the courts to have this information revealed to the public, against the strenuously vicious efforts of the Speaker of the House of Commons and his troughing cronies. Yes, it is appropriate to recognise her as an uncommon woman, whose noble qualities were revealed by her generosity of spirit and courageous action, resulting in a benefit to the public. She would be an asset to the House of Lords, if a future government were to give her the honour of a seat there, a contrast to the thieving vermin of Labour lobbyists who now infest it and disgrace the concept of honour. Titles of nobility of course may confer prestige, but they only recognise rather than create the noble qualities they celebrate. Sadly, when conferred on the instance of political trash, on money-grubbing scum the titles come to mean the opposite of their true meaning.<br /><br />Parliament was seeking to evade the court ruling, and the public interest, by summarising and heavily editing MP's expense information before publishing it in a month or so; until someone copied the raw data and sold it to the Daily Telegraph, which has been revealing it in daily installments of fuel to the flames of public anger. This time it's not just the tawdry triviality of some of the claims which is enraging the public, but the brazen hypocrisy of claiming to be seeking to help the poor whilst explioting special tax rules to enable one to built a property empire on the sly, and even make claims for interest on mortgages that had terminated. People compare their own domestic circumstances to the details of things for which MP's have claimed, and are first amazed and then outraged at what MP's think they are entitled to claim at the expense of people who are far less well off.<br /><br />No surprise then, to find that Labour MP's are the most numerous, hypocritical, arrogant and greedy in their corrupt claims. The MP's mantras of 'it was within the rules' and 'it was an honest mistake' are just annoying the public still more. Many people now want criminal investigations and prosecution, but considering how Parliament wrote the rules to suit itself, and the notorious 'Blairising' of the judiciary, Crown Prosecution Service and police force into agents of the New Labour Stasi state, it is unlikely that Plod will get to feel the collars of many politicians. Quite appropriately, the corruption goes back to the 1970's Labour government, beset by demands from it's shop steward MP's demands for more pay whilst trying to resist pay demands from public sector workers, which devised the cunning ruse of allowing loosely defined expenses to be paid instead of a pay rise. Over time both the pay and expenses of MP's have been increased excessively, and an attitude of entitlement has gripped MP's. Unfortunately they are unlikely to be gripped by hempen collars, or receive their just entitlement of a bullet in the back of the neck.<br /><br />It was amusing to see the public anger directed at MP's on last week's Question Time television show, when three clapped-out politicians from the main parties were heckled and booed by the audience. They showed some courage in turning up at all, but it became clear that they are all past their 'best before' dates, and if prudent would retire to spend more time with their inflated Parliamentary pensions, although no doubt they will cling on for another year to enhance their entitlements still further. They seemed shocked and disconcerted that their usual pompous flannelling failed to soothe the audience, and the repetition of 'it was within the rules' and 'you don't understand', soured the public's mood even more.<br /><br />MP's are rumoured to be in a chastened mood, although the promised suicides to follow revelation of expenses have not happened, of course. There have not even been any resignations from Parliament, just a couple of suspensions from the parliamentary Labour Party, and one of Cameron's advisers has lost that title. One of the lobbying Labour Lords, who were exposed earlier as influence peddlers has been suspended from the House for a year - but that won't stop him from continuing to use his contacts. There may have to be a few sacrifices, but the politicians are still sticking together, and have even voted themselves higher expense allowances, which they may hope to trade in for higher salaries soon. In a few weeks they'll probably recover their natural obnoxious bumptiousness, and be claiming to have been in favour of reform all along, but were oppressed by an evil 'system' which held them down and forced money into their pockets. The greedier ones have even been claiming extra food expenses of up to £800 per month, including times when Parliament was not sitting.<br /><br />Naturally the Scots have been prominent in this looting of the Sassenach taxpayer, with that plaster saint of Liberal blather, 'Ming' Campbell amongst the most egregious claimants of extra rations, along with Scotland's current national hero, Alex Salmond who found time to include generous expense claims in his hectic schedule of appearances in the three parliaments of Scotland, the UK, and the EU; with the posts of greatest opprobrium being occupied by Gordon Brown who gave MP's such favourable tax status in 2003, and the repellently toadlike Speaker, 'Gorbals Mick' who has done his best to bully staff, spread the culture of corruption, conceal the truth and be himself one of the most blatant troughers. The quote by which his despicable political career is likely to be remembered is,"I didn't go into politics not to take what is due to me."<br /><br />The predictable result of this scandal has been to enhance the electoral prospects of the minor parties in next month's local council and EU elections at the expense of the main parties. Currently it seems that UKIP will be the main beneficiary, and Labour may be hammered into fourth place. This is a bit ironic considering that UKIP have had a couple of their MEPs jailed or expelled for expenses corruption, but perhaps they can claim to have purged themselves ahead of the other parties.<br /><br />There's been a poll on <a href="http://page.politicshome.com/uk/public_impression_of_parliament_slumps_to_new_recorded_low.html">PoliticsHome</a> which shows that Parliament is now held in public contempt. It has, one can't say enjoys, the lowest rating of all public institutions, a staggering -61%. The public appears to be in a dyspeptic mood, for almost all the institutions polled are in negative territory, with only the NHS, BBC and broadsheet newspapers scoring positively. Even that sacred cow, golden calf or idol of self worship, the National Health Service only achieves +18% approval, and the BBC the very model of political correctness and Labour 'luvviedom' only achieves +7%. The makeover of the Church of England from Christianity into another bastion of the new religion of the Establishment and cheerleader for all politically correct causes has not served it's reputation well, since it only scores -30%. It's amusing to see that despite the remorseless propaganda for London's hosting of the 2012 Olympics, this achieves -34% approval, no doubt in part the result of the realization that the original costings were wildly optimistic and the public will be left to pay for this expensive ego-trip of the political and subsidised sporting classes. Curiously, the Armed Forces are not mentioned, perhaps because they don't appeal to the political class, although they would probably receive a positive rating from the public. Neither is the Monarchy mentioned, although Crown, Church and Armed Forces were the basic institutions of the nation. They are what the current Establishment loathes, along with the very concept of a nation.<br /><br />Indeed our loathsome lefty rulers and depraved Marxist intellectuals have perverted and inverted the nation and it's institutions. The best are by-passed or reviled. The worst, rule. The public have been brought to a low conception of sovereignty. They have destroyed British identity and substituted everything non and anti-British as superior. Instead of service to others of the nation, the ideal is now service to self and to enemies of Britain. A couple of weeks ago I heard a BBC broadcast where some lefty was snivelling about the hordes of blacks who are picked up from overloaded leaky boats the Mediterranean whilst attempting illegal immigration to Europe. Instead of concern over how to stem this tide and destroy the invaders, the filthy lefty was demanding that Britain take more of these creatures, which are already overrunning Malta, and provide them with a comfortable life at the expense of the British taxpayer. No doubt our disgusting Two Home Secretary will agree. Soon they can become MP's and join that shower of greedy traitors! No offers from affluent lefties to move out to make room for them, or to personally pay for them. Oh no, thats what the remaining British are there for, to be degraded and exploited to benefit lefties and their pets and have their own throats cut as kosher or halaal sacrifices.<br /><br />MP's have been amongst the top few percent of earners for a long time, and at last their cant about not going into politics to make money is coming under scrutiny. Few Labour politicians could hope to make more than a small fraction of what they take from politics if they had to find a real job. Such useless people ought by definition to be excluded from the opportunity to enrich themselves at public expense. It's notable that the moral quality of the public and of Parliament and it's output has declined as Labour has exerted more influence. With few exceptions they're simply evil. Vermin. Orcs. Another lie being exposed is that they went into politics to 'make a difference', to 'improve things', to 'help the disadvantaged'. The only people they've helped apart from themselves are enemies of Britain and of civilisation, and they've done it at the expense of decent people. They rely on the material self interest of their degraded welfare state clients and administrators. Their election broadcasts concentrate on scaring their core vote that the Tories might cut their benefits and quango jobs. Despite the public anger, about 20% of the public still support Labour - about the same percentage of the population as last voted for Blair. This is the pool of filth from which they draw their politicians, supplemented by rich Labour grandees. It is pleasing to note that the rich dolly who was to have been parachuted into a safe Labour seat in London was rejected, albeit for one of of the usual dreary female apparatchiks. They've managed to invert the normal social pyramid whereby a large base supports a smaller tip of rulers and their hangers-on. Now more that half the 'jobs' are held by state employees. The hangers-on outnumber the productive workers. As the economy shrinks, and possibly unravels, tax take declines and lenders become reluctant to give money to a less than creditworthy government, that will be a recipe for trouble.<br /><br />Our world may be facing the possibility of very drastic collapse and the normal way of life may be in the process of turning upside down - perhaps by 2012. <a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/node/45157">Dmitry Orlov </a>has outlined five stages of collapse. We seem to have started the financial phase. There are worries about world trade and the food supply and distribution system which may presage the second stage of commercial collapse. The third stage, political collapse is hinted at by the events and public responses which we have been discussing. Let's hope we don't get to social and cultural collapse. <br /><br />The political boat has been rocked in stormy weather, but it will probably right itself, and normal troughing be resumed quite shortly when the winds of public fury have blown over, possibly after some ritual humiliations, and token changes to the rules. No doubt our politicians will soon recover their nerve and resume telling us that they are wonderful people who deserve even more of our money. The public perception of Parliament is unlikely to recover so rapidly. It is now becoming more widely recognised that the self-serving politicing and busy-work which makes our MP's feel so important, and inflates their vast sense of entitlement, is but a screen hiding their lack of power and importance and competence. Most of the legislation comes from Brussels, or is implemented by the bureaucracy via statutory instruments. Their main purpose nowadays is to distract the public from the fact that Parliament has lost it's purpose. It's a hollow sham hiding the loss of sovereignty to the EU Commission, its activity, as Macbeth said, 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' <br /><br />Lots of people would now like to see most of our MP's hanging from ropes. It would be preferable, though even less likely, that our politicians turned their attitudes upside down, and sought the wisdom represented by the tarot card of the Hanged Man.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-5211389182010438432009-05-08T17:19:00.038+01:002009-05-09T01:19:21.715+01:00Tea PartiesWhen the rebellious <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">bourgeoisie</span> of Boston held their celebrated 'tea party', they affected the disguise of native Red Indians. Pretending to be what they are not comes easily to politicians.<br /><br />There are rumours that some modern Americans are proposing 'tea parties' to resist paying taxes. Naturally all such resistance will be futile because of the immense power and intrusive bureaucracy of the modern state, which the rebellious colonists would have regarded as a grotesque tyranny far worse than anything they thought they were opposing. If they could have known that this state of affairs was associated with their other fears of a large standing army and a central banking system which multiplies national debt, they might have been all the more concerned about the ability of their descendants and successors to live up to the slogan that Liberty requires eternal vigilance if it is to be maintained.<br /><br />The British political scene looks more like a Mad Hatter's Tea Party at the moment. The Prime Minister has made people question not only his judgment but his mental health, by his foolish appearance on a You Tube video, exposing the public to his distressing facial tics and axe-murderer smirks, grinning and giggling out of context with his announcement of his attempt to head off the growing public fury about <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span> abuse of expenses, by substituting an attendance allowance along the lines of the EU Parliament. Not only was the content ridiculous, and resisted by Parliament, whose other denizens are starting to see that increasing the payments, making them unaccountable and a bonus for turning up to do the work for which they are already well paid, is not going to appease the wrath of an <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">increasingly</span> vengeful public, but it showed his contempt for Parliament by making such an announcement on such a medium rather than in Parliament, all the more so as technically it is the business of the House and not of the government.<br /><br />The demented comedy proceeds, with speculation as to which of his moral midget ministers might displace Brown. None of them would be any more popular. The betting favourite is 'Postman Pat', Alan <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">Milburn</span> ,who has already admitted his incapacity for the job. Such self knowledge has never troubled his master, although it is increasingly troublesome to the public. This bizarre crew, undistinguished except for the greed and banality of their expense claims, drifts onwards to disaster; clinging to the wreckage of their political and moral reputations, buoyed by packages of expense claims, '<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">troughing'</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">unapologetically</span>, until the next general election puts at least some of them out of parliament and public office, if not out of public ridicule and contempt. The cabinet don't have a dormouse to put in the teapot, but the midget chipmunk or red squirrel Hazel <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">Blears</span>, may suffice. Previously best known as a dwarf speak-your-weight machine dispensing New Labour soundbites, but now becoming known for the nimbleness with which she has <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">leapt</span> from home to home accumulating expenses along the way, she was seen by criticising Brown's You Tube performance to be hesitantly extending a paw towards the forbidden fruit. The paw was hastily withdrawn when snapped at by glowering '<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">Gollum</span>' Brown, the self tortured current possessor of his 'Precious', the ring of power. At this point the government is so unpopular that <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">Sauron</span> himself would be hard pressed to devise a means of holding on to power, and even his local representative the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">Nazgul</span> Prince of Darkness, Lord <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">Mandlescum</span>, appears to have <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">abandoned</span> hope. The speculations and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">machinations</span> appear pointless. Who would wish to share the bitter cup of responsibility for defeat? Brown refuses to share responsibility. He refuses to accept blame. He does not pray that the cup should pass from him. He is concerned only that his will be done. One can envisage him, after defeat in the general election, refusing to leave Downing Street, babbling of hard-working-families and getting-on-with-the-job as burly men in white coats prise his fingers off the doorposts of Number 10.<br /><br />Already the media is turning against Brown. Gone are the days when <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error">spin-meister</span> Campbell bullied and cowed them into presenting his master Blair and his agenda in the most flattering way. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error">Gollum</span> has had to part with his equivalent, '<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error">McPoison</span>', over the scandal of the scurrilous lies they were planning to tell about the opposition. Now even his faithful BBC poodle, 'toenails' Robinson has started to snap at his heels. There was glee when Brown <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">inadvertently</span> posed in front of several swastikas on his latest school visit. What is it with these people in government? They've debased the education system, they want to keep perverts away from children and close fast food cafes near schools, but they keep going back to be photographed amongst schoolchildren. When Saddam did it, it was regarded as sinister, and our government is surely a greater threat in every way.<br /><br />It's gone beyond the amusement of a Mad Hatter's Tea <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error">Party</span>, to the more sinister situation of a Chimpanzee's Tea Party. The actions appear to be those of humans, but they are performed by creatures, which although resembling humans in body, appear less than human in their understanding of their actions. The politicians mostly seem quite out of touch with real people, unable to perceive anything amiss in their own greed, indignant that they are queried, confident in the protective power of their magical mantra 'it was all within the rules'. They can no longer understand the difference between 'could' and 'should'.They don't represent ordinary people in any meaningful sense, they have turned the political process and constitutional institutions of a democracy into a means of preventing the people from ruling themselves whilst the Political Class enrich themselves. Politicians go through the accustomed political motions - in several senses - but these have lost meaning, been degenerated <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_19" class="blsp-spelling-error">through</span> the level of ritual games, down to a mere cover for the corrupt enrichment of a class of parasites.<br /><br />Today I saw the estimate by a <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_20" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">commenter</span> on Guido's website <a href="http://www.order-order.com/">Order-Order </a>that to make as much money as the average MP gets away with, an ordinary person would need an income of about £350,000 per <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" class="blsp-spelling-error">annum</span>. At a rough estimate of the median income being about £26,000 and the government taking over 43% of GDP, that means an MP absorbs the tax paid by about three dozen ordinary people! No wonder they are so remote, no matter where they started from, they're now on a different planet. It's not even as if they were or did anything special. They're mainly an untalented riff-<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" class="blsp-spelling-error">raff</span> of parasites with nothing to commend them outside the seedy world of politics. There are a few senior executives running large organisations who are paid that much, and even more, and may be worth it, but they're not hi-jacking the taxpayer to secure such an income. Our politicians have complacently caused or watched the destruction of the country. The worse they perform, the more they pay themselves. Only the fattest capitalist <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_23" class="blsp-spelling-error">fatcats</span> and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_24" class="blsp-spelling-error">banksters</span> can compete with that.<br /><br />There's no hope of some White Knights riding to the rescue of the Mother of Parliaments. The Tories will be less corrupt and a bit more competent, but they won't even attempt to put <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_25" class="blsp-spelling-error">Humpty</span> together again. Blue Labour will not attempt to reverse the social and moral degeneracy so avidly pursued by New Labour - they share the belief in it. The time of the Man on Horseback has passed. Three and a half centuries ago Oliver Cromwell, Lieutenant General of Horse of the New Model Army, played that part - and even he as Lord Protector was plagued by factious Parliaments.<br /><br />Even the conventions of politeness are breaking down. A few days ago, at the 30th anniversary of the electoral triumph of Thatcher over Callaghan, people commented that even although Callaghan was a cunning socialist rogue, he made a gracious concession speech and behaved with a dignity that only three decades later, appears foreign to his successors. Sadly, this really is becoming Planet of the Apes, enforced by the social engineering of degeneracy decadence and disgrace.<br /><br />The European elections are coming up next month, so the main parties are in a lather about the prospect of Labour doing very badly at the concurrent local government elections. They're even more exercised by the likelihood of losing a few seats in the European parliament to minor parties, especially the British National Party. in this the 'enriching' minorities are well to the fore, but it is sadly significant to see the weight of opposition against a party which might increase it's share of the vote from about 5% to only around 8%. The notion that anything 'British' or 'National' might receive any support in Britain today causes hysteria in the Establishment. The United Kingdom Independence Party which expects about twice as much support and wants to withdraw entirely from the EU also receives some sneering but less disapproval.<br /><br />To no particular surprise it has been revealed that one of Labour's Indian peers, 'Baroness' Uddin has been enriching herself to the extent of around £100,000 by claiming second home allowance on a flat which she did not inhabit until the story was published. Her normal residence was in a subsidised flat for manual workers, which she seems to have had because her family controls the allocations! Naturally she has been prominent in various trendy politically correct causes which have the effect of transferring income and opportunities from white people to coloured invaders.<br /><br />Welcome to the politics and morals of the Indian sub-continent, where money and family interest has always spoken louder than principle. This was exemplified a few years ago when Call-me-Dave was embarassed to find one of his Indian candidates had only recently been actively raising money for the Labour party, but had changed his political colours as result of some personal dispute. Already, affluent asiatics are coming to treat the British natives with the arrogance of money and the contempt of caste. White people are not reproducing their numbers, so inevitably Asians with large families and some business acumen and political influence are establishing a grip which will not be relinquished on positions of power.<br /><br /> Since independence the Indian and Pakistani militaries and bureaucracies have retained some of the customs and even mannerisms of the British, including a love of afternoon tea and cricket and gardening. It is easy to imagine that before long English garden and tea parties will be attended mainly by 'British' Indians who will occupy the positions of power and influence, served by a coolie class of whites and half-castes. Perhaps in only a couple of generations this new Raj of 'British' Indians will even be headed by an Indianised monarchy!<br /><br />From Red Indians to 'British' Indians, by way of Mad Hatters, Chimpanzees and politicians, it's amazing who you might meet at a Tea Party.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-71668199108476607912009-04-27T14:12:00.050+01:002009-04-27T21:11:46.754+01:00Heart of DarknessAt the heart of the moral darkness which is the New Labour government, sits a creature - can one really call him a man? He hides in the darkness, and much of it emanates from him. His intimate associates have been revealed as hypocrites and liars who pose as good whilst doing evil. 'Like master, like man'. Organisations come to display the characteristics of those who run them. He can't bring himself to make a straightforward apology. He 'accepts full responsibility', but someone else resigns. His cronies drip poisonous slime on the families of those he hates. He is a creature perverted and degraded by his lust for power, although it's exercise corrodes his physical appearance almost as much as his moral being. His weird twitches and manic smiling accompanying emotionally inappropriate circumstances, publicised by his own bizarre video, make him a butt of public contempt. He is not a very competent ruler, yet he clings fiercely to power, even as it slips away from him. It is his Precious. Yes; it's Gordon 'Gollum' Brown.<br /><br />If 'the evil that men do lives after them', there will be much by which to remember this New Labour crew after they've been ejected from political office at the next election, still hissing their venom as they slither into media and public sector positions, from which to plot their return, comforted by their ill-gotten gains of expenses and supplementary residences financed by the taxpayer.<br /><br />They've perverted the electoral system. Not only is there a substantial Labour bias in the constituency boundaries, they've imported millions of Third World trash and allowed them to vote in British elections, and subsidised and advanced them at the expense of the natives. They are strongly suspected to use postal voting fraud to retain control of many seats. They even do it in their internal Labour party elections. It's recently been revealed that a ballot box was broken and votes destroyed in a selection contest for Labour candidate in a London constituency, where efforts were made to have a well connected young woman 'parachuted' into the seat; and Mrs Mills (a.k.a Tessa Jowell), whose husband is in jail in Italy for corruption, is said to have hinted that public money which her department controls could be spent locally if people voted the right way.<br /><br />They've inverted justice. Criminals are treated better than decent people. The crime statistics are faked. The excellent police blogger Nightjack, who has just been awarded the Orwell prize, reports in <a href="http://nightjack.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/a-survival-guide-for-decent-folk/">'A Survival Guide for Decent Folk'</a>, that it is necessary to behave as hardened criminals in order to have any chance in our corrupted system of justice.<br /><br />They've turned education into the promotion of ignorance and viciousness. All discipline and order is denigrated, throughout society as well as in education. They're bringing to an end the era in which education was the means of social and intellectual advancement for bright but poor children. Now it's becoming political connections that open the route to a good job.<br /><br />Whilst the economy crumbles, the government continues to create wasteful employment in the public sector. Apparently, private sector employees now contribute more towards the pensions of public employees than towards their own. In fact, Labour just steals money from decent people and wastes it in bribing their semi-human supporters. Another excellent blog, Burning Our Money, in the post <a href="http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/">Buying Votes </a>shows statistically that <em>''regions that elect a lot of Labour MPs can expect to be rewarded with a bigger dollop of public spending.</em> ''<br /><br />This evil vermin replaces religion with 'political correctness,' which is intended to degrade rather than to uplift, and render humanity as sub-human slaves to the hidden Caesars of the world. Some of it's sources are touched upon at the Smoking Mirrors blog post <a href="http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/2009/04/political-correctness-in-court-of.html">'Political Correctness in the Court of Byzantium.</a>'<br /><br />They're New Labour. Naturally they're evil, degraded and corrupt. They're always prating of democracy, but it's communism they really mean. Many of their political leaders are 'ex'-communists. Remember how those regimes claimed to be Democratic Republics. I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed, two decades ago. I knew someone who predicted that freedom would increase for the people who had been behind the Iron Curtain, but diminish for those in the West until it becomes worse in the West than it had been in the East. That is happening.<br /><br />This New Labour filth preach about helping the poor, but they impoverish real people and enrich themselves and strive to keep as many as possible in dependency to a depraved and corrupted state. Notice how things go together. Their evil nature causes them to corrupt everything they touch, culture, art, morality, national and individual identity, social, economic and political institutions; all in decline under their malign influence. They've made so many aspects of evil legal, that it's not really a surprise to find ministers who think 'troughing' is acceptable because it's 'within the rules', or find sleazy sodomites at the centre of government when sodomy has been glorified, or find that greedy bankers have stolen the economy when usury and financial manipulation was so highly regarded. Vice is rewarded. Virtue is punished. Competence is scorned, stupidity and ignorance exalted.<br /><br />It's not just the politicians and 'apparatchiks'. Their voters are also vile. They rely on the support of the dregs of the population; obese maggots, feeding on the substance of the remaining useful people; the coarsest, crudest, most brutish, selfish, ignorant, deliberately uneducated and uncouth underclass beneath civility and civilization. All maintained and even employed by the state, whose function has been perverted from defence of the realm to maximising the number of Labour voters. It's an Orc factory.<br /><br />All public institutions have been corrupted. The great Victorian achievement of a non-political, honest, competent civil service has been undermined. Now top civil servants can lie to the police to support the arrest of an opposition MP who exposed the incompetence of their department - and get away with it! Political advisers and liars, like the evil 'McPoison', who was so close to Brown, are employed as civil servants, but obviously not not held to the code of impartiality. The nature of government in Britain is changing, reverting from the staid Victorian notion of well documented Cabinet government, answerable to Parliament; through the undocumented 'sofa government' of King Tony, towards the intrigue and favouritism of a Royal Court. The Court of King Gordon is starting to look quite like that of James I, another very queer and vicious ruler from Scotland who surrounded himself with venal catamites who made fortunes by dubious means.<br /><br />It's dangerous for rulers who rely on 'Bread and Circuses' to run short of money. Hence the desperate efforts to tax more heavily in a declining economy, and borrow more money than all the governments of times past put together, and eventually to use 'quantitative easing' as a euphemism for roaring inflation. (It's inflation which wipes out public debt.) All in the cause of employing and bribing their supporters. Wasn't it the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, whose legacy of political wisdom to his sons, as he lay dying at York in the year 211 A.D., was, 'enrich the soldiers; despise the rest'? It's the underclass and state employees who are the soldiers of New Labour, always greedy for donatives at the expense of the public, and encouraged in their demands by seeing what their politicians manage to trough.<br /><br />If this economic 'Brownturn' becomes a serious depression, the whole Welfare State may turn into a Potemkin Village; which will mightily anger not only the Labour voting dregs, but also the naive and more decent people who believed that they would be looked after in old age, and their health and accommodation and their children's education assured by the state. Alas, it may not be just a cyclical downturn, but a structural shift in wealth and power to the East, leaving the 'West' to decline into African levels of poverty, corruption and irrelevance - but without the strong family networks which enable people to survive in such circumstances, because our evil socialist rulers are destroying the family and trying to substitute the state for it.<br /><br />Already there's been an inversion of the purpose of public social expenditure, from helping the old poor and sick of the native population - the 'deserving poor'; to giving preference to riff-raff, encouraging third world immigration and advancement at the expense of the natives, their culture and identity. Whenever there's money to spare it is wasted on the wrong people and destructive state employment; whenever money is scarce it is still wasted on trash and vermin, such as overpaid council bureaucrats, but services of cultural and recreational value such as libraries and parks are cut in favour of asylum seekers, drug addicts and other Labour-voting vermin.<br /><br /><br /><br />The other politicians are not much better. Previously the merger of interests between large corporations and the state was known as Fascism. That's become a term of mindless lefty abuse, whilst their government revelled in Public-Private-Partnerships and Private-Finance-Initiatives. There's been a merger between politicians, bureaucrats, media and business, in which a superior 'Political Class' lords it over the public. They have more in common with each other than with those they rule. The journalist <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-479478/PETER-OBORNE-The-rise-sleaze-ocrats-Britains-ruling-class.html">Peter Oborne </a>has written about this in his books <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Triumph-Political-Class-Peter-Oborne/dp/0743295277">The Triumph of the Political Class </a>and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2005/may/01/politics">The Rise of Political Lying</a>.<br /><br /><br /><br />It's all a far cry from a worthwhile Britain, and that's mostly because the country is run by and for the wrong people. It's impossible to change this by normal means. Humpty Dumpty really is broken and can't be repaired. It's all going down to ruin. Already the distant hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen may be heard in the stories of new diseases, and of disturbances to the food supply, as well as the unfurling financial, economic and social collapse. Who do the Horsemen truly serve? After our death, and the destruction of this increasingly rotten society, what may arise in it's place?<br /><br /><div align="center"><em>Cast a cold eye,</em></div><br /><div align="center"><em>On life, on death.</em></div><br /><div align="center"><em>Horseman, pass by!</em></div><br />That was the <a href="http://home.wlu.edu/~connerm/ENG105A01/Group4/index.htm">epitaph</a> of the poet Yeats, that he chose for his tombstone.<br /><br /><br /><br />It may be hoped that it will be a sturdier society of native Britons, untainted by socialism, political correctness, multi-culturalism or any of the currently dominant insanities, which if at all may be remembered only as curses from a time of madness.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-53124127423977893972009-04-21T16:12:00.029+01:002009-04-21T20:58:26.487+01:00What's it worth?A seat in Parliament, what's it worth? If they were openly sold, what would be a reasonable price? We know they're desirable property. The Labour Aristocracy have just been exposed; Blair's in-laws have been trying to secure a safe Labour seat for a young female relative. There's scandal over which pampered bitch from an all female list of well groomed and connected candidates is to get a safe Labour seat in London, with a ballot box having been forced open and ballot papers destroyed in an internal Labour party election, where the electorate numbers about 280. Something similar happened for Wedgwood-Benn's granddaughter, I think. Have we reached the state where parliamentary seats are accessories for fashionable young women? This is worse than the 18<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">th</span> century situation of rotten boroughs with a handful of electors, in the gift of a powerful landowner; and it's perversely amusing that this passes for normal in what was supposed to be the party that claimed to represent the working class.<br /><br /><br />A seat in Parliament is the entry point for a career in national politics; and the source of a fortune even for those less ambitious or able to attain ministerial office. Considering that an average MP can collect £200,000 - £250,000 per <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">annum</span> in salary and grossly inflated expenses, and enjoy a wondrously generous pension in retirement, it's no <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">surprise</span> that there's fierce competition for each one - not so much from opposing parties, except in marginal constituencies, but from other would-be candidates of the same party. That's just the start of the opportunities for <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">troughing</span> at the expense of the public. The holidays are extensive, they're now only sitting for 143 days per year it seems; so public service need not excessively obtrude on other opportunities for fun and profit. Any tedious elements can be delegated to researchers or assistants, often relatives, who naturally are paid from the public purse. There's a great wheeze in second and even third homes, financed by the public, which can be rented to one's relatives and assistants, to maximise the take from the public. Travel expenses - a glorious rip-off! Free junketing around the world on 'fact-finding' trips. Cheap food and booze in the Parliamentary restaurants and bars, when they can be bothered to turn up - and it's recently been revealed that they often don't bother to turn up for tedious committee meetings, even when extra payments are involved. The results are fixed, so there's honestly little point in bothering. It's amusing that occasionally the government fails to get it's way on a sub-clause of some tedious legislation, as a result of failure of some of it's <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span> to attend, and this causes a little flutter and fluster as the whips nip the heels of the laggards and arrange some extra voting as punishment. Inter-party hobby groups, which can usefully become lobby-groups, especially when well lubricated by free or cheap food and drink, proliferate. Never mind ''let them eat cake'', our porcine politicians are well into the caviar and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">foie</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">gras</span>.<br /><br /><br />So, what would be a reasonable market price for a seat in the legislature? Of course the cunning, connected and energetic will be able to use it as a base for influence peddling, especially if they're Labour peers in the House of Lords, as we have recently been shown. It was rumoured, although the Crown Prosecution Service was too myopic to be able to see any evidence worth prosecution, that Blair and Lord Cashpoint were able to give peerages to those whose quite co-incidental and unconnected donations to the Labour party averaged around £1.25 million. On an open market they might have fetched more. I think a seat in the House of Commons could be worth a lot more. Naturally, there's an element of political risk. You can lose your seat at the next election if your party becomes less popular; but that only happens at four to five year intervals. Moreover, in the safer seats an incumbent is unlikely to be disturbed for as long as he wishes to retain the seat, unless his face ceases to fit with what's fashionable at party HQ. Most <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span>, I would guess, are reasonably certain of say, a 20 year run. An income stream worth roughly £1/3m per year for 20 years must be worth at least £7m capital investment, especially now that interest rates are so low as barely to exist; and then there's the juicy pension for the rest of your life. Starting prices around £10m, shall we say, particularly as there's a brisk demand for a restricted number of places, and we've hardly touched on the additional social advantages of the position. (This ignores the possibilities for corruptly and directly influencing important legislation - largely because the average MP has very little influence on legislation, nearly always voting as directed by his party. )<br /><br /><br />Can you think of more deserving uses for £10m or so than giving it to a politician? Ha! Ha! Ha! How many people realise that's what they're doing when they mark an X beside a name on a ballot paper? Now do you better appreciate why 'your' representative pays so little attention to your opinion and so much <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">attention</span> to the orders of his party leader and the parliamentary whips, and to political donors? They can seriously affect his financial and social <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">prospects</span>. The voters can't. Follow the money.<br /><br /><br />'Man shall not live by bread alone'... even politicians consider more than the money. People love to gossip. Words are important, even if not 'every word... <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">proceedeth</span> from the mouth of God.' Politicians love to make speeches, and to discuss each other's speeches and activities. The commentators also depend on this gossip, so a political class of self important people easily arises. They value themselves very highly, in every way, and expect everyone else to treat them at their own estimation. Even when such people have no real influence on anything important, or when they are only discussing trivialities, they love to argue with each other, to form groups and hold votes, see their faces on television and shout Me! Me! Me! The opportunity to participate in this mutual admiration and criticism society is another important factor that gives worth to the idea of being an MP. This pompous vanity is usually misnamed 'public service'.<br /><br /><br />To some extent this is natural and normal in getting things done in any organisation, and it is hard to imagine politics functioning otherwise. It becomes perverse when the people who are supposed to be making important decisions, exercising sovereignty on behalf of the public, are no longer doing so. Instead they are gossiping, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">troughing</span>, failing to review legislation and hold the government to account, failing to represent their constituents in any but the most trivial ways, and most importantly, failing to admit that they no longer exercise sovereignty - which they have allowed to pass to the unelected EU Commissioners. They no longer do anything important. They're a Plastic Parliament. They just do as Brussels tells them. They cover up by carrying on with their self important intrigues and gossiping, drawing the media into collusion with them, to conceal their deceit. This is treason. They think to evade punishment by abolishing the crime of treason. Judas took 30 pieces of silver for his betrayal. Our <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span> are much greedier. Judas hanged himself. Our <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span> don't expect the option to arise. The more stupid jobsworths among them don't even recognise the situation. They may actually be so dim that they think <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error">troughing</span> and tittle-tattle about trivialities is all that there could be to being an MP. They've degenerated into the world of celebrity and show business. Bread and circuses. Sadly, when Parliament becomes a mere fashion parade of egos, concealing their irrelevance and powerlessness from themselves and from the public behind their gossip and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error">troughing</span>, it may be appropriate to treat a Parliamentary seat as a fashion accessory for spoilt women.<br /><br /><br />When James I was short of money, he invented the title of Baronet, or hereditary knight, and forced affluent people to buy these titles. Now we're short of money again. The title of MP has become a costly bauble - but this time the public is paying affluent people to hold it, as a sinecure. How about turning that around and making <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span> pay for it! Ha! Ha! Increase the numbers to say 1,000. Charge £10million each. A slightly different selection of self important prats gets to ponce around in the public eye. Many celebrities could afford it, and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">don't</span> need the extra <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error">troughing</span>. The media would love it. Now the government (basically the civil service behind a fig leaf of politicians) has an extra £10billion, and saves the best part of £100m a year on Parliamentary running costs. Don't waste it all at once. Good media management could turn a nice extra profit from the site (and sight) of Parliament. The public would pay to see their favourite media stars speaking or singing in the Chamber, or attend a party where they get to shake hands with them. The monarchy has been commercialised. Now it's the turn of Parliament. Even if they had to be in government, some of these pop stars and actresses might be no worse than the socialist scum and fools that we have now. They might even be more practical and intelligent! They'd certainly woo and wow the public better than tractor-statistic-gabbling politicians. Political theatre. Blair was basically an actor; perhaps a real actor could better distinguish between lies and truth. Reagan was a mediocre actor, but he made quite a good President of the United States, especially in the ceremonial aspects of the presidency.<br />A merger between the political and theatrical classes? Many a true thing may be said in jest.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-13382880989568262782009-04-13T19:35:00.041+01:002009-04-14T12:21:51.762+01:00Wrong sort of peopleWhenever something goes wrong with the railways in Britain, it's become a bit of a joke that the blame is usually placed on 'wrong sort of snow' or 'wrong sort of leaves on the line' to excuse the failure of management and staff in coping with easily predictable contingencies. It is my contention that usually the blame for the wrong state of human affairs lies with the fact that they are dominated by the wrong sort of people.<br /><br />We have just been treated to an exposure of the fact that at the heart of the British body politic lies a corrosive and corrupting cancer composed of the wrong sort of people. Paul Staines, who blogs as Guido Fawkes on his site <a href="http://www.order-order.com/">http://www.order-order.com/</a> revealed that 'spin doctors' close to the Labour leadership, indeed operating from within Downing Street, had set up a supposedly independent web site which was to be fed a series of vicious lies about leading Conservative politicians and their families, which would then be picked up and trumpeted by Labour publicists. Damien McBride, the intimate advisor of the Prime Minister has been obliged to resign as the author of these lies. Derek Draper, the recipient of the emails, which have come into Guido's possession, and thence to the Sunday papers, praised their author's brilliance, and has since been babbling to the press that he had not lied deliberately about them. Those who have followed the episodes of this man's colourful history as revealed on Guido's site, might be inclined to regard him as a compulsive liar, and question why he is at the heart of Labour's attempt to make an impression on the internet. Perhaps it's horses for courses, and the party may regard honesty as a disqualification. Questions are being asked as to why the trade union Unite is allegedly involved in financing such people and their activities. The Prime Minister himself has had to disown these men, and deny knowledge of what they were up to, despite being so close to McBride and having hosted Draper to lunch at Chequers, his official country residence, just after the false front site Red Rag was set up.<br /><br />Critics of Gordon Brown, and they are numerous, don't believe that this notorious 'control freak' did not know what was happening, even if he did not see the actual emails. McBride was a very close advisor, Brown's equivalent of Alistair Campbell. Critics note that it is in character for Brown to deny knowledge and evade responsibility when anything goes wrong. He is regarded as two faced, vicious and devious, to have made his way in politics by backstabbing and underhand dealings, so it is no surprise at all to find that his close associates are of a similar calibre.<br /><br />The fact that McBride was paid as a civil servant, and will get a pension of something like £85,000 per year - even if his 'resignation' is real and he does not pop up again shortly with another cushy government job in the usual New Labour manner - serves as another example of the corruption and dishonesty at the heart of British politics. People are still angry about the revelations about MP's expenses, and the continued outrageous expenditures by the Speaker and his wife. The politicians of all parties show little inclination to reform their ways, and the rot is clearly present in the top ranks of the civil service and the quangocracy. Lots more of the wrong sort of people here.<br /><br />It's not just those in politics who are so often the wrong sort of people. It's also those around and protesting about our institutions and habits of life. Our parliamentarians have made a law against protest demonstrations within a mile of the Houses of Parliament. Now they have gone off on holiday to spend even more of the taxpayer's money. Curiously, there has been some sort of protest about events in their home country of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) by immigrant Tamils, right outside the Houses of Parliament. This has been treated with kid gloves by the police and authorities - quite differently from the brutality with which they treated the Country Alliance protesters about the banning of fox hunting several years ago; and the way in which a wandering newspaper vendor was attacked randomly by a policeman and subsequently died at the G20 demonstrations a few days ago. Ah, but there's an important difference of status involved here. The police seem to be empowered to attack native White people in their own land, but must show the utmost deference to non-white immigrants who break the law. Lots more wrong people and wrong policies and wrong attitudes here.<br /><br />There's now plenty of wrong'uns in the police. They have been Blairised and ooze political correctness. They are coming to be seen as New Labour's Stasi enforcers of political correctness. It's evil and disgusting. The media has gone the same way. There's no longer anything British about the BBC - except the taxpayer's money that funds its anti-British propaganda and personnel. A better description than British Broadcasting Corporation might be Blacks Bitches and Communists because of its staffing policies, or Brown's Broadcasting Corporation because of its slavish deference to the Labour propaganda line in presenting so-called news.<br /><br />There's something about their appearance that identifies many of these people as wrong. The liar McBride, and the nasty policeman Quick who invaded Parliament to harass an opposition MP, and who also has just resigned on a vast pension after displaying a secret document as he went into Downing Street, share a similarly porcine appearence and bullying, evil disposition. Quick was the one, I think, who was found to have been running an unlicensed taxi company, staffed by off-duty policemen, from his home. Pursuing business is likely to be more lucrative and less wearisome than pursuing terrorists. That's another group there's something wrong about. According to <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2009/04/12/uk-terror-plot-led-by-man-us-claimed-to-kill-months-ago/">Antiwar.com </a>one of the alleged terrorists rounded up in Quick's last operation, (which was what was displayed on the secret document), was supposedly killed by an American air strike in Pakistan a few months ago. Versatile and amenable fellows these ghosts; more dangerous dead than alive and always available as Bogeymen to scare the populace when a failing, flailing, government wants to distract attention from its own problems.<br /><br />Touching on the Americans, it appears that their shiny new President, like their deprecated and depreciated old one, has his difficulties with the English language and diplomatic etiquette - although the press, because of its lefty bias, still treats the former with an indulgence denied to the latter. I was startled to hear a brief news clip on television today, dealing with the rescue of an American seaman from Somali pirates, wherein Mr. Obama seemed to say that he was determined to resist the rise of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">privacy</span> in the Red Sea area. After Bushisms must we expect Obaminations? Someone should also tell him and his wife that it is not good diplomatic etiquette to pat the Queen of England on the back. She isn't your old granny that you're helping across the road. One might also suppose that there should still survive someone in the State Department who could inform Mr. President that DVD's and ipods are not considered appropriate diplomatic gifts. Perhaps the credit crunch is biting harder and faster than anticipated.<br /><br />There are other visual clues to the wrong sort of people in this country, apart from the vast number who are not White. The television coverage of the G20 protests in the City of London included one brief excerpt showing a couple of smartly dressed City workers watching the demonstrators with expressions of alert amusement and intelligent cynicism, quite a contrast to the slack jawed zombies with weirdly painted faces and dressed as tramps, mouthing ridiculous slogans and shuffling around as if brain damaged. Lefties are degenerating themselves below the level of humanity. Unfortunately, they're trying to take the rest of us with them.<br /><br />Many of the wrong ones are female. Some of these are naive sentimentalists, with whom one might have some sympathy, had they any sign of a 'head' to go with their all too evident 'heart'. These and the zombies are mere cannon fodder for the far more dangerous militant harpies. This type of bitter shrew is often intelligent, but of malign disposition. They have gained grossly excessive influence at senior levels of politics, media, administration, academia and business. Their shrilly malevolent speech easily identifies them, and their appearance often features almost triangular eyes, glittering wiith spite and hate, and short hair.<br /><br />It's not only the socialists who constitute the wrong sort of people. Some of the most successful businessmen have reached eminence by dubious means. Not surprisingly, the reputations of those who were closest to the government might not survive the closest scrutiny. Apart from the now notorious bankers, there are others who would be in a more appropriate position were their heads on Tower Bridge, and their quartered bodies sent for display in the four quarters of the realm. The <a href="http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/">Bent Society </a>blog features allegations that two of our most overpublicised businessmen, Sugar and Branson, sailed too close to the wind in accumulating their early fortunes. Seeing their heads on spikes could be more cheerful than watching another series of The Apprentice on television. Wouldn't it be a pleasure to see Sugar's execution, where someone could tell him "You're not just fired - you're shot!"<br /><br />It's not just the most eminent who are often the wrong sort of people. Every fortnight Private Eye magazine contains more accounts of greed, corruption and malfeasance at various levels. The crooks didn't arrive in UFO's and take over the world from the top; the scum is always in the process of rising to the top, and it gets easier for them in circumstances of moral decay. There's an increasing sense of the end of an era, with people in a position to do so frantically grabbing all they can, while they can. Maybe it's the approaching end of the New Labour government. Maybe it's the developing economic depression, and continuing crumbling of the nation into a third world hell-hole.<br /><br />Sometimes it seems that only a thorough purging by Blood and Fire would suffice to cleanse the country and the world, but increasingly it seems that we have gone past the point where things as they used to be could be restored at all. It may be a case of patching an old garment with new cloth or putting new wine into old bottles as the Bible said. The whole civilisation may be in irreversible decline, and not amenable to being restored to vigour by any amount of pruning or tweaking. If Robespierre and his guillotine couldn't Terrorise Revolutionary France into a Republic of Virtue, and the far more bloody efforts of Stalin failed in Soviet Russia, as did those of Mao in China, it's obvious that neither the attempts of our socialist rulers to convert humanity into their playthings, nor any imagined resistance to them is likely to achieve the desired results.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-56628292586358317912009-04-03T14:54:00.075+01:002009-04-05T12:35:48.525+01:00What are they doing?Politicians. They're bringing themselves, Parliament, politics and their country into disrepute, but they ignore their increasingly angry and frustrated citizens, and continue <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">troughing</span> and posturing as if there's nothing else with which they should concern themselves.<br /><br /><br />The disclosure of what <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span> have claimed as expenses over the past several years has led to another outburst of public indignation, following on from last years' disclosures about the lavish way the Speaker and his wife splash around and wallow in taxpayers money, whilst conducting himself and his duties in an altogether unsatisfactory manner.<br /><br /><br />The humiliating revelations that the (Two) Home Secretary has pocketed a fortune for her family home by claiming to live in her sister's spare bedroom, was undignified. Her claim of 88 pence for a <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">bathplug</span> is so small minded it will pin her reputation in public memory. Her claim of £10 for her husband's viewing of a couple of porn films has made her a figure of contemptuous ridicule, and has enabled a French publication to refer to Britain as the United Condom. Yet she's still in office, still <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">troughing</span> as greedily as ever, although perhaps more circumspectly. Her administrative incapacity in itself should long since have led to her dismissal, but despite this being overshadowed by her public and political embarrassment, the Prime Minister still has not sacked her. He's also a disgrace and a butt of derision everywhere except the compliant <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">Beeboid</span> media staffed by socialist drones. He gets to waste even more money, the £20-50 million thrown away on the G20 Obama fawning and its associated mini-riots amid hysterical media coverage of each other covering a few attention seeking idiots and the massive police overtime and waste of time, is just a small part of the way he misgoverns the country, to make himself look good for a very brief period.<br /><br /><br />It's the little things that trip one up, and make one hated. The scale of their waste and destruction and bad stewardship is beyond the comprehension of most of the public, but that woman (is she Smith or is she <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">Timney</span>?), will have a <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">bathplug</span> and a couple of pornographic videos tied like tin cans to the tail of her political reputation for the rest of her life; and Brown's social awkwardness and jaw dropping tic and claim to have saved the world will be how he is remembered.<br /><br /><br />Tony <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">McNulty</span>; another useless minister for something-or-other, has also caught some of the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">public's</span> displeasure. He charged about £60,000 for in effect visiting his parents a few times, by claiming their house as his main residence. Bad boy Tony, most people manage to visit their parents occasionally without having to be paid to do so! His inept <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">Newsnight</span> performance where he tried to say that the unemployed should be happy with newly decorated <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">Jobcentres</span>, but was lambasted by an ex-<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">Woolworths</span> employee, who is losing her house, has fixed him temporarily in the public gaze. The information that his wife is head of the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">Ofsted</span> quango which messes up schools, and between them they get - one can't honestly say earn - almost a third of a million pounds each year, does not help to improve the humour of the public.<br /><br /><br />Several husband and wife teams of <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span> exist, happily <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">exploiting</span> the disgracefully and deliberately lax rules. One of these women was actually sued for incompetence by a voter. One of the highest charging London <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span>, who disgraces Churchill's memory by occupying his old seat - and claiming to be a better MP, apparently only needs a season ticket on the tube to get to Westminster. What vermin.<br /><br /><br />They don't 'get it'. The Speaker has blocked reforms of Parliamentary administration, the Prime Minister tries to fob off the public with tales of enquiries to report and suggest reforms after he's likely to be out of office. When the Leader of the Opposition tried to raise questions about these rules, the body of <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span> groaned and hissed. They've just given themselves another pay rise and pension boost. If they were pigs one might say they're fattening nicely for the slaughter. The worst of them, odious slimy socialists, have an outrageous sense of entitlement, as if being useless, destructive, filthy political rats somehow entitles them to leech off real people. I used to have some respect for at least a few of them, who are intelligent, knowledgeable and had served in high office without disgracing it, such as Hague, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-error">Rifkind</span> or <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error">Portillo</span>. Now whenever I see the image of a politician I remember the scene from the film The Day of the Jackal, where the assassin practices by shooting at watermelons, and one sees them exploding into a red mist.<br /><br /><br />It's been reported that an <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_19" class="blsp-spelling-error">MEP</span> can become a millionaire out of the expenses over a five year term. It's not so much worse for an MP. A salary of over £60,000 p.a. and tax free expenses averaging around £140,000 doesn't leave them much short of a million over an average parliamentary term of 4-5 years. Imagine how well those are doing who can score the hat trick of membership of Scottish or Welsh or Northern Ireland Assembly, Member of Parliament and Member of the European Parliament.<br /><br /><br />They claim that they need to be paid a lot to attract high quality people - well that's not working, so what's the next excuse? Other countries politicians get away with even more - that doesn't seem the noblest encouragement to public service, now does it? The Tories did it first, so it's right for us to it even more blatantly - that's the moral level of many Labour <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_20" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span>. Obviously it's the presence of this filth that discourages better people from getting involved in what's become the sewer of politics and it's the ability to make easy money for little risk or effort that attracts them like flies to dung.<br /><br /><br />What are they actually doing for all this money? How do they spend their time? Gossiping to each other, making speeches which they know will have no affect on the outcome, intriguing to get good media coverage and avoid blame; and the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" class="blsp-spelling-error">public's</span> favourite - constituency work, meaning answering <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">complaints</span> from voters about some aspect of the bureaucracy, or at least re-directing letters to some horrible bureaucrat who will in due course send a very polite letter telling the voter to grin and bear it. This latter task is why they claim money for staff; but for the money absorbed by each MP one could probably employ ten or a dozen people to answer and re-direct letters. Not high-powered stuff is it? No great skill or knowledge or managerial ability (apart from sleazy political cunning, which I don't evaluate positively) required justifying the inflated comparison they make for salary level with jobs which actually do require these things. Time spend climbing the greasy pole of their own political parties, elevating themselves in the opinion of the scum that has already risen to the top, getting themselves ministerial jobs they're unfitted to perform - why should we pay them for that?<br /><br /><br />There's not much time or perhaps inclination or ability, spent on that old fashioned stuff like securing redress of grievances before voting supplies of money to carry on the government, or scrutinising and criticising in detail the government's handling of public affairs. Maybe few of the members of the public are interested in much beyond sound-bites. Posturing is more successful than real aptitude. It's a media age. Representative democracy? If these people represent modern Britain, it's a very ugly face Cool <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_23" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">Britannia</span> must see in the mirror.<br /><br /><br />What results have they achieved? At what cost? The greater Britain's demoralization and decline the more they preen themselves, and the more outrageously they trough. They exempt themselves from the laws they pass. They attempt to hide their addresses. Ministers move in a cloud of guards and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_24" class="blsp-spelling-error">flunkeys</span>, as if they were afraid of their people. Perhaps they are afraid. Perhaps they have done enough to justify fear. Perhaps we are no longer their people. Their people seem to be the invaders and degenerates who are paid to vote for them, or whose self interest corresponds with insatiable expansion of the state to restrict and bully and nanny at crippling cost to the real people who are forced to pay for it all. Oh, they've been very busy, or their minions have, demolishing and demonising everything British or civilised, promoting Islam and communism and anything filthy.<br /><br /><br /><br />They don't even pay proper attention to defence, the core function of the state. See, for instance the complaints about the lack of well informed attention to defence procurement on the serious and well informed blog <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/">EU Referendum </a>and it's companion <a href="http://defenceoftherealm.blogspot.com/2009/04/as-rejected-by-americans.html">Defence of the Realm</a>. Justice, the second function of the state, has already been perverted. The police are used to bully people over trivialities, and arrest innocent people, while criminals are given rights in preference to their victims. The crime figures are distorted and faked to create an illusion. Instead of executing criminals , they are given light sentences and released early. People are taxed so their money can be wasted by sleazy social workers and 'educationists'[ to destroy proper family life, child raising and education and so generate hordes of criminal zombie vermin labour-voting <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_25" class="blsp-spelling-error">dolescum</span>, justifying more bureaucratic control of everyone.<br /><br /><br /><br />Most of the legislation apparently is just rubber stamping what is sent to them from the EU, so our politicians are just the lackeys of foreign interests. They show little reluctance to be the lackeys of any interests which can offer lucrative prospects of later directorships, consultancy fees, book deals or speaking engagements. Labour has 'reformed' the House of Lords in order to fill it with their sickeningly <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_26" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">hypocritical</span> and corrupt influence peddlers. It could truly be said of them that they have made my Father's House a den of thieves, and turned the Mother of Parliaments into a whore. There's no need to elaborate on the recent revelations of an ex-minister close to Brown, who made video recordings of himself copulating with his mistress in his office in the House of Commons, or on the old rumour that many years ago someone rushed into Brown's office and found that <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_27" class="blsp-spelling-error">Mandelson</span> was busily buggering him. They've turned Parliament into a brothel in every sense, political, financial and sexual; and degraded the British Lion into an alley cat.<br /><br /><br /><br />When Walter <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_28" class="blsp-spelling-error">Bagehot</span> wrote his famous book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_English_Constitution">The English Constitution </a>in 1867 he distinguished between its Dignified or ceremonial and its Efficient or practical aspects. In those days the monarchy was already ceremonial, but Parliament was still a practical institution through which the government of a great empire was conducted. Nowadays, sad to say, Parliament has joined the ceremonial <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_29" class="blsp-spelling-error">flummery</span>, and the real government is carried on by the EU Commission, the vast state bureaucracies and their entanglement of unelected and unaccountable <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_30" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">quangos</span> and fake charities, - and their academic and media outlets which are a substitute for the Church.<br /><br /><br /><br />The Monarchy used to be the focus of national pride and sentiment, as well as of practical government. Now only a residue of sentiment attaches to it, and it has become a fancy dress imitation of itself, devoted to saccharine television programs and tourist promotion. Parliament is now far down the same route, a hollow shell of what it used to be, a mere depository of sinecures for greedy and useless politicians, who scarcely even pretend to take their nominal duties seriously. For recent instance, Caroline Flint, one of the ministers for foreign affairs, admitted that she had not read the Lisbon Treaty which advances the power of the EU, although it is a crucial document in her area of responsibility. The less they form part of the Efficient mechanism of government, the more pomp and perquisites our politicians demand for themselves, although the less worthy they become.<br /><br /><br /><br />Parliament used to be the place where a high level of oratory was expected at times of national crisis, to focus debate and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_31" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">crystallise</span> national emotion into resolution. Churchill was the last great Parliamentary orator, although Thatcher gave a worthy echo. The Nu-Lie-bore substitute of Spin-Doctoring the media doesn't summon up the blood and stiffen the sinews of the nation.<br />Parliament used to focus the national mood, to be at the centre of drama, conflict and resolution. This is becoming less the case as the nation is undermined and debased, and parliament is turned into a tourists sideshow, by our venal and unpatriotic politicians, serving evil interests.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>Parliament has another function now. It has become a screen, a cut-out in the espionage sense, concealing the real rulers from the ruled. Our corrupt and greedy politicians are happy to hear the sound of their own voices, to appear on radio and television talk shows, to pose as wise and potent. They hate to admit their insignificance and foolishness, to acknowledge they are no more than wizards of Oz, putting on a display to fool the multitude. That's another reason for their low quality. Men of real ability and ambition for power don't waste their time in this theatre of pompous self-regarding wastrels. Only the ignorant, stupid and hypocritical twitter about going into politics to improve things, to 'make a difference' - other than a massive difference to their financial and social circumstances. </p><p></p><br /><p>The main political parties are controlled and financed by broadly the same interests, and there is little difference in their policies. They're scarcely more than exercises in consumer branding, using marketing consultants to help them sell pretty much the same rubbish to as many people as possible, in slightly different packaging. Individual membership of these parties has steadily declined. Under Blair individual membership of the Labour party halved, I think, and it's much the same for the others. Cameron has driven out any old fashioned Conservatives. These bands of political opportunists will serve the interests of their real masters about equally well, whichever one happens to be more electorally popular at any given time. It's useful to have the illusion of choice, but the casino owners always win. Minor parties are hated and feared and the media is used to demonise them, in case people get to know about them and realise they could have a real choice. The massive changes made to British population, laws and society in recent decades was not the result of great popular demand, or even much debate. It was imposed by the lefty Political Class and their media co-conspirators, who continue to shrilly damn any resistance to their evil. When was the last time you felt you had any influence on such decisions, or that your representative truly represented you?</p><br /><p><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_32" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span> no longer represent genuinely local interests - unless they're representing the interests of immigrant communities of privileged invaders. They no longer represent social groupings or different philosophies. They just represent the Political Class of lefty vermin who have seized control of middle class positions in administration, media, culture and academia. Oh yes, they also represent themselves, and boy how diligently they pursue their self interest!</p><br /><p>Our politicians and the political institutions they infest are losing political legitimacy. They can hardly claim to represent a nation, when they have eroded and dismiss the concept of the nation and nationalism. They attract either popular loathing or popular indifference to a greater extent than popular enthusiasm. Even in 1997, when Blair smiled his landslide way to office, 40% of the potential electorate didn't bother to vote, 35% voted for other parties and only 25% voted for Labour. Subsequently it's gone down to about 20%. Brown is likely to lose the next election because he has become unpopular rather than because of any <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_33" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">fervent</span> enthusiasm for Cameron. People accept their rule out of habit, and fear of the consequences of disobeying the state. If the economy continues to slide into depression, and the inflation and currency depreciation now being stoked really takes hold, and the Labour government can no longer borrow enough to bribe its clientele of state employees and parasites, things may change. Who will people turn to and obey when they despise the government and no longer fear the state?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><br /><p>This is not the first time Britain has suffered under a corrupt Parliament. Cromwell's <a href="http://www.famous-speeches-and-speech-topics.info/famous-short-speeches/oliver-cromwell-speech-dissolution-of-the-long-parliament.htm">great tirade </a>when he dismissed the Long Parliament, in which he had sat and for whom he had won the Civil War, is astonishingly apt, and is all the more apposite now because it's not just a few <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_34" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span> but the whole 'political nation', 'body politic' or 'Establishment' that is corrupt and sick and hastening the decline of the nation, whilst there's no remedy to be expected nowadays from a Platonic doctor of statesmanship or a God-fearing military dictator. His purges and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_35" class="blsp-spelling-error">dissolutions</span> required no confiscations, beatings, torture, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_36" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">imprisonment</span> or executions of <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_37" class="blsp-spelling-error">MP's</span>. One may feel that their modern successors amply deserve such punishment.<br /></p><p><br />Into what future are they taking the country? It's increasingly clear that power and significance in the world is shifting to China and India and the rest of Asia, whilst we slide down into the Third World. Our crooked, sleazy, mendacious media, political class and politicians are parasites or cancers destroying anything good that still survives, and turning Britain into an Atlantic Zimbabwe. The population may starve, but the vermin elite will live a life of well guarded luxury. 'Britain' may fade into the mists of time, no longer the 'Island of the Mighty', merely another fringe territory inhabited by savage socialised sub-humans. The politicians don't need to worry, for them the future's bright! </p>Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-92196048075363166252009-03-19T16:13:00.132+00:002009-03-27T20:32:49.241+00:00Free at last?It is said that some prisoners become so dependent on the narrow confines of their cells and the monotony of lives minutely organised for them, that they have great difficulty in adjusting to life outside the prison bars; and may even commit further crimes in order to be safely locked up again, where they are looked after and have a recognised place, even if it is a miserable place in a harsh environment. Not everyone can cope with freedom.<br /><br />Notwithstanding the verses on the <a href="http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm">Statue of Liberty,</a> not all the huddled masses are yearning to breathe free - unless that means at someone else's expense, of course! Then there's no limit to the number that our masters expect us to welcome and support. It's not enough to deal with the home grown trash, it's somehow imperative to scour the world for human refuse to import.<br /><br /><br />..<span style="font-style: italic;">.''Give me your tired, your poor,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The wretched refuse of your teeming shore</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I lift my lamp beside the golden door!</span>''<br /><br />I'm not convinced the Founding Fathers of America thought of their enterprise as the creation of a refuge for refuse. Somehow that's what it's become.<br /><br />It's even more grotesque to envisage our female ministers, the 'Blair Babes', harpies, fishwives and harridans to a woman; more particularly 'Five Bellies', our contemptible greedy and absurd Home Secretary, who is the one responsible for (failing to control) immigration, posing and imitating the figure referred to thus:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name<br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Glows world-wide welcome..</span>..<br /><br />Life and art parody each other. Like Circe's pigs, our rulers fail to recollect themselves and how far they have sunk below their proper station and responsibilities.<br /><br />Having turned Britain into a pig-sty, our rulers attempt to degrade it's inhabitants to the level of pigs, and control their living quarters, their mating, their movements and their diet. That effort at control now seems to constitute the main activity of government. Towards which abattoir will they be be driven? For whose benefit will they be slaughtered, morally, mentally and even physically?<br /><br />Those who pay the swine-herds probably consider that they own the swine and certainly mean to profit from them. Physically, the armed forces are already being expended, in a small way so far, in pursuit of interests other than the defence of Britain, or the advancement of its proper interests. There's just been a scandal about a local hospital which faked its figures to appear to be meeting government targets, (in itself a good idea, necessary for good management, but needing to be relevant and monitored), so as to achieve a more financially rewarding status. It did so by economising on trained medical staff, and failing to count patients, let alone attend properly to them. It was estimated that over 400 people had died as a result. Well that's very New Labour, the National Health Service becomes the National Death Service, to benefit the most callous and crooked. It puts one in mind of the financial sector, where the bankers most feted and celebrated by the government, turned out to be competent only at self enrichment whilst destroying the banking system. Of course nothing will be done about either set of filth. Ministers drone about investigations, reforms, lessons being learned - but they're very slow learners (except when it comes to pocketing perquisites and appointments). Hempen collars all round would be just what this 'doctor' would order. If only the dead had been Labour politicians instead of real people, the world would be a better place.<br /><br />Morally, emotionally and intellectually the population is deprived of the benefit it is entitled to expect from participation, (at the levels of their various comprehensions and abilities) in its heritage of religious and cultural institutions. Instead of the bread of life they are offered only the stony life of consumerism and socialism.<br /><br />The ancient Greeks thought that involvement in the life of a small city state was essential for the full development of the potential of humanity, and that the institutions of such communities - where it was possible to hear and respond to a cry from the other side of the city- provided what was necessary for humanity. Their philosophers certainly didn't believe that Jack is not only as good as his master, but a damn sight better. They didn't insist on trying to turn sows' ears into silk purses. Our rulers deny that their are any such differences, and punish anyone who points out reality. It's been noted that the citizens of the ancient Greek city states displayed and were expected to display, a great deal more ability and versatility than is true of modern states, however much they prate of democracy.<br /><br />The great exemplars of modern democracy, the government of the Obamessiah, recently displayed their mettle to the world. After so many decades of confrontation with Russia, their diplomats organised a small gift for their representative, Mrs. Clinton, to give to the Russian foreign minister when they met in front of the world's media. It was a toy button supposed to represent resetting the political relations between the two powers, who each still control thousands of nuclear weapons. Almost unbelievably, their experts in the language and culture of Russia got it wrong, using the Russian word for overload, instead of the word for reset, and writing it in Roman rather than Cyrillic characters! Presumably they had got rid of anyone who knew anything, and substituted some 'equality' or 'diversity' ignoramus. Fortunately, the Russians have a reputation for patience; they're certainly going to need a lot of it.<br /><br />That vermin, deserving of all vituperation, our vile, vicious and venal rulers, political and economic, have expressed their contempt for their people by the destruction of anything small scale and local, denying that the British, and more particularly the English, have any right to their own identity, institutions and territory. They foist the foul fraud of 'Britishness' - sub human socialism - upon both the British and the human refuse they have imported to supplant them. It's been revealed that now one third of primary school children in Britain no longer have English as their mother tongue. The arrogance and insolence of these protected and promoted 'minorities' imported to act as sub-rulers over the mongrelised and miscegenised population, knows no bounds.<br /><br />It's not surprising that many of the immigrants resent and resist degradation and assimilation to this level of the pig-sty. Many are Muslims. Although abominating pork as meat, they are of course eager to get as much as possible of the financial and political variety. Those of better class and quality may pay lip service to the multi-cultural nonsense, but it is merely a tool to make gains at the expense of the natives.They obstinately retain their own religion and culture. Good luck to them for preserving their religion, culture and identity; even if it's Islam, it's better than the degraded socialism promoted by our would-be owners. It should be no surprise that the young men who become 'home-grown' Islamic terrorists, their warriors, spring from the the most affluent and educated and apparently assimilated strata of these immigrants - although our media appear surprised - the politically correct fools.<br /><br />The same gormless idiots are shocked to find that the natives of Iraq and Afghanistan don't welcome the imposition of 'Western' decadence on their societies - apart from the crooks at the top, whose worship of Mammon is as sincere as any capitalist's or socialist's, however often they may be seen in mosques knocking their heads on the floor. Their cousins and co-religionists in Britain don't like it either. The more rowdy insult returning British soldiers, as recently happened at Luton, under the protection of our traitorous politicians and their stooge police. The quieter and more effective organise crimes and divert government grants to finance terrorism. A year or so ago there was a series of television programmes about some of these 'British' Muslims accused of involvement in terrorism, after the explosions in London, and it was revealed that there is a network of otherwise quiet and unexceptional 'British' Muslims engaged in credit card fraud, benefit cheating and various other crimes to raise money for such purposes, and that the money for the explosives and training of some of these people had come from a local authority grant to a local Muslim 'cultural'group. No follow up of that naturally. It might shock the natives and embarrass the powers that be - amongst whom are now numbered many of these immigrants' 'community leaders'.<br /><br />Indeed, these people now <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">are</span> the Labour party (and the other main parties to a lesser degree) in some parts of the country, and there have been accusations of ballot rigging by them. The postal ballots have, seemingly deliberately, been left open by this government, to easy abuse. It's known that such abuse has occurred. Some 'British' Asians were caught with a warehouse of false ballots, and I think Asian candidates of different political persuasion, have sued each other over similar corruption. They aren't leaving it all to the immigrants. There was a very strong smell of postal voting fraud hanging over the recent by election in Glenrothes. This seat is adjacent to the Prime Minister's, and he was personally in charge of the Labour effort there. Although the polls predicted a close result in what had been a very safe Labour seat, with a possible capture by the Scottish National Party, an unexpected flood of mainly Labour postal votes secured the victory. Since then its been alleged that one of the vote counting tables was not fully in public view, and the electoral register showing who actually voted has mysteriously disappeared from official custody - more lessons to be learned, or perhaps they've already been learned too well?<br /><br />So, circuitously, we come to the topic that started me thinking about this post, Scottish independence. I don't know a lot about modern Scotland and its affairs - a bit more about those of the 16th and 17th than the 21st century - but it's impossible to miss the rise of the Scottish National Party and its campaign for the independence of Scotland from England, the breaking of the Union of the two kingdoms. Currently it forms a somewhat precarious minority government in the relatively recently established Scottish Assembly, which deals with local affairs, having narrowly taken over from Labour. Browsing a few of the Scottish blogs, it seemed that the main current excitement is how soon they can or should have a referendum on independence, there not being as yet a majority in favour of the break, according to opinion polls. There's no thought of asking the views of the English.<br /><br />Indeed, something I found a bit strange was the way the SNP bloggers grouped everyone else merely as 'unionists', as if this overrode any differences between them, although in the larger context of British politics their stances on Scotland are only a very minor part of their views. Both 'them' and 'us' in this context are equally and solely Scottish. Small world. (The population of Scotland, is I think, scarcely more than half the population of London.) Will it be a <span style="font-style: italic;">brave new world that has such people in it</span>? Will there be Tempests in the independent Scotland? Judging by Scotland's history, which has been described as exceptionally treacherous and bloodstained, that's a fair bet. The fact that Scottish national dress includes a concealed weapon, a dagger in the stocking, might be a clue to something in the national character.<br /><br />A while back, when the by election was held in the constituency of Glasgow East, I looked at a forum on a Scottish newspaper's site as the result was awaited, and was astonished at the level of inventive invective the locals hurled at each other. Some of them hate each other as much as they hate the English.<br /><br />What would be the foreign policy of an independent Scotland? I'm told it would be peaceful and even pacifist. What, no border reiving into the north of England? No attempt to revive the Auld Alliance with France? No completion of Bruce's attempted conquest of Ireland? How will that accord with the martial traditions of Scotland? Will the successors of the men who served in the armies of Sweden, France and England stay peaceably at home - unemployed?<br /><br />Once the passion for independence takes hold, and the freedom of minorities to break a constitutional union and unilaterally secede from a larger entity is accepted, where will it end? It didn't end well for those who tried to break away in mid 19th century America. If Scotland breaks from England, may the Highlands break from the Lowlands, the Lordship of the Isles be revived to free themselves from the mainland, the Orkneys and Shetlands revert to Norway? Could the Picts be reformed, and send the Scots back to Ireland? Considering the venom to which they treat each other, might there be a civil war between SNiP's and SLabs? It is difficult to suppose that there would be any enthusiasm in England for raising an army to restore or re-conquer Scotland, so we could be left with a United Nations peacekeeping expedition trying to maintain order; perhaps drawn from the armies of Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Rwanda and Nigeria with their recent experience of suppressing rebels. Might there, in future days, be tales told by old soldiers in Pakistan of service on the North West Frontier of Scotland, in the Highland tribal areas, being sniped at from the heather?<br /><br />Peace also has its possibilities. How about Celtic Union with Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany? It could be based on rugby, perchance. All the politicians would be far too egotistical to concede power and privilege to each other, but they'd love the conferences, the speeches, the gossip, the travel, the limelight - the expenses! One would have to mind one's Celtic P's and Q's.<br /><br />What would be the constitutional position of an independent Scotland? Would it be in the EU or not? Would it have a choice? If the English think to end their subsidies to Scotland, will they find that the EU simply replaces them - and they will have to pay more to the EU? Would the present Queen remain Head of State? Might the Stuart Pretender, Prince Michael of Albany attempt to assume the crown? Another Jacobite Rising- a 2015 to go with 1715? Could a Salmond Dynasty be the winner?<br /><br />What would it be like at home for the Scots themselves? 'More Scottish Than Thou' may be an adequate slogan with which to attain power, but is it a sufficient basis for government? How different will a' SNiPped' Scotland prove to be? Will there be compulsory lessons in Highland Dancing and Caber Tossing? Will Gaelic be an official language, with equal status to English- or must we call it 'Scots'? Lots of opportunities for language teachers, sign painters and colourful cartography. Like Ireland and Wales, might Scotland force it's schoolchildren to learn the 'local' language, and require its bureaucrats to display proficiency?<br /><br />What is the difference between SNiPs and SLabs, apart from tribal loyalty? Is it just the envy of 'Outs' for 'Ins'? Should we explore the ins and outs of the matter, will we find that as the Outs become Ins they are uncertain what to do next, having concentrated solely on achieving power; and as the previous Ins see themselves becoming Outs they are increasingly desperate and bitter at the loss of power, patronage, profit and perquisites, well knowing their own disinclination and unsuitability for honest labour? A naked and unprincipled struggle for power.<br /> <br />Rumour has reached me that the SNiPs are even more socialist than the SLabs. If the Scots choose to spend each other's money and blood, who will object, providing none of it spills over onto them? It's sad that a people who produced Adam Smith and David Hume should degenerate into socialists. I feel humanitarian regret that people are subjected to the loss of freedom and prosperity that socialism entails, especially if they have known better, and regret the destruction of Britain; but if that is the fate they choose, they will not be deprived of it. <br /><br />Taking a birds-eye view, as a Raven might, one wonders what Scotland lacks of independence, apart from the name? Practically, is it not already as free as it could be, or as the EU would allow it to be? The usual features of foreign domination are not seen in Scotland. There's no English governor, supported by garrisons of English troops, imposing taxes on the Scots to pay for their occupation and remit tribute to England. They're not imposing foreign laws or an alien religion on a resentful people. Local culture and national symbols and sympathies are not suppressed. The higher levels of political and administrative office are not held by Englishmen. Big business, finance, agriculture, trade, the professions, the media, academia, religion and culture are not dominated by the English. It's very noticeable that all such positions are held by Scots. They have free elections to their own Assembly, which runs local affairs. Only foreign policy and the military are controlled by Westminster - and those are aspects of self governance where we are assured that Scots ambitions are very modest, so little change need be envisaged.<br /><br />Indeed, an impartial foreign observer would note the exact opposite. It's England that is governed by Scots. It's England that is taxed to remit tribute to Scotland. It's England's sense of identity, culture, national symbols and festivals that are suppressed. Scots are prominent at the upper levels of English business, administration, politics and media in a way that the English are not in Scotland. The Scots allow the English to hold elections, but they have no English Parliament, and the Labour government at Westminster uses it's Scots MP's to enable it to control English affairs.<br /><br />Something strange seems to have happened to religion in Scotland. The Covenanters and Calvinists who resisted the attempt of Charles I to impose Anglicanism on Scotland, and tried instead to impose Presbyterianism on England, have faded away to be replaced by the Son of the Manse, whose academic study was dominated by the history of the inter-war Labour party in Scotland, and who labours mightily to destroy the society, economy and finances of Britain with his socialist twaddle. It's fair to note that something as strange has happened to the Church of England. It's female priests, homosexual bishops, and black congregations would appear as hellish nightmares to those who established it, and they could hardly believe that this is now a reflection of England in both secular and sacred aspects.<br /><br /><br />Our rulers are not only socialist, they're also corrupt. Perhaps the two go together. Mao lived as an emperor,whilst imposing austerity on his people. On their lesser scale our ministers and MP's and quangocrats devote themselves assiduously to self enrichment, hypocritically exclaiming when the light of public scrutiny falls upon them, that they have done nothing wrong, followed all the requisite procedures and stayed within the law. Some are always more equal than others, but the socialists seem to be more disgustingly greedy than the others, all the more sickeningly so as they trough whilst proclaiming their efforts to help the poor.<br /><br />In relation to Scotland, when following the Glasgow East by election, I noticed accusations that the previous MP had resigned to spend more time with his loot, to prevent an investigation that would have exposed him; and that Labour, especially in Glasgow was mired in accusations of thuggery and corrupt property deals. This is the political patch of the ill-esteemed and remarkably greedy Speaker of the House of Commons. Labour corruption is not new. Remembering the scandal of the 1960's when the major political figure of the North East of England, Dan Smith I think he was, was jailed along with an architect, Poulson, for massive corruption in public works, it would not be at all surprising if Scottish Labour politicians were corrupt. Since the SNiPs have taken over in Scotland, have they set the police to investigate such allegations, which would seem a useful stick with which to beat their rivals? Not that I've heard. Perhaps police and politicians already know each other quite well, there's little desire to rock the boat, and it's just a matter of snouts jostling for the best positions around the trough, without overturning it or turning on each other.<br /><br />Scotland Yard - strange name for the headquarters of the London Metropolitan police - seems to have been completely Blairised, turned into creatures of New Labour. Our Home Secretary, 'Circe' Smith, was able to watch her 'pigs' invade Parliament to bully an opposition MP, and even arrest him on absurdly flimsy terrorist grounds; but Knacker of the Yard, was not allowed to feel the collar of Blair or Lord Cashpoint for trafficing in honours. It would be wonderful if the Scottish police would send Inspector McKnacker to Westminster to arrest the Speaker, and take him to the knackers yard.<br /><br />Scotland already has more independence than England. Perhaps, like some birds when their cages are opened, they're reluctant to recognise their freedom and take wing, too comfortable with the old habits of subsidy dependence and abusing the English. It's said that 80% of the legislation passed by Westminster is just rubber stamping what comes from Brussels. How much difference would it make if Scotland had a direct relation with Brussels, unmediated via Westminster? Would the same complaints continue, or would the EU be accepted as a new gravy train to climb aboard, a new world to conquer? They may already have started. How long before Scots will be running Brussels, as they ran Westminster? It would not be altogether unprecedented. Just before the South Sea Bubble, long before Fred the Shred wrecked Scottish and British banking - OK, not all by himself; that famous Scot, John Law, introduced France to the delights of central banking that was going to make everyone rich, and resulted in the horrors of a debauched paper currency. He also escaped with a big bag of loot. <br /><br />Will Scotland's independence mean England's freedom? Will England ever again be united, free of foreign rule and alien subversion? If the tide of EU regionalism breaks England into pieces, might something like the Anglo Saxon Heptarchy be revived? Could the North East recreate the Dark Age kingdom of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernicia">Bernicia,</a> which covered Northumberland and the south east Scottish coast roughly as far as Edinburgh. Maybe the Scots could reverse the decision of the battle of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Catterick">Catraeth</a>, and take over Bernicia, thus freeing the rest of Britain from two sleazy socialist subsidy sumps, but no, they're far too canny for that.<br /><br />So, at the last, what are the prospects of freedom? Some have more than they recognise, others think they still have what has long passed. If it's left to our rulers, there'll be less of it; they act as if intent on freeing us from freedom. A freedom-free zone is what they try to create, CCTV cameras spying on everyone, jobsworths bullying everyone, informers enforcing political correctness, ability crushed and failure exalted, the communist state nightmare imposed by the EU, no-one to know any better, or be able to aspire to more than the life of a herd animal, and in a badly run herd at that. Being of a low moral nature themselves, merely cunning rogues, they aim to debase everyone to below their own level to make them easier to exploit. In so far as they recognise quality, ability, superiority to themselves, they hate and despise it, and act against whatever gives people freedom to improve themselves physically or spiritually, and subvert the social institutions by which this may be assisted. Slavery is their ideal, with the slavish 'sheeple', totally dependent on their rulers, repeating slogans about how very free they are, trained not to recognise their mental chains. A population that Aristotle would have regarded as natural slaves, even if they carefully avoid the name, animated tools who exist not for themselves, but for the purposes of others.<br /><br />Although the Brown Snotgobbler and his odious party are highly likely to lose the next general election, that is cause for only restrained approval, as Blue Labour may be only somewhat less statist, Clone-of-Blair having busily purged the Conservative Party of conservatives and conservatism, in 'de-contaminating the brand' to create another principle-free band of opportunist political power seekers. Put not your trust in princes, as the Bible had it.<br /><br />As the external social aspects of our lives offer less scope for freedom, it becomes all the more important to develop one's inner resources. Don't be a sheep waiting for a Good Shepherd to look after you and tell you what to do. Become a goat, and do something yourself. Remember, Jesus may be busy - save yourself. Take heart from the great British heretic <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/pelagius">Pelagius</a>, who opposed fatalism and reliance on the Church, and asserted that If I ought, I can. Or remember the parting advice of Buddha to his disciples, that they should not accept anything on authority, but should work out their own salvation with diligence. Ponder <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave">Plato's allegory of the Cave</a>, written long before flickering shadows on the wall could be related to television or Hollywood.<br />To be free at last, a freedman entitled to wear the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_cap">Phrygian Cap of Liberty</a>, requires both inner and outer freedom.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-64733084800774828792009-03-10T15:33:00.085+00:002009-03-13T16:17:49.381+00:00All changed<span style="font-style: italic;">All changed, changed utterly:<br />A terrible beauty is born.</span><br /><br />Thus <a href="http://terpconnect.umd.edu/%7Esschreib/autumn_02/investigations/Easter1916.html">Yeats</a> on the Easter Rising in his poem <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/poetryofhistory/pip/lauuo/">Easter 1916. </a>Our world is undergoing lots of changes, maybe more than most of us will like. Just as Mark Twain quipped that to those who knew the Noble Savage, his nobility was far less evident than his savagery, it's predictable that until the poets and propagandists get hold of the memories, the misery and even terror in these changes will be more easily recognised than any fancied beauty.<br /><br />In 1916 the Irish public was initially outraged at the rebels who had betrayed their country when so many of their countrymen, of both religious sects, were fighting in France. Of course the rebels claimed to be fighting for another country, and it wasn't Germany, whose rifles they used. Nor was it the Republic of Letters. The risible incongruity of men of letters staging an armed rebellion in a post office seems to have been lost on them.<br /><br />The changes of our time have more to do with the death of nations than their birth. The evil monster of the <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/">EU swallows nations</a>. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Orcs</span> of political correctness and multiculturalism import and promote the vilest savages to assist them in debasing and destroying the institutions, religion, cultures and identities of the local people. Our ruling class of socialist traitors and bureaucratised crazies deliberately wastes the wealth of the people, warps their minds and morals with ignorant propaganda instead of education, perversion instead of religion, thought crime instead of justice. There are protests at the dumbing down of the public examinations, the substitution of fashionable climate change nonsense for science, the inversion of right and wrong in the legal system, the precedence of bureaucratic malfeasance over justice and the waste, incompetence and corruption in the expenditure of public money, that would be criminal if it wasn't done by our rulers.<br /><br />So far, the general hope of redemption lies in a change of rulers, although there is also scepticism that the political opposition can be a major improvement. That's been the terrible beauty of democracy, the persistent illusion that change from one party to another will bring lasting improvement. That is wearing thin and our rulers know it, hence their accelerated efforts to claim every <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">privilege</span> and perquisite they can devise, and their recruitment of more thuggish police to guard them, and new laws limiting freedom, creating more opportunities for ministers to declare a state of emergency and making it a crime to photograph the police.<br /><br />Clone-of-Blair is likely to come into office at a time when further unpleasant changes have occurred, such as more economic depression and rising inflation and continuing rapid decline in the exchange rate. He won't have an easy time, and will soon find charm, smiles and sound bites ineffective in solving the problems. People may see that the changes now coming to a head are greater than the usual short term cyclical variations. All the government's economists and spin doctors may not be able to put <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Humpty</span> together again.<br /><br />It's the material changes affecting their comfort that mainly upset people, and nowadays when the state plays Big Nanny even more than Big Daddy, they blame the government for any inconvenience. That's partly why our current Deluded Leader is so frantically spending money he doesn't have, blaming the Americans and the rest of the world for his own turpitude, ineptitude and folly and trying to look as if he is doing something helpful. Although some call him Moses, he has less chance of parting the waters of this financial tsunami, and walking dryshod to the Promised Land of revered retirement in the Worker's Paradise. Some jobsworth of an angel would nitpick about his failure to pass through the eye of a needle, and deny him admittance in any case, although he is a one-eyed jobsworth himself, and no angel.<br /><br />Despite claiming the status of a world saviour, his attempt to gain recognition from the <a href="http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=10329">Obammessiah</a> was less than a success. Forced to use the tradesman's entrance to the White House, granted only a short chat squeezed into the Obammessiah's normal schedule, and a brief showing to the press, where the Great One stiffly rebuffed his fawning, with the comment that he was sure Mr.Brown would not disagree with him to his face - virtually calling him a backstabber! That's an insulting contrast to the red carpet welcome given to the chiefs of the IRA when they visited a few days later. The fatted calf was killed for the killers of British soldiers, police and civilians. Those who caused little children to suffer are suffered to come unto Him. Trample the meek, it's the gunrunners, murderers, liars and thieves who are welcomed in the kingdom of this messiah. Brown's despicable grovelling to the drunken murderous oaf, to be knighted as 'Sir' Chappaquiddick Kennedy for his services to IRA fund raising and gunrunning is also disgusting, and indicative of his contempt for the country he is supposed to be leading.<br /><br />Even the economic commentators are predicting a bad time ahead, and some, such as <a href="http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm">George Ure</a> ,<a href="http://www.kunstler.com/">James Kunstler</a> and <a href="http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=10278">Gerald Celente</a>, suggest the changes will be rather more extensive than we will like. It may be that things are now departing which will be sorely missed, prosperity, longevity, order and civilisation among them. Throughout nearly all of human existence, paper wealth has had no meaning. Insofar as 'retirement' had any meaning, it meant reliance on the support of children and grandchildren. The value of financial investments is rapidly diminishing, and the whole idea of providing for the future, especially for retirement, by buying paper promises is likely to be exposed as a fraud. The inflation now being stoked by the governments of Britain and America to benefit crooked bankers is likely to eliminate whatever remains of the value of their currencies, and the value of savings in those currencies. Apparently the dollar has lost over 95% of its value since 1913, and the pound has fared no better. That's what usually happens to currencies, governments debase them beyond use, and that's what likely to happen to the pound and the dollar. No doubt rich crooks with political connections will profit from whatever arrangements replace them, at the expense of ordinary people. £sd used not to mean a hallucinogen. Livres, solidii and denarii were apparently traceable back to Carolingian coinage based on Roman units of considerable value, not small change. It may be that Lady Poverty will be a close and constant companion, although we bid her less welcome than did St. Francis.<br /><br />Our highly interconnected globalised economy and society may prove very vulnerable to shocks, and to things like peak oil and imperial overstretch. Dmitry Orlov, in <a href="http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dtxqwqr_25g7bchc">Closing the Collapse Gap</a> makes a very interesting comparison between the Soviet collapse and the likely imminent collapse of America, and concludes that America will suffer far more. Another Russian, <a href="http://twilightstarsong.blogspot.com/2008/12/will-2010-be-annus-horribilus-for-usa.html">Igor Panarin</a>, predicts that the USA is soon likely to split into several portions, although I do not see why the social and racial strains are expected to be resolved in such neat geographical divisions.<br /><br />After the continuing crumpling of the financial system there are fears that the food supply may be decreased and disrupted, particularly if the current highly capital and oil intensive system of agribusiness ceases to operate reliably. Big cities will not be able to feed themselves on what food can be grown locally, especially if oil based transport becomes too scarce or expensive. In the 1930's Stalin ameliorated his immediate problems by sending armed hordes from the cities to loot the Ukraine, and murder all the small farmers who were reluctant to be forced into collective farms. It is conceivable that if food runs short in American cities in a few years time, the Obammessiah may unleash his hordes of criminal blacks and degenerate whites to rape and pillage their ways across rural America.<br /><br />Eras do come to an end. This island has experienced many, so it would not be very surprising if we are now undergoing another such change. The signs suggest it may be so. This is no longer a civilisation or culture of development, enthusiasm, new cultural horizons. Rather it is a time of degeneracy, perversion and collapse. The changes in art and culture are not improvements, but tired imitations of chimpanzees tea parties.<br /><br />There are long cycles, such as the approximately 2,200 year Zodiacal Ages , months in the Great Year of the precession of the equinoxes, Hamlet's Mill. Sometime in the next century or so the Age of Aquarius will start when the vernal equinox moves into Aquarius. That's a very long time in human experience, and there are many shorter cycles. Recently there has been some speculation that the winter solstice of 2012 may mark an important change, as it marks the end of the Maya calendar, and shows the way to the centre of the galaxy in the direction of a gap in the Milky Way; although apparently that orientation also lasts for a century or so. It's possible there may be some event around 2012 which will serve as a shorthand marker for a major change occurring over a longer time, such as the fall of Rome in 476A.D.<br /><br />One can speculate as to what that might be, and perhaps the economic and political collapse of the USA could fit the bill, signaled by the government defaulting on its debt, or having to withdraw its forces from the 800-1000 bases it maintains in some 130 countries, because it can no longer afford to maintain them, or a humiliating setback in Afghanistan, which it would no longer be able to reverse. The rulers of America set it on a similar course to that of Hapsburg Spain, so it would not be surprising if it suffers a similar fate. China could be the rising power that eclipses America, as France did in the case of Spain.<br /><br />Although such alteration may be inevitable, it may be that our rulers are deliberately provoking collapse, making things worse than they might be. Beyond the incompetence and stupidity and favouritism, evil may lurk. They are socialists after all. Are they deliberately losing control of borders, flooding the country with third world garbage, <a href="http://http//isupporttheresistance.blogspot.com/2009/03/importing-diseases-and-death.html">allowing precautions against disease to lapse</a>, knowingly doing whatever will fail and cause waste and destruction? The <a href="http://forthardknox.com/tag/cloward-piven/">Cloward-Piven strategy</a> suggests that's exactly what they are doing.<br /><br />In the normal course one would have to accept that as Tennyson said, The old order changeth, yielding place to new. It may not be possible to put Humpty together again, although government economists and spindoctors strive their mightiest. Eventually the ideals and the feuds of history lose their meaning for subsequent generations. The 17th century is ending in Northern Ireland. All that 18th century concern for the rights of property and rights of man, enshrined in a written constitution with a small government, is passing away in America.<br />As the generations pass and the cycles turn, we could agree with T.S Eliot's assessment, in Four Quartets:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">We cannot revive old factions</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">We cannot restore old policies</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Or follow an antique drum.<br /></span> <span style="font-style: italic;">These men, and those who opposed them</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And those whom they they opposed</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Accept the constitution of silence</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And are folded in a single party.</span><br /><br />Although our world is ending, and much that was good is destroyed, the triumph of evil may be less complete than it now seems. The old religion of the northmen suggested that <a href="http://www.bambooweb.com/articles/r/a/Ragnarok.html">after the Ragnarok</a>, a fresh new world would arise, peopled by those who had taken refuge deep within the Cosmic Tree.<br /><br />Six hundred years ago, and more, a wise woman lived in the churchyard of St. Julian's in Norwich. She was an anchoress, a mystic famous then and since as <a href="http://www.gloriana.nu/julian.html">Dame Julian of Norwich</a>. She lived through the Black Death and the Peasant's Revolt, so she knew something of change. Her theology was notably optimistic, and a line of hers, All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, was taken up by the poet Eliot, in his great poem <a href="http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/t_s_eliot/poems/15136">Four Quartets: Little Gidding:</a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And all shall be well and</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">All manner of thing shall be well</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />When the tongues of flame are in-folded</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Into the crowned knot of fire</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And the fire and the rose are one.</span>Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-25428518391803300222009-02-23T17:52:00.047+00:002009-02-24T00:44:06.166+00:00Forging a RingLast night I happened to see a television programme about Christianity. Naturally, given the proclivities of our media, it was presented by an atheist scientist gleefully gloating over the replacement of Christianity by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Scientism</span> as the effective established religion of the chattering classes.<br /><br />It's been noted that successful religions tend to demonise their predecessors, and this programme about the Enlightenment period of the 17-19<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">th</span> centuries, gave a banal glorification of those saints of science, Galileo, Harvey and Darwin - almost a new trinity. Indeed, following the example of Pope Gregory, who ordered Augustine's mission to England to take over the practices and places of worship of the previous religion, merely re-naming them, so that the populace would become more readily accustomed to the new management; some of the programme was even set in a church, and church music was played as background to the scene at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">CERN</span>, (the large hadron <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">collider</span> in Switzerland), described as a cathedral of science. <br /><br />The choice of Christians to be fed to the lions of media mockery, was of course fully in accord with the tenets of political correctness. Although the most vibrant sector of Christianity appears to be amongst the blacks, we were not shown any of them. That's perhaps a little disappointing, even <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">discriminatory</span>, in a country where the second highest dignitary next to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in what is technically still supposed to be the established church of England, the Archbishop of York - is a black imported from Uganda.<br /><br />Not so long ago, amongst evangelical sects popular with blacks, it was reported that some of the more superstitious had taken to beating and killing children who were suspected to be witches. Material there, one might suppose, for the rational and materialistic to investigate. One might even suppose that keen rationalists could be interested in the mentality of the blacks who, only a few years ago, transported children from West Africa to London to be murdered so that some of their body parts could be used in black magical procedures to benefit those who could pay for them. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Hmm</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">pre</span>- Christian practices still surviving or reviving, or possibly naive Christians confused about the Real Presence?<br /><br /> Ah, but no ... the doctrines of political correctness require blacks to be regarded as holy people - although less so than those who claim a patent on the term. Consequently the selected lamb had to be white, and turned out to be American; presumably one of those least affected by the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Obamessiah</span> whose utterance of the great mantra, 'Change', caused all liberal media hearts to flutter; even if so far it's proved a less creative word than the traditional 'Fiat <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Lux</span> '. Should he turn out to be a failed messiah, who disappoints the expectations of his followers, will he, I wonder, become known as the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Obamination</span> of Desolation?<br /><br /> America, we were told in tones of hushed incredulity, is a place where a third of the population still takes the Bible literally, and prefers the creation account of Genesis to that of the Great Prophet Darwin (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">PBUH</span>). Perhaps not incidentally, it's also a place that's still a lot more pleasant to visit on an expenses paid trip than, say, Libreville, Liberia, Lagos or London.<br /><br />The unrepresentative representative of Christianity turned out to be an astrophysicist who believes that dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time as humans. This scientific solecism so shocked the programme makers, who had arranged for the interview to take place in a garden which has models of dinosaurs interspersed among the trees, that the camera lingered on several white women wearing long dresses and bonnets, as if to show us how old fashioned are these Americans. Literal mindedness all round. Well, they showed that '<span style="font-style: italic;">single vision and Newton's sleep</span>' may have more than one dream.<br /><br />The next foreign trip took us to Rome. It's a fair bet than our intrepid scientists and media folk won't be planning a trip to Riyadh for a programme on Islam and Science. They're not crazy. Heads might roll. Rome is a lovely destination. It was pleasant to see the statue to Giordano Bruno, burned as a heretic in the Piazza <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Navona</span> in the year 1600, and sit in it's shade quaffing a cooling beverage while listening to a local academic. It's also very safe since the Inquisition was packed away in a cellar of the Vatican. Bruno was a useful stick with which to beat Christianity, but he was quickly dismissed as too much of a mystic and insufficiently scientific. Similarly with Harvey. No time for poetic imagery; facts only please.<br /><br />After a full and frank confession by a Catholic priest that he believed firmly in the dating system of Science, and abjured the errors of the past, it was time to visit the museum showing the Inquisition's implements of torture. This was full of facts, very scientific. The scientist was impressed by their documentation and methodology, almost at home as he stroked the manacles and showed how the iron clamps worked.<br /><br />Having established the correct atmosphere, we were taken to Switzerland and escorted through the cathedral of science. A Revered Scientist told us he does not altogether exclude the possibility of a deity, but for him it is not a working hypothesis.The building looks ugly, a grimly rectangular entrance, guarding access to the working dungeons below. Vast expenditure, scant results, ugly environment, pompous jobsworths - you know it's a government project!<br /><br />It's built like a prison, and that's what it is. It's designed to imprison sub atomic particles in a narrow ring, using very strong magnets, and accelerate them in opposite directions, observing and speculating about the results of the collisions. <br /><br />It has one feature similar to something found in many cathedrals. They have beautiful high Rose Windows bringing light into a sacred space. This excludes daylight from an infernal space, but has a low circle of several layers of what look like metal bricks around the central ring. They're probably magnets. The visit to the torture implements of the Inquisition starts to seem like a preparation for visiting this place. Those circular manacles and clamps, made to fit the human body, look like precursors of this shackle intended for the body of nature. They were made of iron, and iron is famous for its magnetic property. It is magnetism that prevents the particles escaping from the ring, which holds them as effectively as iron holds a physical prisoner. No wonder the scientist seemed so fascinated with the implements of torture; he's the spiritual successor of the Inquisitors.<br /><br />It's of a piece with the Enlightenment motif. Sir Francis Bacon, father of the New Philosophy, or science as we now call it, wrote that Nature was reluctant to yield her secrets and so had to be 'interrogated with power' - tortured. That was not just a fanciful metaphor as it seems today; in the early 17<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">th</span> century the belief still lingered that there is a living spiritual presence in nature. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Anima</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Mundi</span> was less <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">wishy</span> washy than the modern <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Gaia</span>. Some have dared to equate her with the Virgin Mary, but that might have earned them the attention of the Inquisition, or of Protestant heretic burners. There are scientists today who speak of observer participation influencing events, and there have been strange people like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Schauberger</span> or Keeley,who sought to co-operate with nature instead of coercing it. Latter day alchemists, whose own abilities seemed to enable events that others could not replicate - very scandalous to the religion of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Scientism</span>, which still dominates the intelligentsia.<br /><br />Confessions under torture, we know what they're worth. Obsession with facts and denial of meaning. Knowledge limited to the service of wealth and power. That's the dark side of Science. It's also the dark side of Religion. And of the State. The Inquisitor and the Scientist are one.<br /><br />It's rather like The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien had wisdom. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Saruman</span> the White pursues knowledge. At first he is on good terms with Nature, then he falls under the dominion of the great Eye ('I', or Ego) and misuses his knowledge to pervert the forces of life into means of achieving personal power and domination of both society and nature. The Scientist is a servant of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Saruman</span>, who is a servant of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Sauron</span> the spiritual force of evil, who has forged the rings by which all life and consciousness is to be controlled. It doesn't have to be that way.<br /><br />What do we find the scientists doing in their underground cathedral of science? <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">They're trying to forge a ring!</span> It's not the One Ring, it's not even one of the great rings, they don't have the spiritual depth for that, but it compels a lot of human attention and resources and directs them to a sinister implement for torturing nature, apparently merely because they think they can. The Manhattan Project was a precedent, we know what that spawned, and that they still went ahead with the first test, despite not being quite sure that it would not unleash an unstoppable chain reaction which would destroy the world. They don't believe in anything but physical facts and their own egos. They can't imagine a spiritual force manipulating their egos. For many, it may be their 'Precious'. This may not be the last stage. The Ring, or the Power behind it, may have a stronger will to which our foolish scientists and greedy rulers succumb. Some may become <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Ringwraiths</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Nazguls</span> of Science. <br /><br />This is quite a step from the banal television programme with which we started. The Shire was a long way from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Mordor</span>. It's interesting to see where a religious, symbolic and mythological consideration of Science masquerading as Religion might take us.With apologies to Tacitus, one may say that they make a desolation, and call it science!Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-84531271936181629422009-02-16T17:01:00.025+00:002009-02-16T21:10:27.168+00:00Pork with StyleOur unbeloved Home Secretary is certainly not the first or only British politician to be caught with her snout in the trough. It's just been revealed, for instance, that our Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, has benefited similarly, doing up his expensive Scottish residence whilst living in a London flat with a political pal who turned out to be one of those sleazy influence peddling Labour Lords. <br /><br />What is it that makes these people not only sanctimonious self-righteous scolds, but corrupt in such a dreary, grey, bureaucratic box-ticking, petty minded style? Things, including 'troughing' and corruption, used to be done with flair and grandeur. At least some of the money was spent on magnificent architecture and the best art money could buy, as well as providing patronage to scholars and artists and employment for the numerous servants required to run a palatial aristocratic house and estate. These stately homes are now an important part of the tourist industry, and the 'heritage' of the nation!<br /><br />People with access to such opportunities were expected to have some culture, even if it was not bred but bought rather hastily after the acquisition of the wealth and status it was to embellish. Renaissance lords were expected, not only to pay for the art and architecture, but to have sufficient taste, discrimination and knowledge to keep their artists up to the mark. What a contrast with the modern manner, where prizes for modern art have been won by apes, where Caliban rules over Prospero and Ariel, where discrimination, taste and knowledge are swearwords, and high offices are usurped by those who would have been petty rogues and rough servants in a more civilised era. The world is indeed turned upside down. <br /><br />There's also a contrast in sheer ability. It is rumoured that the Home Secretary is regarded, by her senior civil servants, as a lightweight ignoramus quite unfitted to her responsibilities. Our Foreign Secretary, bestrides the world not as a colossus, but more like a gibbering banana waving monkey! Our derided and deluded leader, far from appearing as the Saviour of the World that he imagines himself to be, is disliked and mocked by the leaders of other countries. By contrast, Walpole, although notoriously corrupt, was a very shrewd and successful Prime Minister.<br /><br />We can't overlook the example of the most famously corrupt and flamboyant first minister, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who also rose from humble origins. To be fair, there were no pettifogging rules in those days to limit what an office holder could make from his office, and it was expected that even the most honest would profit substantially. Outdoing the king himself in pride and magnificence of display, however, turned out to be a 'career limiting move'. Despite his acknowledged great administrative and political ability, it was his inability to lose the king his wife which caused the minister to lose first his 'London' house and then his head. <br /><br />Hampton Court Palace is certainly an extreme contrast with the poky suburban dwelling of the Home Secretary's sister, and an entourage of only two men at arms would not have impressed anyone in Wolsey's world. In our world it may seem excessive, an exercise in egotism, since if one mediocre politician was killed a dozen similar could replace her immediately. Sensible terrorists, wishing Britain harm, would not attack such people, seeing the politicians are doing far more damage to the country than any terrorists could hope to achieve.<br /><br />In our world, the Home Secretary is said to have been a cookery teacher at a junior school. This is a modest job, potentially useful, probably within her ability. Had she stuck to it, the world would be a better place. In Wolsey's world she might also have had a useful place, not among the great of the land, but as a junior cook, at Hampton Court, contributing to the diners enjoyment of magnificent feasts.<br /><br />In a different world she could still contribute usefully to a magnificent feast. The cannibals of the South Seas used to call their victims Long Pigs, as the flavour of human flesh was said to be akin to pork. Now there's a use for our porcine politicians. The Ravens would like a share.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-54052840483308204862009-02-16T00:11:00.013+00:002009-02-16T02:15:39.389+00:00Miss Piggy and the Kali YugaSome people with an irreverent attitude to our porcine Home Secretary, liken her to a TV cartoon character named Miss Piggy.<br /><br />This is sharply amusing, and triply appropriate, given her omnivorous greed; reflected both in her personal appearance, which has otherwise earned her the sobriquet of Five Bellies; and her disposition to 'pig-out' or grub for every financial advantage to be gained by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">MP's</span> and ministers under their self-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">servingly</span> lax rules; recently revealed to the disgust and annoyance of the public. Although a married woman, she is continually referred to as Miss, being apparently one of the flock of crazed feminist <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Bacchant</span> harpies, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">screechingly</span> engaged in the destruction of family life, and social <span style="font-style: italic;">mores</span>.<br /><br /> Actually,her sour disposition and scowling visage tend to create sympathy for the cheerful cartoon character and the useful animals with whom she is compared. There's also a sinister resonance with Animal Farm, as in true Stalinist New Labour style, she is one of our rulers, hypocritically pursuing their own comfort and advantage under the pretence of public service, and twisting language to help them deceive the public.<br /><br /> Other blogs have recently commented on the debasement of language by our current rulers, and it is characteristic of political correctness and Communism, and the shadowy power behind both. The Bible refers to a Father of Lies, as did the Zoroastrians, and indeed the motto of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Mossad</span>, using a quotation from Deuteronomy, proclaims that by deception shalt thou wage war.<br /><br /><br />Our ruling filth, whenever some of its roguery is revealed, whines self-righteously that no rules or administrative procedures were transgressed, and they somehow deserve all they can get at the expense of the public. Alas, that the public is unable to give them even a small portion of their just desserts. Perhaps, if there is anything in the notion of re-incarnation and karma, they will be re-born, not as useful, cheerful pigs, but among those who give a bad name to pigs, or as plague <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">bacilli</span>; or even as wretched people who endure a particularly miserable life and painful death, considering that it used to be a common belief - and still is in the East - that such circumstances were a means of compensating for evil done in previous lives.<br /><br />Of course, there's long been a belief that time brings moral deterioration to the mass of humanity, and not the 'progress' that is optimistically asserted by glibly affluent moderns. This is seen, for instance in Hesiod's scheme of metallic ages, in the Biblical image of the man representing empires from gold to clay, and the Hindu belief in ages dominated by successively lower castes and moralities. It is easy to suppose that our current rulers, and the type of people favoured by the media and lefty intellectuals, with the perverted culture that produces them, and that they worsen; provide evidence that we are now in the last and lowest portion of the cycle, the Kali <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Yuga</span>; when the coarsest common man, rather than the spiritual or noble, or even the rich, is lauded, and the most materialistic, ignorant, vicious, depraved and criminal elements rise to the top. This phase may last for several <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">millenia</span>, although it is the shortest part of the cycle.<br /><br />There has been a recent media fuss about children having children, all at taxpayers expense, and hereditary dynasties of loutish uncouth Labour voting people who have never worked or done anything useful, but are given more comfortable circumstances than can be afforded by many of those who have been taxed to pay for them. These are the core voters upon whom Labour rely, and whose administration provides jobs for the apparatchiks and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Guardianistas</span>, at the expense of decent people, and this moral and intellectual degeneracy and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">socio</span>-political thralldom is the condition to which they are working to degrade everyone. Already many of the vermin who fill the offices of state really can't tolerate anyone who is or aspires to be anything better.<br /><br />They are like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Tolkien's</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Orcs</span>, created from tortured Elves and bred inhumanely in darkness and foulness. Like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Saruman</span>, their leaders may pretend to be religious, and even holy, yet they serve <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Sauron</span>. Don't forget that Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings to create a mythology for England.<br /><br />This suggests that the Kali <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Yuga</span> is well advanced, but has probably not yet reached its depth, when life expectancy will be very low - hence children having children, and living circumstances and culture will be very low - but that's the way our <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">progressive</span> leaders are taking us. That some people recognise and protest this shows they have not entirely succeeded. Rearguard actions and rallies in the long retreat are possible, and the evil are not always efficient. There may be unexpected developments, as the times become more 'interesting', and the Ravens may have more to observe and report.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-18777753900561261032009-02-12T14:59:00.029+00:002009-02-12T18:14:13.202+00:00Humpty Dumpty<span style="font-style: italic;">Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,<br />Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.<br /></span><br />There's been a great fall. Not just Lucifer's; ours.<br /><br />The politicians told us that Britain is a broken society. That was years before the economy started to fall off the graphs of share prices, the banks exploded like burst balloons and productive businesses shed jobs as fast as their sales orders disappeared. The remedy of our ruling and chattering classes is more of the state intervention which is a symptom of the problem rather than a cure.<br /><br />Did Humpty fall, or was he pushed? Might he even have jumped? Will the TV detectives, mainly financial and political, find the right culprit? Will those in the public eye manage to evade blame? Will scapegoats be identified, to bear the brunt of public anger? Will the greedy and mendacious Masters of the Universe retire quietly with their ill-gotten gains? That last appears likely. It won't end neatly, with time for tea before the next scheduled programme appears, whilst you sit back and enjoy it. This reality show appears on your TV. but you may have to participate in it, and you may not enjoy it.<br /><br />It's been amusing to notice how the media have minimised each stage of the economic decline, remaining firmly behind the actual level, and refusing to consider the possible further extent of the problem. Hardly surprising, considering their background, fawning relation to both powerful business interests and the politically correct and morally depraved leftist filth who control the public mind. They've now admitted we're in a depression; so it'll be worse.<br /><br />Has the fall finished? Will things soon get better, so this episode of unpleasantness can be forgotten in the resumed hurly-burly of 'getting and spending'? Perhaps not.<br /><br />There's much worse to come if you can believe the predictions of George Ure's Urban Survival site at<a href="http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm"> http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm </a><br />His news for 12th February 2009 includes the following:<br /><br /><p style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" align="left"> <b><i><span style="font-family:Arial;color:#003399;">If you Think It's Been Bad So Far...</span></i></b></p> <p style="margin: 0pt; text-align: left;"> You ain't seen nothing yet...at least that's what a number of data points seem to be suggesting. This could be the beginning of the 'perfect storm' in economic terms. Some of the points I'm watching and pondering:</p><p style="margin: 0pt; text-align: left;">...<br /></p>My attorney called yesterday to advise me that <a href="http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/tradingdesk/archive/2009/02/11/less-risk-in-canadian-banks-ubs.aspx"> US banks were leveraged something like 83%, which is why we are having such a mess of things. Canadian banks, if I followed his logic, were only leveraged to about 78%, which is why people in Canada are not screaming bloody murder about sailing off the edge of the financial world. But in Europe - and this is a scary thing to think about, the leverage was on the order of the UK's 96%, which means that when Europe starts to collapse</a>, it's going down big-time. We're already seeing the story's leading edge with headlines like "<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4593539/European-banks-toxic-debts-risk-overwhelming-EU-governments.html">European banks' toxic debts risk overwhelming EU governments.</a>"<br />...<br />He's picking up the financial press on this, but it fits the pattern he's been predicting for a long time. Note that this is not from a mystic seer, nor someone predicting the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but from someone who has studied the patterns of financial and economic statistics for a long time, and considered social trends, to conclude that massive economic and social collapse is quite likely, in the near future. You may not place much credence in his associates 'ricketty time machine', using shifts in the emotional content of language used in discussion groups on the internet to predict likely future events, - but they predicted the top of the stock market in America, within a day.<br /><br />Another straw in the wind blows from the direction of James Kunstler's site at <a href="http://www.kunstler.com/">http://www.kunstler.com/</a> He has long been predicting that the declining output of oil, combined with growing demand from the rising economic powers of Asia, would force an end to what he calls the Era of Happy Motoring, and it's associated urban sprawl.<br /><br />These are people who seem able to see further than most, certainly better prognosticators than Gordon the Saviour of the World, or the Obamessiah, or any of their court jesters.<br /><br />As for economists; to whom many politicians turn in times of uncertainty,to read the runes or tealeaves; they're mostly eager to issue the expected soothing statements and encourage their master's continuing follies. The most competent and honest sect of economists, and hence the least regarded, is the Austrian School. They emphasise that a problem caused by government's over expansion of the money supply and ensuing profligacy, is not to be cured by even more of the same on a more gigantic scale. The Ludwig von Mises Institute at <a href="http://mises.org/">http://mises.org/</a> is their main bastion.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">All the king's horses, and all the king's men,<br />Couldn't put Humpty together again.</span><br /><br />All the pompous commentators and cunning advisors to unclad Emperors, will have no more success. As things fall further apart, the Ravens will be fed.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-87372847648600680562009-02-06T19:20:00.028+00:002009-02-07T01:37:00.697+00:00ProphecyCome Back, Colonialism, All Is Forgiven.<br />That's not the sort of headline you expect to see in our politically correct media, but there it is, on a story at Time, dated 14th February 2008, by Alex Perry. <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713275,00.html">http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713275,00.html</a> Noting the date, someone may have a sense of humour - something else, besides truth, that's politically incorrect. It's a story about the failure of economic development in the Congo. <br /><br />"We should just give it all back to the whites," the riverboat captain says. "Even if you go 1,000 kilometers down this river, you won't see a single sign of development. When the whites left, we didn't just stay where we were. We went backwards."<br /><br />"On this river, all that you see — the buildings, the boats — only whites did that. After the whites left, the Congolese did not work. We did not know how to. For the past 50 years, we've just declined." He pauses. "They took this country by force," he says, with more than a touch of admiration. "If they came back, this time we'd give them the country for free."<br /><br />Thanks, but 'no thanks'. It's difficult to imagine many whites being willing or able to take up that burden again, or even being able to stop grovelling to the crazies who find the word 'golliwog' worse that any foul language, and justification for extreme execration and punishment. Africa will just have to continue rotting until the Chinese get around to absorbing it. They're busy with Tibet at the moment.<br /><br />In the present circumstances it is very difficult to imagine any such change...and yet, circumstances do change, sometimes rapidly and dramatically...though you'd need to be a Prophet to predict that much of a change. The Prophet Nicolaas van Rensburg predicted it.<br /><br />Not many people outside South Africa have heard of the Afrikaans prophet or seer, Siener van Rensburg. In South Africa he was famous up to his death in 1926. His predictions assisted Boer forces in the Anglo-Boer War. He was jailed for participation in a rebellion against South African participation on the Allied side in the First World War. He was ardently devoted to the cause of his people, hostile to British rule and friendly towards Germany. Some predictions attributed to him are amazingly prescient. Some Afrikaner's still have faith in him. He predicted that after much suffering under black rule, the Boere would regain control of South Africa, assisted by a resurgent Germany, and even extend their control over Africa up to the equator. Oh yes, he predicted that England would lose all its colonies and be destroyed. So far, so crazy, one might think.<br /><br />Here's a summary of his life and predictions.<br /><a href="http://www.blogsouthafrica.net/2008/01/31/siener-van-rensburg-visions-of-the-future/">http://www.blogsouthafrica.net/2008/01/31/siener-van-rensburg-visions-of-the-future/</a><br /><br />Here's a free book about his life and prophesies.<br /><a href="http://www.israelect.com/reference/WillieMartin/SEER.htm">http://www.israelect.com/reference/WillieMartin/SEER.htm</a><br /><br />The thing I find strange is that someone who died in 1926 would have been able to predict massive black emigration to Britain and Europe, and its concomitant decadence and disease, and see this as a major factor in the destruction of Britain.<br /><br />He was no modern man, but a man of the past, the distant past. His powerful presence, and the awe and devotion and controversy he inspired, make him seem like an Israelite prophet, or a druid. Deeply religious, he apparently literally never read anything but the Bible, and his mysterious visions were noted in a couple of exercise books by his daughter. He seems a bit like the legendary Merlin, but one who never found a successful Arthur, and whose people attained their Camelot only a generation after his death. Such men have a hold on the soul of their people, and it is easy to see why the Romans were so determined to stamp out the druids, why the Biblical Kings of Israel had such an uneasy relation with the prophets of their people - and why Smuts suppressed mention of van Rensburg and his writings during the Second World War when a faction of Afrikaners rebelled in support of Germany.<br /><br />The timing and interpretation of many of these prophecies is of course unclear; but it is disturbing in the light of the present economic situation, that he predicted that England and America would become full of debt, and bankrupt.<br /><br /> It's certainly not reassuring to notice that he foresaw further massive immigration of blacks into Britain, and racial conflict, and that this was likely to precede a war with Russia, which left Britain destroyed, and no longer even occupying a place at the diplomatic table of Europe; which will be headed by a revived Germany, not disposed to sympathy towards Britain.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-2304683649977933262009-02-04T18:51:00.019+00:002009-02-05T02:11:27.099+00:00Change and decay...As the old hymn has it, Change and decay in all around I see...<br />Well it's certainly more starkly visible in some places than in others.<br /><br /><br />Only a few weeks ago there was a television programme which showed Louis <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Theroux</span> visiting the Johannesburg suburb of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Hillbrow</span>, getting pictures of the squalor and decay that has overtaken what used to be the vibrant bohemian entertainment area overlooking the centre of the city. I have just come across a site called The Death of Johannesburg at <a href="http://deathofjohannesburg.blogspot.com/">http://deathofjohannesburg.blogspot.com/ </a>whose author shows many pictures of the current state of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Hillbrow</span> and central Johannesburg.<br /><br /><br /> I was interested because three decades ago I lived there. I remember that I could stroll in under half an hour from my flat, down to work in an office at the end of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Rissik</span> Street, near some of the places he shows around Marshall Street. I can confirm that what he says and shows is correct, and it is reinforced by many of those who have added their comments under the photographs.<br /><br /><br />Some of them asked for photos of the more prosperous suburbs. Someone else at another site supplies these. See Leaving South Africa - a photo essay at <a href="http://www.ianfraserlive.com/leaving.index.html">http://www.ianfraserlive.com/leaving.index.html</a> The houses have been fortified, surrounded by high walls topped by razor wire or electric fencing, and protected by armed guards on emergency response. Residents are still frequently attacked or murdered, and feel at risk of being car-jacked and shot every time they drive in or out of their houses or stop at a traffic light at night.<br /><br />'The past is a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">foreign</span> country', 'you can't go home again', 'water under the bridge', 'you can't step into the same river twice'. I know. Why am I bothering you you with this information? Consider, 'what's past is prologue', 'coming to a street near you soon', 'similar causes produce similar effects'. Some find less advanced symptoms of this type of physical and social decay already active across Britain, but its progress held back by the less completely corrupt political and bureaucratic systems, and the less than total influence of blacks and criminals and lefties. Don't rely too much on the mitigating influences, they are weakening. The same moral, intellectual and political causes that destroyed civilisation in Africa are at work and will have the same effect in England. Indeed, some of the same people are active in high positions, including one who forgot to mention the source of some of his election funding recently.<br /><br />I can remember when an American <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">politician</span> said that it was American policy to turn South Africa into just another African country. That's a great success, but it seems that it will involve also turning the United Stated into just another African country. Yesterday, Rhodesia and South Africa, today America ...tomorrow, the world. That may be over ambitious. The Chinese, Japanese and Indians are probably not going to accept <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Africanisation</span>.<br /><br />Still, anyone who's seen Africa should have a rough ides of the likely future of this country. The important people, the ones with the best connections and snouts deepest in the trough will be unharmed, indeed they will benefit from the additional opportunities for crime and corruption. It's the rest of us who will suffer. By the way, unless you're one of the apparatchiks who will be provided with armed guards by the state, the option of private security will be much less available to middle class people than it is in South Africa. The laws will prevent it, the left will howl against it; having more money may just make you more of a target.<br /><br />The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">decay</span> is proceeding apace. It's not just the people, its the attitudes of the people. A few years ago there was a series of television programmes about someone who went around Britain in the 1920's or 30's using a moving pictures technology which did not catch on. It was interesting to see how much self respect the people displayed. They were neatly dressed, moved with confidence and behaved politely. One episode showed people in a poor area of, I think, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Glasgow</span>, dressed in their Sunday best suits, all wearing hats, attending a concert of classical music in a park. It's an amazing contrast with <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">today's</span> populace of slouching hooded yobs, in trainers and track suits, eating and drinking in the streets and scattering their refuse with unconcern. Better not to mention classical music to them.<br /><br />A friend who visits Britain occasionally commented on the sloppiness and rudeness of the people in the streets of London. He was disgusted to discover that the numerous small grey patches on the pavement were pieces of chewing gum that had been spat out and trampled upon. They've degenerated themselves to the extent that they would be suited to the type of environment that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Hillbrow</span> has become. If the public services decline a bit more, so the rubbish piles up and is ignored, that is what more of this country will look like.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-54983998537386119202009-02-02T20:22:00.028+00:002009-02-03T02:55:30.010+00:00Beneath the surfaceJust beneath the surface danger lurks. At least that's always the impression given by the media, especially if they can drag children into the matter.<br /><br />Well, perhaps we should look a little below the surface of current events and situations, and consider how they may develop and affect those who will live longest with them.<br /><br />Today a fall of snow brought London to a standstill. It always does. Unprecedented, they claimed. Worst snowfall for 18 years. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Hmmm</span> ..London has been a major city for about 2,000 years, so a few inches of snow is not by any means unprecedented, and the city seems to have overcome far greater problems ... blitz, fire, plague. Indeed, considering that the Underground system is more than a century old, and the railway system half a century older, motor vehicles have been numerous for at least half a century, and horse drawn vehicles were around for much longer, it does seem a bit strange that a little snow now seems to cause much more disruption to normal life than used to be the case. Can it all be down to lazy trade unionists, and the crass health and safety regulations? Some of it, probably. There's certainly much less of the attitude that 'the show must go on', 'business as usual', 'we can take it'. There's automatic reliance on government to solve any problems, blame for the politicians if the weather is unkind, eagerness to close things down as early as possible to avoid responsibility and inconvenience.<br /><br />That's the nature of modern society. Passive. Increasingly dependent on large, bureaucratic, politically controlled systems covering all aspects of life. All these systems seem to to be overloaded and on the verge of collapse even in normal circumstances. The government's strategy has been to shovel ever more resources into public facilities, but they are inefficient and increasingly restricted by bureaucracy. Everywhere you look there's evidence of things not working well, becoming more complicated, employing more people and costing relatively more. The military, the police, the vastly inflated <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">quangocracies</span> and officialdom, the medical services, education, transport.<br /><br />That's whilst the country has been rich. It's been able to carry this proliferation and complication. That time is passing. There's an interesting book called The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Joseph <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Tainter</span>. He shows that at first the addition of complexity through greater specialisation and division of labour, as Adam Smith pointed out, creates benefits. Later, things become so complicated, with so many people involved that they fall over each other, and the marginal costs of extra complexity in dealing with the problems of society, come to exceed the marginal benefits of doing so. It becomes impossible to carry on in the old way, resources are insufficient, problems become overwhelming, and institutions become cruder and less specialised and less comprehensive, but cheaper. The complex society - <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">e.g.</span> the Roman Empire, is no longer able to compete and is destroyed or replaced by simpler societies with cruder arrangements.<br /><br /><br />We seem to be at the point where people close their eyes, insist that everything is fine and all we need is another generation of fancier technology, and lots more government expenditure. Bad news is coming.<br /><br />Militarily one can see it starting, with '<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">asymmetrical</span> warfare' and a 'war on terror', where the vast expenditure on nuclear weapons, nuclear powered aircraft carriers, amazingly expensive warplanes, armoured behemoths, spy and weapons satellites in space and the associated research and bureaucracy, turn out to be irrelevant and ineffective in dealing with lightly armed criminals and guerillas. The revival of piracy, as shown by the Somalis, is another straw in this wind.<br /><br />It can be seen in the increasing failure of the criminal justice system. Ordinary people feel ever more exposed and unprotected, whilst corrupt leftist rulers make it ever harder to impose effective punishment at the end of over complex procedures and twist the crime statistics with the connivance of their lackeys in charge of the police. The cost of dealing with an extra crime are large, but the cost of committing an extra crime is negligable.Lots of skilled people and delays on the side of the defence, versus a single lowly skilled and instantly available criminal on the other. Increasingly, crime pays, even at the lower levels, and the risks of detection and punishment decline.<br /><br />Physically these problems have not yet become large enough to disturb many people. An occasional snowfall is still a bit of a lark, rather than a threat to life or livelihood. Missing work for a day or two is basically a free holiday for most people. So far, so good. Things may start to become serious, if for instance supplies of food run low, distribution is disrupted, utilities break down, there are strikes and riots and the big bureaucracies upon which physical and economic and social life now depend start to become disfunctional. Let's hope it all lasts out our time, older people can say - but what about the children, haha!<br /><br /> Well, there's good news and bad news about the children, and it's the same. They're becoming more barbaric and feral.This is the result of the great effort and expense put into social engineering and 'educashun'; unfitting them to contribute to civilised life, but fitting them to demolish complex civilisations and replace them with cruder, simpler, versions of society. Civilised, technically advanced, societies can be run by quite a small proportion of competent technicians, administrators and rulers - so it's not all ending by next Tuesday, especially if the cadres can be recruited from abroad. However, its clear which way the wind's blowing.<br /><br /> Are our rulers so stupid and foolish that they don't realise this? Some undoubtedly are just buffoons.Many are ignorant but ambitious fools promoted well beyond their abilities, or shallow minded people attuned to the status quo, who go along to get along . Brown seems to be deluded. Others, smarter or more cynical, don't care provided their snouts are deep enough in the trough. Behind the public relations figures we see, there may be more sinister forces. It's hardly co-incidence that things consistently tend in the same direction, always against the good of the host society. Remember what Roosevelt told Lyndon Johnson, in politics nothing happens by accident. (The opposite proposition of MacMillan, 'events dear boy, events', applies to banal politicians just trying to preserve their positions and certainly not in charge of events - idiots, who may or may not be useful.) Perhaps there is method in the madness; or as the Bible has it, the children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light.<br /><br />Events are making more people aware of the effect of the EU on Britain. It's amusing to see the lefties squirm and snarl at each other as it becomes evident our windbag politicians can do nothing to preserve the jobs of their voters. Indeed, the velvet glove of rhetoric may be replaced by the iron fist of naked power if the yokels of Lincolnshire, or whevever the latest protests are taking place, fail to accept their much reduced place in the new world order of the EU. That of course would end Brown and his party's chance of re-election, but Brown's value to his party is almost exhausted, he merely has to take the blame for their increasingly likely heavy defeat at the next election. The powers that be won't weep for the loss of the New Labour party either. They've served their turn, and will instantly be replaced by an almost equally subservient Blue Labour party,led by Call Me Dave, Clone of Blair, whose antics may distract the populace for a few more years, whilst the destruction and decay of Britain proceeds a further stage.<br /><br /><br />One may note that this sort of unpredictable spasm, of strikes, demonstrations, stoppages and possible riots may contribute to sudden failures in the already strained infrastructure, as they escalate and interact with other factors. Such a prospect is likely to put the wind up our politicians, not just because of the chaos unleashed; but because it would reveal their powerlessness and lack of authority, mere stooges of Brussels; and so lose the legitimacy of the whole Westminster farce of pretended sovereignty in the eyes of the public, who are not yet ready to accept the death of Britain and it's dismemberment into a number of peripheral EU regions.<br /><br /><br />The slogan 'British jobs for British workers', the naive acceptance of which has crystallised the current labour dispute, is ironically amusing in the current political and social context. Few significant businesses are owned and operated in Britain by and for Britons any more. All the big ones are branches or subsidiaries of foreign organisations. They have no independence of decisions made abroad. Foreigners may buy shares in businesses quoted on British stock exchanges - well, perhaps not so many recently, but perhaps more later. They may have operations abroad, whose results are included in their British financial statements.Many of those working in Britain are not British in the sense that would have been accepted by previous generations. The same is true of the black and asiatic representatives of the British government, including those sent to the EU. The whole concept of Britain is being besmirched and dismantled by the powers that be. Currently it is becoming just a name for one of the state entities and gravy trains affiliated to the EU, similar to a company name. Many of this crowd of cosmopolitan crooks and vermin could just as well be employed by some other company or team or 'country'. The unions mean jobs for their members, but they aren't going to get that. Most of their members are white, and that will count against them in the new era - it's already happening. Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and the sky will be black with them, as the leftist policies the unions supported show their inevitable results. There is one use for the slogan; to contrast what was, and what might have been, with what is and what is likely to be; and thereby perhaps encourage some people to think.<br /><br /> Given, say another half century,probably rather less, certainly by 2050 the destruction of Britain and the British is likely to be complete. The territory is likely to be occupied by a deracinated mish mash, which has absorbed most of the whites and negroes at Third World levels, and probably under the religious spell of Islam; with strong Indian and other oriental groups preserving their identity and well represented among the wealthy and powerful.<br /><br />Considering some of the currents just beneath the surface of events, there are likely to be 'interesting times' ahead, with much food for ravens.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-40374855160306511662009-02-01T11:51:00.036+00:002009-02-01T17:44:41.202+00:00SlaveryThere's much wailing and breast beating over the slavery of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">negroes</span> in the United States, and Britain's part in the Atlantic slave trade. The ignorant are encouraged to be as indignant as if it was still happening! The more evil of the politically correct want to tax white people to pay a sort of tribute to blacks now - and in effect that is already happening through all the foreign aid and preferential discrimination programmes. Crazy! Little attention is given to slavery in the Spanish and Portuguese dominions of South America at the same time, let alone to the part played by blacks in enslaving their fellows in Africa and transporting them to the coast to be sold to traders. I've even talked to black products of the British system of 'educashun', who believed that only blacks had ever been slaves.<br /><br />Less attention and praise is given to the Royal navy for its considerable efforts suppressing the slave trade on both the Atlantic and Indian oceans. In the 19th century of course, Britain was confident and powerful. Nowadays Britain hardly has a navy. The Iranians were able to confiscate it's rubber dinghy. It's not allowed to protect shipping from Somali pirates, we hear, for fear the pirates could claim political asylum in Britain, and it would be necessary to protect their 'human rights'! Oh, for the days when anyone resisting a warship commited a fatal error. (The Chinese may revive that tradition.)<br /><br />We aren't told much about how the Arabs and their half-caste coastal Swahili followers depopulated vast areas of central Africa, and gave the Sultan of Zanzibar vague claims to sovereignty over much of the continent. European travelers and missionaries (eg: Livingstone and Stanley) had an uneasy relationship with the Arab slave traders, denouncing their activities but depending on their charity and assistance. Stanley found that slave raiding expeditions from the east coast regularly penetrated far into the Congo. Slaves and ivory were joint products, the slaves carried the tusks until they were both sold in Zanzibar. The Arabs were rapidly reducing the populations of both blacks and elephants. Not much thanks is given to the Colonial powers who stopped this trade, and without whom the populations of both species would be much smaller today.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Much more important and far longer lasting and more extensive and economically significant - and hardly mentioned outside the pages of specialist history books - was the enslavement of Europeans.</span> Of course, slavery was very widespread in the ancient world. Most Roman slaves were European or Syrian. The rich cities of the middle east continued to provide markets, under Muslim, as they had under Roman rule. Warfare continued to provide slaves. According to legend, the Papal drive to re-evangelise post Roman Britain, was sparked by the words "non Anglii sed Angelii", on seeing some beautiful Anglo-Saxon slaves in the Roman slave market.<br /><br />The Vikings were notorious slave raiders and traders. The Church chroniclers emphasised their murders of churchmen and theft of church gold and silver vessals and jewel encrusted objects; but good profits were made from seizing and selling beautiful women and boys, and strong workmen, who fetched a high price in the distant markets of Constantinople and Islam, traded across a network of routes and markets. Some time ago I saw a television programme showing a pretended Viking raid on a Saxon village. Everyone was dressed and equipped as authentically as possible, apart from their mindsets. The raiders were supposed to be satisfied with stealing necklaces of wooden beads from the village girls. Political correctness prevented any semblance of the likely reality they were supposed to be simulating. Can you imagine a Viking captain recruiting a pirate crew on promises of sailing and rowing an open boat - twice - across the North Sea, to seize some wooden beads! Indeed Iceland, recently in the news, was populated, not just by Vikings, but through the Irish women they seized.<br /><br /><br />Dark Age Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire was economically primitive. Archaeologists show that the rulers continued to import luxuries from the east. These had to paid for, gold and silver was scarce; there was only one high value export possible - slaves. Slaves were somewhat comparable to the later spice trade. It seems that the revival of trade, city life and culture, starting with Italian trading city states such as Amalfi, from about the 11th century (if I recall the date correctly), was based on the sale of white slaves to Byzantium and Islam.<br /><br />The peoples of Eastern Europe acquired the name 'Slavs', because that's the function they were perceived to perform in the scheme of things, particularly after Church influence and the conversion of Scandinavia reduced opportunities in Western Europe.<br /><br /><br />European slave trading was big business, all sorts of people were engaged in it, including Islamic merchants. It even seems that God's most favoured people first came to prominence in Eastern Europe as slave traders, and relations with the locals went on from there. They were also amongst the largest slave dealers in Western Europe. Centuries later they were also prominent in the Atlantic trade of negro slaves. Very Portuguese/Dutch/British/American of them. Very politically incorrect to notice them.<br /><br /><br />The Ottoman rulers recruited their best troops, the Janissaries, from a levy on the Christian children in their Balkan domains.<br />For centuries European sea trade in the Mediterranean was beset by the risk of capture and enslavement by the Barbary Pirates. Some of the worst of these were European rogues and renegades who 'turned Turk' to escape justice and continue their lives of crime. When British naval power was weak they even raided the remoter coasts of England and Ireland and carried off slaves. They remained an arrogant nuisance, increasing their demands for protection money, until the British and American navies bombarded their home ports in the early 19th century.<br /><br />There haven't been any loud demands for reparations and apologies from Muslims and Jews for their ancestors' role in oppressing and enslaving Europeans. That the reverse has happened demonstrates that evil infiltrators and traitors have taken over the government of white people, who in effect are becoming enslaved in what should be their own lands.<br /><br />The Americans fought a civil war, supposedly to establish the moral superiority of wage slavery over the chattel variety. Those who own or control the 'slaves', of whatever variety, control the polity, economy and society. Now, native white people are treated with arrogant contempt and oppression by their new 'multi-cultural' and 'multi-national' rulers, effectively slaves with little or no say in what should be their own affairs.<br /><br />Man of the Woods, at <a href="http://man-of-the-woods.blogspot.com/">http://man-of-the-woods.blogspot.com/</a> reports a recent British government survey. It reveals that only 19% of white people feel they can influence events affecting Great Britain, whilst ethnic minorities feel they have more than twice as much influence. Only 37% of whites, compared to 51% of minorities felt they had any local influence.<br /><br />So, democracy decays into slavery. It is an old trick of tyrants to use foreign mercenaries and administrators to control a population. That's why Marco Polo was welcomed by the Mongol rulers of China, and served the Khan for years as an administrator and diplomat. Our hidden rulers use a mandarin class of corrupt, depraved, foreign, incompetent socialist vermin to control public administration and public communication and consciousness, and they import massive numbers of other foreigners to help them divide, demoralise and destroy the natives. It's well paid work, and you can get it if you've got the right attitudes and contacts. It adds new meaning to the term white slavery.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-39082072020297813722009-01-30T00:35:00.000+00:002009-01-30T03:02:33.078+00:00Political Chatter and Financial SpeculationWhy do people bother? Is there some public value in the gossip and interest that people take in the minutiae of politics?<br /><br />All reasonably well informed people know that MP's have little or no influence on the course of events, so why do some people so desperately seek the job? Yes, there's the lure of pecuniary gain, and for some - especially Labour peers it seems, the opportunity to function as highly paid lobbyists, or to boastfully claim undue influence over the legislative process.<br /><br />It appears that many of these people however, are more motivated by the prospect of forming part of an 'in' group, inflating their self-importance, seeming to know more than others, feeling closer to the centre of events, or just love of gossip.<br /><br /><br />They may be very shallow people, drifting more or less unconsciously on the currents of conventional opinion - herd animals; not leaders, thinkers, reformers or deliberately subversive revolutionaries, although the rhetoric to which they subscribe or succumb may make them claim to be such. It's probably not possible to have a polity without such people to transmit opinion and justification or criticism of the way things are to the mass of the public, and more faintly reflect back any strong episodes of public emotion.<br /><br /><br />As part of the mass media they can serve to tell the public what the public is allowed to think, delimiting the range of acceptable views and channeling the emotions of large sections of the public. Not so much pack leaders, as loyal exemplars and enforcers of pack discipline and etiquette. Broadly, they don't need precise instructions, although there may be influential spin doctors and others doing just that in limited circumstances. It's more a matter of instinct, being quick to pick up what is expected, and find ways to articulate and implement it. There may be a sequence of concentric circles of influence, with more precise knowledge and expectations nearer the centre, and the centre of influence may not be the centre of visible power.<br /><br />When there's no actual real world power and wealth to squabble over, such people will still gather to form cabals, to gossip and award each other fancy titles. There are on-line free computer games involving thousands of players, for instance Ars Regendi, Jennifer Government, or eRepublik, where there is a 'cover story' of running your own country, but the main appeal is for people to chat, form notional alliances within which Poo-Bah titles and functions are distributed and electoral votes eagerly sought, and even wars may be fought - but without really affecting the notional countries the players are supposedly running. Of course, there are lots of more normal games where the players' diplomacy and politicing has direct consequences for their notional countries. There's clearly a strong instinct towards political gossip and machination and a love of marks of distinction - even when everyone involved knows it's all a game, or even a game within a game.<br /><br /><br />A good deal of what passes for 'real' politics and business may be just such games for insiders. "The money's just a means of keeping score", so to speak. When it's our blood and treasure our rulers use to keep score in their games, we the public are likely to feel aggrieved, but unlikely to be able to prevent it, and highly likely to be emotionally caught in the game, partly through the agency of our politicians.<br /><br /><br />This evening there was a TV programme about commodity speculation. Recently there have been others about financial speculation, and trading, and the role of 'securitisation' of mortgage debt, sliced, diced and traded, and generally just betting vast amounts, and how it's not working out as the public was led to believe. Just considering the function of speculation in 'normal' times, it is not clear to me whether it actually performs the useful tasks of counteracting excessive price movements and maintaining continuity of market prices, as its advocates claim; or whether it is just, (or when taken to excessive levels), legalised theft.<br /><br /><br />It seems to me to be an activity comparable to the political speculation already mentioned. Both seem to express an instinct to outwit others, partly playful, partly combative, more elaborate versions of the 'play-fighting' of young animals, not always involving 'real life'. Both may be tamed to be beneficial, or not greatly harmful to the public; but when they get out of hand using 'real life,' may be seriously damaging to large numbers of people and of benefit to very few.<br /><br /><br />It has been found, by observers at a park in America, that the local flock of ravens competes, drives off intruders, and the young males fight skirmishes with hawks, without serious casualties. Nature is able to keep a balance. We are not always so clever. Something that is deeply instinctive, however fashionably expressed, can't be ignored or suppressed without danger. Wisdom may find a way to allow the play without grave public danger, and even in ways that benefit the public overall. It is not something to be legislated away by our stupid and foolish leaders, too ignorant and arrogant to realise the truth of the old saying that you can throw Nature out with a pitchfork, but she will return.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-54006845325291306332009-01-26T19:19:00.000+00:002009-01-27T00:57:26.076+00:00Things fall apart<span style="font-style: italic;">Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...</span><br /><br />So the poet Yeats informed us. He wasn't thinking of our present economic, political, social or cultural situation but it's increasingly coming to look as if he might as well have been.<br /><br />Day by day thousands of jobs are lost in the productive economy, but more tax consuming non-jobs are created in the jungle of state and quasi state bureaucracies of political control and correctness.That is now the main thing holding the country together and binding it to the EU, while sapping its life-force, poisoning the well-springs of culture and morality, destroying the identity and institutions of the native people and ever more egregiously draining their wealth to be squandered on third world filth, socialist vermin and blatantly corrupt 'Nu Liebore' legislators, administrators and publicists.<br /><br />Soviet Britain, a report noted from the Sunday Times of 25th Jan 2009, at <a href="http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5581225.ece">http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5581225.ece</a> (seen via Devils Kitchen and Samizdata) shows that almost half of the expenditure in the economy is made by the state. Even in the south ,it is over one third, and over two thirds in the north of England, 70% in Wales and almost 78% in Northern Ireland. Scotland escapes mention, but is probably towards the high end.<br /><br />This cozy arrangement is now under threat. Labour's cunning plan to dominate Britain in perpetuity, by over-taxing the prosperous south to bribe their supporters in the rest of the country, and so maintain an overall parliamentary majority funded by those who opposed them can hardly continue much longer unchallenged. They thought they would have overwhelming majorities in regional assemblies,( which is why they were allowed in Wales and Scotland, but not in England). They overlooked human nature - as they usually do. The appetite for power grows by what it feeds on, and creating national assemblies just gave ambitious politicians outside the Labour fold an opportunity to wrap themselves in the local flag and beat the nationalist drum, so Labour is losing its hold on these areas.<br /><br /><br />That was already happening. The economic difficulties present a new and unexpected threat. Brown's government is reported to be spending about £14m per minute in excess of what they raise in taxes, funded by vast and imprudent borrowing. Brown's plan to save his own job, as tax revenues decline, is to expand this borrowing - but the lenders are increasingly reluctant to comply, as the risk of default grows, and the value of the pound in terms of foreign exchange falls precipitously. As the productive economy shrinks, the absolute and relative burden of the tax consuming classes grows. These people have a very strong and vocal sense of entitlement, and deep felt contempt for the people who are being taxed to pay for them. They are not going away, they won't cheerfully accept cuts in pay. They regard reductions in the rate of increase of expenditure on them as unjust 'cuts' to be ferociously resisted. They are the core of Labour's membership, the people who rent a crowd or get out the vote. The government will not be able to resist their pressure. Consequently, they will 'print' money to assuage them temporarily, and let massive inflation destroy the rest of the country. That's when times could get really 'interesting'. Looting what's left, and massacring 'kulaks' or 'aristocrats' or 'saboteurs' may keep the scum at the top precariously in power, but it won't keep the bulk of the population happy, or even fed. Consider that this country doesn't grow all its own food, it's ability to export enough to pay for it's imports is under strain, and the chaos caused by socialist economics, (the Soviet Union actually made it's people poorer than if they had sold raw materials on the international market and bought all their manufactured goods) and the certainty that when there's a shortage it wont be the nomenklatura and its administrative drones who starve. Democracy...meet Stasis.<br /><br /><br />Of course the EU filth are well aware of the possibility that discontent in the taxpaying classes may result in disturbances to their rule, so they are meeting with the scum that govern each state, to strengthen their grip. They are now criminalising bureaucratic misdemeanours, and creating databases on everyone. Raedwald has the news of this latest repression at<a href="http://raedwald.blogspot.com/2009/01/integrated-eu-blacklist-of-criminals-is.html"> http://raedwald.blogspot.com/2009/01/integrated-eu-blacklist-of-criminals-is.html</a><br /><br />It's curious to note that the complex but vague system of cyclical history propounded by Yeats, in A Vision, suggested that the period of approximately 1927 to 2050 would be characterised by 'artificial unification of Europe'. We seem to be well on track. Not bad for a poet.<br /><br /><br />It's not surprising that Britain should fall apart over several generations. When there's an increasingly rich, powerful and successful entity, such as the empires of Rome or Britain, ambitious people want to join it. When it has a superior culture, people on the fringes are keen to assimilate to it. Even when most of Italy was under the rule of the Goths, their king, Theodoric, could famously say,"a good Goth wants to be like a Roman; only a bad Roman would want to be like a Goth." When Britain was successful, ambitious Welsh, Scots and Irish wanted to be part of it, and indeed made substantial contributions. There was bite in the well known joke made by Samuel Johnson, commenting on the beauty of Scotland's scenery, that the fairest prospect a Scotsman ever sees, is the high road to England.<br /><br /><br />Now the tide is starting to reverse. Britain, and particularly England's, history, identity, religion and culture, are scorned and reviled by the ruling scum of cosmopolitan leftist filth who have been brought to the fore by several generations of infiltration and propaganda. It's flag has been debased to a mere sports emblem. It's national day is not celebrated. Flooding the country with the detritus of the third world and making them 'British' has been and remains an urgent priority of our evil administrators. Some of the Asiatic and African immigrants are of superior moral status to the debased remnants of the British amongst whom they find themselves - although many are also the worst criminals and naturally favoured by our rulers.<br /><br />Thus, and as the economic ability of England to generate wealth and dispense subsidies declines, there is less to attract people to it who could compete for wealth and status in their native Scotland or Wales, where a stronger sense of identity has been allowed to remain. The faster England declines, the sooner Wales and Scotland may be expected to break away, and claim as much independence as the EU will allow them. This will certainly include lavish lifestyles for politicians, who will be all the more encouraged to jostle, if there is not enough room for them to strut, upon the EU if not exactly the world, stage.<br /><br />The debasement of English identity, and the Christian religion, was shown in a TV program last Sunday. It was presented by a black West Indian clergyman who spoke of 'we' English; and sundry white female academics and 'priests', who babbled about Bede and the 'inclusiveness' of Anglo Saxon Christianity in the time of St. Cuthbert and the Lindisfarne Gospels. No one was so politically incorrect as to comment on the relations between Saxons and the 'foreigners' - which was what 'Welsh' meant.<br /><br />There can be no doubt that Cuthbert, and the other churchmen of the time would have welcomed the black man as a fellow Christian, but not being blind or dishonest, they could not have welcomed him as a fellow Englishman. Had they been able to have a vision of this show they would probably have regarded it as being a delusion sent by Satan. I'm not sure whether they would have been more shocked by a black man claiming to be English, or a woman claiming to be a priest - most probably the latter. They would certainly be upset to learn of the current state of the Church in England, where scarcely 5% of the population are regular churchgoers of any denomination. They would feel their missionary endeavours to have been unsuccessful, and would be amazed and saddened to find that the Church of England is rent between buggers and blacks.<br /><br />To end, considering what the more distant future may hold, as we began, with a couple of lines from Yeats's great poem, The Second Coming:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">slouches towards Bethlehem to be born</span><br /><br />Yeats's own provisional answer, from the system of A Vision, was that by around 2150 a new tribalism would be evident. Like all others, the current dispensation will pass away. We won't see it, but the ravens may.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-6762679807334736052009-01-24T00:20:00.000+00:002009-01-24T02:51:22.536+00:00Electronic Ostracism and ReferendaThose democratic old Athenians had a wonderful institution, the Ostracism, an election whose winner was banished from the country for several years. It would be wonderful if we could take this idea and adapt it to our situation.<br /><br /><br />The Athenians had something else we don't have - democracy, even if we do have the best of the sculptures from their Parthenon in the British Museum (and let's hope our grovelling government will not send them back). We are not going to get up early and go to a dawn assembly on a hilltop, there to question and debate, pass laws, select and condemn leaders, and then spend much of the rest of the day carrying out 'government' tasks assigned by lot for a limited period, or sitting on large juries to decide law cases. Oh no, we pay specialists, experts, politicians to do all that stuff for us. Not surprisingly, they 'stuff' us. I have already written a long rant about how badly they rule us, and with what egregious venality and contempt. This time, lets consider how the internet could be used to ameliorate our state. <br /><br />The speedy reversal of Brown's decision to force through concealment of MP's expense claims, may have been partly attributable to the rapid spread of protests via political blogs. The internet could be a good way to spread information and collect decisions, nowadays better than getting up early to go and write the name of the politician you most loathe on a potsherd, in hope of seeing him banished.<br /><br />It should be fairly simple to organise electronic voting. Obviously not, of course, if any of those responsible for the infamous failures of government IT systems are involved, but in a better world they'd already be twisting on gibbets, and we may hope for a better world. <br /><br />There's lots of scope for people to suggest how it might be done, but the basic idea of frequent electronic voting to get nearer to direct democracy is both desirable and feasible. Don't expect the political turkeys to vote for a democratic Christmas, however. Their owners would not like it either.<br /><br />Switzerland is famous for its democracy. Their politicians are part timers, power is decentralised, they hold frequent referenda, they are not dominated by politically correct vipers, drones and invaders - and their economy is not falling apart.<br /><br />We could take it further. For example, any citizen could be able to launch petitions on a government website. When politicians become unpopular, the number of people voting for their removal would grow, and after a fairly high (net) number, say a couple of million, these politicians would be expelled from office. It could even be the whole government.<br /><br />Legislation could be introduced and passed (or rescinded) in a similar way. No more politically correct laws that go against the wishes of the real people.<br /><br />I don't see why we should retain the current system of constituencies, parties, large governments, payroll votes, dependency etc. It would be comforting for many people to retain old forms- that's how new political wine gets poured into old constitutional bottles. It would be possible to greatly reduce the influence and corruption of a large high tax centralised state.<br /><br /><br />Naturally, there will always be some people who are more interested and more able and more willing to spend time promoting or discussing ideas than others. Parties and ideologies would not die, but would be less strongly entrenched in your wallet and in positions of bureaucratic vantage. No more built-in advantage for Labour in gerrymandered constituency boundaries. There could be regional groupings, even retaining existing constituencies to start with until people get used to electronic psephology. There could be all sorts of new ideas and experimental arrangements, if people bothered to suggest them.<br /><br /><br />Electronic democracy would be cheaper to organise, and change. Our MP's are useless at investigating government expenditure and bureaucratic bungles. Quite a lot of others would be interested in this sort of scrutiny, if information was more readily available. There would be less scope for party political programmes and fixed governments. Policies would be promoted, probably by much the same sort of prople, but with more of the general public and fewer party hacks in it for the money, power and glory. Each proposal would need the electronic assent of the public. No block votes. No whipping. No unintelligible legislative gibberish, unread by those who pass it. If it isn't in plain English it probably isn't a good law. If you want others to spend their money on you, or give you some sort of benefit, you should not be allowed to vote for it.<br /><br /><br />Probably, members of the public who want to vote on complex and expensive matters should be required to demonstrate a reasonable level of knowledge and competence. Better than currently held by most MP's certainly. There could be on-line information to help people - NOT dumbed down rubbish. Scope for large panels of people knowledgeable in particular areas - an extension of the old Athenian jury idea. Technical proposals might go to specialist groups to discuss and refine to a few proposals for public voting. The civil service could cost proposals. Those that don't get enough people to agree to personally pay for them, fail. No more airy-fairy promises to borrow from domestic and foreign lenders to bribe voters and let future generations repay the loans. You vote for the war, you fight it and you pay for it.<br /><br />This is a rough outline of possibilities. Others could amend, extend or refine them. It shows that we could get a lot closer to direct democracy, and increase liberty, safeguard individual freedom and eliminate the encrusted filth encasing befouling and destroying the body politic. The current establishment won't permit this, but what great food they'd make for ravens.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-49187316244070342282009-01-16T17:41:00.000+00:002009-01-21T00:52:31.826+00:00Polluted Politics and Lost IdentityNow we're all so green, wouldn't it be nice to save the world from the toxic waste produced by our political institutions? Yes, we could help the planet if we could limit the emission of hot air by our politicians and the whole political class. Consider all the useful raw material that is warped and wasted by our political processes; all the people whose lives have been distorted and degraded by those who proclaim that they are doing this with the best of intentions, for the benefit of their victims and the whole world.<br /><br /><br />Well, that's a lot to consider, so we could start more modestly by considering the most recent example of the personal venality of our Members of Parliament. After the fuss about employing their relatives to do little or nothing but be paid by the public, and the second houses and John Lewis list scams, and the ability to claim expenses up to £250 without supporting documentation, the Speaker and a few cronies were to consider tightening the rules. No chance of Gorbals Mick tightening his own belt, or of tolerating any interference with the troughing rights of 'honourable' members. It was slyly and surreptitiously announced yesterday that in future, information about MP's expenses will be concealed from the public, and they will be able to claim £25 without documentation or justification whenever they want. An unemployed person would have to live for almost half a week on as much. Many more voters are becoming unemployed - and unimpressed by their rulers.<br /><br /><br />This Speaker is the rotten face of a rotten parliament, a rotten party and a rotten political system.<br /><br /><br />Speaker Lenthall, who defied CharlesI, appears to have been a sincere Puritan and a humble man. He wrote an epitaph for his own tombstone, 'vermis sum' - I am a worm. How much more apt a description for the current loathsome occupant of his venerable office. This is the same piece of vermin who was seen evading responsibility for allowing a raid by our Stasi police force on the office of an opposition MP who had embarassed the government by revealing leaked details of their incompetence in office. (That was why MP's of an earlier era were reluctant to allow Peel to establish a Metropolitan police force. They feared it would become a tool of repressive governments.) When details of the excessive expenditure of the Speaker and his wife - how she could be incurring legitimate expenses on behalf of Parliament was never made clear - were revealed last year , TV showed brief views of two Labour MP'S. One was of a thin elderly man who urged the Speaker to tighten the rules and clear up the mess swiftly, because it was damaging the reputation of Parliament. I suppose he is regarded as a troublemaker. The other was of a fat oily fellow, who surely must be well 'in' with the government. He was most indignant at the idea that the wife of a Labour MP (as Gorbals Mick is), might be expected to take a bus rather than a taxi to go shopping. It did not seem to occur to him that whatever her chosen mode of transport, she should pay for it herself. As she should pay for her shopping. Don't tell me she was shopping to provide refreshments for some occasion hosted by her husband. If they were not employed by government, they or their associates would have to pay for their own socialising and politicing, and the Speaker is extremely well paid and most plushly provided for.<br /><br />These however, although extremely irritating, are only among the lesser lice infesting the body politic.<br /><br />Parliament itself is almost an irrelevance. Blair rarely bothered to attend. Brown is a poor parliamentary performer, and prefers to bypass this irritating institution as much as possible. Despite the public uproar over the question of expanding Heathrow airport, he denies Parliament the opportunity to debate and decide the issue. It is said that up to 80% of legislation now comes from the European Commission in Brussells. The 'ever closer union' of a boa constrictor and its prey reduces our political institutions to no more than tourist attractions, and provides perverted means for the corrupt zombie class of socialist administrators to destroy the remains of anything worthwhile in this country. The EU itself is blatantly corrupt, not only in the way it runs, the deals it makes, its failure to account for its income and expenditure so that its auditors have refused to accept its accounts ( for 14 years running!), but also the irrelevance of democracy as all important decisions are made by the Commissioners, and our MEP's 'trough it' on a larger scale than our MP's and with far less press and public scrutiny. Some of these creatures even collect three sets of emoluments, pensions and expenses and opportunities for employing relatives, as members of Scottish or Welsh assemblies, MP's and MEP's. No wonder they don't seem to have much time or interest for anything but self enrichment. They hate and fear the light, anyone who attempts to shed light on their doings is persecuted. Several whistle-blowers have been hounded, whilst the evil continue to enrich themselves and betray their people. Never mind the meaning of the E at Delphi, the E in EU evidently stands for Evil. 'U'r Evil' could be a better description than European Union. 'Ur- Evil' might describe the forces controlling them.<br /><br /><br />Such people are obviously highly susceptible to blandishments and are more likely to be in search of temptation than able to resist it. So who might be whispering in their ears? It's not their voters. Perhaps it's rich 'Russian' oligarchs with strong Israeli connections, who stole the Russian economy, and who can now afford to cruise the Mediterranean entertaining their friends.<br /><br />When we stop and take a hard look at our society and institutions and the attitudes that are now promoted and enforced, it's less of a surprise to find that our plastic Parliament is inhabited by plastic people. It's an almost powerless parody of what it used to be. It no longer represents Britain; Britain is what is being destroyed and swept away. In medieval times the House of Lords mattered, this was the assembly of the people who actually owned and ran the country, and who raised and commanded its military forces from their own resources. The King had a council, and could govern through favourites, but he could not overbear strong opposition among the Lords.They included some bishops because the Church was very wealthy and included the intellectual class who moulded opinion and the religious/emotional life of the people, and contributed educated administrators. The House of Commons consisted of the representatives of the richer townsmen and most influential local landowners. They mattered because these were the sort of people who ran things at a local level, and who would have to contribute and collect most of the taxes, so it was prudent to get their agreement to laws and impositions, especially as the king was expected to pay for central government from his own income in normal times and only appeal for one-off taxes to pay for emergencies, especially wars.<br />Meetings were infrequent. Travel was troublesome. People were not always keen to accept the responsibility. The majority of the population were not included, but few of them would have wished to be involved. Their wishes regarding government were usually that the King would be blessed by God and rule justly with good advice from his Lords and Commons, and that their own local superiors would not be too harsh or unjust towards them. The King was supposed to remedy injustice. The institution of the King in Parliament effectively expressed the economic and social structure of the country and articulated it's sense of identity. People and their institutions are not perfect, but this worked reasonably well.<br /><br />Compare the present situation. Most of the people who own and run the economy of Britain are no longer British. A few years ago I saw a brief press report that the majority of the advertiser's 'A' class people are now American or Indian. These are the equivalent of the medieval Lords. They don't need to meet here in a House of Lords, their interests go far beyond Britain. London is just a convenient place to visit occasionally. The top level people may meet at places like Bilderberg, or various other places, or just electronically in a world of easy communications. Probably most of British businesses are subsidiaries or branches of American or other foreign companies. The people at the head of British companies are, in the main, not there because they and their ancestors established and nurtured them, but because they were appointed as stewards for those who hold a controlling interest. They have no personal interest apart from the money they expect to make in a company or in the country. They are not related to their managers, they feel no responsibility, beyond the legal minima and prudent public relations, towards their employees. Institutional shareholding reinforces rather than amends this pattern. They may not feel that they have much in common with the people of the land. They may be transferred around the world at a whim, they will probably live abroad when they retire. Their colleagues and outlooks are cosmopolitan. Even if they were British by birth, they are no longer British in soul or spirit.<br /><br />Not much chance of getting good counsel from these people. Many of them may well be very able,dynamic, shrewd, knowledgeable and even wise, but why would they waste their time in a Toytown House of Lords, or advise fools? They don't have to be here, they can't be compelled, and they don't necessarily have British interests at heart. Strangely, Nu-Liebore seems to love rich 'non-domiciles' and fawningly gives them tax advantages, but apart from throwing them some money as political contributions, the affection does not seem to be reciprocated. Instead, the modern House of Lords is just a repository for decaying politicians, social climbing nouveau riche willing to make political or 'charitable' donations until they receive an 'honour' (puke!) - and oh yes, people the Prime Minister wants to have in his government without having to submit to the risks of a democratic election. Not much hope of robust defence of Britain from that lot either, although one should mention that the older holdouts from a slightly better era have managed to embarass the government occasionally by resisting their more obviously repressive legislation.<br /><br />The socialist intellectuals who are the eqivalent of the medieval bishops are even more alienated. To be fair, many of the medieval bishops were foreigners, and some of the lords held fiefs abroad. Probably they didn't often despise and attempt to degrade the people of this land, unlike their modern replacements and the think tank inhabitants, journalists assorted 'experts' 'educationists', 'reformers' and 'artists' who are the equivalent of the lower clergy. Their mission is to spread intellectual and moral poison, and cause the people to reject their own identity and history. They have been successful.<br /><br />The equivalents of the medieval MP's would be the bosses of successful local businesses, local bankers, lawyers or accountants, substantial farmers or people who have earned some local respect for their achievements. People who might be respected and trusted. Well, there's not many of them left in Parliament, or even locally. Many of our modern MP's have never held 'proper' jobs outside the state bureaucracy or quangocracy. A lot of them have simply crept from student politics, through unpaid service to an MP and party office, into parliament and then into government office. As long as they stick to the party line and avoid embarassment to their masters, they may circulate for years through a variety of jobs, like dirty bathwater draining slowly down a plughole, knowing little and caring less for the areas they are supposed to administer. Even the civil service is embarassed by the low quality of many of them. That's even ignoring the Labour drones, clapped out union officials sent to parliament as a retirement sinecure. Many of these people have never done an honest day's work and would be hard pressed, even in better economic times, to get a job paying anything near the average wage, let alone Parliamentary pay (about three times the average wage) and all those amazingly generous tax free allowances as well as the gold plated parliamentary pension. On average MPs' total cost to the taxpayer is estimated at around £250,000 per head per year, if I recall correctly. Serious money. No wonder it attracts rogues. Scope for an immediate 90% cut I would think. No surprise that this shower of wasters contributes virtually nothing to good government. They only represent the little cliques of (mainly) vermin that selected them and shoved them in front of the public at an election. The party system prevents individuals with ambition - and that's nearly all - from scrutinising legislation properly; government control of procedure prevents introduction and fair treatment of private members bills. Mostly carpetbaggers, few have local roots in the constituencies they claim to represent, and there are few strong local interest groups who could and would be able to support and re-elect an MP who showed independence.<br /><br />So Parliament is just a hollow sham. It does not represent Britain. There may not be much of 'Britain' left to be represented. There's certainly an excessively large and growing population, but this is increasingly merely a garbage heap of the world's refuse, mixed with the debased and degenerating remnants of the British, administered by the vile vampires and brainwashed zombies of communist political correctness. This mess will certainly rot, but it won't produce the beneficial compost in which the New Eden can grow, supporting a marvelous new humanity. More than Watermelon Greens - (green outside, red within) will be disappointed.<br /><br /><br />Yes, this is the modern state. It does not exist to express the identity of a People,but to destroy Peoples and civilisations - except for one, of course.<br /><br />I seem to have read somewhere that before the first world war, Britain ran it's empire with only about 2,000 civil servants. That may not have included all the menial jobs, but nowadays many of these are outsourced, so the numbers are probably roughly comparable. Britain's population may have increased by about half, but better communications and computer technology should make administration easier.It's obviously not about better or more efficient government.<br /><br />Whole categories of government programmes could be eliminated, whole departments closed, if we were looking for fair, effective and efficient government; but that's beside the point.<br /><br />Yesterday's Newsnight discussion showed that the junior ministers are just ambitious but indifferent and ignorant people 'going along in order to get along'; while the senior civil servants are office politician-empire builders.None of them care a damm about the public. Neither do the few near the top who devise the maniacal and wasteful policies.<br /><br /> Sinecure seeking parasites form the bulk of central and local government employees, augmented massively by all the interfering quangos. Indeed, someone has pointed out that the problem extends to some 6-8 million state employees. If they did anything useful, it could be provided by the private sector, but that would eliminate the control of the political class, especially the politically correct socialist filth, whose mission is to destroy civilisation and degrade humanity. Well, they're succeeding. Those who monitor corruption note that Britain is dropping down the table of international comparisons. This is increasingly a Third World country in every way. Even the invaders note and despise the decadence and immorality into which Britain has, not just fallen, but been pushed, by the evil garbage which has been governing it, and the even more evil intellectual and moral forces which have used them and which has generated the politically correct administrators to implement their rule. <br /><br />In previous eras important people surrounded themselves with a brilliant entourage of lackeys, lesser lords and men at arms. In our grey Bureaucratic Era, they surround themselves with 'public servants', lesser politicians, advisers and consultants. Spin-doctors replace astrologers.<br /><br />The whole political-bureaucratic-media-business class is corrupt and self serving. No real news in that, of course. The trick is to institute a form of government whereby politics displays some form of the 'invisible hand' of economics, whereby as Adam Smith pointed out, private selfishness produces public benefits.<br /><br />Meanwhile we have an Augean stable, but no Heracles to clean it.<br /><br />Maybe, one should acknowledge that England and Britain are dead, and that the immediate task is for the scavengers to devour the corpse. Later, something new may grow. Something that will wreak vengeance on the vermin now ruling the land. A Lord who will pull down the mighty from their seats, and glut his ravens.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-90875183074179144472009-01-15T17:02:00.000+00:002009-01-15T18:24:58.144+00:00Then and NowReaders of Private Eye will be aware of complaints about the quality of housing for troops and their families, and that the these as well as the training facilities have been 'privatised'. We also hear that the government intends to expand public works programmes; and it has long been supposed that the defence industry has to be encouraged to sell to unpleasant foreign governments, (who have to be bribed, so causing moral outrage,) so that they can have sufficiently long production runs to produce something for British forces, at an affordable price. Their products are probably not quite as good as those of other major states, and the quantities supplied to the troops are often insufficient.<br /><br />How things change. When Britannia was a Roman province, the Roman troops built the roads, they quarried the stone and they transported it and they built Hadrian's Wall, and probably other public facilities, such as aquaducts; as well as their own forts and barracks, and any seige engineering their campaigning required. Their fighting soldiers included men who were well trained in the requisite crafts and engineering skills. Their army bureaucracy efficiently organised the production and distribution of weapons and armour and uniforms. They did this over a vast empire which took several months to traverse, on foot, on horseback and by sail.<br /><br />Come to think of it, the British army used to be able to do much the same, and also over a vast empire which took several months to traverse, on foot, on horseback and by sail. They both sold weapons to foreigners, who didn't need to be bribed to buy them, and even without foreign sales were able to supply their own forces with all they needed. These weapons were not inferior to those of their tribal opponents or rival states.<br /><br />Isn't it strange that as we 'progress', our capacities diminish? Progress makes things worse, it seems. Progressives certainly do.<br /><br /> So, how about bringing the troops home from foreign adventures which don't benefit Britain, and have them improve their own quarters, handle their own training, organise their own arsenals (and hospitals) and help improve the roads and other infrastructure. Ah, but the unions and the profiteers who finance our rulers might not like that. What a pity.<br /><br />Oh yes, one more thing. Those legionaries were versatile. They were also tough and ruthless. They had another skill. They were good at crucifying internal enemies of the Senate and People of Rome. I think it was Crassus who had his troops line the road south fom Rome with 6,000 rebellious slaves on stakes after the defeat of Spartacus.<br /><br />What a picture that summons. Imagine the main roads of this country lined with the crucified corpses of the the internal enemies of the British people. Surely there'd be more than enough to stretch all the way from Downing Street to the Snot Gobbler's own Scottish constituency. Let the ravens feast!Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-54735157253522932222008-12-31T01:17:00.000+00:002008-12-31T03:31:56.779+00:00Bran's Head and the Ravens of the TowerBran was the Celtic god associated with ravens; in some ways comparable to Odin. His oracular head was said to have been buried under the 'white hill' - Tower Hill, facing the continent, as a protection against invasion; until Arthur dug it up, claiming to undertake the responsibility himself. Well, Your Majesty, that's not been an unqualified success, has it?<br /><br />More recently, legend claims that the continued existence of the British monarchy and nation depends on sustaining a few ravens at the Tower of London. (Supposing that the ravens are symbolic of divine mind, can anything survive outside this?) Considering the present state of these entities in comparison with what they used to be - that's not been working very well either.<br /><br />Of course, legend also associates Arthur with the Cornish Chough, a bird similar to a raven, and claims that in Britain's hour of need, Arthur will again arise to inspire his people to fight and win. Britain has had inspiring leaders. Churchill was a leader of this sort. We will need his like again.<br /><br />A famous quip about Churchill was that he wrote a volume of autobiography and called it The World Crisis. We now labour under a less modest ruler who claims to have 'saved the world'! No small boast. So, it's ''Move over, Winston!", and "Don't trouble yourself, Arthur"; Gordon's already done 'whatever it takes' - mainly, it seems, what it takes is promising to borrow and spend incredible sums of money - to 'save' not only this country, but the world. No need for blood, or sweat, they're so unfashionable (the tears may come later, of course).<br /><br />Wait a minute... wasn't someone else supposed to be saving the world? Jesus... that's right! Gordon's not only surpassed the greatest leaders, displaced heroes of mythic status - he's replaced God!!<br /><br />This is not going to end well. Hubris ... meet Nemesis. 'Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.'<br /><br />Notice the pattern. (The Ravens have.) A divine task is rashly assumed by a vainglorious ruler, and the magnitude of the inevitable failure will be directly proportional to the degree of his folly. Odin and Gordon each lost an eye, but that's about the only similarity. Gordon did not sacrifice his to gain wisdom. He thought he had that already. He's a fool. Bran was of such gigantic stature he could wade the ocean dragging his navy behind him. Gordon's navy is dwindling away, and he has no stature. Neither does Britain. He has become an international laughing stock and is dragging the country down.<br /><br />The ravens of the Tower have had their wings clipped to prevent them from flying away. They stay close to the the spot where many unsuccessful political leaders have been executed. They might be amused at the thought of feeding on the flesh of another political and moral failure. They may remember that only nobles were beheaded; common villains were hanged; but they'd tear his corpse as cheerfully either way.Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286384576937045382.post-80929267964120800352008-12-30T02:42:00.000+00:002008-12-30T03:36:10.774+00:00A group of RavensIf one is to believe WikiAnswers http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_group_of_ravens_called<br /><br />the answer is a Congress or Unkindness.<br /><br />Now that's a thought.<br />I had associated 'Congress' with sex or politics, or even both together. Vulgar parlance of course, recognises the 'unkind' effect of politicians on the public and the institutions for which they are responsible, in the metaphor that the politicians have had 'sexual congress' with them.<br /><br />The same source replies to the obvious follow-up question as to what a group of politicians should be called, by conflating it with a group who decides whether to convict someone of a crime - a jury. Hmmm, not quite conventional, although Parliament can function as a court, and is usually too busy passing passing new laws with criminal sanctions to consider the old Taoist wisdom that making laws creates criminals. However, the jury of public opinion has increasing reason to regard their politicians as the real criminals, and treat them with some unkindness.<br /><br />This blog intends to be unkind to many politicians and their cronies, and revive the old curse, -'May the ravens peck your eyes and tear out your heart!'Odin's Ravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10138497698247404499noreply@blogger.com0