Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Class divides Britain more now than in the Sixties!

Yesterday I found myself in a Twitter exchange on Grammar Schools. It set me thinking about class in Britain's society today.

Looking at the media, watching TV and listening to Radio 4 this morning, there is only one conclusion, that being that the Class Divide in Britain is worse now than at any time I can recall in my almost seven decades of memories.

UKIP, over and above its common sense policies on the EU, could be a means of breaking through that!

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Monday, April 29, 2013

How Germany's Belgium Lie Worked 100 Years Ago Today!

 Here is the entry from Wikipedia for 100 years ago today, linked here:

April 29, 1913 (Tuesday)

  • Germany's Foreign Minister, Gottlieb von Jagow, said in a speech at the Reichstag that German would respect the guarantees of Belgium's neutrality, followed by Minister of War Josias von Heeringen, who pledged that "Germany will not lose sight of the fact that the neutrality of Belgium is guaranteed by international treaty." Germany would invade Belgium fifteen months later on its entry into World War I on August 2, 1914.[60]
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Now we know the clear facts, that this deliberate and blatant lie had exactly the result that Germany intended on the French defensive plan XVII, then under consideration,  by Général Joseph Joffre

What lies today are being deliberately spread to lead us all into what other new and as yet unimagined similar disasters?

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Local Elections may offer last chance to halt final corruption of UK politics

The main thrust of the EU Conspiracy to destroy Europe's once democratic nation states has always been particularly concentrated at local level, while most publicity and trumpeting has been conducted within the National Parliaments and the institutions of the EECartel itself.

The history of this Regional Policy, as described by the EU in its own reports from its own web pages is here.

The objective of any tyranny is to gather power and money towards itself and maintain control of the subjugated victims through the disbursements of funds and privileges. EU own resources come largely from the obscene tax of VAT levied at every transaction made within the EU, now often imposed at levels above 20% and itself a condition of membership in the entire corrupted concept.

Control of the disenfranchised and completely controlled former nation-state citizens is maintained at local level, through the arbitrary spending of these vast sums and the disbursements of perks and privileges to the pro-EU elected councillors on the non-elected Regional Committees, absolutely regardless of whether they were initially elected claiming to represent the interests of Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat Party voters.

That is why the three big parties in England are in a state of almost complete panic this weekend. If enough UKIP Councillors can be elected to break onto the EU Regional Committees across the country, the obscene financial foundations of the big parties in the UK will be exposed and the EU will finally be sent packing from the shores of the UK once and for all.

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Friday, April 26, 2013

Regional Convergence - The Corrupt Conspiracy that UKIP has a week to Expose!

The conspiracy to finally destroy the ex-Countries of the EU and the National Parliaments which once allowed protections of all their Citizens' Rights, now almost completely neutered, has been accomplished through the EU Regional Policy!  Such is quite separate from the sham European Parliament and the authoritarian EU Commission with its posturing and pampered little tin gods! Read the plan for its next six years from here.

Local Councillors, significantly County Councillors are hugely involved in these particularly secretive and sordid activities and arrangements. I suggest these should be made a particular target for the closing stage of the present local elections campaign by the UKIP.

Detail of how this corruption operates in the UK is here.


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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Aggression in Europe - Then and Now!

One hundred years ago yesterday, the then U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan met with diplomats in Washington DC to present his plan for world peace, with the provision that all controversies between nations had to be submitted for investigation before a war could be declared.

Why was such a plan rejected, Germany clearly intended war just as today they are clearly pursuing the economic domination of Europe? Why did the soon to be invaded other nations of Europe let that threat continue to develop? Why are our Leaders doing nothing to disband the EU, the instrument of German hegemony, today?

Earlier that same month a Zeppelin spying on French border defences had run out of fuel and was repatriated. War preparations abounded but the British Admiralty were sending confusing signals to Germany about possible neutrality in the event of an invasion of France. The Entente Cordiale was vague on the matter. On Anzac Day it is fitting to read of events at the opening of hostilities in the Med at the outset of hostilities, to which this blog will frequently return, as the awful centenary dates come along.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Look what they have done to Europe!

When you regard the economic devestation on everyhand, the human misery wrought by old-fashioned German determination to have everything their way, the cold deliberation and determination to impose Economic and Monetary Union in the face of mountains of expert advice warning of the dangers, the sheer gall of those repsonsible seems quite incredible.

Now this morning we are informed that one of the shadowy figures, behind this disaster, Giuliano Amato,  a Vice-President appointed by the Laeken Convention, who with his boss Valery Giscard d'Estaing rubbished the greater democracy the supposed intent of that convention and at the following IGC, dreamt up the obscene Constitutional/Reform/Lisbon Treaty which forms the basis of the European Treaties to this day while honoured mainly in the breech!

Amato was born in 1938, his longevity iteslf an obscenity when considered alongside all that his generation has wrought upon our Continent! Telling is it not, that among all these old men and women who have created the mess that is today's EU, not one of them yet appears to have jumped from a tall building, blown their brains out or suspended themselves from some convenient projection!

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Happy St George's Day!

Monday, April 22, 2013

The EU Mission is to Destroy Countries

We should not be surprised about what has happened to Britain. It was all part of a grand EU masterplan, which inevitably is now blowing up in all our faces. This report from the Daily Mail on a warning from Russia on just one of the ticking time-bombs we have created, backed up by the main BBC Radio 4 Today Programme 08:10 am interview, is one of the most worrying examples of many, many more.

That is why all issues, in both local and national politics, have now become EUROPEAN and thereby part of the greater EU conspiracy! A conspiracy which is bent on destroying national life and replacing it with their completely non-democratic alternative and now clearly German controlled alternative!

Any vote for representatives of the three main UK poltical parties, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat will, AS PAST RECENT DECADES CLEARLY PROVE, merely delivers more EU control, less prosperity and greater poverty as less and less prosperous nations join the EU and existing members are steadily bankrupted by the insatiable greed of the non-elected Commission, its officials and the giant corporations they choose to serve.

As recent elections and events across the EU show, General Elections are often now ignored by the EU!

Therefore make the 2nd May local elections your perhaps final chance to put THEM on notice that the British people have had ENOUGH!

Reject this tri-party scheme to deprive YOU of all our birthrights!

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Sunday, April 21, 2013

Europe slides into Degeneracy

Europe is falling apart this weekend. It is not reported in your Sunday newspapers or on your TV. The London Marathon will be run and most people will spend a typical peaceful Sunday in blind ignorance of what is afoot.

Unlike in 1914 and 1939 the British people will not this time be called upon to physically fight the seeping evil that is steadily engulfing us, for the clear reason that the leadership of our country via the three main political parties are themselves fully involved and complicit in what is underway.

Read my tweets from my twitter timeline so far made today, which I will continue to follow up. Read also Beppe Grillo's call for mass citizen protest in this article from American Thinker linked here, and Athens being for sale from The Slog by John Ward here.

"Today we will have a democracy or die as a country."
Beppe Grillo, real winner of the last Italian General Election
Last evening on Twitter!

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Saturday, April 20, 2013

FTT - Fantasy, Trickery & Theft! The UK Acts & Fitch Downgrades

Of the three large credit rating agencies Fitch, which downgraded the UK from Triple A to AA+ yesterday evening, is the only one with strong links to France for which it maintained its Triple A rating.

At the same time news emerged that the UK was going to challenge the legality of the Financial Transaction Tax, eleven EU countries are presently preparing under the Enhance Cooperation provisions of the EU Treaties. Open Europe has a good detailed report on that move linked here.

Far be it from me to attack or defend credit rating agencies, which by maintaining any triple A rating for any nation within the Euro Group must IMO be completely disconnected from any reality, but this clear connection in timing has to be pointed out.

France has been the country pushing hardest for the FTT. Its national economic estimates incorporate revenue from the tax which allows the fiction that it will meet its EU agreed targets for the present and coming years even slightly realistic.

Yesterday morning on this blog I suggested Britain and France work together to counter the dangerous direction Germany now seems to be taking our Continent, instead they have picked this fight over a completely absurd tax proposal.

This morning on Radio 4 Today programme we heard the harrowing account of a then eleven year old Jewish girl's escape from the Germans, though the sewers of Warsaw during the uprising which took place 70 years ago this weekend. The sheer horror of what then took place must AGAIN be generally recognised in Europe, together we must accept and confront the direction we seem to once gain be heading towards similar ghastliness.

That means leadership, which four Parliamentary votes yesterday in Italy failed to achieve but they try again this morning. BUT what are PM Cameron and President Hollande doing this weekend? They need to agree on something other than a tax disputation which was how things were left last evening!

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Friday, April 19, 2013

What are Britain, France and Italy to do about Germany?

Under the guise of a review of two books on Germany, the Charlemagne column in tomorrow's Economist Magazine raises the reality of German power in today's EU. Read here.

On the week of the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, this seems most appropriate. Norman Tebbit, one of her closest ministerial colleagues, finely tuned in to her beliefs, in his comment last weekend for the Mail, blamed those in her Party who had her removed as working for Brussels, many suspect that is in fact merely code for German influence and objectives.

The 26 other countries of the EU will eventually have to decide their own attitudes to German control of their former nations, many European citizens whose forebears fought and emigrated to avoid such a fate, are likely to be unhappy at that prospect.

The leaders of the larger non-German EU ex-nations have a formidable problem to face, Italy actually physically lacks a leader as well as the character attributes one associates with such a position, as seems to be the case for both Britain and France. Nevertheless something has to be faced, we cannot go on much longer with children being allowed to starve in Greece, as was reported in the New York Times yesterday!

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Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Post-Thatcher Era Has Dawned

Men and women of decent principles and a firm belief in democracy must bend their efforts, wherever they may be and however they may, to ending the grotesque obscenity that the EU has become and removing their own country from its grasping grip and self-serving economic control!

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Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Britain is Surrounded by Enemies

As with any great nation, Britain is surrounded by its enemies, the deadliest, as ever, likely to be the closest to hand.

On the day we bury our greatest 20th century peacetime Prime Minister, who also recovered the Falkland Islands for their peoples, we should remember that fact, particularly in all our dealings with the EU!

I was a child of the Second World War, and was raised with that basic awareness, as this photograph evokes!

Baroness Thatcher properly shared in this opinion, in my own view!


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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Ken Clarke in Thatcher's Resignation - Who are Solid Conservatives?


Maggie Thatcher Cabinet Colleagues Ouster Comments

'The Downing Street Years' Harper Collins hard back edition.

"Ken Clarke now entered. His manner was robust in the brutalist style he has cultivated: the candid friend. He said that this method of changing Prime Ministers was farcical, and that he personally would be happy to support me for another five or ten years. Most of the Cabinet, however, thought that I should stand down. Otherwise not only would I lose; but I would 'lose big'. If that were to happen the Party would go to Michael Heseltine and end up split. So Douglas (Hurd) and John (Major) should be released of their obligation to me, and allowed to stand, since either had a better chance than I did. Then the solid part of the Party could get back together. Contrary to persistent rumours Ken Clarke at no point threatened to resign."

What is this "Solid Part" of the Conservative Party, is this shorthand for what has become the clear enemy of our nation? Is it now led by David Cameron?

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Monday, April 15, 2013

Killing Zeppelin L-53 & thereafter the Royal Naval Air Service

The Royal Naval Air Service in the Graet War was outstanding in killing German submarines and Zeppelins. I have recently described one such success, here is anothe, again from The Spider's Web, showing even greater innovation and ingenuity:

(Page 230) But the L 53 annoyed Colonel Samson, D.S.O., who at this time was Officer Commanding No. 4 Group, E/.A.F., and he had a thirty- foot deck made to fit on one of the towing lighters, and on this, held in place with a quick release  gear, he put a Camel aeroplane, a single-seated fighter land-machine with great speed and climb.

(Page 233) The flotilla then cruised off Terschelling until fifteen minutes after eight o'clock, when the flagship signalled to the destroyer towing the Camel lighter that the L 53 had been sighted. Immediately Cully saw the Zeppelin glistening in the sunlight. It was about thirty miles away, at a height of ten thousand feet. It looked about as big as his little finger.
He climbed into the cockpit of his machine. The propeller was swung. He tested the rotary engine. When the towing destroyer had got up to thirty knots, he ran his engine full out, slipped the quick release, ran along the lighter deck only five feet, and took to the air.
At forty -one minutes after eight o'clock he started to climb towards Commander Proells' airship at a speed of fifty-two miles an hour.


(Page 235) Commander Proells had also been climbing, and he was still above Cully. His airship was of the type known as the height-climbing 50's, the last word in construction, six hundred and forty feet long, with five engines, and containing two million cubic feet of inflammable gas.
The L 53 had all this time been broadside on to Cully. He now saw her turn end on. He thought that he had been sighted by her crew, and that her Commander had turned out to sea away from him. He swung the nose of the Camel directly towards her and continued to...


(Page 236) ... But the crew of the great Zeppelin apparently did not see the tiny midge in the sun, for they held on their course at the same height. At forty-one minutes after nine o'clock, one hour after Cully had left the lighter in the Camel, the two machines met head on, the airship only two hundred feet above the aeroplane.
Cully pulled back his controls and stalled his machine until the Camel was almost standing on its tail. As the bow of the Zeppelin came into his sight he started both Lewis guns....

(Page 238) The aluminium skeleton of the bow of the Zeppelin was now fully exposed. But the fabric of the tail was still smoking and burning. She was standing vertically upright, nose down, and was falling rapidly below him with ever increasing momentum.

The End of the RNAS

(Page 243/4) It was the older of the two British flying services, having its beginnings in 1910. It had never been noted for its red-tape methods, its ingenuity in creating forms to be filled in, or the number of ground personnel required to administer it. But the debt which the nation owes to it for the development of engines and efficient aircraft, no less than for its operations on land and sea over the whole world, has hardly been appreciated. For at one time, without the pilots developed under its traditions and the machines and engines developed by its foresight, things would have gone hard with our arms in France.
It was a small service that had done great things. But its work was not  appreciated, as it followed the traditions of its parent, and adopted, not without a struggle it is true, the virtue of silence. And now its people were asked to give up the legends about the mighty pilots who had created the service, the traditions which had accumulated so rapidly in war time, the uniform and routine which so well fitted their work, the comradeship which had permeated the personnel owing to its limited number, and the name which numberless brave men had laid down their lives to make honourable.

And bitterest pill of all, the Navy, our natural parent, was willing we should be put under the guardianship of an unknown and alien stepmother.
 
At this dinner the toast to the King was drunk in the mess sitting; for the last time.
 
Blow this khaki ! I feel hardly human.

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Sunday, April 14, 2013

Germany's Attitude towards International Treaties

The observations of a World War One Navy Flier, commanding a Flight of Flying-Boats from Felixstowe against submarines and Zeppelins, in respect of atrocities and The Hague Convention, seem worth remembering as Britain's Prime Minister, a proven weak and useless individual, meets the German Chancellor in a castle outside Berlin, this weekend.

The quote may be found from this pdf link, on page 217 start of Chapter VII:

"The Hague, where peace conferences met to mitigate the horrors of war, or do away with it entirely, and supplied the Hun with a ready-made list of forbidden atrocities—atrocities which he immediately made haste to perpetrate."

As George Sanayana said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" and Cameron proves that he has yet to even learn the lesson of the more recent Thatcher years, what hope for the nation is there in the lessons of almost 100 years ago?

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Saturday, April 13, 2013

Zeppelins - the German tool for the Slaughter and Terrorising of Women and Children

In World War One, the Germans in their determination to rule Europe, proved once again they would stop at nothing in pursuit of that aim, when they introduced giantairships called Zeppelins, to bomb innocent civilians up and down the legth of Britain.

As Prime Minister, David Cameron, meets with the German Chancellor Merkel, this weekend; the entire nation would do well to recall just the history of the past one hundred years and the clear message of Margaret Thatcher whose funeral will be next week, the means of her disposal and the nature of those who performed that act and the interests in which they may have been working ALL given the present appalling situation across Europe and the deliberate suffering being imposed, again largely on women and children, to meet German demands in Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Ireland and no doubt very soon elsewhere!

My grandfather was a Flight Lieutenant in flying boats based at Felixtowe, charged with mainly destroying submarines but also these Zeppelins if they could be found. The following extract from the book "The Spider's Web The Romance of a Flying Boat Flight in the First World War" (pdf format file linked here) descibes the destruction of one such by two of his Canadian Co-Pilots:

The quarry these two pilots were crossing the North Sea to hunt was a Zeppelin, an airship over six hundred feet long. It carried a crew of captain, second in command, a warrant officer who did the navigation, a warrant officer engineer, two engineer ratings for each of the five engines, a petrol man, and six other hands, of which two worked the elevators, two steered, one attended to the wireless and signalling, and one repaired the fabric.
All these men had received a highly specialised training at Nordholz, the course lasting not less than six months. Also the deck-ratings and the engine - room mechanics were trained in aerialgunnery, and when at action stations the men not on watch were employed as machine-gunners.
Throughout this month there had been great Zeppehn activity over the North Sea, for early in the year the German military craft had been handed over to the German navy, and the best airships of the tw^o services had been concentrated near the German coast at Nordholz, Wittmundshaven, Ahlhorn, and Tondern. Until May 1916 the Zeppelins had carried out their patrols at a height of a thousand feet, looking for our minefields and scouting for our naval forces, but in this month L-7 was destroyed by gun-fire from a naval unit, and they were now, excepting on rare occasions, carrying out their work at a great altitude.......

Dickey suddenly saw a Zeppelin.
It was five miles on the starboard beam, at a height of only fifteen hundred feet.
Billiken swung the bow of '11 towards the airship.
He opened out his engines. He climbed straight for the Zeppelin.
Dickey was at the bow gun, the wireless operator was at the midships gun, and the engineer was at the stern guns. The Zeppelin was barely moving. Her propellers were merely ticking over.
They were now at two thousand feet, a thousand yards away from the airship, and above her. Now the look - out on the Zeppelin saw the flyingboat.
The propellers vanished as the engines were speeded up. She moved forward. She swung away on a new course. Two men raced to the gun on the tail and the gun amidships on top.
Billiken dived on the Zeppelin's tail at a screaming hundred and forty miles an hour. He  passed diagonally across her from starboard to port.
When one hundred feet above and two hundred feet away Dickey got in two bursts from his machine-gun.
He used only fifteen cartridges.
As he cleared the Zeppelin, Billiken made a sharp right-hand turn, and found himself slightly
below and heading straight for the enemy. He read her number, L 43. Her immense size staggered him.
Then he saw that she was on fire.
Little spurts of flame stabbed out where the explosive bullets had torn the fabric, and the
incendiary bullets had set alight the escaping hydrogen.
Pulling back his controls, he lifted the boat over the airship, and just in time. With a tremendous burst of flame—a flame so hot that all on board the flying-boat felt the heat—the millions of cubic feet of hydrogen were set off. She broke in half 

Each part, burning furiously, fell towards the water.
The top gunner rolled into the flames and vanished.
Three men fell out of the gondolas. Turning over and over they struck the water in advance of the wreckage.
The remnants of the Zeppelin fell into the sea, and a heavy pillar of black smoke reared itself to the sky.


Just what does the present leader of the Conservative Party think he is playing at in disregarding all the plain warnings of Margaret Thatcher, his more experienced and longer serving predecessor, especially those made since she was ousted by their party, and even more so given the clear and obvious results of EMU all across Europe now underway?


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Friday, April 12, 2013

Cam, Sam & the kids with Merkel!

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, seems to have read our lightweight, self-serving and thoroughly treacherous Prime Minister extremely well!

A report on the Cameron family trip to Germany is in The Spectator linked here.

Her plan appears to be to get him on his own, as far from intelligent or savvy advisors as possible, locked in the bosom of his family about which he is at his happiest when over sentimentalising, and finish off once and for all the humiliation of Britain which has been a thorn in Germany's side since Bismark first set the game-plan for reborn Teutonic  Imperialism and world domination.

Nobody can guess nor ever know what side deals and shady understandings could be reached given the track record of treachery we have already witnessed from this useless prime Minister.

Patriotic members of the Conservative Party have one choice to spare the country from whatever role Merkel and Cameron might agree for it over this weekend, and that is to remove him from leading their party as the first act of next week, fittingly the one during which Margaret Thatcher will be honoured at Westminster.

Heseltine who removed Thatcher from power, returning himself from Germany on the day that act was accomplished, has been pulling Cameron's strings for years. Can the Tory Party really not rise against this puppet successor, who it is surely plain for all to now see, stands for everything that Margaret Thatcher spent her life resisting, opposing and abhorring!

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Thursday, April 11, 2013

"I left her, I fear, at the mercy of her friends." Lord Tebbit

3.41 pm
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, I take my mind back to before I was elected to the House of Commons, when I spent a great deal of time abroad. Like so many of us at that time, I was constantly embarrassed at the sympathy that was offered to me by foreigners for the state into which Great Britain had descended. A few years later, I again spent a lot of time abroad, as the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. The change could not have been greater in the admiration that was expressed for what had been done in this country. It was sometimes, I thought, slightly over the top. I could never quite get my mind around the remark made to me in Italy: "Oh, if only we had a Thatcher here!". Can one imagine the concept of an Italian Margaret Thatcher?
Noble Lords: Ha!
Lord Tebbit: The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, would indeed have had some problems then, I fancy.
We should also come to some kind of consensus here today that there were two quite remarkable Prime Ministers of post-war Great Britain: two Prime Ministers who actually changed the country and did so in the way they wanted to change it. They did not sit as change happened round about them. They were Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher. We have accommodated ourselves to many of the things which Clement Attlee did, although many of us would have opposed them at the time. Even some of those in his party, of course, opposed his policy on British membership of NATO and possession of nuclear weapons, for example; and we, on our side, for much of what he did in the social services area.
We should also recollect that Lady Thatcher came into office in 1979 somewhat against the odds that would have been offered a year or so earlier, because of the winter of discontent. The trades union generals had brought down Ted Heath's Government. They brought down Jim Callaghan's Government. They brought into office the Government of Lady Thatcher. They expected, particularly Master Scargill, to bring down her Government, too. What would have become of our democracy had they succeeded?
How many Prime Ministers could have defeated them and preserved our democracy? How many of those who saw her in her early days as Prime Minister would have dreamt that in partnership with Ronald Reagan she would have precipitated the end of the Cold War and the bringing down of the Berlin Wall? It was she, of course, who observed that Prague was not in eastern Europe but at the centre of Europe. That is a geographical fact. One of my regrets is that her successors did not sufficiently exploit what she had done, and that we have left those other Europeans-the Russians-still rather outside the European family and compact. There is still much to be done.


10 Apr 2013 : Column 1144

It is often said of her, and we have heard it again today, that she was divisive. However, there were two great influences in her life. One was her scientific training-and I am particularly glad that the noble Lord, Lord May, mentioned that aspect of her life. The other, of course, was her religious belief. If I may observe to right reverend Prelates, there is a precedent for being divisive: there are sheep and there are goats. The noble Baroness was aware from both her scientific training and her religious beliefs that there are things that are right and things that are wrong, technically, scientifically and morally. She pursued that which she believed to be right. I must say that as her party chairman I found that my life was made much easier by my understanding of the certainties of her beliefs. She never asked me to commission a focus group. Had I been asked I would have resisted manfully, I hope. What is more, if I woke in the morning, turned on the radio and heard the BBC's version of the news of the day I would know what her reaction would be to the news because of the certainty of the construct of her beliefs. It made life very much easier for me.
I should also like to say how grateful I will always be for the fact that she gave me the opportunity to serve in high office the country that she, I, and I believe all of us here, love. I am also grateful to her for that other side of her character, for the support that she gave to my wife and me after we were injured. No doubt somebody in this House will correct me, but I cannot think of a precedent for a Secretary of State remaining in office as Secretary of State although absent from the Cabinet for over three months. She allowed me to run my office from my hospital bed. Admittedly, I had the support of two splendid civil servants in particular who ran my private office, both of whom have appeared again in other roles: Mr Callum McCarthy, and another fellow who I believe has achieved high office somewhere more recently; he was the Secretary of State for Health not long ago. They were quality people, but it was she who backed me and allowed me to continue.
I did not always agree with her, because I have some rather strong convictions and views, too. I recollect one occasion when I left her office at No. 10, walked back to Victoria Street, got into my office and asked my Private Secretary if there had been any calls from No. 10. "No, Secretary of State", he said, so I knew then that I was still the Secretary of State while I was walking back.
Of course, she was brought down in the end not by the electorate but by her colleagues. Not only is it quite remarkable that she won three elections running-someone else has done that since-what was remarkable was that she polled slightly more votes on the occasion of her third victory, when she had been in office for eight years, than on her first. I regard that as a triumph for her.
My regrets? Because of the commitments that I made to my own wife, I did not feel able either to continue in government after 1987 or to return to government when she later asked me to do so. I left her, I fear, at the mercy of her friends. That I do regret.


10 Apr 2013 : Column 1145

Succession to the Crown Bill

I will be returning to this topic of changing the Succession to the Crown Act,  following the funeral of Margaret Thatcher. In the meantime I have received the following remarks by Anne Palmer on the subjct which in my view deserves as large a readership as possible:

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We have fought two World Wars to ensure our way of life remains the same governed by and through our long standing Common Law Constitution. That we are governed by elected Politicians that govern this Country according to that same Common law Constitution also. That our Monarchy remains as it has been for Hundreds of Years. All set down in 600 years old or more Constitutional Documents from Magna Carta 1215 and our Declaration and Bill of Rights 1688 and 1689. The Act of Settlement, Act of Union, plus many others.  Many brave and wonderful people gave their young lives for all of us in two World Wars. Yet here, we are allowing foreigners to dictate what even our Monarch has to comply with-foreign laws.  We betray all those that gave their lives for our  freedom.  No, that is not exactly right. Those Members of Parliament that we in innocence and trust, elected and pay, betray all those that lost their lives not only fighting in that last war that I remember well and one in which our Queen played Her part in that war too,  we betray innocent children and babies also that lost their lives in the bombing of this Country, for they never had a chance to live.


The  proposed Succession to the Crown Bill requires nine (9) changes to nine different parts of our long standing Common law Constitution.  Countries on the Continent can easily change their Constitutions because after that war, they had NEW written Constitutions that are easily changed where as ours goes back for hundreds of years and why the people of this Country, that may have lost relatives in that last war, may have to “fight” all be-it in a different way- to keep our long standing Common Law Constitution that so many gave their lives for.  Not to be governed by foreigners but to continue with our way of life and according to the Constitution so many gave their lives for.  We cannot afford to let them down now. 

15th Feb 2013. Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat,) began the debate, saying: ‘This is a bill with a clear purpose; to bring gender equality to the rules of succession and to remove explicit pieces of religious discrimination from our statute book.’
He continued: ‘The bill does three things. First, it ends the system of male preference primogeniture in the line of succession. Secondly, it removes the bar on a person who marries a Roman Catholic from succeeding to the Throne - a legal barrier that applies to Catholics and only Catholics and no other faith. Thirdly, it replaces the Royal Marriages Act 1772 - an Act that requires any descendent of King George II to seek the reigning monarch's consent before marrying, without which their marriage is void... With King George II's descendants now numbering in their hundreds, this law is clearly unworkable and so it is replaced with a provision that the monarch need only consent to the marriages of the first six individuals in the line of succession, without which they would lose their place.’
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The third reading of the Bill in the House of Lords is scheduled for later this month, it will then, after the formality of Royal Assent, become law, until then it is not!

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Apprentice Despot Cameron cannot contemplate EU withdrawal

The Prime Minister, in Spain before he abandoned his fawning tour of EU Capitals, because of the death of Baroness Thatcher, was loose long enough to prove his credentials as a fully paid-up adherent to the dark tyranny now controlling the European Continent.

Asked how he would act if the Referendum he has promised the country delivers a negative result, the following repsonse was posted as an image on Twitter last evening:


Cameron will not withdraw from the eu

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Some political certainty has gone from my life.


On the day of her election as PM in May1979, I was living in Texas but had arranged a business trip to Algeria to allow me to spend election day in the UK. I passed the polling hours in Crewe and returned to the Westbury Hotel in Mayfair to watch the results coming in on TV. There was no doubt in my mind that Maggie Thatcher would win and begin the process of pulling us back from the degradation to which Wilson, Callaghan and their side-kicks had delivered the nation.

Before the start of the decade of the eighties I was back in London with new employers and challanges. At the dying moments of that decade I had left again, certain that Thatcher had failed in spite of the first few hopeful years and their quite amazing advances. She was betrayed by the members of her own party of the kind who still control it to this day.

In January 1990 she held a seminar at Chequers on the threats to Europe and democracy from the reunification of Germany. A note on the perceived risks is linked here in pdf format. (Downloaded from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, linked here). Her actual removal from power was arranged, we can now almost completely certainly see, as a result of her opposition to European Monetary Union, as such was necessary to achieve German objectives as we can see today in the telling phrase from the above linked paper "we pay so we must have our way"

EMU, it is perfectly obvious today, was an essential tool, given thousands warned the Euro would never work, precisely and solely to put Germany exactly in that position which they are so obviously thoroughly enjoying today.

Maggie Thatcher, as I will always think of her,  had a capacity to recognise what in the Middle Ages would have been described as pure evil. We will all miss that certainty, even those who think she was wrong!

Monday, April 08, 2013

Cameron in Cuckoo Land

Here in South West France  we heard our first cuckoo of this summer around 25th March. In Britain, we describe somebody who is somewhat deranged, but not violently or criminally insane, as cuckoo!

Later today, British PM, David Cameron, after stopping off in Spain, arrives in Paris to visit President Hollande, another cuckoo on a complete fool's errand!

Cameron has no grasp of the modern world nor even British society but his ignorance about the EU trumps even that. I have lived on the Continent for some years but am only just beginning to get a feel for the hugely complex interplaysthat surround the EU. The hopelessness of my incomprehension are probably reflected in the links from a tweet I posted this morning:

31m

At least my ideas will, I hope, be seen as constructive, in trying to patch Europe back together, rather than split it completely apart, as I believe Cameron's ideas will be viewed!

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Sunday, April 07, 2013

The EU Separation of Sovereignty from Territory has failed.

The EU seems to have attempted, in a departure from what I can see as ALL historical precedent, to split Sovereignty from geographically defined territory.

It must now be clear to all, that while Sovereignty, in the form of the "power to Govern" has been smashed to smithereens, the EU has, in most meaningful respects, failed and is now entering its terminal stages of collapse. "Abnegation of Sovereignty," the term for the process chosen by the EU founders, has clearly failed, as it was ever an impossibility, such as being half pregnant!

The attempts by the former nation states to retrieve their national sovereignty will be trying for their citizens! Whether territorial disputes over new borders can be avoided seems moot at present, but the quicker a start is made, the sooner the danger of new wars will pass and the faster the more difficult task of establishing new relationships can begin.

Saturday, April 06, 2013

Amending the Act of Royal Succession - with what results?

The Bill now making its way through Parliament to make females equal to males in the line of accession to the throne could sow the seeds of much dissent.

Most obviously, the main danger will come from the precedent it sets that Parliaments, both at home and across the Commonwealth, can interfere and amend such arrangements at the drop of a hat, but even more significantly in this particular case on the impact it could have had were it also to be considered retrospectively.

The disputes between the Empress Matilda and Stephen, known as the anarchy, are one such obvious example, but more recently Isabelle of Angoulême, crowned Queen of England, widow of King John and mother of King Henry III among others, had an amazing life and involvement in the disputes between England and France leading to over a century of wars!

An interesting description of her life provides a worthwhile weekend read in pdf format, linked from here or other digital formats from here. It was written by W.C. Jordan and richly referenced, I quote its concluding words on that Lady's life:

No single life, not even one as eventful as Isabelle d'Angoulême's, is an adequate mirror of the social and political events that shaped English and French history in the first half of the thirteenth century. On the other hand, no story of those events can be entirely satisfying — by which I mean morally satisfying — without a great deal of attention being paid to the individual actors who lived through them. It is not always clear what they wanted or why they chose the paths they did to achieve their ends. But the records of joy and anger that accompanied individual  successes and failures are precious relics of their moral universe in general ; and in Isabelle's case they reveal a great many of the burdens and terrible dilemmas facing aristocratic women and aristocratic society in the thirteenth century. A pawn herself, Isabelle, it has been suggested, only found emotional satisfaction from making pawns of others ; and yet in the end, her almost disabling  resentment of Blanche de Castille and her sons and of the warm relations that bound them together undermines this facile conclusion. We need not end up excusing her moral or emotional lapses (manipulation of children, treachery masquerading as flexibility, failures of self-control, spite) merely because we may in part come to understand the motivations for these actions. Contemporaries, who suffered from them, certainly did not do so. But we may, if we are fortunate,
reach across the chasm of seven centuries and sympathize with the plight of people like herself caught in a maelstrom of intrigue and conventions that seem often to have deflected or extinguished the generous impulses of their characters. One point, in any case, should be clear : the life of Isabelle d'Angoulême is too interesting and too important to be ignored in any serious reconstruction of the aristocratic life or the political history of thirteenthcentury France and England.

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Friday, April 05, 2013

Restoring the reputation of Navy Fliers

A programme from BBC TV aired this week under the title "Coast", carried a report that revealed old rivalries between the brave airman of World War One of the RFC and RNAS. The item in particular concerned the Zeppelin Bombing of civilians for which the RNAS had initially been charged to counter. The two services were combined into the RAF at the end of the Great War, the RNAS having grown to personnel of 55,000, while its 93 aircraft had grown to just under 3,000 and 6 airships had become 103. 

Little mentioned in these descriptions were the flying-boats and I came across this book online last evening describing such operations from Felixstowe where my maternal grandfather was based as a Flight Lieutenant, having been transferred from Dover.  The book titled "The Spider Web, the romance of a Flying-Boat war flight" may be read online from this link. Surprisingly for me, it describes in some detail the incident which led to my grandfather, Wilfrid Perham, ending the war as an internee in neutral Holland.

I like this description of what these "Jolly Fine Fellows", to whom the book is dedicated, were mainly about from the early pages:

When the intensive German submarine campaign began, the methods of hunting U-boats from surface ships had not been perfected. The hydrophone was crude, the technique of using depth charges was not perfected, and the mines and nets were not adequate. Also, the Dover barrage was not then in being. So Fritz, as the service called the Hun submarine, went southabout from his bases to his hunting-grounds.
Picture the sinister grey steel tubes dropping away from the dock in the German harbour as the Commander in the conning-tower gave the order to cast off, the swirl of water at the stern as the twin propellers took up their job, and the gay flutter of signal flags hoisted to the collapsible mast as they passed out of the harbour —a harbour which they would not see, if all went well with them, for from fifteen to twenty-five days, and which, if things went well for the Allies, they would never see again
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At least these men, for all the horrors of war, knew exactly where their enemies lay; while the reports of their actions, such as the Christmas bombing raid on the Zeppelin base at Cuxhavn, denies any assertion that the Naval airmen were not doing their utmost to counter "Fritz" in one of his apparently, then favourite pursuits: the aerial bombardment of women and children!

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Thursday, April 04, 2013

So Blogging does make a Difference! Duchy of Cornwall.

After over ten years, I was really beginning to believe that blogging really does not make the slightest bit of difference, either to the obscene EU or the apparently now only sheople of Great Britain. That fact has probably been clear from my despir, reflected in postings on this blog, at Parliament's sustained and obvious attack on small independent, non profit-making blogs, of which Ironies Too, is but one of many thousands!

Then last evening on the BBC South West regional news programme Spotlight, aired at 6:30 PM, came one small sign all is not in vain. It was there reported that Labour Peer Lord Berkely is to move a private members bill to make the Duchy of Cornwall more accountable! A report on this action from Scilly Today,  is here.

Could this move possibly be as a result of this posting to IB Times of 12th March, linked here. It appears that as this occurred at the height of the scare and uncertainty about bloggers on the UK facing unlimited punitive damages under the Royal Charter, I did not as usual repeat that post on this blog as normal, so here it is now:

Queen's Return to Health is Ideal Time to Consider Mechanics of Handover to Heir to Throne [BLOG]

Anomalies surrounding the royal succession need to be ironed out now

By Martin Cole: Subscribe to Martin's
March 12, 2013 5:17 PM GMT
Long-serving: Queen Elizabeth II
Long-serving: Queen Elizabeth II
The Queen has returned to her normal duties.
I have no idea how many of my fellow countrymen and women felt  the same sense of small discomposure on first hearing the news of her admission to hospital. In my case such came as a surprise.
The front page of my Sunday newspaper, still a tradition for many on the nation's most leisurely morning of the week, featured a picture of Prince Charles, clad in lime green ski clothes at the Swiss resort of Klosters, with a caption reporting that he and the Duchess of Cornwall would be departing on a visit to Japan
Thus are our senior royals so insidiously intertwined into the very fabric and substance of our country's life.
Yet the Queen cannot endure forever, a moment of transition will inevitably arrive and great questions are brought to mind that appear to have not been yet addressed when the full possible implications of her recent hospital visit are carefully considered.
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Should we allow present arrangements to continue and remain in effect up to the moment succession occurs, or might we not be better to already correct existing anomalies in a calm, equitable and unemotional manner, while we still have the benefit of the Queen's experience and expertise to smooth what is certain in these straitened economic times to be a somewhat bruising and painful experience?
High up on any list of anomalous arrangements completely unacceptable in a 21st-century constitutional monarchy and supposed democracy are the financial privileges granted to the heir to the throne. These revolve around the provisions for the Prince of Wales and the financial arrangements for the Duchy of Cornwall 
I would doubt there will be many in Britain today who could be found to argue that the present privileges and special financial arrangements enjoyed by Prince Charles should be transferred lock, stock and barrel to Prince William upon the death of the Queen - yet such seems to be the present effect of the existing provisions, even after passage of the legislation regarding succession now before parliament.
Other graver issues than the financing of the royal family are now at issue, however, due to the clear existential crisis faced by the EU to which we have incredibly attempted to abnegate a portion of our sovereignty by ministerial abuse of the puzzling powers of the royal prerogative. Background to some of these problems may be obtained by typing "Royal+Prerogative" in the search box of my blog Ironies Too  or for those with time and a strong desire to be perhaps sickened by the real mess in which our constitution now stands read the evidence from Hansard of the present foreign secretary provided to parliament together with the great constitutionalist Tony Benn.
A pdf file on the deliberations of the House of Commons public administration select committee on the subject from 2002-2003 is linked here.
The death of a monarch, particularly one as long serving and dedicated as Queen Elizabeth II, is bound to prove a traumatic event in the life of any nation, never mind one locked into a non-democratic schizophrenic power bloc of supposed trading nations fearful for their own economic survival.
Britain would perhaps be best to use this precious period of domestic constitutional calm provided by the restored good health of our constitutional monarch to prepare better structures and procedures for the handover to her heir.

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