It’s Free, by Wiggia

A short everyday story: last year after Christmas the long-serving Christmas tree had passed into the distinctly tatty phase and bits were dropping off. Time for it go to that place in the sky that is occupied by retired Christmas trees. The wife says we will have to get another one for next year and I said with luck we will not be here.

Of course, we are still here. The local independent garden centre has a loyalty card - who hasn't? - and I mainly use it when I buy compost, they do a good range and you get a further discount and I use a lot of the stuff here in my far too large garden and dozens of giant pots accumulated over time.

The GC sent a mail out saying they were holding a special open evening for card holders, today 4 till 8, and as with all garden centres they are doing a special meal at a very good price, plus you get a free mince pie when you go in ! The evening has 25% off all Christmas decs so the wife cottons on and a date in the diary is marked.



Not having been to this bun fight I said we go at four, get what we want and get out, mission accomplished. They do by the way have a excellent section for Christmas decs etc, as good as I have seen anywhere, so off we go.

As we arrive there are cars blocking the entrance and the road trying to get in plus the usual numpty who having got just inside the gate is looking for an empty space there and then and to hell with the traffic tailing down the road. I nearly turned round and went home, but the wife insists we go in so we do; there is not a parking space anywhere at four ! But they have a retail village round the back with its own car park so I make for that and lo and behold we are in luck: it still had a few spaces empty.

Back into the garden centre, where at the entrance to the main building is this enormous queue. Again I want to go home but as we have come this far in we go, me under duress. The queue is on one side and we went straight past and in. Once inside the reason for the queue was obvious: it was for the free mince pie. There were two people giving out the mince pies on the showing of your loyalty card and there were two platters piled to the sky with the crusty objects. Everywhere you went people were eating bloody mince pies, it is amazing what the offer of something free, even as mundane as a mince pie, does to the general public psyche. Mayhem!

The place was packed and before the wife got sidetracked inspecting gnomes and furry animals for the tree. I suggested we get the tree and the lights plus any "essentials " and get out. Reluctantly she agreed as she was already edging down the colour co-ordinated aisles of Christmas decs.

You will need a trolley for the tree I was told, but there is no way you can manoeuvre a trolley through this madness, so I got an assistant, got the tree and took it to the exit and left it there till we returned with the "extras". A basket was needed and the lights went in and a garland she wanted.
"Can we go now as the tills have not started to get busy?" "While I am here," she said, "we might as well have a look for a few baubles for the tree as I want to replace some old ones." Old ones are replaced on a yearly basis so they are not really old, but she gets great pleasure from the decorating and I succumb.

By now every spare inch of space is taken up by seemingly endless hordes of people eating mince pies, huge waves of small and excited children get under your feet and they drop mince pies or part of them everywhere; older people meet old friends and block the aisles as they chat without the slightest suspicion that the aisles are blocked by their complete disregard of what is going on round them. And still they come. Without seeing it creep up behind me I am nearly rammed by a mobility scooter - how the hell did he get this far? The basket on the front is empty but I detect traces of mince pie down his front. You would think that they would all be laden with Christmas decs, but no, today garden centres are for coffee buns and meals, plus of course mince pies, so they just amble about all getting in each other's way.

I put my soft foot down and suggest she has got what was "essential" and I suggest we leave before it gets really busy. Reluctantly she agrees and I make a short cut through the plant area thus avoiding the pie-eating throng. We reach the tills, I pick up my awaiting tree and glory be there is a till that is empty. "That was lucky," I say and the assistant says "It is, in another half hour as last year the queues are into the main retail area." "We could have stayed a bit longer," says the wife; one look was my answer.

We paid, saving over £55 with my accumulated card points plus the 25%.  I go and get the car and bring it back to load up. We exit easily and pass the entrance that is now blocking the road for a hundred yards. "Thank Christ for that," I say. "But we could have stayed a bit longer." I did not reply and drove home rather like the Sixt adverts, a bit smug, but also rather sad: for in my haste I did not get my mince pie as was my right - after all, they were free.

Weekend Wonders: Metamorphosis

After Brexit: civil rights

A major theme in the almost haphazard evolution of the British Constitution is the restraint of executive power. By contrast, the carefully designed constitution of the EU is about unification, at any cost. This is why the UK's entry into what is now the EU was a marriage doomed from the outset.

As North and Booker's book "The Great Deception" makes clear, the roots of the EU go back to the 1920s and the desire of visionaries like Jean Monnet to establish a supranational body that would once and for all end the deadly rivalry of France and Germany. Who could oppose such an aim?

But which aim? There were not one, but two in the preceding paragraph.

As so often in life, aim is translated into method, and the method becomes the new - often fatally modified - aim. If Peace requires a Unifying Power, anything that is a threat to Unity or to Power must be suppressed.

Also, since the functions of the new super-government are reified in institutions, struggling for control of the latter - and for the status and perquisites gained by servicing them - becomes an end in itself, even for those who still sincerely believe in the ultimate goal (if they can remember what it was.) As with many of our own British party political organisations and charities, Idealism and Ambition are near-inseparable stablemates.

Almost inevitably then, the EU has become a well-upholstered gentlemen's fight club for politicians and bureaucrats, with a faux-democratic structure that allows a voice but almost no power to the common citizenry, and a dangerously ill-engineered economic machine grinding down its peripheral member States; all costs deemed worth paying for a Millennium that is forever just around the corner.

The bloody history of Britain has taught us to adopt a more skeptical and pragmatic attitude. "Rulers," said Coleridge, nine years into the French Revolution, "are much the same in all ages & under all forms of government: they are as bad as they dare to be."(1)

If only we had more power, cry the leaders; if only you knew how to use it better, cry the people.

For look what powers the leaders give themselves, and how they use them:

22 August 1485: Henry Tudor defeats King Richard III on the field of Bosworth, and makes himself King Henry VII - with effect from the day before! The backdating allows him to prosecute for treason anybody who fought on Richard's side. It is ten years before Henry feels sufficiently secure on his throne to permit this bloodthirsty abuse of power to be ruled out by the Treason Act of 1495 (still in force today.)(2)

The penalties for treason used to be mandatory, gruesome and irreversible, so trial was carefully fenced round with procedure. This was administratively inconvenient in May 1940 when one wanted to kill not only traitors but German spies and saboteurs, who did not owe allegiance to the Crown. So a new offence of "treachery" was invented. The Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, explained: "... the Treason Acts might not be applicable to persons who are not normally resident within the King's jurisdiction; and moreover the Treason Acts are antiquated, excessively cumbrous and invested with a dignity and ceremonial that seems to us wholly inappropriate to the sort of case with which we are dealing here."(3)

The new 1940 Treachery Act was rushed through Parliament in a fortnight.

But when it feels the necessity, the Executive in Britain can move a lot faster than that. On 24 August 1939 Parliament was recalled and on the same day passed previously-drafted emergency powers. A week later, Defence Regulation 18B was passed, suspending habeas corpus and allowing for the internment of suspected Nazi sympathisers.

Technically, Parliament's prior approval was not even essential: "It was originally intended that Code B would be imposed by an Order in Council, with retrospective indemnity being granted by an Act of Parliament should anyone dispute the actions of the authorities."(4) There it is again, the ability of the Executive to travel backwards in time to empower and protect itself.

Enter an inconvenient little man: Robert Liversidge(5). Born Jacob Perlsweig, the son of a Russian-Jewish rabbi émigré, he had made money in Canada, returned to England and changed his name. He joined the RAF in WWII but was rounded up with other suspects - an informer reporting him to MI5 as one of a group of "notorious Jew swindlers" - and interned on 26 April 1940.

But he didn't leave it there. He sued for false imprisonment and when reference was made to Code B applied to know the grounds for the order made in his case. The Crown refused to disclose and the case ended up with the Law Lords, who gave their final ruling - against him - in November 1941. Notwithstanding, Liversidge was released on this day, 9 November, 77 years ago.

Although Liversidge lost his case - and for the rest of his long life greatly resented the treatment he had received - it is memorable for the dissenting speech of one of the judges. As required by the Code, the Home Secretary claimed to have "reasonable cause to believe Jack Perlzweig alias Robert Liversidge to be a person of hostile associations." The other judges were happy to take the Home Secretary's assurance that he had such cause; Lord Atkin said that having thereby abdicated their responsibility to investigate and control the executive, they were being "more executive-minded than the executive." He went further, saying that in order to please the executive they were content to twist language out of shape:

"I know of only one authority which might justify the suggested method of construction. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be the master, that's all." After all this long discussion the question is whether the words "If a man has" can mean "If a man thinks he has". I have an opinion that they cannot and the case should be decided accordingly."

Reviewing A.W.B. Simpson's "In the Highest Degree Odious: Detention Without Trial in Wartime Britain", Richard Posner of the University of Chicago Law School was inclined to take a sanguine view, comparing Britain's actions under conditions of extreme national peril somewhat favourably with the American approach to internment.(7)

Nevertheless, the watchdogs must be prepared to bark, for the same overweening tendency of the executive is alive today. Less than 10 years ago, a British Government Minister, Harriet Harman, was proposing to backdate law in order to deprive a bank executive, Fred Goodwin, of his pension, citing the "court of public opinion."(8) Whatever one may think of the man in this case, the blithe willingness to leap over legal defences is horrifying. As Robert Bolt's Sir Thomas More says, "This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast [...]  and if you cut them down [...] d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"(9)

The EU is set up to allow centrally-issued policies and directives, but its impulse to dictatorship is not unique. And see how quickly civil liberties can be overridden by our Privy Council.

When - if - we escape the EU's rule, the work of establishing and maintaining freedom and justice in this country will scarcely have begun.
_______________________________________

(1) http://inamidst.com/coleridge/letters/letter238
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason_Act_1495
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treachery_Act_1940
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Regulation_18B
(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liversidge
(6) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
(7) https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.co.uk/&httpsredir=1&article=4993&context=journal_articles
(8) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7917361.stm
(9) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Bolt

FRIDAY MUSIC: Rachel Flowers, by JD

This is Rachel Flowers who is not just a musical prodigy, she is a miracle and you can read why here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Flowers

There are a lot of videos available but those featuring her playing guitar or flute are not of the best quality so what I have included are piano/organ/synthesiser only.

Just a note on the Steve Reich piece which may not be to everyone's taste. It is usually performed by two pianists and is rarely done by one individual playing two pianos because it is so difficult but she does it here with great aplomb!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Phase

And a further note about the last video. A bit of hyperbole in the title there, she doesn't really bend the laws of physics but it is a stunning impromptu performance of Rachmaninoff.

What is Jeremy Hunt doing with the White Helmets?

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "Few people have to make the kind of moral choices that faced White Helmet Raed al-Saleh, who I was privileged to meet today. The White Helmets risked life and limb to save over 115,000 lives during the Syrian conflict, despite attacks at the hands of the Syrian regime and the Russian military. The UK is proud to stand behind them."

- http://www.voltairenet.org/article203762.html

The Guardian (allegedly one of the media conduits for Intelligence propaganda - https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/04/where-they-tell-you-not-to-look/ ) has pooh-poohed the idea that the White Helmets are partisan, supporting IS terrorists:

"The Syrian volunteer rescue workers known as the White Helmets have become the target of an extraordinary disinformation campaign that positions them as an al-Qaida-linked terrorist organisation.

"The Guardian has uncovered how this counter-narrative is propagated online by a network of anti-imperialist activists, conspiracy theorists and trolls with the support of the Russian government (which provides military support to the Syrian regime)."

- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/18/syria-white-helmets-conspiracy-theories

On the other hand, there is Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist who was on the ground in Syria when many Western journalists were filing their reports from well out of area, and according to her there are reasons to be concerned at the decision to take White Helmets into Canada and the UK:

"I have already outlined this chronology of investigations, refuting corporate media claims that voices critical of the White Helmets stem from Russian influence. Yet, slavish supporters of the White Helmets, continue to demonize anyone posing critical and needed questions on this group, generally labelling such people as “Russian bots”, “influenced by Russia”, or some variation of that, in an attempt to insist only people under the influence of Russia have been critical of the White Helmets."

- https://www.rt.com/op-ed/435670-white-helmets-canada-syria/
- https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-the-mainstream-media-whitewashed-al-qaeda-and-the-white-helmets-in-syria/5624930

Does Hunt really know what he is doing?

Ever since Boris Johnson looked as though he was preparing to challenge Theresa May for the Premiership, Hunt has seemed to me to be backing onto the limelight. But in this case he could be playing with fire.

War and inflation

The Daily Mail is currently reproducing back issues from the First World War.

Here's something I suddenly noticed:


Not a fluke:

http://inflation.iamkate.com/

The same newspaper now costs 70p - equivalent to 168 old (pre-decimal) pennies.

That's not particularly freakish: using the site linked above, the general rise in inflation between 1914 and now means £1 then was worth £109 today.

War's effect on inflation:

1914 - 1918: 51% increase.
1939 - 1945: 51 % increase.

The "oil shock" of the 1970s was war by another name:
1974 - 1978: 94% increase.

But inflation is not inevitable.

In 1800, midway through the Napoleonic wars, prices surged 36.5% - but actually fell again over the next 15 years.

In fact, between 1800 and 1900, prices fell overall by 11%.

Money used to be a good store of value, when we concentrated on trade and industry, not war.

Why should ordinary people be allowed to vote?

"The one thing that has emerged from the comments on this blog, though, is that while there is plenty of enthusiasm for pointing out the Leavers' lack of knowledge, many Europhiles are quite unable adequately to describe the nature of the object of their affection."

- Dr Richard North: http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=87043

This is certainly my experience in debating with the amateur propagandists of the Remain faction, who often maintain that Leavers were unaware of (or misled about) the implications.

But the same is true of most issues. Whatever the system for informing the public, there will be bias and disinformation, many will misunderstand what they are told or look only at what confirms their prejudices, and many will not bother to engage at all.

Even for the slave-owning weekly parliament of ancient Athens, detailed decision-making was delegated: the arrangement was to appoint people to perform State tasks and then submit them to close scrutiny at the end of their term.

So what is democracy for? I suggest that it is not about the people being wise enough to run the complex affairs of government.

Instead, it is a corrective: when the electorate feel that matters are not being conducted in their best interest, they can force a change in the administration. The Welsh, the Northerners, the farmers, fishers, miners and other workers who voted for Leave may not have had degrees in political philosophy, but they knew where the shoe pinched them.

Democracy is a system for making the rulers take serious notice of the feelings of the ruled.