… but we could.
Until recently I thought as so many still do, that the EU had taken over. At the Third Reading of the 1993 Maastricht Bill, that great if sometimes a little crazy Parliamentarian Tony Benn said it was “my last speech in a free Parliament.”
Not, it turns out, quite, thanks to our judiciary.
It began with a pound of bananas. Or rather, 454 grammes.
In February 2000, trading standards officers visited the Sunderland market stall of greengrocer Steve Thorburn and warned him against using pounds and ounces. After another visit in which they erased the authorisation stamps on his weighing machines, they finally raided him on 4 July 2000, seized his scales and successfully prosecuted him in the Magistrate’s Court in March 2001.
For what?
The Weights and Measures Act of 1985 had entitled traders to continue using Imperial as well as metric units; but the Act was amended in 1994 in accordance with various EU directives, outlawing the use of Imperial measures after the end of 1999.
Now, the EU only had the power to issue such orders because we had joined the EEC under the 1972 European Communities Act. A key point is that ECA 1972 included provisions of the type known here as ‘Henry VIII clauses’ that allow Ministers to pass secondary legislation on matters arising – ‘statutory instruments.’ Hence the basket of Weights and Measures Act 1985 amendments laid before Parliament on 19 July 1994 by the then Minister for Trade and Industry, Lord Strathclyde – see Column 182 in Hansard here.
Statutory instruments represent a partial devolution of power from the Legislature to the Executive, obviating the need to pass new primary legislation and so escaping bothersome Parliamentary scrutiny. This is an issue that goes far beyond the meddlesome nuisances of the EU.
Thorburn’s defence was that of ‘implied repeal’: since the 1985 W&M Act came later, surely it overrode ECA 1972? The magistrate correctly observed that EU law had primacy so long as we were still in the Community, and found against him.
Thorburn and other victims of Germaniacally zealous officialdom appealed to the High Court in 2002. Giving judgment against the ‘Metric Martyrs’, constitutional expert Lord Justice Laws explained that it was not a case of EU law versus British law, since ECA 1972 had imported the former into the latter.
So why could the 1985 law not ‘implicitly repeal’ the one from 1972?
The answer was that ECA 1972 is a ‘constitutional statute’ – a special kind that stands above the common run of laws. But – and here is the key to our prison – it arises from and remains in British law, and can be repealed by us.
Laws LJ went on to say (para 58 here):
‘There is nothing in the ECA which allows the Court of Justice, or any other institutions of the EU, to touch or qualify the conditions of Parliament’s legislative supremacy in the United Kingdom. Not because the legislature chose not to allow it; because by our law it could not allow it. That being so, the legislative and judicial institutions of the EU cannot intrude upon those conditions. The British Parliament has not the authority to authorise any such thing. Being sovereign, it cannot abandon its sovereignty.’
And so, on 25 June 2018, the EU Withdrawal Act was passed.
I am sure that His Lordship is too modest to wish it, but surely he is a strong candidate for a permanent statue on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. As is a humble, freedom-loving greengrocer who died tragically young, mistakenly believing he had been defeated.
This is only the beginning. ‘We need to talk about Parliament’ – the use of statutory instruments, of Orders in Council (such a useful tool for the Constitutional vandal Blair), the general ‘bullying’ as Angela Eagle called it last week, of Parliament by the Executive.
Worse, Bruce Newsome's TCW article today shows the outrages that the latter, or at least the Prime Minister personally, is now prepared to attempt.
How tragic, that she seems willing to assist the relentless drive of the EU to make itself master of all Europe, and to snuff out our near-thousand-year-old flame of liberty before its captive nations try to light their own candles from it.
She has gone from laughing-stock to weeping-stock. She, and they, will, must, fail.
Monday, March 25, 2019
Friday, March 22, 2019
New post on "The Conservative Woman"
... in which I discuss Bercow's Monday statement and the points of order arising.
Here:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/point-of-disorder-mr-speaker/
Here:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/point-of-disorder-mr-speaker/
FRIDAY MUSIC: Fandango, by JD
The Fandango is a lively couples dance from Spain, usually in triple metre, traditionally accompanied by guitars, castanets, or hand-clapping ("palmas" in Spanish). Fandango can both be sung and danced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fandango
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fandango
Thursday, March 21, 2019
I Promise To Pay The Bearer - Nothing, by JD
Reading this in the Daily Mail the other day reminded me that I had seen people waving their cards at the tills and then walking away without collecting any receipt or verification. How do they know at the end of the day what they have spent and where? Do they all have such wonderful photographic memories? Very often the purchase is for a minimal amount which baffles me even more.
But the use of credit cards and debit cards is annoyingly widespread. I say annoying because the users of cards are the ones who hold up the queue while they fumble in purse or wallet trying to find the card. Then they take an age to put their pin number into the reader and then take their time replacing said card in purse or wallet.
(It doesn't really annoy me, it just amuses me and I have all the time in the world.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6814055/One-three-card-payments-Britain-day-contactless.html
But in among the comments was this: "A misleading article. Whilst payment volume is higher by card, transaction volume is still note and coin ahead of card, including contactless."
So what exactly is the percentage of cashless transactions in the 'market place' and what is the percentage of cash purchases?
An illustrative tale:
I was watching the racing from Cheltenham last Friday (Gold Cup day) and enjoying it as usual of course. The coverage includes news from the 'betting ring' at regular intervals. There is one reporter standing watching the bookmakers and telling us about the changing odds. Before one of the races he was standing with £10,000 in cash in his hand and saying it was from a punter who was waging it on a particular horse, he then threw the money into the bookmaker's satchel while shouting at the camera. He did the same again before the Gold Cup. He counted out five bundles of £1000 each and said 'this is for a friend of mine' and he handed the money to the bookie and received a betting slip in return. (Both horses lost, by the way!)
So I thought to myself: how is that going to work in our new exciting and wonderful cashless society? And if 'cashless' betting ever arrives, what happens if you have a winner and you go to collect your winnings? "Give me your bank details please and we will transfer your winnings electronically." Yes.....er, no I don't think so.
I can't imagine that the bookies will welcome such a thing. More to the point, owners and professional gamblers are all happier to deal in cash and some owners are very rich men indeed and are not without influence in this country.
And then I thought of other instances where cash is the best choice; car boot sales or craft fairs or 'flea' markets and other second hand markets.
My father always had a pocket full of cash and so did I in the days we were building houses. Most traders did prefer cash because it was and is quicker and easier than anything else if you need to buy materials and other odds and ends during the working day. In fact up to the early seventies there were still things like wage packets and people were paid with real cash money! (Pound notes are not 'real' money; they are promissory notes. It is written on every bank note - 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of £xyz')
I still pay for everything with cash as far as possible. In fact I have forgotten the pin number for my credit card; if I use it at all it is for buying on line. Last time I used it outside was to buy a second hand car - half cash and half card! I suppose I would get arrested if I tried to do that now :)
Will we all be forced into this plastic world or will enough people resist? And is it as widespread as the papers are telling us because I have seen contradictory articles saying that there is still £x billion in notes in circulation.
As my grandfather used to say when he looked at the state of the world "I'm glad I'm on the way out!" and then start laughing at the absurdity of life. I am pleased to say I have inherited his sense of humour!
_____________________________________________
Sackerson says:
The Bank of England responded to a Freedom Of Information request several years ago, saying:
"The link with gold was finally broken in 1931 and since that time there has been no other asset into which holders have the right to convert Bank of England notes. They can only be exchanged for other Bank of England notes. Nowadays public faith in the pound is maintained in a different way - through the Bank's operation of monetary policy, the object of which, by statute, is price stability."
Faith and trust are in short supply these days; and "price stability" doesn't mean what it used to. The BoE says:
"Monetary policy affects how much prices are rising – called the rate of inflation. We set monetary policy to achieve the Government’s target of keeping inflation at 2%.
"Low and stable inflation is good for the UK’s economy and it is our main monetary policy aim."
To keep pace with target inflation (and how is that measured? RPI? CPI? Something else?) you need your bank account to give you 2.5% per annum pre-basic rate tax - on all your savings, not up to some wretchedly low limit.
Money used to be a store of value. For centuries, a loaf of bread was a penny. And as I said a few years ago:
"The Bank of England's website has a page that lets you calculate cumulative inflation for any period from 1750 onwards. According to them, a basket of goods and services costing £1 in 1750 would have cost (the equivalent of) £1.80 in 1900 - an average annual inflation rate of 0.3%. That period covers the tremendous increase in productivity introduced by the Industrial Revolution and further late-nineteenth-century scientific and technological developments, so inflation is not needed for business and prosperity."
Then there's the danger of strangers electronically hacking into one's bank account; and the wholesale spying by retailers and potentially the Government, on all our transactions.
But if you want something worse to worry about, there's the EU's Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD). Under this, if a bank is in crisis, it can cut its debt to creditors and/or exchange the debt for a share in the ownership of the bank ("Congratulations! You are now part owner of a dodgy business!")
So what, silly creditors, who'd lend money to a bank, you might think. What many people still don't realise is that their bank deposits are no such thing - money left with a bank is, legally, an investment. And, dear "depositor", you are not first in the queue to be paid when a bank defaults.
If more people understood the implications, they would be a little less likely to leave their life savings in those reassuringly solid marble-and-plate-glass fortresses. This is causing concern in high finance circles, too.
Except holding cash - paper receipts for Nothing At All - is hardly an attractive alternative.
Can you imagine that at a time like this, Canada's comical boy PM sold off the rest of the country's gold? Keynes called gold a "barbarous relic", but it has an intrinsic value - they used to say that "an ounce of gold buys a handmade suit" and that's still pretty much true. Compare that with a rotting paper relic.
Clap hands for Tinkerbell, everyone. Only the power of faith keeps us aloft.
But the use of credit cards and debit cards is annoyingly widespread. I say annoying because the users of cards are the ones who hold up the queue while they fumble in purse or wallet trying to find the card. Then they take an age to put their pin number into the reader and then take their time replacing said card in purse or wallet.
(It doesn't really annoy me, it just amuses me and I have all the time in the world.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6814055/One-three-card-payments-Britain-day-contactless.html
But in among the comments was this: "A misleading article. Whilst payment volume is higher by card, transaction volume is still note and coin ahead of card, including contactless."
So what exactly is the percentage of cashless transactions in the 'market place' and what is the percentage of cash purchases?
An illustrative tale:
I was watching the racing from Cheltenham last Friday (Gold Cup day) and enjoying it as usual of course. The coverage includes news from the 'betting ring' at regular intervals. There is one reporter standing watching the bookmakers and telling us about the changing odds. Before one of the races he was standing with £10,000 in cash in his hand and saying it was from a punter who was waging it on a particular horse, he then threw the money into the bookmaker's satchel while shouting at the camera. He did the same again before the Gold Cup. He counted out five bundles of £1000 each and said 'this is for a friend of mine' and he handed the money to the bookie and received a betting slip in return. (Both horses lost, by the way!)
So I thought to myself: how is that going to work in our new exciting and wonderful cashless society? And if 'cashless' betting ever arrives, what happens if you have a winner and you go to collect your winnings? "Give me your bank details please and we will transfer your winnings electronically." Yes.....er, no I don't think so.
I can't imagine that the bookies will welcome such a thing. More to the point, owners and professional gamblers are all happier to deal in cash and some owners are very rich men indeed and are not without influence in this country.
And then I thought of other instances where cash is the best choice; car boot sales or craft fairs or 'flea' markets and other second hand markets.
My father always had a pocket full of cash and so did I in the days we were building houses. Most traders did prefer cash because it was and is quicker and easier than anything else if you need to buy materials and other odds and ends during the working day. In fact up to the early seventies there were still things like wage packets and people were paid with real cash money! (Pound notes are not 'real' money; they are promissory notes. It is written on every bank note - 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of £xyz')
I still pay for everything with cash as far as possible. In fact I have forgotten the pin number for my credit card; if I use it at all it is for buying on line. Last time I used it outside was to buy a second hand car - half cash and half card! I suppose I would get arrested if I tried to do that now :)
Will we all be forced into this plastic world or will enough people resist? And is it as widespread as the papers are telling us because I have seen contradictory articles saying that there is still £x billion in notes in circulation.
As my grandfather used to say when he looked at the state of the world "I'm glad I'm on the way out!" and then start laughing at the absurdity of life. I am pleased to say I have inherited his sense of humour!
_____________________________________________
Sackerson says:
The Bank of England responded to a Freedom Of Information request several years ago, saying:
"The link with gold was finally broken in 1931 and since that time there has been no other asset into which holders have the right to convert Bank of England notes. They can only be exchanged for other Bank of England notes. Nowadays public faith in the pound is maintained in a different way - through the Bank's operation of monetary policy, the object of which, by statute, is price stability."
Faith and trust are in short supply these days; and "price stability" doesn't mean what it used to. The BoE says:
"Monetary policy affects how much prices are rising – called the rate of inflation. We set monetary policy to achieve the Government’s target of keeping inflation at 2%.
"Low and stable inflation is good for the UK’s economy and it is our main monetary policy aim."
To keep pace with target inflation (and how is that measured? RPI? CPI? Something else?) you need your bank account to give you 2.5% per annum pre-basic rate tax - on all your savings, not up to some wretchedly low limit.
Money used to be a store of value. For centuries, a loaf of bread was a penny. And as I said a few years ago:
"The Bank of England's website has a page that lets you calculate cumulative inflation for any period from 1750 onwards. According to them, a basket of goods and services costing £1 in 1750 would have cost (the equivalent of) £1.80 in 1900 - an average annual inflation rate of 0.3%. That period covers the tremendous increase in productivity introduced by the Industrial Revolution and further late-nineteenth-century scientific and technological developments, so inflation is not needed for business and prosperity."
Then there's the danger of strangers electronically hacking into one's bank account; and the wholesale spying by retailers and potentially the Government, on all our transactions.
But if you want something worse to worry about, there's the EU's Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD). Under this, if a bank is in crisis, it can cut its debt to creditors and/or exchange the debt for a share in the ownership of the bank ("Congratulations! You are now part owner of a dodgy business!")
So what, silly creditors, who'd lend money to a bank, you might think. What many people still don't realise is that their bank deposits are no such thing - money left with a bank is, legally, an investment. And, dear "depositor", you are not first in the queue to be paid when a bank defaults.
If more people understood the implications, they would be a little less likely to leave their life savings in those reassuringly solid marble-and-plate-glass fortresses. This is causing concern in high finance circles, too.
Except holding cash - paper receipts for Nothing At All - is hardly an attractive alternative.
Can you imagine that at a time like this, Canada's comical boy PM sold off the rest of the country's gold? Keynes called gold a "barbarous relic", but it has an intrinsic value - they used to say that "an ounce of gold buys a handmade suit" and that's still pretty much true. Compare that with a rotting paper relic.
Clap hands for Tinkerbell, everyone. Only the power of faith keeps us aloft.
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
The Times They Are A-Changing, by Wiggiaatlarge
I had to make a journey down to London from Norwich the other day to see my sister who is not at all well. Having been twice diagnosed with pleurisy by her GP she was taken into hospital just after Christmas in excruciating pain to be told she has bone cancer and ten fractures to ribs and spine and as well as being on a chemo program she is encased in a brace that resemble Robocop.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I rang the door bell but she is amazingly upbeat and is of the ‘have to get on with it’ brigade which certainly helps at times like this.
She has always been the family archivist. If you want a photo, essay, whatever, she will have it tucked away in the dozens of boxes full of photos and much much more. With her husband being a not well man with numerous serious ailments the place resembled a cross between a care home and a museum. So much stuff is kept there, it borders on hoarding.
She started to show me old photo albums and there were dozens of myself as a child that I have never seen, ‘Oh you will have to look at this then’ and out would come another full of family photos going back to before WWI.
My sister has also just taken in the contents of an aunt who just died, the last of the generation of my parents who was 96. A brilliant student at St Martins School of Art before the war, she went on to be a fashion editor for a large magazine group attending the Paris fashion shows and others; always immaculate, as she was to the end when going into hospital more worried about her hair than the illness - habits die hard.
There were folios and boxes of her drawings, not just of fashion, also going back to her student days. Much is being collated and given to St Martins for their archives; some individual pieces were stunning.
Anyway, among all this nostalgia was a series of wartime magazines called Parents, sixpence monthly. I took one copy as it contained a picture of me inside (no, I am not going to show on here): I had been entered for the Bonniest Babies competition. Amazingly it had a £50 prize for the winner, a lot of money in 1944 ! And sadly I did not win, but my mum still loved me ?
Inside this small austere magazine are the articles and adverts of the time and as always when confronted by something like this the usual, “I remember” prefixes dozens of items displayed within plus much within the articles.
The adverts naturally are child associated…..
Some of the articles today would be laughed at - or would they? So much then was basic common sense, something sadly lacking in many areas of today's world, from how to make slippers for your child from scraps from your rag bag (who has one of those these days?) to health tips on how to handle baby’s first tooth, and the problem of “dirty heads” - we all met with nitty Nora at school with her metal comb in the bowl of disinfectant ! Also we all lined up for a dessert spoon of malt from a very big tin, always a wonderful antidote to the cod liver oil we also lined up for. And how to cope with your child and his listening to the radio and its educational value ?
And Ministry of Food adverts with tips on how to make nourishing healthy meals out of very little and what we can do with cheese - the MoF recommends Cheese Moulds using grated cheese, unsweetened custard breadcrumbs, a teaspoon of made custard, a pinch of salt and pepper, all blended and mixed, poured into a mould and set: turn it out like a blancmange and serve with green salad and tomato and cold potato salad, Does anyone remember that ?
And what appears to be a curious ad for saving paper. Obviously it was a war time request, but the ad does not say what the paper was saved for. It finishes with in bold: “but it is so important, so vital, so necessary to continue to save paper all the time.” Wartime naturally had a very different set of values, so much today is taken for granted; war condensed requirements down to to the basic, the vital. It is hard to imagine going back to all that. Though the utterances of certain scaremongering idiots would have us believe Brexit will achieve the same; they have no idea.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I rang the door bell but she is amazingly upbeat and is of the ‘have to get on with it’ brigade which certainly helps at times like this.
She has always been the family archivist. If you want a photo, essay, whatever, she will have it tucked away in the dozens of boxes full of photos and much much more. With her husband being a not well man with numerous serious ailments the place resembled a cross between a care home and a museum. So much stuff is kept there, it borders on hoarding.
She started to show me old photo albums and there were dozens of myself as a child that I have never seen, ‘Oh you will have to look at this then’ and out would come another full of family photos going back to before WWI.
My sister has also just taken in the contents of an aunt who just died, the last of the generation of my parents who was 96. A brilliant student at St Martins School of Art before the war, she went on to be a fashion editor for a large magazine group attending the Paris fashion shows and others; always immaculate, as she was to the end when going into hospital more worried about her hair than the illness - habits die hard.
There were folios and boxes of her drawings, not just of fashion, also going back to her student days. Much is being collated and given to St Martins for their archives; some individual pieces were stunning.
Anyway, among all this nostalgia was a series of wartime magazines called Parents, sixpence monthly. I took one copy as it contained a picture of me inside (no, I am not going to show on here): I had been entered for the Bonniest Babies competition. Amazingly it had a £50 prize for the winner, a lot of money in 1944 ! And sadly I did not win, but my mum still loved me ?
Inside this small austere magazine are the articles and adverts of the time and as always when confronted by something like this the usual, “I remember” prefixes dozens of items displayed within plus much within the articles.
The adverts naturally are child associated…..
Some of the articles today would be laughed at - or would they? So much then was basic common sense, something sadly lacking in many areas of today's world, from how to make slippers for your child from scraps from your rag bag (who has one of those these days?) to health tips on how to handle baby’s first tooth, and the problem of “dirty heads” - we all met with nitty Nora at school with her metal comb in the bowl of disinfectant ! Also we all lined up for a dessert spoon of malt from a very big tin, always a wonderful antidote to the cod liver oil we also lined up for. And how to cope with your child and his listening to the radio and its educational value ?
And Ministry of Food adverts with tips on how to make nourishing healthy meals out of very little and what we can do with cheese - the MoF recommends Cheese Moulds using grated cheese, unsweetened custard breadcrumbs, a teaspoon of made custard, a pinch of salt and pepper, all blended and mixed, poured into a mould and set: turn it out like a blancmange and serve with green salad and tomato and cold potato salad, Does anyone remember that ?
And what appears to be a curious ad for saving paper. Obviously it was a war time request, but the ad does not say what the paper was saved for. It finishes with in bold: “but it is so important, so vital, so necessary to continue to save paper all the time.” Wartime naturally had a very different set of values, so much today is taken for granted; war condensed requirements down to to the basic, the vital. It is hard to imagine going back to all that. Though the utterances of certain scaremongering idiots would have us believe Brexit will achieve the same; they have no idea.
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