9 July: following the coup of 27 May 1960, a Turkish referendum approves a new constitution for the country; this replaces the one from 1924 (and will itself be superseded following another coup in 1980.) Members of the ousted government of 1960 (photo above, source) have been put on trial on the island of Yassiada, beginning 14 October 1960, with verdicts eventually pronounced in September 1961; three will be executed including the former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes; in June 2020 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey retrospectively declares the trials null and void.
9 July: Greece and the European Economic Community sign a treaty making Greece the first nation to become an associate member of the Common Market, later becoming a full member in 1981.
15 July: William A. Fitzgerald, alias Nathan Boya, is the fifth person to survive riding over Niagara Falls. 'Interviewed in 2012 for a National Geographic television special about Niagara Falls daredevils, Fitzgerald revealed his reason for his stunt after decades of silence: He had broken off his engagement to a woman that he felt he had wronged, and he performed the dangerous stunt as a form of penance. Niagara Falls had been their planned honeymoon destination.'
Fitzgerald later moved to Bangkok and wrote novels titled 'Up Against The Wall You Spic Bastard: I'm Going to Blow Your Goddamn Head Off' and 'Wanted by Mafia: Hyawatha Two-Feathers: Either Dead or Alive.'
One of my old friends once told me how an accident saved his life. He slipped in his driveway, and the subsequent CAT scan uncovered a growth on his kidney. That discovery gave him a number of extra years of life.
In a similar way, the pandemic has made issues with our country readily apparent, rather than causing them: access to health care, lack of sick leave, a weak safety net, and the imbalance in the economy.
Forty years ago, a person could work really hard at a union job, and support a family. I read this morning how some celebrity's first job was sweeping up in an Iowa factory, at $12 per hour. Today, that same job would probably earn about the same, even though the total inflation since that time has been something like 400%
Starting in about 1980, a large proportion of GDP has been the banking sector, now reaching 40% Realize that banking, while necessary, is essentially parasitic. Not coincidentally, 40% of the gains of the economy go to 1% of the population, most of whom are in banking and investment. If one looks at gains in the stock market, 92% go to the 10% of the richest.
We have created an unsustainable economy, and not in the way that conservatives would have us believe. In the past 250 years, the Scientific, Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions brought plenty to the wealthy nations, and that plenty has now been sequestered by a handful of largely non-productive individuals.
At some point, the average people will earn too little to keep the system running. If too few people have good health insurance, then the medical system will not do research or treatment, because there won't be enough money in the system. Likewise for energy, information, and all other industries.
If ever there was a sign not all is well in the land it is
the regular polls showing voting intentions. You would like to believe that the
last few years and more would shine a light on the incumbents of our HoC and
the mendacious chicanery that pervades the place and decide none of them - with a
few worthy individuals as exceptions - are worth the price of a lead pencil on
the day.
The recent by election at Amersham was a classic, a Tory
stronghold taken by the Lib Dems. Why would anyone believe the Lib Dems were
any different from the other main stream parties? They have all had their
moment in the sun and all failed us badly, but 'the other lot are worse' is the
excuse for voting for nonentities these days, both individuals and parties,
since Farage decanted from UKIP there
hasn’t been a viable alternative where you can place your X on polling day.
So we have poll after poll showing the Tories, I can’t call
them Conservatives because they aren’t, having a comfortable lead in voting
intentions despite failing to do much at all for the country since taking
power. The Covid period was just a convenient time to hide the fact that apart from
dealing with the virus, badly in many aspects and managing to put the country
into a debt situation at least equal to the last world war, they have achieved
nothing apart from frightening the life out of a large part of the population; bravo.
The problem for the public is those incumbent parties here
and elsewhere in the western world have it all sewn up. Breaking the mould is
extremely difficult: the party apparatus is very good at belittling any
upstarts by lying innuendo and smears, using all those recent words and phrases
such as the catch all 'racist.' With the press and big donor business on their
side and the institutions filled with left of centre ex-university graduates
with political PhDs and no real world experiences, it has become almost
impossible to unseat those who believe they rule by right, the so called
‘heritage’ parties - that title alone should be enough to warn off any intending
voter, the entitlement in that phrase is gross.
Why do populations still believe a single word any politician
from these so called heritage parties says? You would think that past failures
would make people hesitant in giving the same failures another chance when as
recent decades have shown nothing does change.
It is still in the people's hands to vote them all out if they
wished. When Tower Hamlets had its corrupt council scrapped, the indigenous
population in the area was still large enough to stop it happening but even
with previous evidence on what was going on they failed to vote them out and
the Muslim bloc voted them in again.
Apathy was the reason that happened not lack of numbers, the
same has been true up and down the country, people vote one way because they
always have, why, what has been gained from that lazy approach, nothing, other
than being taken for granted by the sitting MP who in many of these areas
doesn’t even have to campaign to retain his seat.
I still live in a constituency like that. The last election
showed the MP to be invisible; he gets fatter, does nothing of value and opens a
few enterprises; if you write to him an anodyne reply by his paid staff is what
you get. Having an MP like that is pointless, there must dozens the same all
over the country; at a guess you could cut out 50% of them and no one would
notice the difference. Belgium after all managed without a government at all for
eighteen months, others have had locked coalitions resulting in no
parliamentary work being done for long periods and it made no difference. Anyone who believes we need all these parasites needs their bumps felt.
Am I being too cruel? I think not. The vast majority put party
and themselves before the people of this country. Look how many said the
right things about getting over the line with Brexit and then reneged at the
last moment for party unity, leaving us with a poorer deal.
Yet time and again come voting day people applaud the ones
who have shafted them, people stand and say someone with no attributes at all
would make a good PM; why so deluded?
What has also become apparent is the usage of postal voting
to ensure the right results in certain areas. It was pooh-poohed at first as
being insignificant; not any more, yet the major parties refuse to do anything
about the misuse of postal voting. Why? Because they both have skin in the game.
The Batley and Spen by-election showed how much postal voting
can sway an election. This chart borrowed from elsewhere gives a graphic
example of how postal voting has increased particularly in areas like this. The
last two figures are worse than they look as the turnout at the by-election was
lower than in the general elections so the postal vote was an even higher
percentage than the last one, virtually double.
Postal voting should not be the default method to put your
cross on a piece of paper. It was never intended (or was it?) to be anything more
than a way of getting people who had genuine difficulties getting to a polling
booth a chance to vote. After all if you can’t be arsed once every four years
to drag your sorry backside to a polling station then you should forfeit your
right to vote.
Labour have painted themselves into a corner with postal
voting as it suits them so well in areas where people are told where to put
their cross and have the voting paper collected from them by community
persuaders.
For the Conservatives to object would open a can of worms
about corrupt spending tactics in many constituencies they have contested in
recent years; the farce of Thanet was still never resolved by a commission
known for talking but never acting.
So now we are stuck with postal voting that cannot be
verified and is abused by ever more of the same and nobody says a word.
It will of course all fall down when those same areas who are
allowed a ‘community’ candidate as a sop to the postal voting practice decide
to start up their own party when the demographic grows and that won't be long. In mainland Europe it has already started; small enough to ignore now, but in
time...
The western world has become indolent. Even when an
opportunity has arisen to change those in power for something truly different
the voters run back to the hen house at the last moment and then moan for four
more years. True, in many cases the full strength of the incumbents and a
compliant press has helped, but have people given up on free thinking? I
believe in the main they have; the ‘I will continue to wear masks forever’
brigade, and there are millions of them, have sadly shown that to be a fact.
They have become inured. Whatever is taken from them, whatever
the cost, they never question why. A neighbour who is a good friend and far from
not seeing what is going on is typical: when the crunch on any issue comes, I
get the ‘I don’t know what to believe ‘ reply; he really would not rather bother
with it all and there lies the problem.
There is an awful lot going on in the background at the
moment that is not public knowledge in any meaningful way. It is all damaging
and a threat to our prosperity or what is left of it. If the voting public
doesn’t wake up soon we are done for, I see no light on the horizon at this
point.
As it stands George Carlin summed up the state of things
well: without something meaningful to vote for you may as well stay at home.
"Alexander" is a young man in middle America with a broad view of the current craziness...
Trump is the figurehead of a doomsday cult.
That might be a bold assertion to some. An slanderous accusation even. Yet every day that passes I cannot think of any other way to describe his following.
I have been watching his political career since he entered the Republican primary. I, like many, thought he had little chance of becoming the Republican candidate, let alone President. Like so many others, I sat there slack-jawed on election night as he was declared President-elect.
Foolish, in retrospect. I should have considered that my distaste for the Democratic party in general and Hilary Clinton in particular was not unique to me.
At the time though I turned to certain internet commentators with my questions. Their claims were myriad and ever-changing: his dress style, his charisma, his refusal to engage in debate, 5D-thinking that could outwit his opponent at every turn. Meanwhile pundits and preachers farther to the right than my sources were providing an altogether different explanation:
The will of God.
That was nothing new, of course. I remember President Bush having similar religious cheerleading. So I didn't pay much attention to the religious aspect of Trump's political bloc.
Over the next 3 years I would drift away from the conservative sources I once trusted to inform me, a story for another time. However, as I shifted to more left-leaning commentators I noticed something...odd, about Trump's core supporters.
So much of their public support of Trump came with openly religious overtones.
Baptist preachers were singing his praises in the middle of sermons. Televangelists with congregations numbering in the hundreds of thousands were leading their followers in prayer to strengthen his reign.
It was from these churches that the prophecy flowed like water.
Trump would make abortion a crime. Trump would overturn gay marriage. Trump would put mandatory prayer back in schools. Trump would take the liberal media off the air. If a right-wing Christian had a political wet dream there was a preacher on their shoulder to promise them that Trump was days away from providing it.
The result was a swirling torrent of religious fervor backing Trump's presidency, one that his underlings quickly capitalized on. Over the course of his four years in office Trump leaned more and more on his religious following, culminating in that deeply ironic photo shoot in front of a church, after protesters had been chased off its lawn with tear gas.
However, it is not for this reason that I claim Trump is the figurehead of a cult.
That fault lies with Qanon.
I don't have time to go over Qanon in all its horrifying degenerate splendor here, I think that's best saved for its own post, but here is what's important for this article.
Qanon is an online movement named after the username Q. Q claims to be a government employee with 'Q clearance', a top secret government clearance associated with the U.S. Department of Energy. Q also claims that this clearance gives him access to the highest level of government secrets, as well as the secrets of a underground shadow government called the Deep State.
The movement is primarily driven by incredibly vague posts left by Q, which are decoded by the community. The posts are so vague, and the decoders are mostly veteran conspiracy theorists. This means the conspiracy itself is too complicated and ever shifting to fully comprehend, but here are some key points.
1. There is an evil shadow government known only as 'the Cabal' comprised of powerful individuals, mostly from the Democratic party.
2. The Cabal is doing outrageously evil things usually involving murdering children and devouring their corpses in satanic rituals (yes, really.)
3.Trump and a few other high-level Republicans are working to expose the Cabal.
4. Any day now Trump will reveal his master plan, and all members of the Cabal, Democrats, and liberals in general will be rounded up and executed.
This movement, as you might have gathered from context, is completely nuts.
That in no way hindered it from melding into the widespread religious exaltation of Trump. Soon every loyal right-wing Christian had their own theory on how Trump was going to wipe America clean of sinners.
One might notice that this sounds an awful lot like a Doomsday prophecy, because it is. An oddly secular Doomsday prophecy, granted, as it would be carried out with guns and death camps as opposed to divine wrath, but the hallmarks are still there.
It was through this lens that Trump completed his transformation in the eyes of the hardcore right-wing Christian from political figure to eminent savior.
From there the movement quickly infected the Republican party.
I am unsure to what extent its adherents hold sway over the party, only that few Republican officials are willing to contradict them, which implies a staggering hold.
Indeed, any perceived insult against Trump's honor is a political death sentence for a Republican at the moment, as exemplified by Mike Pence.
With this as context the events of the January 6th insurrection seem more in line with The Great Disappointment than a standard political uprising.
That is to say that Trump leaving office was not a part of the Great Plan the true Trump believers were sold.
So, just as with the Great Disappointment the preachers of Trump's good word set a new date for the End Times. This new era is being led by Michael Lindell at the moment, though there is no telling how the wind will shift. He is predicting that Trump's imminent return to power, as well as the subsequent purges, will happen sometime in August.
2 July: as refugees continue to flee the German Democratic Republic, East-West tensions mount. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev tells UK Ambassador Sir Frank Roberts six atom bombs could 'put Great Britain out of action' - and nine, for France. Weeks later, at a Warsaw Pact conference, Khrushchev declares, 'We rate Great Britain higher [than six], and we have several dozen atom bombs ready which we will use to carry out a strike against Great Britain and really put it out of action !' First atomic bomb tests: USA 1945, Soviet Union 1949, UK 1952, France 1960 (China coming in 1964) First hydrogen bomb tests: USA 1952, Soviet Union 1955, UK 1957, (China 1967, France 1968)
Immensely destructive: the H-bomb test 'Castle Bravo', at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands,
was 2.5 times more powerful than expected and its fallout harmed many Marshallese.
4 July: Russian nuclear submarine K-19, hastily developed to catch up with the USA, suffers a burst pipe in the cooling system, for which there was no backup. 'Captain Zateyev believed that if the reactor exploded, it could cause the United States and NATO to believe the Soviet Union was attempting a nuclear strike, potentially causing a preemptive retaliation and World War III.' 22 sailors volunteer to go in and fix it; all are dead within two years.
8 July: While swimming naked in the outdoor pool of Cliveden House, Berkshire, Christine Keeler meets British Cabinet minister John Profumo at a house party. She is aged 19 and has previously been a victim of sexual abuse from her stepfather; now she is being introduced to influential people by osteopath and socialite Stephen Ward. At the height of the Cold War, Profumo is Minister for War and begins an affair with her, but he is not the only one: 'When MI5 found out [she] was also sleeping with Ivanov, a naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London it was a clear conflict of interests.' Profumo eventually denies the improper relationship in Parliament, is later caught out and resigns.
The title to this short piece is one of those phrases we use in hindsight as a get-out clause.
Actually if eighteen months ago much that was being touted and pushed as future agendas and narratives, I would have put in the conspiracy theory bin.
The speed with which things have changed and continue to has not only got me starting to believe in the basis of many of these theories but beneath the surface more than just hints are emerging that show there is indeed a movement for change in the western world and it is not for the indigenous peoples' benefit.
As I have said before the Covid virus whether deliberate or not in the way it has been handled worldwide has proven to be a wonderful opportunity to advance other things that if enacted upon are going to make big changes to the way people live and not that far into the future either, if it all happens the great reset comes to pass.
Once again the climate fanatics have a half open door to push against. Eighteen months ago it would have seemed inconceivable what many are now pushing for, and governments have quickly taken the cue to advance much of the same.
The screw on our lifestyles is being turned it appears every day, as items like eating meat that most of us saw as the mad ramblings of the eco nutters is coming up on the rails; focus groups acting on ‘our’ behalf use the healthy eating habit meme to persuade us to save the planet by reducing our meat consumption, while at the same time government committees state that the price of meat will go up to ensure consumption drops.
The same thing is happening with anything transport related. EVs may be the preferred future, but there is no way at present we can power them should the numbers ever get near the government targets, so restrictions will be enforced; firstly the ‘cheap’ to run EVs will become subject to restrictions, many forms have been muted already, pay per mile to make up for the lost fuel revenue, charging to be increased in price to level with fossil fuels, restrictions on usage, i.e. pay more to use during peak times, the banning of all private vehicles from city centres (already happening) and coercion to use public transport.
If I hear 'build back better' again there is a chance something will be lobbed at the TV screen. Everyone everywhere is using the phrase at every opportunity. What does it actually mean? You can repeat something as long and as often as you like but if no one actually explains what it means there is little point, yet on and on they go repeating the mantra. It is easy to think this is something dreamt up and coordinated in some sleazy smoke filled room in Davos; maybe it was and the conspiracy theorists are correct. Or is it simply those at the top in governments world wide are not that bright and have simply latched onto a phrase they all think will work for them in delivering right-on statements. If the latter it shows a total lack of individual thinking ingenuity and shines a light into those who would govern as not being that bright at all.
It is not easy to believe this is someone purporting to run the country; it has to rank as one of the most inane statements in the English language uttered by anyone in recent times and there have been many.
There has been a flood of buzz words in the last eighteen months, most pointless, many misleading and some just stupid, plain English forsaken for a phrase with a very limited life: furlough, tiered, traffic light, self distancing, lock down, bubble, new normal... it goes on and on; long Covid, vaccine (when it isn’t a vaccine), herd immunity (that’s a bovine phrase), Covidiot, flattening the curve etc. etc. etc., all of these have been hijacked or invented to suit an agenda, all replace standard English words that actually explain things in a much more descriptive accurate and simple way. As I have said eighteen months ago anyone using these phrases out of context would have been laughed at.
The NHS eighteen months ago had many flaws and a GP side not fit for purpose. Who could have foreseen the total close down of all services but for treating the virus, most of the NHS staff making Tik Tok videos to relieve boredom and ending with an NHS that is now a basket case, with the potential for thousands more to die from neglect by that organisation than have done from the virus. Eighteen months ago you would have laughed at the suggestion and the stupidity of shutting all else down.
Who could have foreseen the borrowing of money at the highest rate ever in peacetime? £303 billion in one year was spent above income attained leaving us with a debt so large we are totally finished if interest rates go up even 1%; savings will be wiped out by inflation and still they spend and talk of further restrictions on wealth creation in many areas.
Meanwhile the quality of politicians continues to plummet, from a pre Covid poor to post? Covid dire, our Health Secretary manages to make a complete arse of himself by managing to get himself recorded on the office CCTV, that in itself is quite an achievement as the camera was so bloody obvious, but still….
The Labour party goes for the grievance vote by putting up Jo Cox’s sister as a candidate, despite not being a Labour member until a month before being chosen and bending all their own rules on selection, and now the Muslim vote they curry favour for has discovered the fact she is a lesbian; they surely didn’t believe that once found out it would not make a difference with the ROP supporters - naive or stupid? At the same time all political parties involved in the by election show total cowardice in failing to mention the teacher threatened with his life and living in hiding because it might lose them some votes.
And Angela Rayner (crayons) now deputy party leader and former shadow education minister has just put out this statement about Hancock….
"Matt Hancock was in fragrant breach of his own rules"
"A senior minister has a duty to uphold standards, when faced with the opportunity to have an affair he should have reclined"
Amazingly some Labour MPs are pushing her as a replacement for Starmer!
Meanwhile the PM just lies about everything.
Eighteen months ago it was ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’; now, after a large part of the population has had two jabs to save ‘our’ NHS we are told we will need two more in the same year. Just how good is the efficacy of the jabs we have been given, if we now need two more to protect freedoms that have not returned?
Eighteen months ago you could go on holiday anywhere in the world. Now, even if you do escape you will probably be stranded and have to return at great expense and go into quarantine. For the elite nothing has changed in eighteen months, but then they only make the rules, there is no expectation they will ever have to abide by them.
'Staycation', another awful word coined first by another waste of space, one David ‘I am not a quitter’ Cameron, is giving a boost to the local holiday market, well to those who can afford £2500 a week for a one bedroomed cottage in Cornwall; no point in trying to get a room in a hotel, they are either booked solid till 2023 or full of dinghy people as army barracks are not good enough for them despite being good enough for the army.
I read a report by someone who took his wife to A&E for a suspected broken arm in an East London hospital. Upon arrival there was a queue and virtually everyone in it was foreign, many different languages were being spoken; it would appear that the influx of illegal migrants to inner city areas and who have a health problem of any sort rock up to A&E as they can’t register with a GP, thereby clogging up a service we pay for and they don’t and never have. This isn’t new, just worse: I remember when my mother was dying in St Mary’s in London, parking round the back of the hospital meant I had to come in via the A&E; it was striking, the place was packed and I could not see a single white face in the place - a mixed area for sure, but not one. You cannot help but wonder how many were not actually entitled to health care. When I mentioned the fact to a nurse looking after my mum she said the place was a de facto destination point for so many from abroad who want to game the system and there is little they can do. Nothing has changed: with over a million at least of illegal migrants in this country, some reckon at least twice that, the cost must be horrendous for the tax payer, yet the virtue signallers think this is all OK and shows we care as a nation. We do care, as long as they are genuine and have come through the right channels and not the English one.
But our own should come first. They pay for it, and all those virtue signallers in the NHS who are so loose with the services we make possible, or did.
Again the influx of dinghy people has highlighted something that was partially buried or kept under wraps eighteen months ago.
Eighteen months ago if you decided to sell your house and move it was not easy as not that many were putting their properties on the market as the conditions post Brexit made the market a bit unsure of direction. Come the virus and the country bankrupting itself the housing market goes through the roof and the government gives it or the builders a helping hand; who seriously would have bet on that, the economics of the madhouse? It keeps the Daily Mail happy though: “man charged with murdering wife and children, seen here in an earlier photo in front of his luxury £750k house in... a popular area for aspiring rappers.”
Add to that demand for building materials has risen at an unprecedented rate during that period. Timber alone has doubled for many types and much is simply unavailable, so house prices have rocketed and now if you decide not to move but upgrade your old house it will take a lot more money and a lot longer to get the job done. Congratulations to our new chancellor for exacerbating the problem.
Since eighteen months ago, the press have become the mouthpiece of the government: any dissenting or challenging statements are ignored completely or those uttering such mischievous items of fact are now de-platformed, cancelled or declared nutters. Marches are only reported if of the correct type - BLM and XR are on the approved list - anything else even if hundreds of thousands attend are totally ignored, all in the name of having a united front in tackling the virus (despite all this togetherness they have still made an utter cods of large areas of the fight against the disease.) The BBC of course have no trouble taking this stance as they have been doing this as the new normal for years now.
It is also difficult to believe we would have a border in the middle of the Irish sea separating us from another part of the United Kingdom. Eighteen months ago if that had been suggested as a solution to a problem we would have laughed at it, but that along with all the other nonsense is an indication of how we have progressed or not, and the nots win.
Finally an advert in the Times today, the 1st of July by the Co-op:
“Your goodbye wishes matter
"Plan your funeral with us and choose now how you want to be remembered. We’ll make it personal, every step of the way.
"Buy a CO OP plan before the 30th of June and get up to £50 back to spend at the CO OP.”
If I understand the drift of Margaret Thatcher’s vision for
the United Kingdom, it was one where the ordinary person might eventually own
the house they lived in, instead of paying rent forever; and own shares so that
they could have some of the benefits of capitalism, instead of seeing
themselves as serfs working for ever-wealthier bosses.
If the project works, it destroys the socialist ‘take all
and provide for all’ model; but if it fails, how many might opt for shabby
security over potentially ruinous freedom? The jury is still out, but I dread
the verdict.
The stock market has
become a rollercoaster in recent years. Here is a graph of selected days – the high
of the tech boom of the ‘90s, the low points of 2003 and 2009, and where we are
now. To give some idea of ‘real terms’ I also supply the figures adjusted by
the official RPI index https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/cdko/mm23
(June’s market close is deflated by May’s RPI, the latest available):
As you see, the magic 7,000 figure around which the market
is now circling – above the historic high point of 6,930.2 on 20 December 1999 –
is actually worth about half what it was then. Yes, you might do better by
picking particular stocks or funds, but yesterday’s star could be today’s dog, as
for example we see in the legal-vulture-besieged Neil Woodford https://www.ft.com/content/2f077ae2-f19e-11e9-bfa4-b25f11f42901
. At least with Prince Ras Monolulu’s racing tips https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/horse-racing/54695641
you got a result the same day.
Most people aren’t gamblers, at least not with their life
savings, which is why they used to like with-profits funds, getting an annual
statement from the insurance company to say how much their holding had grown
since the year before. However such funds found it difficult to cope with the volatility
of the last decades, sometimes having to impose ‘market value adjustments’ to stop
investors running away en masse in a bad year.
The uncertainty is compounded by what’s happened in the bond
market. The unimaginable levels of debt in our system have forced the
government to drop interest rates to near zero; when a personal pension plan
holder wants to retire with an annuity, it has to be secured with bond
investments on which the annual yield is now pitiful, so that one needs a far larger
fund to get the same income. The alternative is to leave one’s pension
investment in equities, with their associated risk.
The investment boom of the 1980s lit expectations that were
fanned by regulators. It’s understandable in a way – there were cases of maturing
mortgage endowment plans that yielded six times their target value – but only
if you think good times go on for ever. At one point the illustrated yearly growth
on pension funds was in the bracket 8.5 – 13 per cent. However by the beginning
of the 90s even the best funds run for our insurance company weren’t showing
anything like that higher figure.
As with so many issues, instead of looking for cat-stroking
villains we need to understand that the roots of our problems are systemic. Britain
threw away the wealth of generations in two world wars with a great depression
in between – there was no Roaring Twenties here. Post World War Two America –
seizing the chance to finish off the British Empire - turned off the financial
tap to us even as it poured money into western Europe to rebuild it and prevent
an outbreak of communism. The terms on which we joined the EU withered many of
our industries for over forty years. Meanwhile the Third World gained our
technological know-how and exploited it with desperate urgency as only the poor
can – one company I used to advise specialised in exporting large machine tools
from our closing factories. Is it a surprise that money-making seems to centre
around housebuilding these days, rather than industry? It is as though Stone
Age men could eschew hunting in favour of selling each other caves.
Well, now we’re out of the EU, though it seems that like
jilted lovers they still try to make as much trouble as possible; but there’s
no going back to the status quo ante; it’s a different world now. Although it’s
nice to hear a PM who makes optimistic noises, we’re already seeing that ‘free
trade’ is not an unmixed blessing; we have exchanged the mini-globalism of
Europe for the maxi-globalism that has done so much for the multinationals but
whose benefits have not really trickled down to the rest of us. If we really
are de-industrialising and also turning expensively and erratically green in
various ways, how are we going to support our over-large population, especially
when we are still expanding it with further influxes of people?
We are long overdue a consideration of how to cut our coat
according to the cloth we still have; otherwise people will start to contemplate
a different system.
