BENEFITS MEWS – CHELSEA

Benefits Mews, Chelsea of course, is a far cry from that vile, run down rat hole of a street in Birmingham that’s full of working and underclass loafers and benefit scroungers featured in the Channel Four documentary series for the wrath of Daily Mail readers. Oh no, Benefits Mews Chelsea let me tell you is a very different kind of place altogether. Full of splendid bijoux style cottages each with its own garage and the entrance naturally gated. Not really the place to have outsiders wandering in. And the people who live here are decent. Hardworking. Not the kind who’d scrounge off the State. People you might call the best of British not the worst! I know what they’re like because I live among them. Let me introduce you then to some of my friends.

Living at Number Three are Lord and Lady Mungo and their son Giles. His title and estates in Berkshire go back five hundred years! Gerry chairs a private equity company based in the City though for tax purposes it’s registered in the Bahamas, courtesy of advice from the Inland Revenue that is. Friends at the top and all that. Only pays tuppence in the pound on all those billions he makes but even then he’s still doing his best for the economy in these rather tough times. I mean, all those billions of tuppences really add up, but then he’s a bit of a dog on the quiet. Stops by the Lords every day on his way to the City, signs in and out for ten minutes and picks up three hundred each day. That’s fifteen hundred a week! Most of the money I hear goes into an Education Trust Fund for Giles, now at Eton. Even that’s tax deductible of course and helps pay for the fees. Oxford too when he gets there.

Lady Mungo of course does her bit, lending her name to various charities, so naturally no unemployment benefit for her. Can you just imagine! Someone like that, having to go down to the dole office on a regular basis… Being offered work as a chambermaid or doing the washing up in some restaurant on a minimum wage. It’s just too dreadful to contemplate. People like that would rather die!

Next door at Five there are the Porkinoffs, Boris and Olga. He’s one of those émigré oligarchs with banks and oil in Siberia. Lives all over the place thanks to his permanent British residency status, courtesy of the Foreign Office. Helps with the Child Benefits they pull in for their kids. True, they shouldn’t get it at all with all the millions he makes but then it’s all in his grandmother’s name, only she’s long dead and buried  in Moscow! So it’s all straight and above board you see. Kind of! I mean, you can’t call it scrounging. Getting a bit extra a week was his right as an Englishman I remember him joking last Christmas at the champagne party they gave. Why, they were just as needy as anyone else he gave me a wink! Got it paid straight into his bank. I mean, he owned the bank after all!

Two doors down at Number Eight are the Sinclairs. The Major, ex Scots Guards, owns a mobile phone company registered in Ireland. Operates big time in Britain but pays his tax over there. A fraction of what he might have done here but then they give people work in the Call Centres. Zero hours contracts and minimum wage and all that but at least they’re employed and ought to be grateful. He’s a major benefactor to the Conservative Party. Always reliable for a generous contribution to Party finances at Election time so the Treasury leaves him alone! Besides, he knows a whole lot of people from way back. Old friends at Oxford you know. George and David went into politics while Maxwell went into mobiles!

Splendid couple, the Sinclairs. Their eldest boy doing wonderfully well. After finishing business studies in London his father got him a job at one of the big investment banks in the City. An Internship with one of his friends. Bit like an apprenticeship in industry only this one’s in finance. Listening and learning how deals are fixed up and how to get along with all the right people. First rate opportunity for someone young. None of this wretched applying for jobs stuff, writing CVs or filling out forms. That’s for the Benefit Street kids. I mean if your father can get your feet on the ladder you’d be stupid to turn down fifty thousand per annum and driving a Porsche.

Across from the Sinclair’s there are the excellent Cardews. Roger’s just got himself knighted. Services to banking and all that. Designs Investment Portfolios at one of the biggest. A most remarkable fellow. They kind of lost ten billion last year but never mind that. It’s publicly owned so the taxpayer picks up the tab! As for Roger, with all that hard work of his he picked up a serious bonus. Two million or more for helping organise the ten billion loss. Of course it was only a fraction. He’ll need to work harder losing more next time round. And yes, there are people who always complain. All those millions out there on zero hours contracts or getting the minimum wage let alone teachers or NHS types getting their annual one percent.  What do they contribute to the economy? No, Roger’s part of the Financial Services Sector, not one of those benefit scroungers out there. The type who phone up the Payday Loan Companies needing a fix because they’ve squandered their money on a Premier League Season instead of putting it by for the rent. I mean talk about benefits! You’ve got to earn it before you can spend it and people in banking know all about that! A nice little earner that bonus of his.

Yes, people in Benefits Mews Chelsea know all about earning money, not like the scroungers on television.  Birmingham? They must all be having a laugh. Doing their drugs then down to the social with their hands out for taxpayers’ money. Better if they got up before twelve and got on their bikes, and furthermore stopped permanently claiming a Sickie. The Tories thank heaven are putting a stop to all that. If they’re not dead or dying they won’t give them a penny. Not anymore!

It’s not me alone that’s saying it but just about everyone else in Benefits Mews. Good, decent, hardworking people like Arabella Dalrymple . Spends all her time in charity work raising money for good causes all over the place. Heaven only knows how she manages to live here… but we do!

They have sheriffs and bailiffs calling round Benefits Street

And here in the Mews we all love to watch
them taking the telly and cooker, the beds and the sofa.
While we put some fizz in our mid-morning Scotch!  

So let’s get it clear. We in Benefits Mews are respectable people. Putting our money into the economy not leeching it out, so no 50 pence tax rate, thank you very much! How dare the mob up in Birmingham criticize us for paying less tax when they don’t have to pay a penny themselves. If they don’t want to work then it’s their choice so naturally they don’t have to pay. Just live a life on the hob courtesy of the taxes Yours Truly fork out for them in Benefits Mews!

And finally I forgot to tell you about the great retailer Harry Devenish who lives across the cobbles from me. A billionaire he may be but he’s being bankrupted by all the taxes he has to pay in handouts for the millions living in Benefit Streets up and down the country so he put all his money into a bank in Monte Carlo under his wife’s name. That way he pays no tax at all but now he’s set up a soup kitchen in London for the poor and the homeless. What he’s saving in tax he’s giving back to the needy so he’s a really splendid fellow you see.

So if you’ve read this post, please don’t cry for them on Benefits Street. Time you started crying for us! 

 

THIS POST IS SPONSORED BY THE GENEROUS CONTRIBUTIONS OF ALL THOSE WHO LIVE IN BENEFITS MEWS ALONG WITH THOSE WE’VE RECEIVED FROM DAILY MAIL, EXPRESS AND SUN NEWSPAPER READERS.

SEX AND THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS : LET’S TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

Recently the talk in the media has been about the unfortunate Liberal Democrat Peer Lord Rennard. I say unfortunate because no-one knows, as yet, the precise nature of most of the historical allegations made against him by a number of women, added to which is the fact that the police have investigated these and  see no reason to recommend prosecution. Right now then he is innocent. Never mind that his otherwise good name has been blackened in the press and on television on a regular basis. How must that feel for him and his family? Especially if he did nothing wrong! So on the basis of unproven innuendo and unknown allegation it seems all too easy to destroy a person’s reputation and character these days. And it seems all  too easy to form an opinion based on speculation and gossip without having any hard fact.

There was a time not so long back when making a pass if that’s what he did was simply just that. A man chatting to a woman and expressing his interest, or a woman doing the same to a man. Now such interest is interpreted in a different and highly negative manner. It is viewed as coming onto that person. Let’s consider the phrase. In today’s parlance it means that the person expressing interest is imposing himself or herself on the other and that furthermore such imposition is always unwarranted.  A man however might chat to a woman or a woman to a man simply because they like them or find them interesting and intelligent. They might find themselves attracted and this may be harmless enough. They might even find themselves sexually attracted, and this in itself is neither unpleasant nor nasty, nor is it a crime. It’s just an attribute of the human condition, but to generally infer from any such conversation or interest a purely sexual intention is both perverse and injudiciously judgmental. Ultimately it becomes a barrier to normal human relations and is a part of the dogmatic moralizing that has come to characterize a new kind of morality. One that broadly seeks to stamp itself on personal relationships by ideologues seeking to load their own personality deficiencies onto others.

Making accusations or allegations has become easy these days in a judgmental climate of gutter press morality inspired by narrow intellectual value judgment by those with their own ideological axes to grind all of which are only too enthusiastically propelled forwards by politicians whose fundamental interest is control. The times we live in are indeed judgmental and dangerous, Yet it is the conduct of many of these politicians that is itself irresponsible, indiscreet and a thoroughly bad example from those who seek to govern us and set an example.    

And it with this in mind it seems to me that some more than others have failed to show us the way. The Liberal Democrats in this respect have had much to answer for in recent years most of which has now quietly dropped from public view. The reputation of this Party has always been susceptible to one kind of naughtiness or another. Well quite frankly you might say, what would you expect of a political party that jumps into bed with the Tories on a promise. Did I hear the word tarts? Well that’s how the British people now see them though there are those who might be less gracious with their language! But for the Lib Dems alas there are far more things in the background than this. Indeed the whole Party seems to have been uncommonly prone to sexual indiscretion. Perhaps failing to keep things quiet and under wraps might be an alternative way of looking at it.

Let’s take a look. Years back before the Liberal Democrats there was the matter of Jeremy Thorpe, leader  of the Liberal Party and his relationship with naughty male model Norman Scott. Oh dear, it involved the death of a favourite dog among other things for the media and was a notable political sex scandal of the time, causing his resignation and departure from politics. It was a long way for a political leader to fall. More recently however one of the first leaders of the Liberal Democrat Party, the worthy Paddy Ashdown, gave cause for a bold front page headline in the Sun Newspaper, PADDY PANTS DOWN after being revealed having an affair with a respectable lady. Never mind, both he and the Lib Dems toughed it out for a while but the little indiscretion stuck and he was replaced.

Another considerably worse oh dear was to come. Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Energy now in a Coalition Government with the Conservatives was having a secret affair that once uncovered most displeased his wife Vicky Pryce who according to a recent claim in the press gave him a black eye and chucked him through a plate glass window because he’d left her for his bisexual publicist Carina Trimingham who she’d described as a man and said he’d done it because he was a closet homosexual and had “been engaging in that activity again.” The whole thing had gone hand in hand with Huhne asking his wife to take penalty points he’d incurred for a motoring offence and she, confronted with one betrayal after another blew her top and let it all out. Consequences, jail time for both and an acrimonious bust up in public. So there it all was. Another top Liberal Democrat who couldn’t keep his flies buttoned up.

And speaking of flies, hidden pleasures seem to accompany Liberal Democrats wherever they go. Immediately prior to Chris Huhne there was the worthy David Laws, Lib Dem political high flier who for reasons best known to himself, claimed Parliamentary expenses on behalf of a gentleman lover whose existence might otherwise have never been known. Oh dear! The Parliamentary high flier not only outed as gay, not a crime in itself, but wrongly if not naughtily claiming expenses for someone he shouldn’t. Why do it for a few hundred quid one might ask if you wanted to keep your love life a secret? Wasn’t he earning enough? If he wanted to keep his relationship secret for whatever reason why take the risk? Result… put to the sword in the media and made to look like the arse that he was for the appreciation of the general public. Time though has passed and all been forgiven. He’s back in high office as a Junior Minister so there is political life after a scandal!

More recently however, even post Rennard, there’s been another Liberal Democrat sex splash. Another oh dear! This time just an ordinary Member of Parliament, Mike Hancock, allegedly being seriously indiscreet with a lady constituent and a damning Report on the matter just released. Dear, dear… And this is a Party that wants us to trust them running the country! That claims to be a model for sobriety and discretion! I mean, betraying the public who voted for you is one thing but as a politician, betraying the personal standards you set for yourself, something quite different.

And so back to Lord Rennard? The Daily Mail has called him a ‘groper’ on a front page recently and Liberal Democrat Party Leader Nick Clegg has demanded that he apologize for what is supposed he had done which he’s refused, claiming that he’s done nothing wrong and has nothing to apologize for. This seems to have caused a general furor among countless numbers of ambitious women who all now claim to have been abused at one time or another by male senior colleagues in work situations. What all this actually means is that we are witnessing the birth of an entirely new culture. What I would term The Abuse Culture, in which just about any man or woman may be liable to be accused of ‘abuse’. This extension of the increasingly neurotic character of the society we live in with its out of control bike riders and dogs being used as love objects or attack weapons and protest against just about anything being stifled by extraordinary police powers, is psychologically symptomatic of the manner in which economic depression impinges itself on otherwise rational judgment and brings out in people a whole number of demons all of which are a prey to those with emotional and ideological axes to grind.

And indeed, there are many decent individuals who, in the coming years are likely to be ground up in the process at the hands of the psychologically disturbed. We are living in an increasingly divided society. Fortunate for those who seek to govern and control us who are undoubtedly glad of such divisions in our national life. The lower middle class of the Daily Mail and the Sun against the unemployed, the poor and the benefit claimers; the indigenous white British poor against a tide of mass immigration; the police against public protest, especially that of students (at times it actually seems like the police against everyone who isn’t lower middle class) and, increasingly as it seems, a calculated and devastating division between the sexes. Turn people against each other. Divide and rule. It’s simple enough.

The prognosis is bad and there are dark days ahead. 

NOSTRADAMUS : THE HIDDEN PROPHESIES

Nostradamus, or more accurately Michel de Nostredame, was born in France in December 1503 and died there in July 1566. He was therefore a contemporary of Henry 8^th although it was two French monarchs of that name with whom he was actually associated. Firstly Henry 2^nd whose death he predicted and which led to his fame and more sensationally perhaps, predicting the ascent of a boy at the French Court to eventually become Henry 4^th.

Nostradamus! The name has an almost magical ring to it. Whether you’re a believer or skeptic, the very  mention of this astrologer, mystic, prophet or quack, whatever your persuasion… by his reputation alone quickens the pulse. In his early life he studied medicine and became a doctor who helped fight the plague, soon after which he claimed to have foresight and seriously turned to astrology, a hot topic of his day and one strongly bound up with two other big interests, that of astronomy and cosmology. Taken together they all served as a fascination for many, especially royalty and the nobility, for such things as horoscopes and predicting the future. In a way I suppose this was quite natural, both for monarchs with dynastic aspirations as well as dictators.

The first installment of his book, Les Propheties, was published in 1555. With its predictions and prophesies of world historical events it caused a sensation when it appeared and quickly became a bestseller. His services as astrologer were in immediate demand and he was summoned to Court by the French Queen Catherine de Medici to draw up horoscopes for all seven of the de Medici royal children. These prophesied that all her sons would be kings. Some might say that he was just an old smoothie, a bit like Disraeli and Queen Victoria; both men, coincidentally had Jewish backgrounds, but it certainly did Nostradamus no harm. Soon he was being consulted by a wide variety of powerful people who asked him for horoscopes, birth-charts and other astrological readings. He was definitely on the up and up with his influence at the French Court immense, especially after predicting the dramatic death of the King.

You can imagine the scene. Get it right once with superstitious febrile minds all hot to learn of their fate who believed that their future was bound up with mathematical calculation to predict planetary alignment and you were on a definite roll, and Nostradamus, though certainly no scientist like Galileo, certainly had a way with numbers. His second installment of prophesies was published in 1557 which appeared like the first in the form of four line verses or quatrains written in medieval French. The third appeared in 1558 and for some reason disappeared and was lost. However an Omnibus Edition of all his predictions appeared two years later, after his death in 1566.

All his predictions, with the patronage of royalty behind them, were a major hit of his time throughout Europe and have been in print ever since. He’s the greatest star in the astrological heavens with more written about him and his prophesies than the science of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton put together. Mysticism , prophesy and prediction have undeniable charm as modern mass media astrologers are only too well aware. Charm that is for certain categories of the emotional and spiritually needy.

His career as astrologer developed as a consequence of his interest in astronomy, particularly planetary alignment. Considering the event of 1524 he looked back to those of 1186 and 710 and consulting historical records noted that nothing major had occurred in those years and correctly predicted that nothing major would happen when the next alignment happened. In this he took his first step, hoping to predict and time future events by looking back to the past. The fact that in theory there should be no causal relationship between the two events cuts no ice for those needy enough to believe that there is!

Astrology was immensely popular in all the late medieval circles of wealth and power. It was a time prior to the emergence of science during the Renaissance, one where Catholic orthodoxy had reigned supreme in Christian Europe for centuries, and as a pseudo-science had a companion bedfellow in alchemy. Today astrology with its attendant tarot card companion is no longer the prerogative of royalty and the nobility but with the advent of industrialization, democracy and various personal rights has had its franchise of interest extended into the masses, today having a huge following! The predictions and prophesying of Nostradamus   hasn’t gone away. By no means! Predicting the future and prophesying events are of as much interest today as they ever were five hundred years back which is why millions of people the world over are interested in the man whose name has become synonymous with the power of prophesy. A man about whom thousands of books have been written along with tens of thousands of theories about what he actually prophesied and what has or has not come true.

There is today as much speculation about what he actually said as there is about what he didn’t say! It is actually possible to turn just about any one of the many hundreds of quatrains that he wrote into whatever way you want to see it. Interpretation of just about anything he said is so flexible that you can make it mean anything! That in writing about someone called Hister he prophesied Hitler and the Nazis… and there’s loads more of where that came from. Just about everyone and anyone connected with prophesy, futurology and interpretation gives themselves license to come up with something weird, wonderful and different so what we have now is a situation where thousands of people are making a living saying he meant this and didn’t mean that. In short, Nostradamus has become an industry for astrology junkies, even science fiction speculation specialists who say he was really an alien from the future who got left behind on some secret mission to planet Earth and having changed his appearance got on with life best as he could by pretending to make predictions when he knew about things all along! Oh, and if you think that I’m making it all up then please think again!

Some of his most important themes, however, are recurring and topical. A major one of his time was the relationship between Christianity and Islam, mainly due to endless military and religious conflict between the two warring faiths. Thus in his 1566 Almanac he predicted imminent major Muslim invasions of Europe. The theme was topical then and for good reason. Today there are many who might justifiably say that the man got it right with Muslim immigration into Western Europe over recent decades running at unparalleled levels and that population movement is only a precursor for something quite different. Of course, they will point out that Nostradamus said this 500 years back, but then it was just as big in his day as it is right now in ours! The fact that we in Europe have been living cheek by jowl with a seriously different culture with  dissimilar values for 1500 years now is nothing new and for the man to predict major future conflict between the two faiths is actually not a big deal. What is a big deal is that this conflict became subsumed for well over 400 years beneath British colonialism and empire. Beneath the rise of Imperial power, both British, French, Spanish and Portuguese as well as Russian, and with the collapse of this power, the conflict between the two faiths has reemerged with a vengeance. What Nostradamus didn’t do was provide any predictive analysis for the dynamics of the conflict. Something that cynics would point out that he was unable to do BECAUSE SUCH EVENTS HADN’T OCCURRED YET!

However, given the circumstances of the time in which he lived, with the rise of British, Spanish and Portuguese naval power in the first half of the 16^th century it wouldn’t have been such a big deal by such a clever astrological dick to have prophesied the rise of British and Spanish Empires in the New World and its possible consequences for checking any further Islamic incursion into Western Europe. Indeed one might have expected such a prediction from such a great prophet but alas no such luck. Not that I can see anyway!

My reason for writing about Nostradamus in this post however is something quite different than seeking to challenge, minimize or critically examine his prophetic power but to bring to the attention of both his supporters and detractors something quite new. Something altogether unexpected in our knowledge of the man’s life and work. Something indeed so unexpected to me that I can hardly believe my good fortune in making my remarkable discovery only recently, more by chance than anything else, not as a disciple in any way of the man’s thought. It all came about when I’d decided just a few months back to visit some relatives on my father’s side of the family living in Paris. It was at an in between time of some amicable conversation and my aunt’s marvellous cooking that I decided to take a vacation and after the usual tourist attractions made my way to the famous Bibliotheque National and using my British Museum Library Card sat in the Reference Library for a while running my eye over a folio of facsimile Vatican manuscripts which I’d summoned up from the basement.

The studious atmosphere around me was all most delightful and pleasant. Academics from all over the world  researching for papers or books. Much furious writing and working computer screens. I was clearly at the heart of so much scholarly research in the sciences and arts. Here I was at the very apex of Western scholarship and thought and what a privilege it was simply to be there! My mind returned from its wandering among my surroundings to concentrate on the folio placed on my desk, bound with a ribbon I noted and like the Essex lad I’d once been I’d had the immediate thought which I instantly sought to suppress… oh how fucking quaint… but found myself unable to do so despite my many years of scholarly study at some of our best Universities. Well notwithstanding the ribbon barring my way I undid it and began perusing the documents. These were a series of Vatican interdicts from the early 17^th century of materials deemed impermissible reading. Indeed unsuitable for contemplation or study, from the simply challenging to the plain nasty and damnably heretical. All hidden away under the clawing hand of the Inquisition with their authors gone to the stake.

Clearly some had escaped along with their works for I recognised certain names. However at the back of the file was another, somewhat smaller, though sealed, and like the larger marked with the obligatory large blood red cross at its front. I was instantly curious and looked for simple ways to open the file but was unable to do so, not without causing some damage. I referred the matter to one of the assistants present, presenting my credentials and asking where the original might be found. Quite naturally, as I learned, it had come up from somewhere deep in the basement.

I’d very much like to have a look at it, I said softly, speaking my best mediaeval French. I mean down there where it is… It would be so much more, well how should I put it, atmospheric you might say… Her eyes opened wide with astonishment. Why, I spoke the language she was doing her own part time research in… It was a most unusual request but then… Well perhaps it was possible…

Minutes later quickly following her through a kind of hidden doorway lined with books I made my way along a poorly lit passage then down a flight of wooden stairs clutching a railing for dear life. She seemed to know her way about I couldn’t help thinking. How many men had she had down there with her in the past I wondered and what were they doing? It was the Essex in me all over again! Cut it out, I silently said to myself, following close behind and now bending a little as the ceiling narrowed, all around me a thin layer of dust. At last, she came to a stop and turned to me. Well here was the place indicated in the records for the original folio, the facsimile of which I had up on my desk. I smiled at her graciously. She’d been altogether too kind. And there, true to the Library records it was, tucked neatly up on the shelf. May I, I asked, indicating my interest in taking it down for perusal.

Moments later I had it in front of me, going through the original ancient pages, last seen no doubt by Inquisitional hands. I felt that I was actually staring at history as my eyes ran over the documents. Not only staring at it but actually part of it and the decisions men made to ban, burn or simply hide important works of the time they felt too dangerous or threatening to be seen. List after list of names, plays, poetry, scholarly consideration, literature. It was all there in front of me on the original folio parchment. And there at the back the other much smaller file with its symbolic red cross. My hands trembled as I lifted it out, only this time, to my astonishment, it was actually open!

I can barely describe my emotions, even now. I looked across at my young French companion. Waiting for her to say something as I recall. She looked at me with those wide eyes of hers and slowly nodding her head gave me a look as if to say, well what are you waiting for, you wanted to see the original file… This was all true but quite frankly nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see. It contained everything in the facsimile upstairs only here there was more. A solitary folio page inside another folder which bore the cryptic message on its front cover written in Latin. Translated I read it thus, Never to be Publically Known… and below was the Great Seal of the Inquisitor General of the time.

My feelings can be barely imagined. Never to be Publically Known… and here was I, a man of the 20^th century reaching back to what I wasn’t quite sure. I took it all in at a glance. A single sheet with four quatrain verses. In the blink of an eye there were names of planets set in strange cryptic verse which I read over and over. Nothing at first seemed to make any sense. The style was strange, almost predictive. Then suddenly I had it. Knew exactly what I was looking at even if I didn’t have any idea what it all meant. It was probably the handwriting more than anything else. I could only stare at the paper in wonder then turned to look at my companion, only a single word passing my lips…

Nostradamus, I said slowly, my intuition racing. These quatrains belong to Nostradamus! They were hidden by the Church. They were never to be seen by the public.

We looked at each other for a moment. I knew I was right. In the 1550’s and 60’s they allowed all his other predictions to be published but somehow not these. He’d died in 1566. They must have been written years earlier, possibly part of that final set of 1558 that had disappeared without trace. It was impossible to know for sure. Maybe they’d been studied by some Inquisitional Enquiry. A decision taken to have them all burned, yet for some reason they’d been removed, saved, hidden away. All these thoughts raced through my mind. Saved by whom? I could hardly imagine. My eyes ran to the top of the paper and I began reading, wanting answers. Wanting to understand more than anything…

Here they are, as I read them on that fateful sheet… Translated from the French,

Two dark nights will rise at dawn

devour the virgin and the corn
Saturn from east, Pluto north
when Luther over Rome comes forth

The old keep company with the new

as many first then late as few
With pestilence much gone to dust
our holy world then torn in two

Some say the glowing orb lies still

and all we are doth go around
While men of little worth grow great
proclaim new destiny and unholy fate

The blood and bread and wine betwixt

beginning and unknown end are mixed
And all eternal motion ruled by number
fixed… And faith itself now cast asunder

It was down there in that basement cellar with Madeleine that I felt my thoughts transfixed. Hers too I think as our eyes ran over the lines. I was still struggling to understand them, but where we were just wasn’t the place. It would be impossible to get them out of the building but that didn’t matter. The camera in my mobile would do it all. I quickly put it on flash, took the sheet twice then each quatrain separately. Seconds later I checked to see it was all there and that was it. Time to close everything up, put back and get the hell out. That we did and later that evening got to work in her flat.

Coffee on the table and the precious papers spread out under a powerful lamp we tried making sense of it all. These were four further prophesies. Clearly lost for hundreds of years. Hidden away as I’d already thought but the question was why? What was it that the Inquisition had read into them that made them so disturbing, so threatening? Guided by that as a clue we began going over them one at a time. The first quatrain, from its opening line as it seemed deliberately set out to be cryptic… Two dark nights will rise at dawn… Nights rising at dawn! Some joker! Devouring the virgin and the corn… It all gave a sense of turbulence and destruction. One figure of astrology coming from the East the other from the north both implied catastrophe. Finally Luther over Rome comes forth… This now made it all clear enough. There’d already been a sense of calamity but with the mention of Luther there was no longer any need for speculation. This was the Rome of Catholicism and the appearance of Luther from the north, one of the fathers of Protestantism, heralded religious conflict.  Seen as a whole these were not simply lines of prophesy but together pointed to a kind of  spiritual apocalypse!

Sitting there as we did we could see it all from our own historical time but for those reading the prophesy then it’s impact would have been frightful. A prediction of impending doom and more than enough to make them want to hide it away!

The second quatrain in a way seemed to run on from the first. The old keeping company with the new… Catholicism keeping company with the new faith… In a majority at first then losing ground to the new rival religion. All the chaos and destruction caused by the conflict between the two faiths with the unity of holy Christianity torn in two… Yes, this was now equally clear. The prediction of coming religious conflict and a world division within the Christian faith must have seemed terrifying to the fathers of the Inquisition who read it, especially then facing the challenge of Islam! It would have been regarded as outright heresy! Perhaps Nostradamus was too well established at the French Court for him to be questioned or worse so they covered it over with censorship. Hid it away like it never existed. Kept a serious eye on the prophet instead.

With our heads together over the table we concluded the same. Our interpretation seemed at once sensible and logical. The third quatrain however was the most interesting so far. Here, the glowing orb to which Nostradamus referred was clearly the sun! Some say the glowing orb lies still…  Of course, this was the notion that the sun was stationary and that the planets, particularly Earth, moved round it. This was something directly contrary to the teaching of the Church, namely that the Earth, along with God and the Church, were all at the center of the Universe and the Sun and its planets moved around it. To imply anything else was again outright heresy and it is not too difficult to guess who the men of little worth were. Indeed, the first men of experiment and science were those of astronomy like Galileo along with all the new thinkers and philosophers of the Renaissance with their new ideas about humanism, the value of personal thought and man’s place in the Universe. Such thinking was total anathema to the Catholic Church and the Inquisition of the time. Nothing less than damnable! The prediction of the coming triumph of such thinking was quite revolutionary. It could never be permitted to reach a wider public so there it was, down in some dusty old cellar hidden away in  a folder!

Madeleine and I stared at each other, both of the same mind. Not for too long if we could help it! The new great prediction could now be brought to the attention of the world! Yet there was also the fourth with its talk of the blood the bread and the wine… It all sounded very Catholic, but then between beginning and end, and all of it mixed… What on Earth did that mean? It seemed to place Christianity between a definite beginning and an unknown end in time. Just a kind of faith in an eternal scheme of things but here, having said that, Nostradamus gives us his last and perhaps greatest thought in these most heretical and radical of all his predictions. Namely that in the future, we would understand that such things as motion could be understood through science i.e. quantification by number rather than religious interpretation. As he said in his last line… And faith itself now cast asunder

This, perhaps, is probably the most extraordinary line of these four lost quatrains and in my opinion the most prophetic single line he ever wrote. It is entirely out of keeping with so much of his earlier thought and clearly demonstrates the personal distance he’d travelled . All eternal motion ruled by number fixed,  in other words quantifiable, and not just motion but implied here is so much more, even gravity if he’d gone any further. But then maybe he did. Maybe there was far more that was lost than we suppose. Newton perhaps, even Einstein! The names of these men of course could not have been known. Their ideas and thoughts perhaps, another thing altogether!

When we looked at all these considerations together they seemed to make wonderful sense and we congratulated ourselves on what we took to be our brilliant surmises. Everything seemed clear to us then. Our interpretations all seemed to fit. Not only had we discovered something new and amazing that day deep in the Library but with our minds on fire, had taken it forward. Taken the ideas of a man long dead to exciting new levels. What would he have said if he’d been with us, we wondered? Especially over a good cup of coffee or a bottle of wine. And in Paris of all places, one of the centers of revolutionary thought!

It had been a wonderful day and a wonderful evening. Two minds interacting together. Speculating, racing along new and exciting horizons after making discoveries. Conscious that they are the first. That they’ve been somewhere that no-one else has ever been! Maybe the old man found it too. Discovered the sense of being the first! That night we raised a glass to him and spoke his name well.

Today, not long after, I’m communicating our story to you. After ourselves you are the first to know, worldwide, over the web. To as many as we can free of charge. The way it should be.

LATEST NEWS : FIRST WEEK OF JANUARY 2014

THE POLICE SHOOTING OF MARK DUGGAN

The Inquest Jury into the police shooting of Mark Duggan has finally given its verdict that he was killed lawfully. Oh thank heavens! It means that most Daily Mail, Express and Sun readers can now rest safely in their beds all happy and contented. The entire police and Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation into his shooting and the Inquest itself has brought into public view some remarkable facts. Firstly that the evidence given by various police present at the incident was remarkably similar with statements written up at the time made by the officers sitting together in a single room without anyone else present. These were contradicted by a single independent eye witness who viewed the incident from a 9^th floor flat across the road at short distance whose statement told an entirely different story altogether. More disturbingly perhaps was the conduct of the Independent Police Complaints Commission in this matter. It has long been known that the supposed independence of this body has become seriously compromised in respect of its impartiality with regard to investigation of complaints about police conduct. Indeed to call it ‘independent’ in any way has become something of a joke and now we learn that the senior investigating officer of this body in respect to the shooting of Mark Duggan is himself a former policeman!

It is a fact that soon after the shooting, this supposedly independent body publically put out the false and incendiary suggestion that Mark Duggan had himself fired a gun at police officers. Furthermore they failed to inform his family for a considerable length of time after his death then somehow failed for no known reason to have any member of their organisation present in the room when the police wrote up their statements. Given these well-known facts it is only the readers of the above mentioned newspapers that can go on believing in the impartiality of this body which means in fact that the public at large has absolutely no protection whatsoever from the conduct of the police. Equally important, where it comes to the matter of police evidence, an English jury are far more likely to believe what the police say than anyone else despite the extraordinary volume in recent years of police misconduct. This is particularly so in the case of a considerable variety of ethnic minority or other campaigning groups. Anyone in these groups is undoubtedly disadvantaged in respect of the conduct of the British police.

Let’s not mince words. Given recent so called justified killings by armed police, it is today extremely dangerous for any member of the public to walk around the streets carrying anything in a carrier bag resembling a small piece of wood or a chair leg and similarly dangerous for anyone to hold a mobile phone in their hand. This is because in recent years the police have clearly adopted a shoot to kill policy in the case of people they believe to be carrying weapons, instructing their armed officers to act accordingly in the full belief they have immunity to do so. In the case of the Mark Duggan killing this assumption has turned out to be correct.

So with assessment often only too brief, sometimes even instant, by armed police who are often poorly educated, the life of just about each and every member of the public is at genuine risk, a fact not at all helped by our knowledge that the Independent Police Complaints Commission is now generally thought to be a police front, employing in its ranks former police officers to carry out its investigations! In short, the general public have absolutely no protection whatsoever from the police who with the Mark Duggan verdict will now feel they have carte blanche to behave in any manner they like.  It is only the readers of the three cited news-rags who will go on believing that they live in a free country when everyone else, perhaps, might take the view, if they haven’t done it already, that they live in a police state. Because that’s what a police state actually means. Somewhere the police can do anything they like to anyone and get away with it. Have their extreme actions regarded as lawful. In Europe it was recently Jews, trade unionists and socialists along with members of other ethnic and religious minorities. In Britain today it’s ethnic and social minorities. Soon it’ll be YOU and it all starts with the police. Police attacks against students… police attacks against workers and trades unionists on strike… police attacks on members of ethnic minorities;  individually or in groups.      

REMEMBER… THAT’S HOW IT STARTS  THAT’S WHERE IT BEGINS

 

THE GOVERNMENT LOVES HARDWORKING PEOPLE!

Yes you’ve heard David Cameron say it and George Osborne too! And Nick Clegg and Vince Cable! Oh how wonderful. They all love hardworking people.

That means people who work hard… not anyone on benefits or working AND collecting benefits. Sorry, all those people out of work and on benefits. Nobody loves you! And even if you worked hard for ten, twenty or thirty years and paid your National Insurance Contributions throughout, in other words paid for your unemployment benefit, it still doesn’t matter. You’re getting benefits so nobody loves you!

Let’s take a closer look at these good folk who love hardworking people. Firstly it is only fair to ask who these hardworking people are? Are they people who’ve worked hard all their lives, been frugal and saved up money for their retirement? Sounds like they’re righteous to me! The kind of people that David Cameron loves. Surely! Well in that case why are these good hardworking people who’ve saved up their money getting sweet fuck all interest on their savings these days, Mr Cameron? Why are most only getting 1% or less on the money they’ve saved, far below the rate of inflation, when it’s being loaned out by the building societies and banks they’ve put it into at a rate of 3-4% on mortgages? As you well know Mr Cameron, it was the financial institutions who caused the current economic crisis so why are you allowing them to rip of your beloved hardworking people all over again with these rotten interest rates? Have you no respect for those hardworking people you say you love who’ve carefully saved money all their lives for their retirement in order that those other friends of yours, the lazy and incompetent financial institutions can rip them off in the way they’re doing right now?

WHY ARE YOU ALLOWING ALL THOSE GOOD HARDWORKING PEOPLE YOU SAY YOU LOVE TO BE CHEATED IN THIS WAY WITH ROTTEN INTEREST RATES?

Okay, maybe the good hardworking people that you’re talking about are young or middle aged. Well in that case what on earth is the point of these people saving money if all they’re getting in return is virtually nothing … unless of course the truth is that you simply want them to spend everything they earn on mortgages to create another artificial  price rise bubble in the housing sector so that everyone feels good all over again till the bubble bursts the way it did during the time of the Thatcher Dictatorship, or else spend it  on cheap crap goods out of China!

I’m talking about those good hardworking people you say you love David Cameron and George Osborne SO LISTEN UP. Those good YOUNG hardworking people of yours… are they all agency workers or kids on minimum wage? Are they part-timers or kids on work experience FORCED TO WORK FOR NOTHING OR ELSE BE DENIED BENEFITS? Are these the young people to which you refer WHO WORK HARD FOR VIRTUALLY NOTHING IN YOUR WRETCHED CHEAP LABOR ECONOMY?

Oh, but that’s only one side of it all isn’t it? Let’s look at the other. At those good hardworking people in the Inland Revenue who work very hard indeed trying to reduce the tax liability of multinational corporations by giving them the best possible private advice WHICH SAVES THEM BILLIONS OF POUNDS EVERY YEAR AND TAKES IT AWAY FROM THE BRITISH ECONOMY AND YOUNG BRITISH PEOPLE. But then many of these corporations are registered overseas in Ireland and so contribute little to nothing to the British economy or the welfare of its citizens anyway. But then saving these multinationals any contribution they might make as taxpayers is considered far more important than those good hardworking British people that David Cameron and George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable say that they love.

Right. So let’s have the truth! The good hardworking people rhetoric that comes out of the mouths of these leading Coalition politicians is quite frankly just so much shit. It’s fodder for those who read the Daily Mail and the Sun who not only hate young people but hate just about everyone, EXCEPT OF COURSE THE POLICE, those whose business it is to keep order. Soon the experience of a much tighter kind of control and order will appear in our lives!

The good hardworking people rhetoric crap is plainly symbolic. A counterpoint to young people without work. To anyone who complains. To anyone who protests about what is happening in our society. The unemployed are simply LAZY, the complainers are simply troublemakers and the protesters are commies or anarchists! They should be made to do useful community work or locked up in detention centres or correction facilities for re-educating. Naturally by the police!

Soon, very soon, there will either be good hardworking people or the deliberate idle. Good hardworking people get to pay tax, eat junk food, get fat, go to watch Premier Football, read the Sun, Express or Daily Mail, watch East Enders and get to live in Essex. The unemployed lazy in the other hand get to eat chips, feel depressed, experience hopelessness and violence and get to be even fatter. The middle class on the other hand will only get to look on and wonder… About when it will be their turn to be loved or unloved!

 

THE RETURN OF IRANIAN JACK

So, Jack Straw has returned from yet another trip to his beloved Iran! This time pleading for British and American tolerance and patience to the supposedly softer more liberal current regime! Now if there was ever any major Western politician who appeared more friendly towards the fundamentalist Islamic State of Iran then it has been Jack Straw, or Ayatollah Straw as most Iranian dissidents called him due to his frequent visits as British Foreign Secretary to Iran in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack on New York.

As Foreign Secretary from 2001-2006 he was always chummy with Iranian diplomats and political figures appointed by the vociferously anti-Semite President of Iran, Holocaust Denier, Ahmed Amadinajad who piloted Iran’s nuclear weapons program, endlessly promising to destroy the Jewish State. Nonetheless, despite its condemnation by the United States as the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism, Ayatollah Straw has consistently offered it verbal support.      

In 2006 he was shifted from his post as Foreign Secretary by Tony Blair and reshuffled to Leader of the House of Commons. In connection with this Wikipedia has commented , “It is believed that Straw’s public opposition to potential military actions in Iran during his tenure of Foreign Secretary was one of the main reasons for his demotion.” Indeed, he seems to have had a peculiarly strange relationship with this hard line fundamentalist anti-Israel, anti-Semitic Islamic state, being technically a Jew himself through his mother, yet nonetheless declaring himself as a Christian. However, why he should have adopted such a friendly disposition to the major international enemy of Judaism and Israel is difficult to fathom though in 2013 he was accused by an Israeli politician of making anti-Semitic remarks at an international conference to the effect that it was the monetary wealth of American Jews that promoted the selection of Israel-friendly politicians to the American Congress. Something he has always denied.

However it is a fact that his time as Home Secretary in Tony Blair’s Labour Government between 1997-2001 was marked by the appearance of fundamentalist Islamic preachers delivering sermons outside mosques, the content of which were often grossly anti-Semitic and which the British police were for reasons best known to themselves unable to stop. This period too also witnessed the growth of openly racist anti-Semitic literature being openly sold on the streets of London and elsewhere.

Altogether, what Jack Straw is politically, despite his lifelong service to the Labour Party is a whole mixture of things, his career being marked by a number of different bees in his bonnet which have come and gone with the times. One however has flourished throughout and that has been his friendly disposition towards a viciously anti-Semitic political regime whose Holocaust Denial made no impression on his choice of political friends. Why is that one wonders? Why too has he never publically condemned the threats by Islamic Iran to destroy the Jewish State of Israel.

The British Labour Party has always had a mighty peculiar and mixed relationship with British Jews. Most Jewish immigrants to Britain have given it their tireless emotional and practical support and there have   been not a few Jewish MP’s and Party activists. The current Leader of the Labour Party in Parliament is a Jew. Even so, one of the most notorious anti-Semites in modern British politics was a former leader of the Transport and General Workers Union, Ernest Bevan, and there have been many others. It is also the case that one of the forefathers of the Labour Party itself, Henry Hyndman, expressed anti-Semitic views.

But then Labour Party politicians have always been known to express strange and peculiar views as well as being strange and peculiar people, no more or less a percentage of the rest of the British population! So if Jack Straw wants to be Iran friendly let him be so. It doesn’t make him an anti-Semite, just another peculiar opportunist political dickhead who seemed to be politically very important, or thought he was, for a short space of time before disappearing up his own arse. Someone who was more than red hot to flush his own vestige of Judaism down the toilet best and fast as he could rather like that other political creep of recent times, Catholic convert Nigel Lawson. The two were political contemporaries and both thought they were  so terribly important and that was only natural you see, because they were politicians and arrogant enough to think they could make a real difference to people’s lives when they actually couldn’t. Only mess them up far more than they already were by sticking their noses into history.

Ayatollah Straw will always be known with that name and historically no friend at all in the great Jewish story. However, I shall always think of him as Iranian Jack!

BY POPULAR DEMAND: AN ALTERNATIVE NEW YEAR’S HONOURS LIST

FIRST CATEGORY: TOSSERS AND SCUMBAGS

A) INDIVIDUALS  B) ORGANISATIONS

SECOND CATEGORY: FOR HONESTY AND DECENCY  

A) INDIVIDUALS   B) ORGANISATIONS

 

FIRST CATEGORY: INDIVIDUAL NOMINATIONS

Ed Davey: Lib Dem Secretary of State for Energy

Boris Johnson: Mayor of London

Stephen Fry: National Goody-Goody

Brian Cox: BBC Television Know All

Jamie Oliver: Food Pontificator

Jimmy Savile: National Favourite Children’s Entertainer (Posthumous)

Lord Justice Leveson: Legal Enquiry Dickhead

Ian Duncan Smith: Tory Secretary of State for Benefit Cuts

AND THE WINNERS ARE: 

Brian Cox :  For Services to Universal Wisdom :  Medal of Distinction  Tosser First Class

Lord Justice Leveson :  For failing to ask Rupert Murdoch how he got hold of the Broadcasting License for Sky Television:   Emeritus Award Tosser First Class

Stephen Fry :  For being so effortlessly and endlessly congenial : Medal of Distinction  Category of Tossers                                             

Jamie Oliver :  For making a fortune out of telling everyone what they should eat : National Tossers Award 

Ed Davey : For Services to the Energy Suppliers Cartel:  Distinguished Order of Scumbags

 

FIRST CATEGORY : ORGANISATIONS NOMINATED

The Inland Revenue

The Energy Suppliers Cartel

The Liberal Democrat Coalition Partners in Government

Rupert Murdoch’s News International Corporation

The British Police Service

BBC Television

The English Cricket Team :  Players and Management

The Co-operative Movement

AND THE WINNERS ARE:

The Inland Revenue: For services to large multinational corporations on how to reduce their tax liability.  Distinguished Order of Outright Hypocrisy

The English Cricket Team : For setting such a fine example to all young British sports enthusiasts on the exemplary and professional conduct of their sport.   Medal of Distinction   Category of Tossers

The Liberal Democrats in Government : For taking the art of lying, deceit and opportunism in British politics to new heights.  Order of Scumbags: First Class

BBC Television : For nepotism. And for hostility and outright bias in its reporting on the State of Israel.   Order of Scumbags:  First Class

The Co-operative Movement : For allowing a drug-taking incompetent rascal to become Chairman of the Co-operative Bank and contribute to the wrecking of its finances.  Medal of Distinction  Category of Tossers

The British Police Service : There is no honorific order or award that does sufficient justice to the standard of behaviour and conduct of the British Police Service over the last year.

 

SECOND CATEGORY:  INDIVIDUAL NOMINATIONS

Margaret Hodge  Chair:  House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.

Ed Miliband  Leader of the Labour Party.

Teresa May  Tory Immigration Control Queen

Edward Snowden  Former security services employee of the United States Government.

Ed Mitchell  Former Tory Cabinet Minister

Nigella Lawson  Celebrity Cook

AND THE WINNERS ARE

Margaret Hodge:  For distinguished and honorable services to the Parliamentary process by ensuring that those interviewed by the House of Commons Select Committee which she chairs are mercilessly questioned about their public conduct.  Medal of Decency and Personal Integrity

Ed Miliband:  For promising to curb the power of the Energy Companies. For promising to end the appalling cheap labour employment practices experienced by young British workers. For standing up for the personal and political integrity of his deceased father whose name and conduct had been blackened by the Daily Mail.   Medal of Decency and Personal Integrity

Edward Snowden: For bringing to public attention the disreputable conduct of the intelligence services of Britain and the United States at considerable personal risk to himself.    International Award for Personal Decency and Integrity.

SECOND CATEGORY: ORGANISATIONS NOMINATED

The Guardian Newspaper and its staff

The Campaign for Justice on behalf of the victims of the Hillsborough Disaster

LBC Radio

The National Health Service

AND THE WINNERS ARE

The Guardian Newspaper and its Staff:  For news reporting at the highest professional standard of truthfulness, integrity and courage.  Medal of Honor for Public Service.

The Campaign for Justice on behalf of the victims of the Hillsborough Disaster:  For its long heroic struggle against the greatest odds and obstruction to bring to public attention the true facts of the Disaster.  Medal of Honor for Public Service.

LBC Radio:  For its clear, truthful and interesting reporting of public events great and small and exemplary contribution to radio journalism.  Medal of Honor for Public Service .

The National Health Service:  For working tirelessly to ensure the health of the nation in the face of endlessly vindictive Tory criticism and only too often disgracefully low pay of its employees. It remains as  it has always been, the finest and most honorable public service institution of our country.   Medal of Distinction for Exemplary Public Service. 

UNLIMITED IMMIGRATION INTO THE UNITED KINGDOM

Right now on January 2nd politicians of the two main parties along with sections of an unsympathetic if not downright hostile media are wringing their hands sorrowfully over impending large scale immigration into the UK of people from Romania and Bulgaria. Other groupings of the political and media establishment however are cheering it on. The major supporters and apologists for these coming large scale new arrivals are the Liberal Democrats, the BBC, and a small section of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Here the Lib-Dems are universally pro and vociferous. The BBC, typically sly and slimy, only has reportage and interviewees from those with an supposedly independent caste of mind but who invariably turn out to be in the pro camp providing an endless litany of rationalization about how mass immigration has always benefitted and will continue to benefit the British economy with immigrants providing the Government with increased tax revenue and the country at large with all the delights of cultural variety. Yes, they’ll all be paying tax, making a great contribution to the economy with all their amazing skills and besides, there’s always the new and tasty food they’ll be introducing us to!

Quite frankly, there are millions of people out there who’ve heard all this stuff time and again over the last thirty years and now quite rightly believe that they’re getting more and more of the same old crap from the same kind of people who’ve got nothing to do with the vast majority of the working population who live north of London. So having said that let’s take a look.

Most of the immigrants that came to Britain between 1870 and 1950 were Jews, Irish and Italian. The Irish helped build our roads and railways, the Jews the garment, food retail and light entertainment industries while the Italians contributed to our service sector. The Irish and the Jews were not economic migrants. They came to escape persecution. The Jews at the hands of the Russians, appalling treatment at best. The mainly Catholic Irish who suffered at the hands of British prior to Irish independence. At its maximum they accounted for a combined total of no more than three quarters of a million people spread over a period of some seventy years. The decade 1955-1965 saw the arrival of another half million immigrants, mainly from the Caribbean, who often took up employment in the transport and national health service sectors, generally making a positive contribution to British society. It is when television and media panelists along with politicians speak favorably about the benefits of immigration it is these groups to which they refer as a basis for reportage about the benefits of immigration.

Indeed, it is from this perspective that they view recent immigration into Britain over the last three decades. The trouble with this sleight of hand is that immigration into the UK over the last thirty years has been entirely different to what it was in the past, significantly both in volume and cultural character. It is the sheer volume that is glossed over more than anything else. We are not talking here of a quarter million Jews or four hundred thousand Irish over fifty years but over four million arrivals from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India in not much more than half that time along with another half million from Africa! To most people living in the Midlands, the North or Scotland and Wales before 1960, seeing such people was more occasional than anything. Today, most sizable cities north of London have large communities of Asian immigrants who in some cases outnumber the indigenous population.

This mass arrival of Asians in such a short period of time is now paralleled by another wave of mass immigration from East Europe, the main weight of which has been the arrival of one million Poles in the  last less ten years and the impending arrival of possibly one million Romanians and Bulgarians from East Europe’s poorest societies. Given these facts it might be useful to consider the political and historical circumstances surrounding these two great waves of inflow. There can be no doubt that this great influx of people began during the latter end of Margaret Thatcher’s political rule but increased without check or hindrance whatsoever during Tony Blair’s time in office and the Labour Party’s continued governance under Gordon Brown, ultimately turning into an avalanche. To supporters of unchecked mass immigration the use of this word is only too often branded as a heresy, or racist, fascist and worse. I’m sorry to tell you however that such labelling, snarling and finger jabbing is only too typical of an unresolved fascist mentality itself. The facts are plain enough. What is important however is to examine their causes and perhaps ask yourself why a situation of rapid, unchecked mass immigration exists.

Towards the end of its life the Thatcherite Government turned a blind eye to a steady trickle of immigration from Asia. As soon as Tony Blair’s Labour won its first election in 1997 however, this immigration was positively encouraged. In the great majority of cases these immigrants were Muslim. Before 1980 the sight of mosques proliferating in most British cities was unheard of. From the time of New Labour Government they became commonplace. Equally important, from the time of New Labour Government a remarkable new phenomenon appeared on our streets. Muslim fundamentalist clerics, allowed into Britain without let or hindrance by British Home Secretaries like David Blunkett, were allowed to preach race hatred against Jews and white people in general to large crowds of followers in streets outside mosques and along with this followed the unchecked sale of disgusting Muslim race hate literature. To all of this the police for no understandable reason turned a deaf ear and a blind eye. New Labour permitted and encouraged it all.

And with the fundamentalist race hate preaching came the radicalization of large sections of young Muslim listeners. The same youth who are today fighting for Islamic jihad and fundamentalism in Syria, throughout the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. It is well known indeed to British security services that Muslim terrorism is a main British export round the world and a clear consequence of New Labor’s policy of turning a blind eye to unchecked immigration. So why did Tony Blair and his Home Secretaries permit it? Allow the UK to become a haven for mass South Asian immigration? The taxation and economic benefits argument doesn’t hold water. Most women arriving were unskilled and couldn’t speak English. In this respect things haven’t changed. If they did work it was within small family shops supplying south Asian products for their local community, the great majority of their husbands and other male relatives doing likewise, so the notion of economic benefit is simply a myth.

More important than anything else though is that the many millions of Asians who came were not fleeing from any form of persecution. To claim that is false. They were in main economic migrants and came to Britain purely for economic reasons.  

This first great wave of mass immigration under New Labour has brought no real economic benefit at all to the UK. What it has brought however is cultural diversity and with it on the downside a climate of tension and terrorism into our homes and onto our streets. Such a downside includes a plainly racist attitude to those among whom they live and their cultural values such as equality between sexes, rights of women, tolerance towards people of other races and differences of sexual gender along with a general belief in equality and democracy. In the case of the above first wave of mass immigration, New Labour Government was under no legal obligation to admit such numbers. They did it as a matter of policy. It has been suggested that this was done to create greater competition in the labour market. Something that an undoubted Thatcherite like Tony Blair might have wished to do. Greater competition of course being a euphemism for cheap labour or cheapening the cost of labour. This is hardly likely as the vast majority of Asian arrivals were hardly more than small shopkeepers or employees in the services industries at best. Another view, that of attacking the British working class by diluting its cultural integration and cohesiveness so soon after its battering by Margaret Thatcher and her police is more tenable.

It is now generally felt that New Labour, over its more than a decade in Government, did little to nothing for British working people and was generally hostile to the Trades Union Movement. Indeed, Blair himself is often called Tory Blair and recognised by many in that Party as a political descendant of Thatcher herself. His successor Gordon Brown certainly was. Both men and their Governments it is recognised did little to nothing for the poor and the working people of Britain. In fact the consequences of their financial policies has been a great impoverishment of most British people. After Thatcher most working people in Britain expected something far better from Tony Blair and New Labour. Instead what they got soon after Thatcher and Major was a huge wave of Asian immigration into their towns and their cities. The latter it has been suggested is hardly coincidental in that piled onto their weakened position in economic depression was having to contend with a vast and challenging immigrant influx occupying their minds and their thoughts. In my view this kind of ploy is a typically New Labour thing. A kind of Social Democrat neo-Toryism which Blair and his acolytes certainly were.

However it wasn’t the end. From his mid-term in office Tony Blair turned towards Poland, newly admitted into the European Community, with Community law regulating the flow across Europe of labour. Poles were now able to circumvent all employment and travel restriction. However not to worry, we were all told by New Labour at the time, and BBC pundits of course! Labour’s expert statisticians assured us that no more than 15 thousand, 20 at most, would arrive each year and furthermore they would all be highly skilled people, so no fears for employment on that score! Yes, they would all be highly skilled so the tens of thousands of unemployed men, women and teenagers in Britain need not worry! If ever there was a damnable lie that was it! In the first five years of Blair’s open door policy over one million Poles have arrived. It is now an all too common joke that Polish is the first language of dozens of towns and cities throughout the south of England and West Country. But then the Poles are really great for our economy so we are told! They can be taxed on their high British wages and they buy so much food from our shops… except that they don’t! They buy from their own Polish shops of which there are thousands all over the place, and then in the building industry in which many of them are employed, they mostly work off the books! THEY DON’T IN MAIN PAY TAX AT ALL!

With Poland having EC membership, their population could choose to work just about anywhere so why did a million choose England? No problem at all! It was the best place for easy cheap council housing and free financial benefits anywhere in Europe, thanks to Tony Blair and New Labour. No such open arms, however, for young workers here. With an influx of one million Poles in five years New Labour assurances and statistics were all shown up as lies. However, it’s a cheering fact that in the last year some ancient New Labour Grandees from past times have crawled out the woodwork and admitted they’d made a mistake and got it all wrong!

Oh dear, oh dear… They’d got it all wrong! They’d made a little mistake about immigration! But then as most British people now know, if they’ve made such an acknowledgement it’s only because they’re red hot to be elected in 2015 with Ed Miliband at the helm. Dear old Ed… one of the architects of Gordon Brown’s policies of mass immigration! What actual benefit did the immigration of one million Poles and along with Latvians, Lithuanians, Slovaks and others bring to the UK. Well, and here is the other very well prepared answer… They do all those jobs that most young British people would never do. And that is because all those young British people are LAZY… they simply won’t do that kind of work… They want to earn lots of money for doing nothing!

Yes… they want to earn lots of money for doing nothing… I can read in so many downright reactionary newspapers… Hear it from the lips of so many miserable old bastards!

Yes, let’s run our own youth down and call them all lazy! They want to earn lots of money for doing nothing! Well I for one can’t hear you saying that about the scumbags in banking and finance who’ve cheated us all. All I can hear is you turning your spleen on our own kids and calling them lazy when they won’t pick vegetables for two quid an hour or scrub plates in a kitchen for less. So why did Tony Blair and his political friends let them enter in droves? The answer’s more than clear. They’re simply cheap labour, especially in unskilled occupations such as the building trade or clerical doughboys working for banks and insurance companies. Have a mind for them though. Most work hard and mean well. It’s tough leaving your parents, family and friends for somewhere many don’t want you to be!

Romanians and Bulgarians. Great! As long as they’re not on our street! Well if Boris Johnson has any say they’ll all be working in London! Surely not all of them begging down Oxford Street, Boris? Maybe you ought to think of taking some of those kids in prams home with you! With one of their mothers as wet nurse, or maybe two or three, all scamming food out of your kitchen!

YES, BUMBLING BLOND BORIS LOVES ROMANIAN BABIES! So we suggest that you all look him up when you arrive and pay him a visit. But please don’t worry! If you can’t find where he lives then you can start asking around. Ask our lovely police first. You can be sure that they’ll help you! Then you can go on working in Oxford Street with your fingers real itchy. Please don’t worry! All our best BBC liberals and friendly Liberal Democrats think you’ll be making a real contribution to our economy. Helping with the free circulation of money. From our pockets to your bank account in Bucharest. And good luck to your wives and your two dozen babies all begging. You see, that’s what we British all like. Seeing all you good folk coming here and working so hard. And if you want to park your Mercedes in our drive than you are welcome. Or if you need a short term loan may we suggest you give Wonga a miss. Just look up the Liberal Democrats Executive Committee, make a list of their names then go pay them a call. Holding up all those Oxford Street babies with television cameras present that you’ve arranged to be there! May I suggest to you good Romanian or Bulgarian folk that you go pay that really nice man, Nick Clegg and his wife, a visit… Or better still Mister Vince Cable. Yes, the minute your coach arrives in London why not try looking them up?

And after that there’s always Ed Miliband and his family. They’d really love to have you all camping in the back garden. That’s why they’re bringing you all in. So you can camp on everyone else’s! But actually, our politician who wants to see you most of all is a lovely lady called Teresa May. All her tens of thousands of immigrant well-wishers call her Mother Teresa!

And don’t any of you forget now. You’ve all got the support of the Bulgarian President who recently said that Britain can’t turn you away because we’ve got no right to. Isn’t that really nice. Our Government refuses to let the British people have a vote on whether to stay in the EC or get the hell out, so your President can actually say that, you see. He knows that you Bulgarians and Romanians have got more political rights and freedoms than we have in Britain! He knows that you’ve got the right to take a coach over here from the shit-hole you live in over there, put your feet down and fuck over the British.

By the way, has anyone told you? There are one hundred and thirty thousand Romanians and Bulgarians living in Britain already and the flood gates haven’t yet opened. And they are all such lovely people! If you don’t believe me just listen to BBC television, or better still Channel 4!