THE GREEKS AND THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS!

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first send mad is a well known saying from Greek mythology though whether ancient or modern there’s no-one who’s ever been better with bullshit. Today they’re running rings round their German paymasters in the European Union using delaying tactics and making endless excuses about paying back all the bailout money they’ve borrowed. Meanwhile their new Left wing Government keeps laying down conditions and promising reforms, coming out with any old guff they think sounds good. Trouble is it needs more and more money by the day to pay bills at home such as public service workers salaries but with nothing more on offer keep going round in circles without a hope in hell of playing catch up. The Greeks don’t make anything, and they don’t export much of anything either except drama, false promises and bullshit. In that sense they’re very much like the Liberal Democrats before the General Election. Full of tales about all the wonders they’ve worked and full of dramatic promises about the amazing things that they’ll do if people vote to put them back into Coalition Government!

Tales about all the wonders they’ve worked and promises to work more wonders and miracles… Quite frankly, anyone listening to all of this coming out of their mouths might ask whether they themselves have gone mad or whether it’s the Liberal Democrats, who like the Greeks have simply lost it! Or maybe it isn’t like that at all. The Greek Government knows it can’t pay the Germans a penny and the whole population is deep in the shit so whatever they say or whatever they do it won’t make a difference! In which case why not simply go on saying anything when nothing actually matters and furthermore there’s nothing that anyone can actually do! Right now it’s exactly the same with the Lib-Dems. They’re endlessly talking up their record in Government to the electorate, asking for understanding and sympathy while making more and more promises like the lying toe-rags they are, knowing that none of it matters. For five years they threw in their lot with the Tories voting for welfare and benefits cuts and there’s nothing they can do now except come out with bullshit, trying to justify their conduct and spend all their time talking it up, down or sideways!     

It’s like listening to some old French tart on a gramophone record. She’s got nothing to regret and will keep on opening her legs all over again. Some kind of promise that is! Keep on giving people another dose of the clap and all self righteous that she’s making a difference and would you believe it, promising to protect the NHS at the same time. And for that you’ve really got to have nerve. That’s the message, the promise of integrity that the Liberal Democrats are coming out with daily, nationally and all over the board. Trouble is, too many people already believed in virgins and fairies and went down with a dose like the jobseekers, the poor and the students and what the Germans think of the Greeks is the same that British people now think of those old talk it up tarts wearing orange. They’re so far down in the polls that every time they open their mouths you can’t help smelling the rot.

Let me give you a current example of such Liberal Democrat electioneering promises made at the local level of politics. The Party has long controlled Bath & North East Somerset Council and one of their recent manifestos leaflets, Bath’s traffic… We all know the problems tells its own story, or does it? It was printed in response to endless complaints from angry motorists in and around Bath and throughout much of the area. Over the last eighteen months they’ve experienced an endless series of catastrophic road-works instigated by the Liberal Democrat controlled authority which have enormously added to the already existing and quite frankly needless congestion. Two of these schemes incorporate so-called fancy pavement improvement in an effort to give the respective areas what might best be described as a more green villagey character. In one of these, a major transportation conduit, the works, already extensive and causing staggering traffic chaos throughout the day were suspended when the builders used by the Council declared themselves bankrupt. Since then, all building activity incorporating various roads and pavement ‘improvement’ has been virtually abandoned resulting in astounding traffic chaos to a wide southern area of the City.

Along the London Road, leading to the M4 Motorway and the old A4 road to London, the Council’s road widening and fancy pavements scheme has been running for many months with no end in sight. If it wasn’t already plain bad getting into the City from the east because one of the two available lanes was given over to infrequent taxis and buses, the entire area has now become a staggering rat run of cones which keeps extending along both sides with no foreseeable end in sight. For over a year sanity has been dumped down the tubes with businesses along the road suffering devastating loss. But that’s nothing compared to the general loss of trade by shops throughout the City. In the last year what may best be described as FLASH-WORKS have appeared just about everywhere. “It’s like going to bed at night and waking up and finding the street you live in suddenly dug up and everywhere surrounded with fencing, and workmen with digging machines causing traffic chaos that’s never been there before,” is how one resident described it to me.

These FLASH-WORKS and the suddenness with which they appear have been an astonishing experience for the motorist. Both for those who live in the City or travel through it. The traffic chaos over the last year or more has been astounding. What was initially bad was made far worse by Liberal Democrat council controlled works over the last eighteen months which, for both motorists and small business has turned the place into a hell-hole. Alas, that’s not the end of the story! A main arterial, the A36, leading to Wiltshire has completely disappeared from use and for how long nobody knows. Or if anyone from the council does they’re not telling! It’s oh so very Liberal Democrat!  

But wait! In response to all the many complaints, your friendly Lib-Dem team whose new business rates have all but strangled the life out of most small shops, have brought out a flash pre-election leaflet telling people how, if re-elected, they will do away with all Bath’s traffic problems… Making Bath even better…

This is a truly astonishing document detailing plans build a huge road tunnel under a main railway line, river and canal just a few miles outside the City together with a new rail station and giant car park. The scheme is so enormous that it is comparable to the size of the works needed for the Channel Tunnel. Nothing on the little map illustrating the scheme shows a railway, river or canal in the vicinity but they’re there all the same! It’s an interesting thought that if the chaos caused by the roadwork schemes elsewhere are anything to go by along with the time spent, the effect of this new Lib-Dem proposal would be to stuff up the entire City and take at least twenty years to complete. It might even mean ending much of the use of road transport throughout the City itself and its suburbs.

The Liberal Democrats who control the Council make their intentions plain. GET COMMUTER CARS OUT OF BATH their leaflet roars, and in a little inset they say, ‘The government welcomes the strategy… Approval from Westminster for our plans (November 2014)’

Just a brief word about this. There’s a big difference between the government welcoming the strategy and approving it. Alas for the Liberal Democrats no formal approval for the scheme was ever given, mainly because of cost and furthermore the original plan they submitted NEVER INCLUDED A TUNNEL UNDER A RAILWAY LINE, RIVER AND CANAL SO IMPLYING IT DID IS SLIMY IF BEST AND PLAIN UNTRUTHFUL!

But never mind that. The Liberal Democrats of Bath as with Liberal Democrats everywhere are at their most friendly when it comes to supporting cyclists who most motorists in Bath regard as rats on two wheels. Here is a list of their new cyclist friendly intentions

We aim to spend 10% of the Highways budget to support cycling.

We will introduce cycle traffic lights to give cyclists a head start.

We will encourage bus companies to fit racks to carry cycles up hills.

We will review junctions to make them more cycle friendly.

As stated in a previous post, BICYCLE FIENDS, cyclists in Bath rule its streets and pavements, jumping the town’s traffic lights with impunity and thinking nothing of knocking over and abusing pedestrians, yet they are thought by the nimby-namby Lib-Dems to give the town greenness and character!

The road traffic scheme these Greeky Liberal Democrats intend for Bath is verging on madness. It would cost hundreds of millions, money that can’t be obtained from central Government funding and which the council they run doesn’t have. Apart from the little problem of finance, given the slower than snail’s pace progress of current road-works in the City, regarded by most of its residents as a very sick joke, the time scale is likely to be run into decades. As someone recently said, they’ll be at in for the grandkids to see…

At the back of the leaflet there’s a photo of the ex Lib-Dem MP Don Foster with his arm on the candidate’s shoulder, both of them looking into the camera like something out of the film Total Recall with the evil administrator of Mars and his buddy, Hauser, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie. If you know the film and then see the photo you’ll know what I mean! Under it are the words spoken by the former MP…  

‘These schemes will make our city a much better place and Steve knows how to get the money for them out of the government.’

Some boast! Especially as the candidate has never had anything to do with government before yet is said to know how to get hundreds of millions out of Labour or the Tories. Well for this completely mad Liberal Democrat promise to free the City of Bath of its road traffic chaos with such a scheme, all he’s ever likely to get is a resounding kick in the butt. Thinking they could assuage the fury of Bath’s motorists before the General Election with this kind of thing, the Liberal Democrats rushed it out hoping it might win them back a few votes and maybe save them losing control of the council. The scheme however is mad, its costing unspecified and its technical complications simply unstated. Yet there it is. A leaflet with a crazy little map and full of clever little photos of what the Liberal Democrats think makes people happy. Of course it’s nothing new. It was first proposed ten years or more back and abandoned as totally impractical. And now it’s been rushed out all over again with Bath’s skanky Lib-Dems hoping to save face for all the wretched traffic chaos they’ve caused.

It’s like a Greek kind of promise, but then as I said earlier, it’s a very Greek kind of thing! Those whom the Gods seek to destroy they first send mad… and this is clearly the way the Party is heading, not only in Bath but all over the country. They can make promises, any old promises, till they’re blue in the face but people know these clapped out political tarts for what they are. They’ll do anything… say anything to keep hold of power and that’s the most terrible thing really. They honestly believe that they’re the best guys in town and what makes it worse is that there are people around who actually believe them.

Now how sad is that!

GENERAL ELECTION CAMEOS

For sheer unashamed cheek you couldn’t do much better right now than consider the great Liberal Democrat offering made by Nick Clegg and his Ministerial Colleague David Laws, who by the way put in a dodgy Parliamentary expenses claim for his partner not long back, of promising millions of public sector workers a handsome salary increase in 2016 if the Party formed part of a Coalition Government after the Election! Now how do you like that? Firemen, policemen, teachers and many others working in the public sector would get joy if Nick came back as Deputy Prime Minister! It just begs the question, what kind of joy did they get from these monkeys in the last five years of Coalition?

Of course, Cleggy will tell you that because of him and his mates everyone’s pockets are full of cash except for all the above who lost out because of those nasty Tories… but never mind, give him a chance and next time round he’ll fix it! Just give him a chance and see what a difference he’ll make. Well last time round Nick, British people didn’t vote Liberal Democrat to see you jump into bed with George Osborne and vote for all round salary cuts. They voted for you because of the promises you made in your Election Manifesto then immediately broke. And right now you’re making more big promises to millions of people without being able to give any kind of guarantee that you’ll keep them.

YOU’VE PROVED YOURSELVES TO BE LIARS BEFORE SO HOW CAN YOU HONESTLY EXPECT ANYONE TO BELIEVE YOU?  

Wait a minute! Did I say honestly? Sorry, I made a mistake. There’s nothing honest about such promises at all, there doesn’t have to be you know it! It’s just any old bullshit that desperate politicians, desperate for your vote pull out of a hat thinking they can persuade you that you’re virgins all over again and ready for shafting. Not only don’t they have to keep any promises but there’s little to no chance of them being able to. That’s the worst part of it with the Liberal Democrats. They know they’re a busted flush and that just about everybody’s had it with them. That in a couple of weeks a good half of their Parliamentary representation is going down the plug hole. It doesn’t matter. They’re still coming out with any old porky shit in the hope that people will have forgotten who they opened their legs for to get into Government. Trouble is, tarts always sound like tarts let alone look like them when they put it about and you can’t hide the dirt under the makeup. You’re known and if the electorate has got any sense they’ll smell you a mile off.

The Liberal Democrats are like a disease and people are savvy to that sort of thing second time round. The promise of making it up to the public sector workers whose standard of living they joined with the Tories to attack is only just that. A promise they have no way of keeping. Just words! Part of the Liberal Democrat spin by the new political whores on the block. Sorry Nick but you’ve got the look of a deep fried Mars bar about you and there’s no way of hiding it.

Nigel Farage and the BBC! Now here’s a delightful election cameo. If UKIP’s main man thought he could get even half an ounce of fair dealing for his anti-EU, anti immigration message from the terrorist friendly, liberal elitist, pro-EU broadcaster for the British Establishment then he really needed to think again. This is a nasty sanctimonious little outfit that thinks nothing of unconscionable bias in its reportage on a whole range of issues. They can make claims of neutrality in their selection of panels and audiences but most people know that they’re carefully chosen and all of those seemingly random questions carefully prepared. The questioning of Party Leaders is a case in point. If Nigel Farage expected anything less than being critically talked over, continually interrupted or having his words misinterpreted during his interview with Evan Davis then he was deluded right from the start. What he needed to do was show resolution. Either shut the man up or walk off the show. Instead he allowed himself to be continually put on the defensive without being allowed to develop any argument he was trying to make.

Alas he was too much of a gentleman and with the BBC that’s half way to surrender. He should have known he was in for a roughhouse and dealt with the tactics accordingly… played the roughhouse game instead of being the earnest politician who made no promises but said what he thought. We’ve all heard the leaders and spokesmen of the main Parties make plenty of promises. UKIP’s Farage however has concentrated on just a handful of key issues like immigration, defense and membership of the EU, things that most of the others have kept hidden away under the carpet.    

Actually, dealing with the immigration issue is of the utmost importance for this country. It’s now running unchecked into hundreds of thousands with the dregs of Eastern Europe arriving here on the make with opportunistic criminal activities in mind like state benefit robbery from places like Slovakia, once Hitler’s second most favorite Nazi State after Austria, Latvia that even today pays its citizens who once joined the wartime Nazi SS a generous pension for their murderous activities, and then of course there are always the Romanians, the biggest piss-takers in Europe to say nothing of the Poles. Over a million of them here on the make and cock of the walk with it. And quite frankly why shouldn’t they be? They’ve been purposefully brought in by business, fronted by the liberal intelligentsia full of ready-made excuses, to depress wages and operate as a reserve army of labor. And you’ll barely hear the argument from anyone else except Nigel Farage.

That’s the big trick really… the real purpose of the European Union. Depress wages throughout the economic bloc and make its goods competitive with those of cheap labor south-east Asia… and do the job through the so called free movement of labor across European borders. Forget any territorial border controls. Labor goes where it’s cheapest with so-called New Labour lads like businessman Tony Blair giving it a helping hand on the way. If there was ever anyone who didn’t give a diddly squat about the economic welfare of the British working class it was Blair. His message to millions of Poles with their eyes turned to Britain and hot to earn a shilling was bread, let them eat cake! Shame that the decent hardworking people of Britain should be forced to sink into the morass of purposefully imported alien values and cultures and be forced to give up what was once so much their own. This coming election then is a kind of last hurrah for what was once a culturally traditional British way of life. Ultimately, perhaps, that’s the real meaning of the Farage message. That the British people have to wake up before it’s too late!

Natalie Bennett of the Green Party certainly doesn’t think so. She comes to British politics from a different direction entirely to that of Nigel Farage. Can you at all imagine the strident dictatorship of a Green Party Government lead by Mme Bennett? Who would be her Chancellor of the Exchequer and who her Foreign Secretary? We haven’t seen any member of her Shadow Cabinet yet and we don’t know anything about the Foreign policy of a Green Government towards America, Russia or China! Why not? The Greens are fielding hundreds of candidates in the Election. What if the British people went mad and they all won? Do you think it’s impossible? Why, if millions of Londoners could elect a mumbling bumbling semi-idiot like Boris Johnson to be their Mayor then anything could happen! So you went to bed and woke next morning to find Natalie Bennett in power running a Coalition Government with Nick Clegg. Can you think of anything that’s more toe-curling, more cringe-worthy a proposition? A Green and Orange Coalition! Nick Clegg in bed with Natalie Bennett. Sounds like a perfect sketch for a Newzoid!

Well what does being Natalie Bennett mean? Well being out of power it naturally means stating your position on a whole raft of policies some of which actually sound good; like making the bankers whose jack the lad investments initially created the economic crisis actually pay for it, something that HSBC is most unhappy to do. Like guaranteeing the survival of a profits free National Health Service, reforming the tax collection system and cutting out all the Inland Revenue sweetener deals for the multinational corporations, scrapping university tuition fees, renationalizing the railways and creating a national Living Wage for millions of workers. Much of it sounds exactly what you once might have expected from Old Labour only it comes with a whole wave of Greenery, from taking action on Climate Change whatever that means and getting rid of most of Britain’s current power generation facilities. Such gifts come with strictures such as promising to promote walking and cycling to improve our health and undoubtedly sooner or later enjoying a cigarette will be turned into a crime! Promoting cycling? All motorists know what that means! Roads and pavements everywhere turned into a bicyclists’ dictatorship with hundreds of thousands of little two wheeler Fuhrers shouting the odds just about everywhere. No thanks! And neither do I want to be told to eat less meat and more vegetables.

Furthermore Green foreign policies have a virulent downside like a nasty animosity towards Israel bordering on anti-Semitism. Little to nothing about EU membership, dealing with uncontrolled immigration or Islamic fundamentalist terrorism home grown or away. There’s a big part of the dumpy little lady that’s suspect but even so her appeal is undoubted. Many of the values she stands for are decent and today fill a great hole in politics that was once filled by politicians when politics was honest and such people actually cared. Much of her domestic mileage has traction, especially with young people looking for something fresh but have nowhere to go. Maybe that’s why 10% of the electorate will support her. Trouble with the Greens is that some of their views are prescriptive and the British people traditionally don’t like being told what to do.

She’s a female figure quite unlike Nicola Sturgeon. Currently without any power she quietly campaigns for support whereas Nicola, with overwhelming regional support, is currently campaigning for national power. Both Party leaders have a very different kind of appeal. That of the feisty Scotswoman is of a certainty coming from strength; that of the Green Lady her commitment to an eclectic raft of good causes. The appeal of the latter is nothing like that of the former. One means business for Scotland, the other business for the universally disaffected, as they might wish to portray themselves! Natalie Bennett is fresh and green and highly prescriptive as fresh and green usually is. The current Queen of Scots is hard-nosed and cute and aiming for power. She has a certain way of swinging her hips as she prances along, something the dumpy Natalie could never do, yet she’s as equally hostile to the Jewish State and as fundamentally ignorant about its modern creation and character as is the Queen of the Greens. Ignorant and bigoted as so much of the Left is these days.    

It has sometimes been said, apropos writers, that they are best known, best understood, through their attitude towards Jews. That their attitude towards Jews is a kind of litmus test that reveals character. Perhaps this is applicable to everyone, not just writers. And not just Jews I think but also the Jewish State. Irrational ignorant dislike leaves me uncomfortable with people whose views I might otherwise find interesting or support and the same goes for the leaders of Labour and the Liberal Democrats as it does for the Green Party and the Scottish Nationalists. David Cameron on the other hand I firmly believe to be free of any such prejudice.

The presentation of these cameos are my own and express my own judgments. For example where would the campaign of Labour Party leader be without the pervasive image of his full, shiny set of teeth in a strangely pallid face. Given the factors that seem to motivate the British electorate these days, especially women, image and presentation are highly important. Maybe not quite as much as policy but probably running it close and the Miliband teeth along with the soft sell of the man as being caring and reasonable are all part of the carefully conveyed smiling image. It’s safe, just as much as the conveyed images of all four of the main Party leaders are safe. This is because they are fundamentally unchallenged. They present themselves to the public through carefully staged managed meetings of Party supporters or in meeting people situations such as workplaces or NHS hospitals where they are highly unlikely to come up against rowdy criticism or hostile questioning. In short they and their political associates make sure that all such situations are highly controlled and leave no room for chance difficulty. Like the personal images presented everything is smooth and agreeable like a good healthy set of teeth.

Nicola Sturgeon is feisty and challenging. Clegg is above all, reasonable. Cameron in control and reassuring and mild mannered just like any other politician who’s convinced that he’s done a good job running the country under difficult economic circumstances, conveying a reasonably satisfied image that he can stand on his record. And at the end, when the time comes for people to put a cross on their ballot paper, all these leaders will put their trust almost as much as the image they’ve conveyed as the policies they stand for. Image is crucial to what they are in a nutshell. The cameo of the Party leader that the voter has in mind along with what they stand for agreeably concur with the views of the man or woman holding the pencil then they get the vote! The carefully designed and constructed cameo image has been important in British politics since the 1950’s and perhaps never more so than now.

With a blurring of policy between the Labour and Conservative Parties in recent years the creation of sharp cameo image for this current election has been essential, as much to show difference between the two leaders themselves as in the things that they stand for. For Cameron it had been continuity, particularly in the sphere of the economy. For Miliband it has been the critique of unfairness and a lack of justice. And into the mix comes the forthrightness and challenge of Nicola Sturgeon and Nigel Farage along with the soft smiling integrity of Natalie Bennett.

The choices ahead of you are possibly the best ever yet!

THE MANIFESTOS OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS AND UKIP

On Wednesday this week hot in the footsteps of Labour and the Conservatives, a pallid but jollied up Nick Clegg brought out his offering on behalf of the Liberal Democrats in a glitzy colorful political jamboree well trumpeted by BBC television as one might expect given their undoubted favoritism for Lib-Dem middle of the road promises to just about everyone including a foreign policy of maintaining Britain’s overgenerous whacky overseas aid.  In contradistinction its coverage of UKIP’s manifesto launch was a much more moderate affair. Both manifestos deserve a few words of coverage here.

Promises are fabulously cheap at election time. That said and remembering their last election manifesto, such promises cannot come any more fabulous for their plain bare faced cheek than those coming from the boys in orange. Their main claim to the electorate above all other things is VOTE FOR US because we as Liberal Democrats guarantee to provide balance between future cost cutting attacks on welfare benefits by hard-nosed Tories and unnecessary expenditure by frivolous Labour who they accuse of being only too willing to increase benefits all over the place! As Clegg himself put it, Liberal Democrats would go into Coalition Government with whoever they thought might need them; be best for the country that is! And here his wonderful boast that they would give heart to the Conservatives and be the brains for Ed Miliband!

Oh how wonderful! How very good of him and his mates, one of whom by the way was caught by the cameras sitting in a corner and grinning his head off like a leery Chinaman! With those ever most noble Liberal Democrat values they’d be the true guide for what is right and best in Government on behalf of the people. Not too much cutting and not too many giveaways. The Lib-Dems would hold the middle ground and would be our good shepherd. Kind of biblical when you come to think of it! And this is precisely how they are portraying themselves!

IS THIS A JOKE OR SOMETHING? In the coming election the Lib-Dems are likely to lose at least half of their seats. Their opinion poll ratings are way down below even the Greens! Few people want them anymore. Clegg and his Party are seen as people who propped up the Tories and unashamedly voted for huge cuts in Welfare State benefits. Talk about betraying their promises to students, their current promise to increase expenditure in education by 3.2 billion is enough to make a cat laugh. They can promise this and they can promise that but with the Party likely to get a serious kick up the arse in May they’re hardly likely to be back in Government and they know it. That said they can make promises till they’re blue in the face . None of it matters. The best thing they could ever hope to do is prop up the Europhile wing of the Conservative Party, but with their ever friendly uncontrolled immigration policies that’s hardly likely to go down well with the backwoodsmen from the shires.

UKIP on the other hand are currently under attack from everywhere on the political party spectrum to which should be added the ever snide Channel 4 Television News and the BBC with their association of UKIP’s immigration policy with racism. It’s such an easy allegation to make. So ugly, untruthful and yet so damning because saying that you think control of Britain’s borders is necessary opens the door to the politically motivated accusation of being a racist when its actually got nothing to do with racism. Those who want immigration control for perfectly rational economic reasons experience this as a smear tactic employed only too often by those new political fascists. Coming this time from the Left.

UKIP and its leader firmly believe in immigration control. It’s a central plank in their Manifesto because of Britain’s membership of the EU. Along with it however are a raft of economic policies whose costs the Party claims will be funded by the cancellation of Britain’s payments to Brussels. These include a more generous tax regime for low paid British workers paid for by abolishing Foreign Aid and a diminution of money given to Scotland, policies likely to find favor with the Daily Mail and Express reading lower middle class electorate of Essex and Kent to whom the Scots are at best a grungy scowling anathema. And whereas the Party’s policies on the economy are broadly Left there is little to nothing said about the Trades Union Movement currently sidelines and ignored by all the main Parties.

UKIP’s Manifesto commitment to Defence and defence expenditure is clear as is their commitment to British armed forces services personnel. No cutbacks from current levels and a promise to build a large new hospital for their exclusive use. No talk though of salary increases for the armed forces with the Party seeming to take their fighting services for granted, same as all the others have traditionally done. Lots of the usual talk about bravery but little as ever about putting bread on the table for those who risk their lives in stupid places for ultimately stupid reasons! Shame on you Nigel, your heart wasn’t in the right place on this one. You could have made a real difference here!

The final point I wish to make here is this. How many of you have looked into buying an English-Scottish Foreign Language Dictionary lately? It might be as good an investment as one for English-Romanian!

THE CONSERVATIVE AND LABOUR PARTY MANIFESTOS - ALL QUIET ON THE IMMIGRATION FRONT

In recent days the two main political parties contending for office in the May General Election have delivered their respective manifestos. Both make interesting reading, as much as for what they don’t offer as for what they do! A few crumbs of tax giveaway from both, each promising to financially protect Britain’s number one social icon the National Health Service. From Labour a definitive stated intention to make the country a fairer society, offering job security to large numbers of young workers by abolishing the nasty practice of zero hours contracts, increasing the minimum wage and abolishing the hated bedroom tax. From the Conservatives a reprise of Margaret Thatcher’s promise of home ownership with a discount of up to 35% for those who live in charity trust housing, that is if they can afford to raise the deposit which with today’s inflated property prices will only be available to couples both of whom have good jobs! Never mind, at least the offer is there and naturally only to all decent hardworking people! So if you’re decent but haven’t got a job you can kiss it!

Both parties also promise to get tough with wealthy tax avoiders and multinational companies who use the countless loopholes in the Inland Revenue’s tax collection regime to salt away billions in overseas tax havens. By getting hold of money from sources like that and in addition continuing making serious cuts in welfare benefits that so many unemployed and poorly paid wage earners rely on, both Labour and the Conservatives swear Father, Son and Holy Ghost to reduce the ‘financial deficit’ caused years back by the casino speculative activities of bankers and other booted and suited jolly jack the lads of the City of London under the stewardship of Gordon Brown’s Labour Government and NOT, let it be said, by the miserably paid kids on minimum wage zero hours contracts who now have to pay for it all.

With the economy the main thing for both parties is to get rid of the wretched deficit! Well it doesn’t really need much of a brain to work out that the British Government banknote printers could rustle up the two hundred billion in sweet red fifties in just a couple of days, same as they’ve already been doing for the last five years simply by continuing their nifty little program of QUANTITATIVE EASING… which basically means printing money that you haven’t got!

But no, neither party could possibly think of doing that when it’s much easier to socialize the banker’s debts by kicking away the crutches of the Welfare State from the jobless and poor who depend on them. The Tory-Lib-Dem Coalition have already been doing it for years without a qualm of conscience and with Labour’s support and both Cameron and Miliband promise to continue the robbery. If elected to govern however, Labour, having abandoned all its old socialist values, will make benefit claiming tight as a duck’s arse and further increase the misery for the jobless and homeless but at least it promises to do one seriously good thing… removing part of a gigantic burden of debt from the shoulders from many hundreds of thousands of students. That at least is honorable!

As for Liberal Democrat pledges and promises, quite frankly they’re a bit like a washing powder. Whatever the color of the clothing these political tarts take a turn with you can be sure they’ll claim that it’s due to them that everything comes out whiter than white when actually it comes out looking like shit. You know, a bit like all their promises of electoral reform!

These then are a taste of what the two main parties have to offer. However as I said in my opening remarks, both manifestos are important as much for the things that are missing as for the promises they’ve made and the single great issue missing from both is immigration. Neither party seems willing to talk about it let alone put anything on paper. Why is this? Why are they so coy about the subject, so fearful of even discussing the issue? For the Labour the reasons are clear. Recent Labour Governments were responsible for allowing a wave of uncontrolled mass immigration into Britain, mainly of Muslims from SE Asia, closely followed by close to a million Poles all in a period of ten years duration. During the current Coalition the problem of uncontrolled immigration has continued with the appearance of hundreds of thousands of new arrivals on an annual basis from the Baltic States and Central Europe. Indeed, most of the eastern side of the United Kingdom from Norfolk to Newcastle could be mistaken for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. If Labour gave the nod to Pakistan and Bangladesh from 1997 and with it a welcome to countless Islamic fundamentalist terrorist sponsoring preachers, the Tories deluged the towns and cities of Lincolnshire with cheap labor from the former Nazi loving Baltic States.

This latest wave of immigration from east Europe is a problem resulting from Britain’s membership of the European Union and cannot be stopped except by its termination. The issue is serious because it affects the job prospects of millions of British citizens. For the Labour Party leadership, termination of membership is out of the question. It refuses to debate the issue or allow British people to have their say on the matter in a Referendum. They’d like the problem to just go away but it won’t because the issue of immigration is so central to the concerns of the electorate. In this respect Labour’s caught between a rock and a hard place. They have to deal with the issue because the electorate demand it but they can’t because they’re wedded to Europe same as a large part of the Conservative Party. As a result the issue of immigration and its control has become a stalking horse for Nigel Farage and is indeed pivotal to UKIP’s policy of Britain’s termination of membership. The fact that the two go hand in hand has set alight the current election campaign with the Party set to win 15% of the vote!

NIGEL FARAGE : TALKING STRAIGHT

If there’s anything guaranteed during this election campaign it’s that UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage is out there on a daily basis talking to people. Talking to them straight and talking direct. No behind closed doors cosy chats to selected audiences for him like Clegg, Cameron and the Milipede. That’s not for him. Nigel prefers talking to them about issues that concern just about everyone. He knows what they are, the three things we all have in mind. Not about second bedrooms or maternity leave, crumbs of tax relief or putting more coppers back on the beat but uncontrolled mass immigration, our membership of the EU and the British economy. Issues that are all seriously connected and can’t be separated.

Let the other politicians make promises or try and talk things away, Britain’s membership of the EU and our experience of mass immigration from EU member states is something that can’t be controlled and is directly connected to jobs in this country and the cheap labor immigrants who are taking them. That’s a fact so that when Nigel Farage talks about our EU membership he’s talking jobs. Talking about an issue of major importance to so many of us, especially our young British workers.

Membership of the European Union with its bureaucrats in Brussels hungry to control just about every aspect of life in this country from our politics and laws to our social policies and our economy have no qualms about dumping another million migrants from its once Nazi-happy Baltic States onto our labor market, just as much as Tony Blair’s New Labour Party had no qualms in allowing three million plus Muslim Asians into Britain in a wave of mass uncontrolled immigration from 1997 for ten years. And along with them, hundreds of fanatical Islamic Fundamentalist preachers who were allowed to spew out their religious and race hatred on British streets. Nigel Farage takes note of these facts simply by pointing out the consequences of unchecked mass immigration into Britain in general. For this he is condemned by the solidly Europhile Liberal Democrats and Labour Party both of whom welcome immigration from Europe.

Whether it’s jobs or uncontrolled immigration Nigel Farage makes no bones about where he stands and his Party along with him. In a recent speech to the workers of Grimsby’s fishing industry, one generally acknowledged to be fast disappearing, he talked to them straight and direct only it didn’t need Nigel Farage to tell them the worst. They all knew the score. The EU in Brussels had been choking the life out of the industry for years and handing it over to France and Spain. Norway, not an EU member, was able to protect its sea borders and has a thriving fishing sector with all its workers fully employed, In Britain, from Devon to Dover and from Hull up to Aberdeen it’s almost a thing of the past and to those who want to talk about jobs he pointed out that they’re all mostly gone… abroad!

The issue of jobs is at the heart of the British economy, linked as it is to our membership of the EU and to mass immigration and UKIP’s leader knows that these things are all interconnected. They can’t be separated and talk-talked about as Clegg, Miliband and Cameron all try to do. So when Nigel Farage brings them together he knows that we know where he’s coming from and that’s the place in our mind where they remain the most meaningful issues in this election campaign… job security, our personal prosperity, fairness in daily life and being able to speak our minds without looking over our shoulder for that tight little oh so right little political correctness.  

That’s also mighty important, being able to speak our mind about Europe. The Lib-Dem and Labour leaders won’t allow it. Won’t give the British people a Referendum! Won’t even give them the chance to express an opinion! No matter, UKIP’s leader says it all for us. Recently the dead hand of Tony Blair made an appearance in the debate. Whatever induced this political has-been of British politics to climb out of his coffin looking more like a cadaver than ever, his political strictures to Labour couldn’t have done Ed Miliband much good. There he was, this former friend of fun loving jazzerucci Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi whose holiday villas he and his family once frequented as special guests, sticking his oar in with strictures and warnings about the dangers of taking Britain out of Europe and the need to stay in.

Exactly who blew the trumpet for Tony Blair and why was never made clear but Nigel Farage would understand the message. Blair telling Miliband not to follow David Cameron’s promise of a Referendum on EU membership to the British people in 2017 if Labour was elected to Government. This is important. Tony Blair who did little to nothing for British working people during his ten years in office laying down political conditions! Telling them what Labour shouldn’t allow! Such a bright fellow that Tony Blair! Telling the British of all people what they shouldn’t be allowed to have via Ed Miliband. Didn’t you know Tony? Why, even Margaret Thatcher knew that the British people couldn’t be told. They’re ornery, a bit like Nigel himself. They might be persuaded at best but they just won’t be told! Maybe Blair, with his close business connections and never shy of earning a shilling himself these days giving advice was speaking on behalf of his friends most of whom want Britain to stay part of the EU with all its benefits of ever cheap labor costs, but it certainly wasn’t on behalf of British workers who this former New Labour Prime Minister never once offered an official Living Wage all the way through his years in office.

Blair’s intervention? Nigel Farage, merry fellow that he is must have been laughing his socks off. True the Daily Mail and the Express got all hot under their editorial collars but quite frankly, anyone with half a political brain would have seen it for what it all was. Blair chucking a boomerang for Labour! Not speaking to people direct but doing it as a third party with third party interests. Your days of power politics are over Tony Blair. True, you’ve been interfering in Israeli politics in recent years on behalf of hostile EU interests that you represented as special envoi but all you got for that was a well deserved flea in your ear and now you think you can do likewise in British politics on the EU’s behalf. Sorry, perhaps you should take your carcass back to where it does best and that’s earning a shilling to top up all the dosh you’ve acquired by being such a clever advisor!

Nigel Farage doesn’t have that kind of money but at least he’s talking straight and direct to millions of people. Earnest, direct and straight from the heart. I’m no supporter of UKIP but what I do know is that he’s on the right track and right now we need him. He deserves a slice of power at least. It was given to Clegg and his Liberal Democrats five years back who immediately chucked it back into the faces of all those who voted for him. Farage won’t do the same. He’s powered by hard-boiled conviction rather than opportunism or fantasy and despite all the smears about him being half-hearted about the NHS, that’s only the stuff of his worried opponents. Decisions lie with the British people, egged on as always by the mass media. The man’s message as always is that the British can take care of themselves. It’s not a nationalist message. The man is pro-European and believe it or not, pro-immigration, only friends with Europe not control, and managed well handled immigration. People with skills that this country needs not a wild stampede of cultural madness. His message then is one of plain common sense and it needs to be heard. Needs representation at one of those places he likes least of all. At the Westminster heart of establishment politics!

THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS : POLITICAL OPPORTUNISTS OR PLAIN GANG OF TURDS

In the last few days I was amazed to see that in the latest Election opinion poll the percentage of those interviewed who said they’d vote Liberal Democrat climbed from 6 to 8 percent. In all honesty I had to rub my eyes. I could scarcely believe it. Eight people out of one hundred thinking of voting Lib-Dem! It made me stop and think for a moment! Eight people out of a hundred thinking of voting for Nick Clegg’s Party as junior Coalition partners in what is essentially a Tory Government. It kind of took my breath away. That after all those things they said they’d do but forgot about, like bringing down energy prices, like helping to reform the electoral system, like coming down hard on rogue banking practices, all we ever saw them get up to was joining the Tories to attack the Welfare State and reduce benefits for poor and unemployed people.

No matter what kind of gloss you put on it that’s what their politics actually came down to during their time in Government! Energy prices only ever went one way and that was up! As Energy Secretary, Liberal Democrat Ed Davy set up a cartel of the Big Six Energy Suppliers some of whose executives worked in his offices and all that ever happened to prices was that they went the wrong way for their customers! And what about all their talk of reforming the electoral system? Something that seemed such a big deal to them. Well the Tories soon put a stop to all that so not another word said! And as for getting the bankers and banks to behave themselves, well all you can say for Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Business Supremo is that people like HSBC must have been laughing their heads off at all your promises of change when all you ever did during your time in office was sweet f/a. And as for Danny Alexander, Lib-Dem Secretary of the Treasury and George Osborne’s favorite lackey, what did he ever do to control the antics of the Inland Revenue and their sweetheart tax deals with various billionaires and multinational corporations. Answer to all of that… NOTHING!

The main plank of Nick Clegg’s current election campaign is that he and his Lib-Dem buddies in Coalition Government stopped the Tories from doing many bad things. That’s the main thing we hear coming out of his mouth. That it would all have been a lot worse if he and his chums hadn’t put the brakes on David Cameron and his ‘evil’ intentions! What is astonishing to me is that there are people out there who actually believe it! Yes, the all powerful Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and his buddies actually got the Tories to do as they wanted… because if they didn’t?

Right now, after seeing even a small climb in the share of people thinking of voting Liberal Democrat I can only stand in wonder at the political naiveté and short term memory of the British electorate. Clearly most have forgotten the promise they made to students in their last election manifesto, forgotten all their talk about reforming the banks, forgotten their promises of electoral reform. So when Nick Clegg stands up and tells people about the good things that they did, all of which taken together don’t amount to a diddly squat compared to their support for Tory welfare cuts for the young, the poor and the unemployed, I can only turn round and ask myself… exactly what kind of people still intend voting for them when they might as well just go and vote Tory instead?

Please forgive me but I don’t understand! Why on earth are you thinking of voting Liberal Democrat? Except for being diehard supporters of the European Union whatever the cost, giving the same kind of support to unlimited and unchecked immigration and of course turning a seriously blind eye to Islamic extremism, what else do they offer? They only have one man doing the talking these days it seems so pray tell me, whatever happened to Vince Cable and who shoved the old Scarecrow back in his box? Indeed the same might be asked of all the rest of the Lib-Dem gang in Coalition. Has anybody had sight of Ed Davey or David Laws, of Danny Alexander or even the Bath mangle-wurzel Don Foster? And yet with so many of these Coalition front-liners invisible, there are actually people out there still thinking of voting for them!   

Something I find almost incredible.

Given this fact I for one cannot help thinking that it indicates something strange, something even peculiar in the British national psyche. That despite everything they know, the broken promises, the lies and the deceit of the Liberal Democrats for over five years or more there are still millions of people out there willing to give their support. I can only think of it as a peculiarly British kind of masochism. In this case a political masochism. In social terms a bit like wives loving their husbands who they know are lying on a regular basis, cheating and even beating them once in a while! Women who’ve seen and heard it all before yet keep on coming back for more… And so it is with the British electorate! They just keep on coming back for another dose of sweet smiling bullshit just like they want to be lied to! Nick saying… although you really didn’t know it at the time I really did it all for you and if you give me another chance I’ll make it up to you, make things all right, just for you! And here he gives you one of his famous sheepish innocent smiles!

And so you believe his promises. You somehow rationalize that he really cared all along and if you give him another chance he’ll do everything he can to make you happy and Britain prosperous again. Just one more chance so he can work to make Britain a better place! So that he can prise that old cadaver Vince Cable out of his box in the wall, turn the key in his back and make him talk fussy all over again.

Well you voted for them last time in spades. So did they actually come up with the goods? Do everything you expected and hoped for or were they only a political irrelevance all along? People who talked the talk but when it came to it walked the walk with the Tories. Or were they people who talked bullshit all along, a plain gang of lying political turds who never thought you’d check up on them much because as British people you’re not really interested in politics or what politicians do, except when it’s on the front page of the tabloids! From this point in time a month before the General Election it looks plain enough. All that they did in Government was prop up the Tories who once in a while fed them with a handful of peanuts. Well, if you’re the kind of person who thinks that’s good enough for a Party of political principles and values well you go ahead and give them your vote, but take a look at yourself in the mirror before doing so. On the other hand if you think you’re a bit better than that and won’t support a gang of opportunists second time around well just give your face a good rinse, dry off with a towel and go and kick them into the long grass come May 7^th.   

 

NICK CLEGG, THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS AND THE TELEVISION DEBATE

This Post is about Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. Thursday’s television debate has now come and gone and from polls taken immediately after it’s clear that his performance landed him firmly at the bottom of the pile of the Party leaders participating, well below even the Greens! After last night the Liberal Democrats as a national political Party are on their way out and most of their Westminster seats will be won by the Tories in the coming General Election. Clegg himself was put on the back foot most of the way through for being a Tory collaborator. He himself acknowledged the fact and apologized for some of the political decisions he and his Party had made, justifying them for the sake of national economic interest. For those interviewed later his excuse just didn’t wash.  

The Liberal Democrat leader spent most of the time during the debate on the back foot looking sheepish and acknowledging guilt. In the polls he came over as the most feeble and ineffectual of all the Party leaders and it was fascinating to see him turn angrily on David Cameron and accuse him of conducting harsh economic policies when he’d gone along with most of them over his five year time as Deputy Prime Minister, a fact pointed out by the other participants. Actually even Cameron himself looked surprised at this ‘betrayal’.

Clegg trying to distance himself from everything he’d done right at the end, only now it was simply too late! He’d collaborated!

That was the message that went out to millions of viewers. But still, some five or six percent of the electorate are willing to give him a second chance! Some in the Lib-Dem Gang must be rubbing their eyes. They’re a political irrelevance and in their heart of hearts know it. On their way down the tubes of political history without even making a splash and to 95% of the British electorate good riddance.

If any future British political leader wants to learn how they can destroy their own political party they can learn a good lesson here. Betray the promises you made, collaborate with the enemy and pretend you did it all for the good!