Please Tell Me

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 07, 2010

Please Tell Me

"Can you please tell me who will stop this happening and I will vote for them."

So says Mr Tony Nicholls in a comment under Christopher Booker's latest ST column today. 

Booker (along with Richard North) has made another valiant attempt to unravel just how much of our tax money is being flushed down the bog of the global warming industry. It's not easy, as regular BOM readers will recall from our own attempts. Indeed, there is every indication that government departments deliberately mislead us. 

For example, Booker describes how Defra paid £1,436,000 to fund the international working group that produced the last IPCC report - the one that included such lies as the melting Himalayas. Yet they later claimed in a report to Parliament that the cost was only £543,816 - only around one-third of the true cost. 

Indeed, as Booker points out, when it comes to tax funding for the increasingly discredited global warming industry, official behaviour bears all the classic hallmarks of money laundering:

"Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs... lists 26 "suspicious indications" which should attract attention to the possibility that a financial transaction might need investigating. These range from "checking identity is proving difficult" or "reluctance to provide information requested" to "unnecessary routing of funds through third parties" and "transactions having no purpose" or "which seem to involve unnecessary complexity".

It's clearly outrageous, and not at all what any of us want. But as Mr Nicholls' comment highlights, we don't seem to have much choice. All three of the mainstream Westminster parties are committed warmists, pledged to go on withOperation Barbarossa however bonkers it may be, and whatever the catastophic impact on our prosperity.

Which brings us to the conversation Tyler is having with increasing frequency round the leafy glades of Surrey. It goes like this:

The Major (or Mr Scott, or Mrs Fitzgerald): "But why should I vote Tory when they're going to be just the same as Labour? Why shouldn't I stay at home to show what I think of them all?"

Tyler: "Well, because if you do that, the LibDems will get in all round here, and we'll either end up with Brown scraping back or a hung parliament. And if that happens, the markets will tank within weeks, there'll be the emergency budget to end all emergency budgets, taxes will go through the roof, and you'll end up in an even worse situation than now. Is that what you want?"

The Major (or Mr Scott, or Mrs Fitzgerald): "No of course not, but it may be we just have to go through it. I mean we never got Maggie until Heath had gone down and the country had experienced some serious pain. Right now we seem to be wandering around in a daze... nobody seems to understand what a grave situation we face, and Cameron isn't prepared to stick his head above the parapet to tell us. And even if he gets in, do you seriously imagine he'll get a grip? He'll be just like Heath... drifting along until we hit the rocks."

Tyler: "Hmm... well... Cam and Osborne are bright boys. They must know what happened back in the 70s, and they won't want to preside over a replay. Once they're in - assuming they can get a majority, that is - they'll have 5 years to sort things out. And whatever they say or don't say ahead of the election, they know they'll have to get a grip right away in order to give the economy the best possible chance of returning to growth by 2015. They're not dumb."

The Major (or Mr Scott, or Mrs Fitzgerald): "You think so, huh? And do you believe in fairies as well? Frankly, it isn't just the economy that worries us about Cameron, it's the whole deal - from hugging hoodies right through to this global warming nonsense. I mean, whatever happened to the traditional Tory party? Whatever happened to Tory values?"

Mr Farage (rudely butting in): "They all went off and joined UKIP."

*****

It's very difficult all this, isn't it. The horrible fact is, there isn't actually anyone we can vote for who will stop this happening. Sure, there are people we can vote for who will promise to stop it, but that's a different thing - under our grotesquely unfair first-past-the-post Westminster system of government, such people will never get the chance to actually implement their promises. Tyler's constitutional reform package includes separation of the powers and a directly elected President, but absent that, our real world choices are indeed very limited.

Which is why we will be out campaigning for the Tories again this time. They sure ain't perfect, and we share many of the Major's concerns, but in terms of forming a government to replace Brown's disaster, they're all we've got. 

And what we can say is that from Tyler's personal knowledge, a good number of the new Tory candidates who will hopefully become MPs in May do share our belief in small government. Yes, they are all susceptible to the murky compromises that condemned souls make for power, but they are at least starting out on our side.

What we must do - all we can do - is to carry on campaigning outside of Westminster for the things we believe in. Believing that one day, when the tide of public opinion has turned far enough, our once and future king/queen will again step forward to wrench that sword from the stone.

It may not be much, but right now my friends, I'm very much afraid it's all we've got.