No getting away from it - by Richard... Saturday, September 18, 2010

No getting away from it - by Richard... Saturday, September 18, 2010

"Defence decisions must be determined by foreign policy, not by the Treasury," says the lead letter in The Daily Telegraph.

This is from Col David Hills retired. You can see why he is retired, and still a Colonel rather than a General. He talks far too much sense.

But, of course, to recognise that principle also requires looking at the Elephant in the Room. That is not allowed. So we have acres of newsprint, a torrent of comment and thousands of overpaid backsides warming God-knows how many committee chairs – all to absolutely no avail.

There is no getting away from it though – determining defence policy without first working out your foreign policy is a complete waste of time - and some. But to do it when you know that the real reason is because you can't bring in the "elephant" is just dishonest. Then, that's what they call politics.

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Of bald men and combs - by Richard...

The European Movement is getting terribly worked up about the EU Referendum Campaign, offering a line-by-line fisking of the Campaign's position statement.

The trouble is that the statement is the usual identikit "euroscepticism" which shows that the authors know nothing and have learned nothing about the enemy they confront. Here is a sample:

It's a sad fact that Britain is sleepwalking into the European Super-State and Britain must wake up to the nightmares hiding under the sheets of Brussels. EU laws and directives made without our knowledge or consent, behind locked doors of the most complicated clauses and sub-clauses imaginable.

Equally predictable is the European Movement response, the bores leading the bores, making this very much the fight of the bald men. But the European Movement should know that any campaign which features as its pin-up boy the egregious Dale, gurgling about the "Westminster Village", is going nowhere.

The first and foremost requirement of any campaigner is to "know your enemy" - Wellington's finding out what is on the other side of the hill, and all that. And the most crucial thing you will ever learn about the EU is that it is not a super-state, has no ambitions to become one and will not become one. But it is, increasingly, a super-government - and that is where it intends to go.

Primarily, the EU is a means by which the political élites in each of the member states by-pass the democratic institutions in their own countries, imposing their rule without the inconvenience of people participation. That is why the construct is so popular and enduring. The élites have created their own government without the interference of the pesky people.

In short, the EU is not an external agency imposed on us by foreigners (the UKIP/little Englander paradigm) but a conspiracy in plain sight, so glaring and obvious that it is ignored by all. It is the mechanism by which the political élites of Europe by-pass democracy and keep themselves in power. Thus, the EU is what the power élite in the British establishment impose on their own people - replicated in each country of the Union of Elites.

But, as long as we have the spectacle of bald men fighting over combs, the proles can be kept occupied without ever getting near the truth. The conspiracy goes marching on. The European Movement is part of it, and the EU Referendum Campaign looks like it is joining it.

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And so it starts - by Richard...

We've had a truly crap summer. I've never known the grass grow so little, its been so cold. We've had the central heating on three times this week already, and now we get the above in The Daily Mail.

All the signs are that we're in for a rough winter – another extreme global warming event. And the little warmists can squeak all they like about "weather", but when you're having to buy rock salt wholesale and re-mortgage the house to pay the fuel bills, the "big fry lie" begins to look a bit frayed round the edges.

Another bad winter and global warming is political history – up here, anyway.

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Read this and weep - by Richard... Friday, September 17, 2010

Damian Reece, Lord Turner, the EU and the European Supervision Authorities.

Of Lord Turner, Reece says: "If the EU had its tanks on our lawns, such brave words would be an effective shell burst to drive them off. Except the tanks have already rolled over our lawns and are now camped outside the FSA’s HQ in Canary Wharf, with a division trundling along Commercial Street towards the Bank of England ...".

And that is why there are no politics any more – just revolution.

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Meaningless data - by Richard...

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, arctic sea ice appears to have reached its annual minimum extent on 10 September. The minimum ice extent was the third-lowest in the satellite record, after 2007 and 2008, the Center says, "and continues the trend of decreasing summer sea ice."

The big joke, of course, if you are into these things, is that arctic ice extent seems to run on a seventy year cycle, as well as being affected by short-term cycles which have more to do with wind patterns than they do temperature. Thus, a declining trend since the beginning of satellite data – which started in 1979 – is actually meaningless. Unless you know what happened in the previous cycle, you have no comparative base, and therefore you are just producing figures in isolation.

The very latest figure might tell us that the cycle is on the turn, and there is some slight evidence that we have passed the bottom end. We are, after all, just past the 70th anniversary of the surface raider Komet traversing the ice-bound northeast passage, on her way to the Pacific to sink Allied shipping.

As we recalled earlier, she left Germany on 3 July 1940 with a crew of 270, sailed up the Norwegian coast and then, with the assistance of the Soviets, navigated the northern route, crossing the Bering Straits into the Pacific Ocean in early September. She returned safely to Germany on 30 November 1941, after sinking seven ships, only in 1942 to be sunk by British motor torpedo boats near the Cap de la Hague, with no survivors.

If seventy years ago, we'd been spending the time monitoring arctic ice instead of indulging in an orgy of killing, we might all be better off. But, since we did not, we don't have the information – and guessing isn't good enough.

The Russians though, who live with the ice - and suffer from the vagaries of the climate far more than we ever have - have collected a huge amount of data and are convinced (warning mega PDF) that there are long-period fluctuations in climatic conditions, and have evidence to demonstrate the existence of an approximately 60-year repeating pattern in the circumpolar Arctic zone.

Needless to say though, that doesn't stop the little boys and girls in NSIDC knowing better and making stupid statements. Why should they listen to the people who know what they are talking about when they can make complete idiots of themselves unaided? But I guess they are no more stupid than the people who listen to them.

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Yes, but! - by Richard...

There is a point when you have to give up, because you can go further and achieve nothing more. Commenting on the Strategic Defence Review is one of those things where this must apply.

In dealing with defence, there is a single absolute – a sine qua non. Defence policy is the handmaiden of foreign policy. It is subordinate to it and cannot be determined until and unless you have decided on your foreign policy.

What then must happen, of course, is that you must then staff, organise and equip your armed forces in such a way that you can, within reasonable limits, pursue your foreign policy – to the extent that it relies on armed intervention or the threat of such intervention.

What we seem to have in the current discourse, however, is the "yes, but ... " syndrome. Yes, we know foreign policy has not been decided, but let's get on with deciding our defence policy anyway, they say.

But no can do. Without being firmly anchored in a workable foreign policy, the armed forces is so many expensive but useless toys and a bunch of highly-paid time-servers, awarding themselves badges and baubles and holding endless parades. We can do without them.

And another "but". It is so boring, I know, so one can understand the reluctance to talk about it. But we are in the EU ... foreign policy is a shared competence but primarily one dictated by the EU. Increasingly, we do not have independent decision-making powers with regards to foreign policy.

On that basis, since we are entirely dependent on the EU for the core foreign policy choices, there is absolutely no point in constructing an independent defence policy or having a strategic defence review, unless that just means chopping the budget, which it appears is actually the purpose of the exercise.

For the rest though, discussion is just so much hot air (see picture above – the 22nd common mounted military committee in action). We are in the EU, and that is the way it is. And that is why there are no politics any more – just revolution.

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Why it matters today - by Richard...

To complete yesterday's piece, before getting back to work, it is worth noting that as of yesterday seventy years ago, the capital city has suffered nine days of continuous bombing. Perhaps 4,000 Londoners were dead, getting on for 10,000 had been injured and over 100,000 were homeless. No one actually knows the true numbers because any semblance of record-keeping had broken down.

In the most heavily affected areas, local authority services had all but ceased to function. Rest centres, set up to deal with bombing victims, were not even scratching the surface. Public shelters were grossly overcrowded, woefully lacking in facilities and insanitary. One shelter, intended for 3,000 people, had four toilets – and it was accommodating 15,000 people.

Public transport was erratic, and in large parts of London had stopped working completely. Abandoned by the government system, families were trekking out to Epping Forest, to the hop fields of Kent and even as far as Oxford, by the tens of thousands, in an attempt to reach safety and relief. Chislehurst Caves in Kent were converted to accommodate nearly 10,000 – by the people themselves.

Yet, coming into the tenth day, the official government policy on using the Underground as bomb shelters was still prohibition. Even as the sirens sounded, women and children were being turned away, while the likes of Lord Halifax enjoyed the safety of their luxury shelters in the deep basements of the Dorchester Hotel.

After the tube trains have finished running for the night, it remains policy to lock the stations and mount police guards to keep people out. And the police did as they were told by their bosses.

In a few stations, though, there were people sheltering overnight. This is so unusual that aGuardian columnist actually writes about it in his paper – he is one of the lucky ones. But it is only because the people turned up en masse with crowbars and swept the police aside. They broke into the stations and secured shelter, in defiance of the authorities and their prohibitions. The people decided and, shortly afterwards, the government caved in and lifted the prohibition.

It was the same elsewhere on other issues. Shelter management and organisation was set up not by the government but by volunteers. When the government decided to put its own people in, they were swept aside. Local vicars, WVS volunteers, and many others, started making sense of the rest centres, and gradually order – and humanity – prevailed. And, in each case, the government fell into line.

In other words, the collapse of society was averted – and the safety of the people assured – more or less, not by a beneficent government but by people power. It was their endurance, their good sense, their organisational skills and perseverance that saved the day – not the dead hand of a corrupt, inefficient, lethargic public bureaucracy.

As for the government's war, its legend is a sham. For weeks, the Home Intelligence unit had been telling the government that there was virtually no belief that the supposed invasion was a threat. That the RAF was saving the people from the invasion was not credible.

Furthermore, the invasion was never going to happen and the government knew it. Right up to the last, daily reconnaissance flights over the massed barges showed no signs whatsoever of them being loaded with troops. It was all a gigantic bluff - Hitler's bluff and Churchill's bluff.

The RAF thus never saved us from an invasion. It was hugely popular, but only when it shot down Nazi aeroplanes. That was because Nazi aeroplanes were bombing people – and people were not awfully fond of being bombed. But that was all.

Thus, the idea that on 15 September, now celebrated as "Battle of Britain day", back in 1940 brought any sense of relief is a total fiction. By then, the real war was the war against the people – the relentless bombing that was to go on for 76 days and spread to the rest of the country, killing tens of thousands.

Far from the fighting on the 15th bringing any relief, therefore, conditions were to get worse – much worse, with the RAF as much use as a chocolate fireguard as the Luftwaffe bombed through the nights.

As the people suffered, the government and its Brylcream Boys in their shiny new Spitfires were powerless. So the people held it together and proved that people-power is what makes things work. They lasted out until Hitler had finally had enough and turned east to invade Soviet Russia.

No wonder, therefore, the government prefers its own, carefully crafted myth, where a small, government-directed élite - the "few" - in a top-down war, saved the proles from a mythical invasion during the daylight war. Sooner that than accept the reality that the people saved the day.

That is why the Battle of Britain still matters now. The carefully crafted official myth perpetuates and sustains the political status quo, a centralist, statist, top-down myth that suits both the left and the right wing of British politics. It is the myth that government is a force for good, that it works and that it has the interests of the people at heart.

So, when you see all those happy pictures of people sheltering in underground stations, and hear all the guff on the BBC about the "Blitz Spirit", just remember the whole thing is a government-inspired myth. As for the BBC, it was so bad at times that more people were listening to the German radio stations for their news than the official broadcasts.

Most of all though, ditch the BBC guff about the "people's war" as if it was something separate and different from the rest. What the invention of the bomber had done was allow belligerent governments to bypass the field armies of their opponents and attack the people of the warring nations in order to force a decision.

By this means, the battleground had become the streets of London, joined by the other towns and cities. That's where the real Battle of Britain was fought and won - not in the skies above. I wasn't a question of the Battle of Britain and then the Blitz. The Blitz was the Battle of Britain, thedecisive battle.

The people were not part of the war, therefore - passively enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. They were the war, the front line. The military, the bosses and the politicians - they were spectators. If the people had folded, many of them would have been dead meat.

The real message, therefore, is the one that needs to be taken up and replicated – because it is totally relevant to today's conditions. And that is stark: no one is going to come to our rescue and save us from the messes the government has created – any more than they did in 1940. We are going to have to do it ourselves. When the going gets tough, the only thing that matters is people power.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread