Bog off - by Richard... Monday, June 20, 2011

Bog off - by Richard... Monday, June 20, 2011

"It's some crack that we have a country in recession and virtually bankrupt but the authorities can afford to put a plane in the sky to spy on turf cutters," says Michael Fitzmaurice, breaking apart a piece of the black, natural fuel in his hands.

"During the cutting season we have had helicopters as well as planes, and we have had officials in vans scouting across the boglands to stop us doing what our ancestors did for centuries. And it's all because they are afraid that the EU will fine Ireland if turf cutting continues".

And, indeed they are. The EU has designated natural bogs as Special Area of Conservation and has ruled that no more turf cutting can take place there in order to preserve the bogs. But now that EU Commission claims it has aerial photos suggesting raised bogs in the Midlands are still being harvested for peat despite the ban.

But what the politicians have agreed between themselves, on the holy ground of Brussels – which isn't even organised enough to provide its own government - now has the Paddy plods scouring the country to put down the bog trotters.

Even the Brits, at their very worst, never attempted this. Another of the refusniks, Tom Gibney, has the deeds to this bog going back to British rule in 1896 framed in glass on my wall at home. "It still has the UK crown on the top of the document", he says, "and now that we are supposedly an independent country I am not giving it up and the right to cut a small piece of it for turf".

Whatever gave Gibney the idea that Ireland is an independent country is anyone's guess, but maybe he has been listening to too many politicians who, in between their Gadarene rush to dump powers in the hands of EU bureaucrats, are only too keen to perpetuate the fantasy that nothing much has changed.

So we end up with the battle of the bogs, the weapon of choice a "reasoned opinion" from Brussels, which has the plods scouring the countryside in helicopters to hunt down the perpetrators ... a bog standard response for an occupied country, one supposes. Sooner of later, though, someone is going to have to tell them to bog off.

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

They really are all the same - by Richard...

I guess that if it was put to a public vote, a clear majority would be opposed to EU defence integration. But with the Tories forging ahead at high speed, we now have Labour shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy on exactly the same tack. What we think really is not important.

Britain's overstretched armed forces should be much more integrated with those of other European nations to help cut costs and bolster Nato, Murphy is arguing. He says that that greater European defence co-operation is "critical", especially in the procurement of new weapons and hardware, as well as in training.

The idea of "co-operation" is, of course, fatuous – and about as productive as sitting down with an adult tiger and discussing lunch. But all our politicians seem to dwell on this fantasy, presumably because they can't cope with the reality of what they are really proposing.

It goes without saying that this is an agenda that the Lib-dims fully support, so once again we see the three main parties partaking of common receptacle micturition (CRM). As always, this makes a mockery of any idea of democracy. You can vote for any party you like, but don't expect any difference. Three parties – one policy. You know it makes sense.

COMMENT THREAD

5Share

Print ready

A repentant sinner? - by Richard... Sunday, June 19, 2011

I've never really gone with this Luke 15-7stuff. Why should the "repentant sinner" get all the glory, when the ninety-nine "righteous men" got it right first time?

So it is with the applause for the new "hero" on the street, the wandering fool otherwise known as Steve Hilton who, according to The Mail, is now backing Tory calls for Britain to pull out of the European Union.

The Downing Street "director of strategy" is said to have swung behind moves for the UK to go it alone after "being shocked to discover how much sovereignty has switched from Westminster to Brussels".

We also learn that his "growing frustration" with the EU is one of the reasons he has been involved in heated exchanges in No 10 which have fuelled reports that he may walk out in protest at the government's failure to press ahead with radical reforms to the NHS, Whitehall and other institutions.

Here, one really does have to ask what sort of a "director of strategy" for a political party is "shocked" by the degree of penetration by the EU into the affairs of the UK. If he wasn't already aware of that, then he's been taking money under false pretences.

But there is an interesting point here. We often assume that the bubble-dwellers are pushing the EU agenda knowingly, with malice of forethought. It is difficult to appreciate quite how pig-ignorant these people really are. Now, though, we have what appears to be a graphic confirmation – the idiot child is "shocked" after finding out something he should already have known.

Before we get over-excited about this "repentant sinner" therefore, one needs to step back and look at what the Hilton is said to be shocked about – namely "how much sovereignty has switched from Westminster to Brussels". Now, thirty-five years ago, we would have rejoiced in such a convert to the cause. More than three decades on, though, the thinking and understanding has moved on.

As with the great discovery that "Soylent Green is people!", we have learned that the European Union is an integral part of the British government, and the British government is an integral part of the EU. So much are they one and the same thing that one is provoked into crying: "The EU is our government".

On that basis, no more can a British government pull out of the EU than can Cameron extract his brain from his own cranium, assuming that is where he keeps it. The EU and the UK government are one and the same, indivisible parts of the one. The issue therefore – as we have long recognised – is no longer that we should seek to withdraw from the EU. We can no longer do this. One might say, you can take Britain out of the EU, but you cannot take the EU out of Britain.

Thus, the real objective is one of regime change. We have to take down the current government, revisit the constitutional settlement and rebuild an entirely new one. And yes, we are talking revolution. The only question is whether it is going to be peaceful or violent. But it is going to happen - simply because it has to.

Little dimwits like Hilton, though, are so far behind the curve that they are not even in the game. From his position at the centre of the bubble, doubtless he feels he is "the man", but he knows nothing. And that is why, whenever there is fundamental change in progress, it comes from outside. The bubble-dwellers will be the last to know. Give Hilton another thirty-five years, and he might just have caught up. But, by then, the game will be over.

He and his likes won't even have seen it coming.

COMMENT THREAD