Never fails to impress - by Richard... Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Never fails to impress - by Richard... Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Raedwald is at it again, clinically dissecting in fine style the utter stupidity of Labour's plans to create nine regional fire control centres. Scrapped last year at a cost of nearly £500 million, as he points out, the waste represents a year's payments from 50,000 taxpayers - the working cohort of an entire English county.

Yet not a single Labour ex-minister, not a single Labour MP, not a single Teflon Mandarin, is to stand in the dock to face charges of malfeasance and maladministration or misconduct in public office. The looters and despoilers get away scot-free.

If we roll over and let them, they will continue with their looting. Even now, the empty centres arestill costing us. As one local newspaper reports, a Taunton school with sub-standard facilities could be rebuilt with money haemorrhaging from the nearby empty regional fire control centre.

Just for this one centre, the government is paying £102,373 rent monthly for the idle facility. The final total could hit £30million, equivalent to £500 per person in Taunton, while tens of millions of pounds set-up costs have been written off, the paper says.

And that is why we protest – why we must protest. It is not just a question that our taxes are too high. It is not just a question that so much of our hard-earned money is wasted. It is also that those who waste it so often go unpunished and, more often than not, are rewarded by further highly-paid employment at our expense.

With politicians no longer doing their jobs, it is down to us. And we can no longer afford the luxury of this waste. In fact, we never could – but were never asked. It really is time to make our displeasure felt.

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Diversionary tactics - by Richard...

This man is shameless in the way he seeks to divert attention from the effects of his own policies to the behaviour of the energy companies. I suppose some people might be fooled by his tactics – especially the self-deluding greens – but more generally I think it is a case of "a plague on both your houses".

Already, he has tried our patience, putting the blame on "lazy householders" for high energy bills because "they can't be bothered to shop around".

This is another classic example of politicians being out of touch. I've changed energy suppliers and it is not that simple. Apart from anything else, working out which is the better rate is not straightforward. Then the process of clearing accounts, swapping over direct debits and organising the transition can be fraught.

Not least of the problems is that none of the suppliers seem to have their own meter readers, and those that are employed seem not to communicate their findings to the companies they appear to serve.

But greatest dishonesty on the part of Huhne is in respect of those on lower incomes and those with debt troubles – now running into millions. The secretive policy of avoiding disconnections and forcibly putting people onto pre-paid meters means that for those people swapping suppliers is not an option.

Not only are these people paying a higher tariff, if they have a pre-paid meter, no other supplier wants to know them.

Few politicians seem to understand this – and even fewer seem prepared to find out. Being poor often means paying more than the better off for commodities such as energy, while there are always the predatory bailiffs hovering in the background for when they stumble.

It is easy then for multi-millionaire Huhne to posture and preen. But he clearly has little idea what being poor is all about, and obviously cares less. As long as he can get the cheap applause at his party conference – where he is running interference for his own policies – that is all that seems to matter.

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40 Prozent würden Eu-kritische Partei wählen - by Richard...

Through the wonders of Google translate (although it also helps to have a German-speaking friend) we know this (as in the title) means that up to forty percent of Germans would vote for a eurosceptic party.

There is a certain type of eurosceptic little Englander (they do exist) who would have it that the EU is a renewed attempt by the Germans to create a Reich – even if one sees more commonly now it being referred to as the new Soviet Union (EUSSR).

Neither are correct in my view - I've said often enough that it's not the Hun in the sun we must worry about, but our own political elites who are using the EU as a democracy by-pass, a mechanism to cement their own hegemony.

But this piece does make another point. Ordinary German people are just as fed up with the EU and their unaccountable political élites as are we. Temperamentally, they are our allies. And that rather reflects the one unarguable success of the EU. It has managed to transcend the trauma of the last World War and unite the peoples of Europe ... in their hatred of the EU.

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The alternative plan - by Richard... Monday, September 19, 2011

I promised yesterday that I would start addressing ideas on how we, the people, start recovering power from the politicians or – as the case may be – taking power that we have never had.

On this, I recall a man – I think it was Rothschild, but the name doesn't really matter – advising on what it took to become a millionaire, in the days when a million was an unimaginable sum. He is reputed to have said that all that was needed was a burning desire to earn that much, and a determination to put that objective above all else - everything else.

In like fashion, all that is needed to acquire power is that same determination – and therein lies our problem. Generally, the English people are not power hungry. They are indifferent to the trappings of power and most often prefer simply to be left alone. Shorn of ambition, however, we tend be relaxed about other people doing the job, and we end up content to let other people do the ruling. Sadly in some cases, that means we can be easily led.

This is a tolerable situation when we are tolerably well ruled, and when our government is unobtrusive and inexpensive. But when we are badly ruled, when government increasingly intrudes in our daily affairs, and when the cost becomes oppressive, it is time for change. But, for that to happen, we must want it to happen, and be prepared to make it so.

Unequivocally, this leads to the first element in any "plan" – the gathering together of enough like-minded and sufficiently motivated people who are desirous to some extent of change, and are prepared to work constructively to achieve it.

Arguably, that is what political parties are about – but the iron rule of Selnick's "self maintenance" says otherwise. The purpose of a party becomes its own perpetuation – the task always ends up taking second place to that overpowering need. Any successful group must be unstructured, free from the dead hand of institutionalisation.

The second fundamental is the recognition of a simple doctrine. Primarily this states that we should tolerate governments only because the alternative – not having a government – is marginally worse. But it must always be understood that government is at its heart our enemy. Given a chance, it will enslave us.

From this stems the third vital element of any plan – the recognition that we are in a state of continual war against our own government. It may be a civilised sort of war, without bloodshed, against a foe with whom we can be cordial and good-natured. But it is our enemy and we are at war with it.

Fourthly, we have to control the money. In civilised society, he who controls the money that government can acquire, and then spend, controls the government. That is what Referism is all about. We have to be able to limit the amount of money any government can tax, and we have to be able to veto extravagant expenditure.

Then we have to fight within our means, usually as a part-time effort, as we all have our own lives to live. Thus, we also have to fight clever, to make up for our chronic lack of resources. Not any of us can match the richness and breadth of government, because it can use our own money against us.

Thus, effectively, we have to fight as guerrillas. The Mao precepts apply here: when the enemy attacks, I retreat, when he stands still, I harry, etc, etc. The detailed rules are here, but they have to be adapted to our civilised sort of war.

What that means in practice is that we have to pick the enemy's weak spots - his vulnerabilities – and exploit them. And this is where I particularly like the strategy of legality, making the government obey its own rules, using them to damage and harry it until it is prepared to concede our aims.

To that extent, we cannot necessarily choose the battlefield. One target may be the British membership of the EU, but the direct approach may not – and certainly has not in the past – yield dividends. But attack in a different area or direction may bring the enemy to the table, whence we can make our broader demands known.

Broadly speaking, though, we must remind those who wish to rule us that they rule with our permission and by our consent. Mostly, in huge areas of our lives, they have no permission to rule us at all, and we must remind them of that as well. In short – for the time being - we must as a group make ourselves ungovernable, in a very genial sort of a way, all to make that singular point, that we are the masters.

And if that all sounds terribly metaphysical, it isn't really. The real plan is that we don't actually want a plan. We don't need "leadership", inspirational or otherwise, because in our everyday affairs, we don't need to be led. We are quite capable of managing our own affairs, thank you very much.

What we want is that part of government that must exist to run itself smoothly, quietly, unobtrusively, and with maximum economy. But, if the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and all that, every now and again we recognise that we have to put government back in its box when it gets above its station.

Now is one of those times, and that task falls to us. We didn't ask to do it and, frankly, we have better things to do with our time and money, but it is a job that needs doing. So, that is the "plan" – a non-plan, if you like. I'll pop down to the charity shop and get some clothes to put on it over the next few days.