Wednesday, 9 November 2011


Are they going? In a pig's eye - by Helen... Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Berlusconi "vows to resign". What on earth does that mean? The man has lost the vote, has lost his majority. Just go already. Nope, the BBC doesn't say he has resigned either just that " has confirmed he intends to resign after key economic reforms have been approved". Goodness me, I remember a time when Italian prime ministers went down like ninepins and there was none of this vowing around the place.

According to Reuters he will resign once a new budget law has been approved in parliament.

No, Papandreou hasn't gone either.
Greek political leaders failed to wrap up coalition talks as planned on Tuesday night, raising fears the deal could start to unravel after two missed deadlines.
The country’s president had been set to appoint a new cross-party government headed by Lucas Papademos, a former vice-president of the European Central Bank who previously served as Greece’s own central bank governor.

George Papandreou, the outgoing prime minister, was supposed to announce his resignation at the same time, according to an official from his PanHellenic Socialist Movement.

“There’s radio silence from our side, let’s see what happens in the morning,” said a senior socialist. The government spokesman could not be reached for comment.

An official from the conservative New Democracy party said:”Contacts seem to be over for today.” He added that there were “no indications” that Mr Papademos had pulled out of the discussions.
OK, I'll say it again: just go already.

That leaves Theresa May who has managed to pass the blame for her incompetence on to the head of the UK border force. He has resigned but in a Parthian shot has accused Ms May of misleading Parliament. As if she would. So the heat is on. Theresa May has already announced that she will not resign but we have not had a public pronouncement of support from the Boy-King. When that happens we shall know that her days are numbered.

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He'll be back soon, I'll warrant - by Helen...

And my stint will be over.

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Update - by Pete... Tuesday, November 08, 2011

North is awake, eating, tubes removed and talkative. It's fairly safe to assume that if he hasn't shuffled loose of the mortal coil by now, he isn't going to.

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1688 and all that... - by Pete...

A guest post by Sandy Rham.

In 1688 there was a prat called James II on the throne. His elder brother, Charles II was probably the best of the Stuart Kings because he concentrated more on the Boudoir than interfering with the country. Indeed on one of his nightly forays his younger brother had suggested he shouldn't go out into dangerous streets with so little escort, to which he allegedly replied: “There is not a man in all my kingdom who would kill me to put you on the throne”.

And so it proved to be when King James II brutally crushed the Monmouth Rebellion and got himself thoroughly disliked for wanton abuses of power. In 1688 a group organized a 'convocation' of all the worthies of the Realm and told James II to hop it. They also invited the Duke of Orange to become the first Constitutional Monarch. This means that although the Sovereign may not be over-ruled, the definition of Sovereign, they are, nonetheless, bound by limits to their power.

Chief among the strictures imposed was the imperative that the Nation may not be given away so no power could fine us a Nation, nor could they over-rule our courts. At the time the worry was the Catholic hegemony, which having lost Britain a 150 or so years earlier, was still scheming to get a puppet on the throne.

Although Cromwell's Commonwealth was within living memory, and they were dumping a pretty rotten Royal, they nevertheless chose the Monarchy over a Republic. They also put all authority within the hands of the Sovereign to be lent out on the receipt, directly or indirectly, of a bondsman's oath. This means judges, the police, the armed services et al. have no authority in their own right, but rather the authority the sovereign lends them.

Thus they effectively put all their eggs in one basket and made the protection of the sovereign and national sovereignty paramount. With hindsight the reason is clear, a sovereign, being a person, may be held accountable for the actions done in their name, and we can all agree accountability is sadly missing today.

Lawyers will try and persuade you that since GB has no written Constitution it has no Constitution. This is not so, we have 'Constitutional Documents' of which by far the most important are the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Rights 1688, the result of James II demise. The reason these carry more weight is that in both cases the Rule of Law had broken down and the documents represented the conditions under which the rebels would give their Consent to the Rule of Law.

This is the purpose of a Constitution, to set bounds on The Powers That Be, to draw the line beyond which the people will withdraw consent and rebel. TPTB then try to use the Authority conceded to them to 'adjust' the Constitution bit by bit, snipping away at Liberties. Americans are vigilant on this front, but in Britain TPTB have gradually rewritten the Rule Book, or at least they think they have, and claim our implied Consent by the fact we haven't rebelled... yet.

So the Constitution is not an outdated legal thing with little relevance today, as the TPTB will have you believe, rather it is that line beyond which lies rebellion, withdrawal of Consent to The Rule of Law. A constitution cannot be decreed for us any more than respect can be demanded, yet it is respect for the law that leads to consent to the rule of law.

We will have to reclaim our sovereignty and it would be wise to plan for the structure of the subsequent Nation, to consider just how the Law is allowed to Rule.


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Not nobody is going to resign, not nohow - by Helen...

Theresa May is not resigning. Berlusconi is being urged by his "key ally", Umberto Bossi of the Northern League, to resign but is singing the Italian equivalent of "la-la-la-la, can't hear you".Greece is still "inching towards a deal" while
an emergency cabinet meeting -- the last likely to be held by the present government -- was postponed owing to a meeting between outgoing Prime Minister George Papandreou and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, state television channel NET said.
That means that Papandreou has not resigned either.

Just thought you'd like to know.

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Update - by Helen...

13.40 North Jnr informs me that the Boss is doing very well and has had various tubes removed. That means he can eat, drink and, may the force help those poor nurses, talk.

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Karlo rather than Groucho Marx for once - by Helen... Monday, November 07, 2011

Of course, many of us recall what Karl Marx said at the beginning of The Eighteenth of Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (I must admit to finding it quite useful when I was doing history O level): History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

Actually, that is a meaningless statement for if the first event, the tragedy, is history repeating itself, then there must have been an even earlier one. In his view Napoleon I was the tragedy and Napoleon III, the farce. But what came before that?

However, there is no getting away from the fact that all historical parallels one can draw for present events in Greece and Italy show the situation up as farce. For the time being, anyway.

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Nope, they haven't gone - by Helen...

Oh come, you surely did not think that either hereditary Prime Minister Papandreou or the rather farcical Prime Minister Berlusconi would go before every single finger was prized off that premiership? Here and here on Your Freedom and Ours.

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Rejoice, rejoice - by Helen...

As North Jnr has pointed out, the Boss is awake or near enough. I have sent my commiserations to the medical and nursing staff.

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Alive - by Pete...

Alive, awake and all is well.

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And just to cheer everyone up - by Helen...

The Daily Torygraph once again misses the point. In fact, the Daily Torygraph talks rubbish. Apparently, David Cameron must have a plan to take to the table. What kind of a plan. Ah, that would be telling.

Any article that starts with a sentence that includes the words "Britain’s relationship with the European Union" is going to be a lulu. You just know. All together now: Britain no more has a relationship with the EU than Sussex has a relationship with the United Kingdom. Got that?

Let us move on. Apparently, the Torygraph may have understood a few things:
It appears increasingly clear, however, that the compromise expressed by that slogan is no longer an option. The crisis within the single currency means that the countries who are part of it are destined for full fiscal union, in which there will be a single policy for all of them on taxation and on government spending.

Within the EU, the eurozone countries will have a unified set of economic and social interests, and will certainly act as a caucus, outvoting the rest when it comes to matters that can be decided by qualified majority voting. And as we report today, the rule changes agreed by the Lisbon Treaty have had two very important results.

First, there has been a significant increase in the number of issues over which Britain has given up its veto. Second, and far less frequently mentioned, alterations to the ways in which votes are weighted and counted, set to come into force in 2014, will mean that the eurozone countries, when they act as a bloc, will be able to impose their will on the rest – and there won’t be anything that Britain (or any other EU member that is not in the euro) will be able to do about it.

Should the euro bloc decide that the City of London needs to be subject to regulations that will effectively eliminate its competitive advantage, Britain will just have to accept it. And should that bloc decide that it is time to unify criminal law across Europe, Britain would have to implement that momentous change, even though it would trample all over the last government’s precious “red lines”, not to mention the basic principles of British criminal justice.
Apart from the fact that most of this is not in the future but in the past and the present with theTorygraph failing to report developments in any detail, one cannot argue with that analysis.

Then we come to the grand conclusion, otherwise known as the Torygraph's pompous pronouncements the Telegraph's view:
We believe they are not: that there can be a workable compromise between being subsumed by the EU and divorcing ourselves from it entirely. The Government has said the same. But for that to come about, we need a detailed examination by ministers about what our options and goals are, and a wide-ranging debate among the public, so that Britain not only has a watertight plan to bring to the negotiating table but also one that has the popular legitimacy that has been so sorely lacking in Brussels’s relations with member states. These are enormous questions, and they can no longer be swept aside – for on them depend the future and nature of our democracy.
May I suggest that somebody, anybody on that rag finally reads the Treaties and, perhaps, dips intoa certain book that gives you the history of the whole project. A wide-ranging debate among the public would be a good idea but it is unlikely to get us anywhere if it relies on erroneous information from our media.

Posted by Britannia Radio at 08:37