“Labour seems to think the British economic renaissance is going to be rebuilt on minor changes to a food and drink trade that amounts to 2-3 per cent of our exports, yet if it really believed this, why is it killing family farms and making them erect solar panels instead?”
– David Frost, former chief Brexit negotiator in the former Tory government, writing about the sellout deal that UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer agreed with the EU at the weekend. The deal effectively puts the UK back into the EU Single Market on farming and food; it also gives a number of concessions that, even if they don’t completely reverse the UK’s independence from the EU, make a number of steps in that direction. This is one of those cases where the devil is in the detail. Like Lord (David) Frost, I want the UK to go for mutual recognition of trade standards, which is what sovereign nation states, such as New Zealand, already do without fuss. Apparently, this is outside the mental universe of Brussels negotiators and the UK government.
The reference in the quote above is to the policy of the current Labour government to impose inheritance tax on family-run farms, a measure that will force a number of these farmers’ families to sell up, possibly selling out to energy companies instead.
From where I stand, it seems pretty clear that Starmer wants to reverse Brexit, even if it falls short of formal re-entry into the EU.
Representatives versus “moral leaders.”
Give me representatives every time.
Yes the final parts of British independence are being surrendered – but then independence was (it is now clear) never really on offer, only “Brexit” – a made up word that does not mean anything. Like most people I thought I was voting for independence in 2016 – but it turns out that I was not. I did wonder why the word “Brexit” was being used rather than independence – but with the squalid betrayals by Mrs May, Alexander “Boris” Johnson, and now Sir Keir Starmer (all of whom are just obeying officials and “experts”) it is clear why the meaningless word “Brexit” was used rather than independence.
Ben Habib (who stood for Parliament, twice, a few miles down the road from me) did try to explain that the “deal” with the European Union was not independence – but Mr Johnson and Mr Nigel Farage (yes him to) would not listen – even when told that by keeping Northern Ireland in the E.U. (violating Mr Johnson’s promises – supposedly his promises had to be violated in order to “keep the Belfast Agreement” with the IRA terrorists) the whole of the United Kingdom would, in effect, be tied to E.U. regulations. And now what little autonomy we had gained is gone.
We should also not forget the World Health Organisation whose “World Health Assembly” is happening right now – some nations, such as the United States and Argentina are leaving the WTO – but the United Kingdom is not, and will agree to whatever totalitarian madness is proposed.
It is unfortunate, but it is unclear what we can do to gain independence. The British political class (including Mr Johnson and Mr Farage) will never stick to NO – they will always seek a “deal” an “agreement”, and that is fatal – it plays into the hands of the officials and the “experts”. Once you concede that the independence of your country is a matter of “negotiations” – you have already lost.
A double betrayal – to the European Union and to the World Health Organisation.
As for farming – yes it is clear that the policy of the British government (following international suggestions) is to get rid of family farms. Other governments are following similar policies – although perhaps Britain is the most extreme case.
Food is to come from factories – as Mr William “Bill” Gates has explained. What remains of rural areas will be “rewilded” (Mr Johnson was very keen on that) – and important people will be able to visit these areas.
Most ordinary people will live in small apartments in “15 minute cities” – they will not have cars (as the electrical grid can not sustain millions of electric cars – assuming the electrical grid can be maintained at all), and they (we) will live off a basic income – which will be electronic and have to be spent on certain things in a certain amount of time. Even what entertainment people can have will be decided for them – so that corporations such as Disney and the BBC will no longer have to worry about the “reactionary” public. Entertainment will be full of “positive messages” to make sure people have the “correct” opinions.
The institutions (government and corporate) have explained all these matters repeatedly – they are NOT engaged in a conspiracy, as everything is out in the open. It is not their fault if people do not take their totalitarian plans seriously – they have not been hidden, it has all been open-and-above-board.
The most grimly amusing thing is that so called “Greens” are helping bring this totally unnatural future society into being – it is about as far from a natural existence as it is possible to be, but they do not see that.
“Will it work?”
Of course NOT – the new system will collapse into terrible horror (including starvation) in places like Britain, but there we are.
Democracy.
If people vote the “wrong” way then annul the election – and ban the candidate they voted for.
And if people keep voting the “wrong” way – then magically get far more people voting in the second round of an election than in the first round of the same election (Romania), or get lots of votes appearing from other countries, and crash the election computer a couple of times (Moldova). Although neither Romania or Moldova was nearly as bent as the Brazilian Presidential election which was a total (computer – electronic voting) farce – and which Western sources are starting to admit was a farce, now it is clear that the (ungrateful) “Lula” has tuned out to be a friend of Mr Putin – the forces that put “Lula” back in office made a mistake, they now regret rigging that particular election. If “Lula” had not turned out to be a friend of Mr Putin, the international establishment would still be pretending that the election which brought him back to office was straight.
In Britain?
Do not ask why various young men, including a Ukrainian young man, keep trying to burn down the home of the Prime Minister Sir Keir “Two Tier” Starmer.
The same Sir Keir Starmer who instructed the “independent” courts to “send them to prison for a long time” – about people who had not even yet been tried (for such “crimes” as venting on social media – or walking past a scene of disorder) – let alone convicted.
And the same Sir Keir Starmer who has claimed, several times (including in the Oval Office) that there is “Freedom of Speech” in Britain – a country that arrests more people for what they say or write than any other nation in the Western world.
The “transition” to totalitarianism, censorship of political dissent and so on, demanded by the various world institutions (government and corporate) will be the continuation of a long process here – one that started as long ago as the 1960s.
No wonder there is hardly any opposition to the new World Health Organisation agreement.
Or to the European Union agreement – which, amongst other things, de facto commits us to “Net Zero” – Mr Miliband must be delighted.
It would have taken five minutes research to find out that it was the leftist “Lula” who was the friend of Mr Putin – rather than the conservative President of Brazil.
But five minutes research was not done by the international corporations (commercial and governmental) and so on – who seem to have believed their own propaganda – assuming that the “right winger” MUST be the “Bad Guy” (TM) and so should be removed by electronic voting manipulation.
In short the international establishment were not just unethical – they were also lazy and stupid.
Evil will never win Why ? Because he is irrational
Ayn Rand
Paul’s dystopian vision is compelling. In the same way you can’t take your eyes away from a train-wreck in progress. But… Well, what if it did “work” – at least for a time – and it could work or at least be seen to work – for a time. That would be even more horrific. A dystopia that appears to be a utopia and is believed in by it’s inhabitants is far, far worse than an obviously dysfunctional system imposed purely by top-down diktat and force. Because Paul’s dystopian idea is actually workable for a society that already believes that flying is intrinsically evil and that recycling is intrinsically good and that nuclear power is intrinsically evil and Windy Miller has the the moral high ground. The recycling thing is the biggy. There are lots of people out there who genuinely believe the more they recycle the more absolute good they are doing “For The Planet”. They don’t understand it is merely a partial mitigation of waste at best.
They are the same people who bought into “cash for clunkers” thinking getting rid of a perfectly good petrol car for a new electric one was a good thing ignoring the fact that even if CO2 is evil incarnate making a new car is the equivalent in “emissions” as driving their existing one 100,000+ miles. These are idealists which means they believe reality to be whatever they want it to be or told it is. These are people who are simply incapable of getting this joke.I’m not saying they object to it (though they do) but they simply can’t conceive of how it’s funny because it’s true. Is it not remarkable that one of the most significant crusaders against trans-ideology is a fantasy writer?
In a sense both trans-ideology and the Green movement are much the same because they are based upon the denial of empirical reality. Note here that the German Green Party is utterly oppossed to nuclear power in principle. Germany is now burning lignite because of the Greens.
I shall now indulge in a (long) quote…
– From Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges. Taken from a fairly reasonable English translation of the whole story here. Read the whole thing. You can get the complete stories of the great Argentine in a single volume. Worth it’s weight in Tlön-stuff.
But there is hope. “Tlön may well be a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth forged by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men“. My Emphasis. If you can decipher you can understand. If you can understand you can destroy. Big “ifs” but still “ifs”…
Phillipe,
I missed your Rand quote. Is evil “irrational”? I think I have answered that. Or rather Borges did. Rationality is not the same as truth. It is entirely possible to create a perfectly rational system based upon false axioms. A rather interesting esxcursion here would be Hilbert’s Programme and how it went wrong.
I, as an outsider, would like to ask a question- was Brexit worth it? Are you better off now than you would have been if you’d stayed in Europe? or is this one of those impossible-to answer questions? As a libertarian, I favour smaller, local, democracies, but I am not living in Britain.
@Nicholas
Brexit was worth it, if only to “stick it to the man” for a microsecond or two.
N (UJ) G,
No, it wasn’t worth it. Wh]at we got was worse trade and travel. What we absolutely didn’t get was a “smaller, local, democrac[y]” because, quite simply, Westminster can be gits just as much as Brussels. Keir and Ursula are two cheeks of the same (should be slapped) arse. Yeah, I know… In principle things could have worked out different but I never believed that.
You see what Clovis just said? Exactly. For a microsecond or two…. Exactly. Trouble is the vote was nine years ago and that’s a lot of microseconds…
NickM
Phillippe Hermkins has a point.
Take what happened in the House of Commons today – rather than ask the Prime Minister about his alleged (alleged – it is NOT proven) Rent Boys, or his sending people to prison because, upset at the murder of three little girls, they vented on X (only Rupert Lowe seems to care about this poor women), the Prime Minister was asked about the “winter fuel payment” – and he agreed that he would spend more money on it, to the support of all parts of the House of Commons.
Think about that – the government first makes energy very expensive with its “Green” taxes and regulations, and then it provides welfare money so that some (some) people can afford to buy the heat and light.
Yes it may not be, strictly speaking, insane – like Mayor Curley a century ago Sir Keir Starmer (and the politicians of all other parties) may well understand the harm they are doing – but the two interventions do not cancel out, they “double tap”.
The energy regulations and taxes do terrible harm (destroying what is left of British manufacturing) and the welfare payments (so that some, some, people can buy the heat and light for their homes) make the public finances worse.
Is the government insane or is it destroying the country on purpose – deliberately?
I do not know – but I do know this country, the United Kingdom, is going to go down.
Legal “reasoning” from the Blairite British “Supreme Court”.
According to the judges today, people can go and camp on the land of other people – without the consent of the landowners.
I wonder if anyone will take the judges at their word and go and camp in their garden – perhaps defecating everywhere?
Or is it “one law for you – but a different law for ME”?
“The establishment have let Mr …. out of prison” well they should not have put him in prison as his “accusations” against the Syrian were true “shut up – they have let him out, he is free!”
Well now they have charged him with another stitch-up offense.
As Katie Hopkins said in her most recent video – which was on the case of a mother sent to prison for a “tweet”. It is NOT really because the authorities have something against a particular individual – the individual is just a “hostage”, a warning to the rest of the population.
“Step out of line – and we will do this to YOU, and to your family”.
So NickM has a point – there is a logic in the actions of the authorities, the logic of power and control.
The boot stamping down on the face.
Paul,
I agree with you. I actually, oddly enough, had just read a DM article on that prison sentence. I agree but these people are not being irrational. They are being evil and whilst those sets have a sizeable intersection it is entirely possible to be evil and rational. I think in D&D it is called “Lawful Evil”. If you believe in the Qu’ran then 9/11 makes perfect sense. A big “if” but it still makes sense. OK. I’m going to Godwin myself here… If you really believe Jews are the root of all evil then surely the Holocaust was a good thing – just not done thoroughly enough. What I’m saying is it is entirely possible to reason yourself by rational means into a very bad place if your logic is based upon false axioms. And, yes, that applies to making people poorer and then “giving” them back some of their money because it serves the Grand Design of net-zero or whatever and looks nice – “Oh, he’s giving cah to the elderly!”. Maybe. Or maybe that is just cynical politics in action. I mean we all know the NHS is “free”, right?
Now, Paul. I shall hold something against you. I had to Google, “Keir Starmer Rent Boys”. You owe me a new screen and keyboard 😄.
Paul, I like your dystopian idea (I mean in a fictional sense) because it isn’t “1984”. It isn’t a boot on a human face. It could seem utopian and that is what makes it truly scary. People should be scared. People should be terrified by what Starmer said because what he said was essentially that he approved of free speech as long as he and his ilk approved of what is said.
Paul,
BTW, just to clear things up. My Orwell ref was written before reading your last comment.
I don’t regret Britain leaving the EU because I don’t think Britain should have ever joined. I do regret that the vision of the late Conservative government for a post-EU Britain (‘Global Britain’ or whatever it was called) effectively amounted to mass immigration on a scale that made the Blair-Brown-Cameron-May levels of immigration (which were already unprecedentedly high by historical standards) look relatively modest.
Clawing some positives from this disaster, it at least looks like the Conservative Party may well be permanently discredited. For much of my adult life the Tories complained that they couldn’t deliver an actual conservative government because they often lacked a large majority (or any majority) and the EU blocked much of what they wanted to do. Well, they had a 80 seat majority under BoJo and left the EU. And it turned out to be the worst conservative government ever. I am not uncritical of Nigel Farage and Reform but the Tories are a sunken ship.
“Well, they had a 80 seat majority under BoJo and left the EU. And it turned out to be the worst conservative government ever. I am not uncritical of Nigel Farage and Reform but the Tories are a sunken ship.”
I rest my case.
Martin – did we ever really leave the European Union? Read what Ben Habib, and others, have pointed out about the legal trap the “deal” put us in (with Northern Ireland bound to obey E.U. regulations). Nigel Farage was sadly mistaken about the deal. Although even Ben Habib was slow to fully understand just how bad the “deal” was – the propaganda about how we achieved “Brexit” (whatever that is) confused a lot of people – including, I must admit, myself.
Still – be that as it may, we are now back under the European Union, we have “Brexit” rather than independence. Sir Keir Starmer has seen to that – with his agreement with the European Union to place the United Kingdom under E.U. law and the E.U. court.
NickM.
Yes they, the establishment (cultural as well as political) are evil – not insane.
They know difference between moral right and moral wrong – and they make a choice to do what they know to be morally wrong. They do that because they enjoy it – they indulge their passions, at the cost of the suffering of other people. Indeed it is the suffering of other people that they enjoy it – we all have that sadistic streak within us – the great question is whether we choose to stop it.
Paul,
I don’t think they really understand morality or maybe just don’t care about it. What they are are utilitarians. And we are their utensils. I don’t think it is sadistic as such. They believe that their Greater Good trumps all morality as traditionally or generally understood. They will stop at nothing to create their New Jersalem even if that is a Hell for us because by their reckoning they see dissent as a lack of understanding, a flaw to be destroyed.