Our President Has Become A Madman Says Senior French Politician

French President Emmanuel Macron has tuned into a “madman”, a senior member of the French national assembly has declared.

Boris Vallaud, the Socialist Party leader, has described Emmanuel Macron as being a “madman” in a recent interview.

Questioning the president’s sanity is one of the milder criticisms aimed at the French President in recent days, with the head of state angering allies and enemies alike with his aggressive push to pass his deeply unpopulare pension reforms at, seemingly, any cost, in spite of his already having triggered widespread protests and violent riots across France.

According to a report in Le Figaro, Vallaud lambasted Macron’s continuing stubborn support for his pension reform system.

“I do not accept that Emmanuel Macron has a mandate to apply this reform,” the Socialist leader said.

He also described Macron as seemingly becoming ever more “entrenched” in the Elysée palace as opposition to him mounts, attacking the “obstinancy” of the President — who he now considers a “madman” — who has opted to lash out at the general public for opposing him rather than listen to their perspectives.

But his continuing policy of mass immigration has destroyed la belle France, and played a large part in the economic issues that now plague the country, pension reform being just one symptom of the failure of his high-tax high-regulation regime.

It seems the whole of Europe, other than the UK, can now see that the American Imperium is dying on its feet, and that they need to look further afield. Scholz was in China just a few weeks ago, and others will be making the same trek in due course. The Democrat Neo-Cons, and Dubya, have antagonixed pretty much the whole world, and I suspect it’s too late now to turn the clock back.

For all his faults, Macron sometimes gets it right however, during his talks in Beijing with Xi JinPing, the Chinese were exasperated by his continuous harping on the Ukraine issue, despite making it clear that they will not alter their foreign policy to accommodate him, or the EU, or anyone for that matter. Their relationship with Russia is deepening, largely due to the clumsy and arrogant actions of the |United States and their vassals in Europe, (UK especially).

The fanatical Washington Neo-Cons (Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken, William Burns(CIA)) thought their provocation of Russia over the Ukrainian ethnic Russians would precipitate war (which it did) and their “sanctions from hell” (prepared well in advance, slapped on straight away) would “destroy Russia’s economy” (Liz Truss’ words).

The Russian economy would collapse with massive inflation (it’s now around 4%), resulting in the toppling of Putin, to be replaced with a compliant leader like Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who permitted the western vultures & Russian oligarchs to strip Russia’s resources. Putin stopped that, which is why the US have demonised him ever since.

The Chinese are not stupid; they see all this, and they see also how the long-standing “constructive ambiguity” of the Taiwan . question has been shattered by Nancy Pelosi’s Taipei trip. Additionally they point out to Macron that a new world order, not the West’s cherished “NWO” is emerging as more and more countries are signing up to their BRICS and SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation) & dumping the dollar for trading.

America’s arrogance knows no bounds; after the Russia provocation it attacks its own allies by blowing up Nordstream, after which Germany’s silence only confirms German (and European) vassal state status. Macron seems to understand this, and is the ONLY western leader to break ranks with the American fanatics, and suggests that maybe, JUST MAYBE, European countries, including Britain, should act in their own interests, rather than slavish obedience to Washington’s dictates. The rest of the world is moving away from US intimidation; Europe should do the same, and Americans need to clear out the Washington swamp.

If Europe wants to be less reliant on the US dollar, they will have to learn to be less reliant on the US for their defense and find a way to co-exist with China’s communist regime . The US should simply force Europe to finance its own defense by removing most of the troops we have had stationed there since 1945. Today Europe has a population and a GNP larger than the US. They can afford to defend themselves. They just prefer to spend their money on social welfare program.

RELATED:

French President Macron Narrowly Survives Confidence Vote Over Dictatorial Pension Reforms
Riots erupted agross France again today after French President Emmanuel Macron pushed through his pension reform act, raising the retirement age without bothering to present his proposal to the National Assembly so representatives could vote on bit. The public backlash has exceeded even the most pessimistic predictions, and there is now a good chance that a no-confidence vote this week could collapse his government.

French Police Use Teargas As Freedom Convoy Brings Thousands Of Protestors To Paris
Inspired by Canada’s freedom Convoy, a sponaneous protest by drivers of heavy trucks against the fasistic and oppressive curtailment of individual freedoms by Prime Minister Trudeau’s regime, French truck drivers protesting President Macron’s similarly authoritarian measures converged on Paris where they were met by riot police enforcing Macron’s ban on protests against government policy …

France: Thousands of Health Workers Who Refused Covid Vaccine Mandate Suspended
The French government have today suspended 3,000 health workers who have defied a manadte requiring all medical personnel to be vaccinated against COVID,The Guardian reports. Announcing the move France’s health minister said that many have since agreed to be inoculated now that they had seen “the mandate was a reality”.

France: Thousands Protest Against Vaccine Passports and Mandatory Vaccination
21 July 2021: French protests call for ‘freedom’ amid government vaccine push 17 July 2021: Reprots of numerous protests, with the total number of protestors involved estimated at over 1 million, marched in numerous cities and urban areas across France on Saturday. They were protesting against against President Emmanuel Macron’s authoritarian policies of forcing vaccination of health …

Macron Forced to Back Down on Mandating Vaccine Passports for Shopping Malls After Nationwide Protests
French President Emmanuel Macron has been forced to back down on imposing mandatory vaccine passports for entry to shopping malls after volatile nationwide protests. As we highlighted last week, Macron’s announcement that proof or vaccination or a negative test would be required to visit shopping malls, restaurants bars, hospitals, bars, cafés and access public transport sparked immediate demonstrations.

Majority Of French Agree With Military Generals That Nation Is Nearing “Civil War”, New Poll Finds
A new poll has found that a majority of French people support the sentiments expressed in a letter signed by active duty and retired members of the military warning that the country is heading towards a “civil war” caused by failed multiculturalism and attacks on French identity. Around 1,000 servicemembers signed the letter, warning President Emmanuel Macron of “several deadly dangers” threatening France, including “Islamism and the hordes of the banlieue,” a reference to the fractured suburbs around major cities with high crime …

Le Pen Calls For Referendum To Stop “Submersion” Of France Via Mass ImmigrationMarine Le Pen, leader of the French Rassemblement National (National Rally) has called for a referendum on immigration policy to stop what she called the “submersion” of France via a “globalist” program of mass immigration. Speaking in a debate on problems caused by mass immigration, Le Pen told the French Parliament that the political establishment had betrayed French people …

The Islamic Republic Of France
France’s left-wing elite are accused of cowardice for failing to support 16-year-old girl facing death threats after she insulted Islam online, the ruling class have been also accused of cowardice for failing to support a 16-year-old girl who has faced death threats after she allegedly insulted Islam online.

General Strike brings France To Standstill As Nation Protests Macron Policies
France has been closer to social breakdown than the political establishment in the EU and their mainstream media sock puppets will ever admit since the the gilets jaunes demonstrations at their height nearly torched Paris and other cities. It would be a mistake to think, as television news bulletins and large circulation newspapers have suggested …

French police drag Yellow Vest “protesters” away from Bastille Day parade as they jeer Macron
As Mr Macron was riding by at the start of the parade, he was greeted by people in the crowds who turned their backs, booed and whistled. Before the parade, he delivered a message to the French people and said he wanted to highlight France’s “irrevocable commitment to consolidate French and European security”.

German Interior Minister Caught Faking Asylum Numbers To Hide Migrant Crisis
Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, is trying to fend off claims that she has faked statistics on refugee numbers to hide number of illegal immigrants claiming entry to Germany by posing as asylum seekers since the beginning of this year. While official figures show only 57,647 refugees have been admitted to Germany, the federal police have registered 101,900 arrivals of undocumented migrants since January

Who Blew Up The Nordstream Pipeline
So whodunnit? Sabotage of undersea gas pipe will escalate tension and move the world closer to nuclear war, but who is behind it, Russia in a bid to put more presure on Europe, Ukraine in an attempt to drag NATO into direct action, or the USA using a CIA false flag event to advance its own agenda.

An Energy Crisis In Tandem With A Food Crisis On Top Of An Economic Crisis And A War. This Cannot End Well
As politicians in North America and Europe try to deflect from their own failure that have contributed to the current plethora of crises by blaming Russia and Vladmir Putin for all the current problems, while the war in Ukraine is a contributory factor in each, the real blame lies closer to home.

Swedish Media Outlet Publishes Leaked U.S. Document On How to CRUSH Europe Economy via Ukraine War Effort
Swedish news organisation Nya Dagbladet has published a leaked top secret US plans to use the war in Ukraine and an induced energy crisis to destroy European economies. The report claims the RAND Corporation a defence and foreign policy think tank founded by military aircraft maker Douglas has the official aim of improving policies and decision-making, is the source of its evidence.

Has Putin Has Pushed Europe Into Economic Depression, Hyperrinflation and Currency Collapse?
Though it was entirely predictable and indeed had been expected for some time, the news over the weekend that the Nord Stream 1 pipeline which feeds gas from Russia to northern Europe via The Baltic route had been shut down completely by The Kremlin in retaliation for the continued financial and military support given by NATO and EU member states to Ukraine in the conflict with Russia. The European Commission, governing body of the EU, immediately put the community on something close to a war footing, …
Continue reading >>>

Jingoistic Western Triumphalism Will Not End The War In Ukraine Or Cripple Putin, But It Is Crippling Western Nations
As the war in Ukraine grinds on and Russia steps up its economic war against the west and in particular The European Union, claims made recently by the idiotically ‘woke’ leaders of Europe’s main economic and military powers that the West has a once-in-a–generation chance to severely weaken Russia’s capabilities, both militarily and geopolitically, look increasingly hollow. Putin’s critics have cited ‘Western unity’ as one of the main reasons why Russia will be economically destroyed and politically humiliated when the Ukraine’s military finally claim victory.

European Union Is Again Close To A Meltdown As Eurozone Economy Collapses
Once more we return to the political instability and economic fragility of the European Union as the conflict in Ukraine combined with loonytoons Climate Change mitigation policies, the failure of ‘sustainables’ to meet ever increasing demand for electricity, fod shortages and rampant price inflation put economic and social pressure on governments of member states …

Workers of the world Unite… to beat the Left

from The Currant Bun, 5 July 2021

THIS morning more than a million letters carrying Unite logos will drop on doormats across the UK.They will offer union ­members a chance to choose their new general secretary.Please don’t throw them in the bin.You have in your hands nothing less than a chance to save British democracy.

This vote will decide if ­Parliament can field a real Leader of the Opposition — a viable alternative to the Tories — or a puppet tied to the purse-strings of hard-left extremists. It would set Keir Starmer free to change Labour Party rules, kick out terrorists’ friend ­Jeremy Corbyn and shunt ­deputy leader and arch-rival Angela Rayner on to the back benches.

All this would be possible under a new general secretary ready to fight for members’ rights instead of plotting non-stop political mayhem.

Picture Credit: The Sun

The ballot follows “Red Len” McCluskey’s decision to retire early as the most powerful ­figure in the Labour movement and its biggest cash donor from Unite’s deep pockets.

By-elections come and go, but this little-noticed contest will affect the shape of Britain for decades to come.

Unite members form the backbone of the UK economy in shipbuilding, construction and trucking, including the Sun’s famous White Van Man. Indeed, many members are Sun readers, Brexit supporters and Red Wall Tory converts in the Midlands and the North.

They are being offered three candidates — the Socialist Workers’ Sharon Graham, Communist Party-backed Steve Turner and moderate Gerard Coyne, who almost beat Red Len last time round.

Coyne is fighting for pay, pensions, shop floor rights and working conditions — and immigration controls. Continue reading >>>

RELATED:

Labour Scourge Of Tax Avoiders Is A Tax Dodger? WTF is going on?
We have often made points about the hypocroisy of the left, particularly those lefties, but surely Margaret Hodge (nee Oppenheim – the diamond people) is the undisputed champ of left wing hypocrites. As a senior Labour MP Margaret was always eager to condemn tax avoidance. Unfortunately like most self righteous Labour millionaires she did not practice what she preached.

Britain’s Racist Future:Labour Set To Throw Selection On Merit Out The Window
With four weeks to go until a General Election that could change the face of Britain forever, the Labour Party, which hopes to be elected to govern this great and proud nation, has unveiled a set of policies that would make minorities into privileged castes and relegate the white Working and middle classes to the status of second class citizens.

Once We Respected Red Cross Because The Did Good Work. Now They Promote Politically Correct Tyranny.
The cancer of politically correct thinking has spread throughout British public life. Probably the most perfect illustration of how out of touch the new elite, the Meritocracy (who only merit a kick up the arse) have become with the lives of ordinary people is the politicisation of the institutions of government, local government, education, the law and now even the charity sector. Read what happened to a charity worker who dared to have his own opinion on a gay rights issue

Ed Miliband Sounds Like A ‘Public Schoolboy’ Says Traditional Labour Voter.
With two and a half months still to go until polling day, the election campaign is well and truly underway. Ed Miliband kicked off Labour’s effort with what could turn out to be his bigotgate monent, as he stopped only a nanometer short of telling an aircraft electrician that ordinary people were not intelligent enough to understand politics and should stick to talking about the soaps.

Pink Van Woman In Trouble Again
The Labour Party deputy leader, Little Hattie Harperson, the paedophiles friend, cannot to anything right at the moment. Hattie has of course always been an electoral liability on a par with the racist posh boy Chukka Ummuna, a hot tip to replace Ed (Bacon Sandwich Man) Miliband until Chukka, in a rare moment of honesty said he believed all white people should be killed (or something like that)…

Has ‘Hampstead Socialism’ Lost Labour The Working Class Vote
When a traditionally left wing publication like The New Statesman turns on The Labour leader you can be sure the party is in bigger trouble than anyone involved with it is ever going to admit. This blog has been saying for years Labour is now more elitist than The Conservatives, the party of lawyers, academics and media luvvies. …

Game of Groans: David Cameron and Ed Miliband will be torn apart as the election nears
Will Dave or Ed be Prime Minister after the 2015 general election or will a sicteenth centry witch fould up the best lain schemes of mice and men. 2015 could turn out to be the Demdike Man election, not through macick, but metaphor. The Witch of Pendle representas a communitity and culture that has been abandoned by the self righteous, politically correct concensus politics of the bourgeois establishment. Are the working and middle classes about to strike back.

Derbyshire Chief Constable Claims He Was Forbidden To Arrest Former Labour Minister Or Search His Home”>South Yorkshire Police Commissioner Shaun Wright Finally Resigns Over Rotherham Child Abuse Scandal
Police chiefs blocked a paedophile probe into a top politician 25 years ago, one of the country’s most senior officers said yesterday. Derbyshire Chief Constable Mick Creedon was serving as a detective sergeant in Leicestershire when allegations surfaced against Labour MP Greville Janner in 1989. Mr Creedon said he was ordered to limit his inquiries into the MP, now Lord Janner of Braunstone.

Miliband Promises Same Old Shite – Not A Word About Action Against Paedophile Sex Gangs
Labour leader Ed Miliband’s keynote speech at the Labour Party conference woyuld have to be the best speech of his life if he hoped to be Prime Minister after next years election, the consensus of opinon said. Ed’s friends and opponents awaited the speech with very different hopes and expectations. in the end as Ed dodged the bg issues, the economy and debt, law and order, immigration and Europe, it was probably his enemies who were happier.

Rotherham child sex abuse scandal: More victims identifies, more cover ups exposed.
What immigration has been to the Conservative so the Child Sex Cover Up scandal is proving to be for Labour as the party gets set to tear itself apart. With similar scandals due to be exposed in Rochdale, Bradfor, Oxford and other big towns, the Rotherham case is gathering momentum. So indirectly it looks as if immigration and fear of being called racist will be the downfall of both major parties.

Sex Gangs Operating In The Child Care System – Why Didn’t People Come Forward.
The predicable response from many politicians since the Rotherham Child Care sex scandal blew up in the faces of the smug, self serving establishment has been to feign surprise and say, “But why didn’t people come forward sooner?” The fact is that as we saw in the Jimmy Savile scandal, people were coming forward, people were voicing suspicions and they were insulted, ridiculed and humiliated.

Miss Whiplash Call Girl Agency Owner has compromising picture of Cameron and Osborned, People’s voice alleges
The allegations of senior members of the coalition government having been involved in activities involving drugs, prostitutes, gay sado masochism and sniffing bicycle seats while members of the elitist Bullingdon Club at Oxfor University should have been enough to consign them to obscurity. But the new ruling elite seem to think such degeneracy is a qualification for leadership.

How Little Hattie Harperson and he leftie friends fell in love with paedophilia
A look at the fascination with paedophile rights and the sexualisation of children that seems to have a powerrful grip on left wing politicians in the UK’s Labour Party and Obama’s Democrats in the U.S.A. Trying to pass of the sexualization of childhood as a human rights issue is beneath comtempt.

Ken Livingstone’s Policies Are As Dodgy As His Tax Returns With Easter over the focus for news shifts (we hope) from the middle east, the Eurozone economy and and the decay of western society to the campaign to be elected Mayor of London.With Conservative Boris Johnson opening up a significant lead his Labour opponent Ken Livingstone, having seen a desperate big to woo the Islamist vote backfire as it alienated many white voters while not …

Milliband: Labour Will Demand Equal Rights For Toothpaste.New Labour leader Ed Milliband pledged at his press event relaunching the party under his leadership that Labour will look after the “squeezed middle.” The press, broadcast media and the world of politics have been speculating about what this means. Only Boggart Blog can bring you the exclusive, Ed was talking about family values, sibling rivalry and toothpaste.

Sleeping With Conservatives
Could You Hug A Tory asks a feature in The Guardian some time ago. Several typical Guardian writers describe their feelings of fear and loathing when, purely in the interests of science of course, they hugged prominent members of the Conservative Party. Me? Sex is non political. The last thing I worry about when a woman I fancy smiles at me is her politics

If Sturgeon Is Jerking Miliband’s Strings, Who Will Be Prime Minister
Has Ed Miliband met his Bigotgate already?
Legacy Of Rogernomics
Ten, The First Night
The Gordon Show
Prime Minister Has A Precious Moment
How To Be A Bigot
Clegg To Make Cancer A Crime
Change Can Be Unfair To Everybody
Politicians
Cameron Pat On The Back
Government internet snooping plans puty on hold Snooping Goes Too Far
After Ashcroft We name Labour Non Dom Dodgy Donor
The Death Of Free Speech
If Only The World Were Fair
Authoritarian Box Ticking
Change They CAn’t Belive In
Government By Fear And Panic
Keep Health Out Of Politics
Poverty: Labour Succeeds Where Thatcher Failed
Social Status Down The Toilet
Surveillance Society

Covid19 & the denial of veridical reality

by Catte Black in OffGuardian 30 May, 2020

t probably hasn’t passed anyone by that the covid19 crisis, whether manufactured or exploited, has caused great schisms in the alternative media.

Almost from day one there was a divide between those who opted to accept and even endorse the rollout of authoritarian measures by governments around the world as ‘necessary evils’ (or even as harbingers of a world socialist revolution; beats me how that is supposed to work but still), and those who pointed out that this rollout was at best flagrantly disproportionate and opportunistic, and at worst a planned response to a planned or cynically manipulated ‘pandemic’.

Over the last few months the position of the latter has become stronger by the day, while that of the former has been weakened to the point of collapse.

As we have pointed out many times the official data has never supported the panic memes. In fact the two entities, data and narrative, co-exist almost independently of one another, telling mutually contradictory stories, without anyone in the Panic-sphere (to coin a phrase) seeming to notice or mind very much.

It’s as if on this topic some very smart people have been hypnotised or vaccinated against fact. They see the numbers, they read the data, but it just does not compute … Continue reading >>>

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS
Pandemic of pandemics
Fear and Panic

 

Spain Arrests People Traffickers And Drug Smugglers Crossing From North Africa in Speedboats

by Arthur Quinnell, 7 March, 2020

Spanish police helicopter buzzes traffickers’ speedboat off the coast around Malaga (Picture credit: Central European News Agency )

Spanish police announced the arrest of 90 people suspected of being involed in an organised crime network that operated lucrative smuggling rackets that moved both people and drugs across The Strait Of Gibraltar from Africa to Europe.

The Civil Guard released a statement today stating that the smuggling network regularly moved people and drugs across the Strait from Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in northern Africa to The Costa del Sol in high powered RHIB (rigid hull inflatable boat) speedcraft of the type often used to move illegal immigrants from Libya to Italy or Turkey to Greece.

The Spanish national law enforcement agency said their investigators found evidence that 11 speed boats operated by the gang had carried a total of 269 people and over 10,000 kilograms of hashish from Africa to the Spanish mainland. The ring used radar systems and lookouts stationed along the coast to avoid detection, the police alleged. The advantage of the semi inflatable boats is they can operate in very shallow water.

The migrants moved by the racketeers were allegedly detained by the traffickers at a remote location in Spain until their families paid 5,000 euros ($5,600), a senior police officer said. The Civil Guard did not say when the arrests took place but revealed that another 39 people are under investigation in the case.

The police agency said officers involved in the operation against trafficking had so far confiscated over 10 tons of hashish, 26 boats, 29 vehicles, 250,000 euros ($282,000) in cash, and 12 firearms, during the investigation.

Ceuta is one of Spain’s two northern African enclave cities on the Mediterranean coast. Spain´s southern coast has become a major entry point for drugs and illegal immigrants into Europe since the mass migration crisis of 2015 when Italy, Greece and the Balkan States defied Brussels to tighten border controls. Since a far left government seized power in Spain, the Spanish government has taken a very lax line on preventing illegal immigrants posing as refugees and asylum seekers entering the EU though Spain’s leaky borders..

RELATED POSTS:
Europe

Europe Unglues

Immigration omnibus

Spain omnibus

War and Politics Behind Mass Displacement in Africa, Not Climate Change – UCL

Minister In Spain’s Socialist Government Claims Country Needs ‘Millions and Millions’ of Migrants

When Progressives Accuse Conservatives and Libertarians of Wanting To Destroy The Planet

I often see left wing activists, eco – loons and ‘progressives’ around the web claiming that their critics, people who are sceptical of the ‘science’ that predicts Warmageddon any day now accuse anyone who challenges them or points out the economic and social lunacy of demanding we stop using carbon based fuels immediately of wanting to destroy the planet.

One has to wonder why followers of the cult of Saint Greta Thunberg think destroying the economy of the civilized world, throwing billions of people out of work and causing millions to die of starvation would be preferable to seeing a few thousand people a year die of the effects of pollution were the scare stories about Carbon Dioxide true. (They’re not, and if you are not aware of why they are not, your scioentifioc education is sadly lacking.

Another assertion that crops up time and again is that climate change sceptics somehow believe CO2 pollution does not affect them but only affects poor people. Firstly, CO2 is not a polutant. Secondly, while pollution is a serious problem in some places  it doesn’t affect sceptics as badly as it affects poorer people who vote Labour in Britain, Democrat in the USA, and socialist or leftist parties around the world – and if the left understood more clearly why this is so, they could be many times more effective at implementing the right environmental policies to deal with the problems.

Let me show you what I mean with the help of an American AGW sceptic site . Here’s a photo of Los Angeles on a clear day from 1990.

Smog like that used to be a huge problem, and that smog is not carbon dioxide (which is a colourless gas,) but probably a high concentration of nitrous oxide along with sulphates and other noxious gases. But today, Los Angeles looks like this:

The difference between those two photos is obvious. A lot of environmental policy changes were needed to get from point A to point B, and they worked. Mission accomplished.

Now, lets compare that to a photo of Chattanooga, Tennessee, from 1990:

And here’s Chattanooga today:

Other than 28 years worth of advances in camera technology, Chattanooga hasn’t changed much. In fact Chattanooga was considered one of the cleanest cities in America in 1990, and still is today. The environmental policies that were absolutely necessary in Los Angeles weren’t needed at all in Chattanooga.

One of the problems the left have is that their collectivist mindset demands one-size-fits-all solutions because they want everybody to be the same. However if you ask any fashion conscious woman how well do one size fits all solutions work in clothing, the answer will probably be too profane for a public forum.

One of the reasons socialism always fails is that for all their screeching to the contrary, socialists cannot abide diversity either at local or national national level. Thus we are seeing theEuropean Union falling apart as a result of its attempts to politically and financially integrate all its diverse member states (from industrial power house Germany, population 85 million,) to the island nation of Malta (population 350,000) with its fishing and tourism based economy.And we are seeing Britain (now out of the EU,) and other member states torn apart as divisions, between north and south, east and west, city and rural communities go unaddressed because the broad left, the neo – liberal, globalist consensus imposes national and global policies to problems that require local solutions.

The result of trying to pass national legislation to solve local problems is that you’re going to get a lot of push back from people who don’t have the problem you have. Moreover, they don’t want to spend money solving a problem they don’t have.

If I had, now how does the song go?, “A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound,” for every time   I’ve read ridiculous statements like “Conservatives hate clean air and water” in response to their opposition to proposed environmental legislation that would shut down entire industries, I would perhaps have accumulated enough to take a holiday in some unspoiled island paradise in The Caribbean – maybe. But what for.There’s plenty of unspoiled countryside around where I live in north Lancashire and the air is clean. Yet less than 50 miles away away in Manchester,  Liverpool or Leeds the usual big city pollution problems apply

How can the left reasonably expect someone who can look outside and sees a lot of green, clean air, clean water, and a sustainably-developed/ undeveloped/unspoiled/unpolluted woodland, hillsides and valleys, fast  flowing streams in all directions that they should pay more in taxes to fix problems that in most places don’t need fixing?And how incompetent would a government have to be to spend shitloads of taxpayers money in order to provide a nationwide solution to a problem that only exists in a few localities.

How can you reasonably expect someone who has zero need for more regulations, more constraints on their freedom,  which would be completely unnecessary where they live, to be happy to pay the extra taxes and accept the curtailment of personal liberty?

Think it through. If a footballer breaks a leg during a game you don’t sent the whole team to hospital to have the broken bone set in a cast. If a kid eats something rotten and gets a gut infection you don’t give the whole school antibiotics.

The way left wing thinking works is like the guy with the shittiest yard in the street telling everyone else they should be doing more to keep the neighborhood nice.

In reality, most of the country, my country, your country, any country, is perfectly fine from an environmental impact standpoint. You wouldn’t pay someone to mow your lawn if your lawn didn’t need to be mowed. You wouldn’t pay a mechanic to fix your car if it wasn’t broken. And you wouldn’t be happy if government regulators came and said “Listen, we’re going to raise your taxes because people with overgrown lawns and inoperable cars can’t be arsed sorting their problems out.”

So, on the same token, why should communities who already do a good job taking care of the environment where they live be taxed and burdened with regulations to solve a problem they don’t have?

If the left understood this and focused environmental policy at the state and local levels, instead of the national and global, they would not be facing collapse here, in the USA, Europe etc. Why am I writing advice for the left when I am a libertarian you might well ask. It’s because I know I’m safe, the left never learn because they can never accept they are wrong. They can never admit those who oppose them might have a better understanding of a problem. Even now, after suffering a crushing defeat in the General Election two months ago, the UK Labour Party cannot acknowledge that working class voters abandoned then because they are perceived as out of touch with ordinary people, obsessed with minority issues like gay and trans rights, with pandering to Islamic extremists and with exporting more British jobs to China, India and other emerging economies in pursuit of unrealistic and self destructive targets for reducing CO2 emissions.

Conservatives and libertarians don’t hate clean air, green spaces or a healthy environment, but they are realists. Instead of trying to change the climate and atmosphere of the whole planet they focus on what they can change. We can save the environment and civilisation if we do it little by little.

RELATED POSTS:

Climate Change – Climate Science:

Criminal damage in Cambridge reveals the police soft peddaling on Extinction Rebellion crimes
Nobody is allowed to walk on the grass outside Trinity College Cambridge. I suppose an exception might be made if you were a 365-year-old don who once lolled under the famous apple tree with Sir Isaac Newton (probably a couple of those old fellows still holed up in the port cellar).

Is Hatred Of Greta Thunberg Justified?
As the backlash against the Greta Thunberg cult gathers momentum a lot of lefties are asking why the little Climate Warriorette is so hated by so many people. As usual with the left, they are asking the wrong question. Just as they asked, “Why can’t you believe the scientists, when in fact not only is it always legitimate (and scientific,) to question and challenge scientific theory, so it is perfectly rational and logical to challenge the Cult of Saint Greta ….

Ruling Elites support Extinction Rebellion plan for Marxist world to ‘fight climate change’

Climate change: Electrical industry’s ‘dirty secret’ boosts warming

Scaremongering IPCC Pushes Climate Hysteria with New Doomsday Report

Billionaire Investor Erik Prince Launches Fund For Electric Car Metals

---

Why Are The World Government Schemes, Agenda 21 and Agends 30 blanked by big media?
Since the early days on the old blog.co.uk platform we have from time to time raised the issues of Agenda 21 and Agenda 30, The New World Order, and the push for a global, authoritarian, socialist government. Any mention of these things in online forums is certain to get the author accused of being a conspiracy theorist, a right wing extremist, a nutcase, a young earth creationist and much worse.

---

Greta Thunberg Slams Australia for Coal Industry, Expands List of Climate Demands
Little Greta Thunberg, who was elected by nobody apparently now speaks for us all on matters relating to climate change. The Swedish climate change hustler who is making a fortune for her handlers from donations to her campaign, again castigated Australia for continuing to mine and export coal despite her previous complaints, adding a call for an end worldwide to the actibity to her list of climate demands to be delivered at the upcoming World Economic Forum in Davos …

Another Kick In The Bollocks For Warmageddonists And CAGWARTS*
I’ve had many arguments with the Warmageddonists, the people who have been saying that if we did not shut down all coal, oil and gas related activites the earth was going to turn into a giant furnace and we would all burn. When the scaremongering first started, the deadline for frying was “after dinner”. Then it got to “Tomorrow …… or the day after tomorrow perhaps,” then “next year”, “before 2050,” and eventually “soon.”

What if man-made climate change is all in the mind?
If our view of reality is shaped by the mind and our perceptions of information, how successful are attempts to manipulate the perceptions of the whole populations through manipulated data, spin and assertions of authority likely to be. As scientists and politicians moan that the public no longer take sertiously climate change scare stories, we have to conclude, not very.

Meteorologists Begin To Admit To Climate Engineering
The freethinkers and Libertarians of New Media have been questioning the pseudoscientific certainties of the global warming lobby for a long time. During that often acrimonious process (because the Global Warming lobby are ever bit as organised and as driven by blind hatred of those who question them as the Bearded Queens In Bridal Gowns lobby) and most of us have been accused of infanticide, genocide and worse. At last the respectable climate scientists (the ones who didn’t sell their arse for the corporate dollar) are speaking, and the media are listening.

Mad Scientists Now In A Race To Create Human – Animal Hybrids
Scientists all over the world are busy creating extremely bizarre human-animal chimeras. Once again The Daily Stirrer has to say “We told you so”. There is something very creepy and sinister embedded in the typical scientists desire to play God. It is a complete, psychopathic disregard for moral boundaries. If we can do it that …

UK Offshore Windfarms Produce More Rust and CO2 Than Electricity
A private case going through a British court of arbitration at the moment involves two very large supply organisations.
Unfortunately the case is being heard away from the prying eyes and radar like ears of the media. A 1996 Act Of Parliament enabled such things as a way to free up Court time taken up by complex technical disputes…. And, perhaps, to keep embarrassing truths away from …

Doctors may withhold treatment from patients with “green lifestyle issues.”

A few weeks ago an item on the BMA’s website linked to the “Doctors against climate change” group of the doctors’ trade union. This body of medico-environmental socialist – utopians stated …

The Two Faces Of The Politics Of Failure

What a mess the modern way of doing politics based on a politically correct consensus and social engineering has produced. The daily stirrer looks at how the bipolar left – right divide stops things getting better rather than helping get the developed world back on track.

Green Policies Will Not Save The Planet But Are Costing Poor Families The Earth>

Politicians bleat sabout the plight of the poor then press on with their clean, green, sustainable energy policies which include stealth taxes to subsidise expensive and inefficient wind turbine and solar panel power generators. Can they not see it is the green agenda that is driving up inflation …[Environment]

Solar Storm Armageddon: Will This Be What Makes Warmageddonists Shut T F UP

An eruption on the surface of the sun, aka solar storn will send a flood of highly charged particles towards earth. Satellite communications and other technology might suffer sone disruption but the best thing about it is from here in the north of England we will be able to see the Aurora.

The Danish Experience – Problems With Wind Power And The Truth About Turbines
The truth about wind turbines, their real efficiency as opposed to the hyperbolic claims of clean sustainable energy firms and their lobbyists, politically correct politicians and green activists and how wind farm operators have been given a licence to pick the pockets of taxpayers

Minister In Spain’s Socialist Government Claims Country Needs ‘Millions and Millions’ of Migrants

The Minister for Social Security, Inclusion, and Migration in Spain’s socialist interim government, has said the country, which already has phenomenally high unemployment, requires millions of new migrants from third world nations, similar to the hundreds of thousands of illiterate, unskilled professional benefits claimants who have flooded the country in recent years, to combat the forecasted demographic decline in the near future.

Escriva claimed the demographic projections for Spain are so bad that the country will require “eight or nine million people just to keep our working population at the same level”, and noted that other countries should be “prepared to integrate” large migrant populations, France Info reports.

“The demographic trajectories are there. It will happen, we will not escape it,” Escriva said during a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris on Thursday.

“We must be prepared to integrate into our societies, if we want to maintain our comfort levels, a certain number of additional migrants and our population will be more mixed,” he said and added: “We have to prepare societies for this. Explain to them why it is good for them, for their children, and for generations to come.”

He’s talking bollocks of course, mass immigration is a sacred cow policy for socialists throughout the European Union, but the EU’s ‘open doors’ policy, imposed on member states by Brussels is responsible for the social and economic problems being experienced by many EU member states.

European Commissioner for Migration Ylva Johansson, who also attended the meeting, went on to state that European Union citizens are worried that we cannot manage migration, that we cannot control it”.

“We must show that we control immigration,” she said and added that the EU could do more to deal with illegal immigrants. Johansson went on to state: “Those who have the right to stay, they are welcome, we must welcome them.”

While many establishment politicians, particularly on the left, have idiotically championed mass migration as a way to boost the economies of European countries by paying out more benefits to unemployable people, serious economic studies such as a 2016 report from the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) claimed mass migration was harmful to long term economic growth.

A University of Basel study released in 2018 agreed, concluding that in the short term mass migration can benefit the economy but in the long term migrants are a net loss for the state, rather than a contributor.

Back to contents table
RELATED POSTS:

Not Qualified To Press A Button

Janice Woodward spent 75 minutes trapped with her granddaughter in a lift at her local ASDA store at Portland, Dorset, after health and safety rules stopped staff pushing a button to rescue them according to …

EU’s Top Eurofederalist admits EU wants an empire

We Were Right Again – Immigrants Are Keeping British People Out Of Jobs

A British worker is “displaced” from the jobs market for every four immigrants from nations outside the EU, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has revealed. The new report, published yesterday is the first official admission of the impact immigration has on British workers and the economy It showed migrants have been keeping resident workers out of jobs for many years. Jobseekers have long been aware that when they …

New EU bureaucratic control freakery destroys British Jobs
British Workers To Lose Jobs Under New Rules

Almost 30,000 young British workers will lose their jobs because of new European Union employment rules due to take force this week, Europe watcher report. Open Europe, a consultancy firm specialising in European regulatory compliance said the Agency Workers’ Directive (AWD) could put 28,000 young workers’ contracts at risk by making the temporary staff, employed on short term contracts, too expensive to …

Creating Wealth

Politicians talk about encouraging entrepreneurs to create wealth,provide jobs and revitalise zombie economies. But entrepreneurs do not create wealh, they move money and goods around. Only the banks and the finance industry can create the wealth that drives the economy. Bankers do this by using asset values as collaterlal for loans. Learn how the system works and how it failed ….

Number Of Jobless Falls But Are Figures True?
The total number of unemployed people decreased by 17,000 in the three months to February, according to official figures. The official number unemployed, based on those claiming jobseekers allowance stands at 2.48m. The drop was greater than the 4,000 decrease expected. The unemployment rate for all age groups also fell unexpectedly by 0.1% to 7.8%.

Hopes Of Recovery Raised By New Job Figures
Stock Markets and business confidence in the USA received a boost yesterday when it was revealed employers in the private sector hired 230,000 people in March, building on the 240,000 staff taken on in February. It was the best back-to-back growth in new hirings since early 2006 and proved enough to drive stock markets higher in London, Freankfurt and Paris as well as New York. Unemployment has so far been the Achilles heel of the US recovery, but the latest figures suggest an upturn in … [ Read all ]

Councils Still Creating Non Jobs
As Coalition ministers strive to find ways of cutting Britain’s crippling public sector deficit, Labour councils are still creating ‘non – jobs’, positions crreated to appease politically correct prejudices, service the vanity of executives and elected officials and buy votes from minoroties. We look at the nature of some non jobs taxpayers are funding …

With All Eyes On Catalonia Spain Prepares To Vote For The Second Time This Year

Egbert Nobakon, 1 November 2019

Yesterday, just hours before campaigning was due to begin in Spain’s second General Election this year and fifth in four years, the minority Socialist government’s interim justice minister urged parties to avoid exploiting tensions between national and regional government in Catalonia, the nation’s richest and most populous region, to reap political benefits.

Spanish parties “should be capable of not turning (Catalonia) into a partisan or electoral issue” and be “loyal to the state,” Dolores Delgado told The Associated Press in an interview.

She added that only extremists would gain from further tension.

Spain’s fifth general election in four years follows failed coalition negotiations between the Socialists — who came first in the last, April 28 election — and the anti-austerity Podemos (We Can) party. In the 2016 election Podemos were barred by the EU from joining a coalition because Brussels will not asccept any Eurosceptic party in government in an EU member state.

Interim prime minister Pedro Sánchez, leads the Socialist party, which is ahead in the polls but has lost support since the April election as support grows for the conservative opposition Popular Party and the surging Vox far-right party that has a manifesto reminiscent of the Falangists of General Franco.

Campaigning officially starts at midnight Thursday. It will only last 8 days after the electoral law was changed to avoid a splurge of funds in the case of a repeated ballot.

RELATED POSTS

The Pain In Spain (omnibus)

 

 

Spain’s Election Problem: Muslim Population Grew By 20% in 4 years As Spanish Nationals Are Marginalised

Pablo Iglesias, PODEMOS party leader (Picture source: Daily Telegraph)

Catalonia has the fastest growing Muslim population in Spain – and more Islamic centres than any other region in the country. In spite of a strong separatist movement, the left has total hegemony in regional politics and the patriotic forces are being marginalised by the socialists, their elected politicians are excluded from key positions and known supporters are being fired from jobs and having trouble getting hired elsewhere, Defend Europa reports.

From 2011 to 2015, the number of Muslims in Catalonia has grown by 19.5%. That translates to 83,000 more people than 4 years ago. Not only that, the risk of terrorist attack has tripled in just this year (under the socialist government, almost 30,000 more Muslims, mostly uneducated, illiterate single males, have arrived). From 2011 to this year, the number of immigrants has doubled. They constitute more than one million people in a population of only 7 million.

This “wonderful” multiculturalism, the creation of the EU and being promoted by the socialist government in Madrid exploded in the Barcelona terrorist attacks of 2017. After seeing this, what was the reaction of the Catalan politicians? Well no, with the Catalan separatists hamstrung as the duopoly parties close ranks against them, its graft and corruption as usual in Spanish politics.

Campaigning for Spain’s general election, brought about when the minority socialist government, which gained power in a bloodless coup only last year, lost a confidence vote in the national Assembly. Campaingning for this election, to be held on April 28, begins on Friday this week and accusations of political espionage described as the country’s ‘Watergate’, external meddling and breaches of electoral law are flying in all directions.

Last month Spain’s judiciary launched a probe into an alleged conspiracy by secret police and the former conservative government led by Mariano Rajoy to smear the reputation of the left-wing Podemos party founded in 2014.

On April 1 Spain’s Socialist administration claimed to have deactivated the so-called “patriotic brigade” of senior police officers. “The sewers no longer exist,” said Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
But Podemos’s leader Pablo Iglesias has since claimed the dirty tricks campaign against his party did not end when the more ideologically-aligned Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez came to power last June.

Last weekend Mr Sánchez’s deputy press officer, Alberto Pozas, was summoned by a judge in connection with the theft of data from a mobile phone belonging to Mr Iglesias’s former aide. The phone was stolen in November 2015, weeks before the first general election in which Podemos took part, when Mr Pozas was editor of a now-defunct sensationalist news weekly called Interviú.

Investigators found data from the mobile phone among the files of former police officer José Manuel Villarejo, jailed since 2017 while a court probes his role as alleged leading member of the “patriotic brigade”.

Among a series of accusations against Mr Villarejo, the former police commissioner is believed to have staged a phony police probe into alleged financing for Podemos from the Iranian and Venezuelan governments.

And while all this is distracting voters, the invasion of Spain by illegal immigrants from Africa goes on, as in so many other nations in Europe the ruling elite are oblivious to the concerns of their countrymen and women who are not so privileged, and are happy to replace the population with uneducated, unaware cheap labour.

And so the smears and corruption, bribery, entrapment and general malfeasance will go on until election day and a vote, which in common with the last three general elections in Spain is likely to throw up an inconclusive result. Did you really think the UK is the only European nation where democracy is in crisis?

MORE on Europe’s problems

Police State Britain

Authored by Neema Parvini via The Mises Institute,

This article will demonstrate how the United Kingdom has steadily become a police state over the past twenty years, weaponizing its institutions against the people and employing Orwellian techniques to stop the public from seeing the truth. It will demonstrate, contrary to official narratives, that both overall levels of crime and violent crime have been increasing, not decreasing, as the size of the state in the UK has gotten bigger. It will also expose how the Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010, deliberately obscured real crime data with estimated crime rates based on survey data as opposed to the real numbers. I will demonstrate that, contrary to popular opinion perpetuated by progressive myths, life was much safer in Britain during the era of classical laissez-faire from the 1850s to 1911.

In his 10 years in power from 1997 to 2007, Tony Blair passed an astonishing 26,849 laws in total, an average of 2,663 per year or 7.5 a day. The Labour Party continued this madness under Gordon Brown who broke the record in 2008 by passing 2,823 new laws, a 6% increase on even his megalomaniac predecessor. In 2010, Labour’s last year in power before handing over the reigns to the Blairite social radical, David Cameron, there was a 54% surge in privacy cases brought against public bodies, and the Cabinet were refusing freedom of information requests at a rate of 51%. The vast number of new laws under Labour does not count the 2,100 new regulations the EU passed in 2006 alone, which apparently is average for them.

Many of these vast changes under Blair and Brown were in the area of criminal law. By 2008, Labour had created more than 3,600 new offences. Many of these, naturally, were red-tape regulations. To give you an idea:

• Creating a nuclear explosion
• Selling types of flora and fauna not native to the UK, such as the grey squirrel, ruddy duck or Japanese knotweed
• To wilfully pretend to be a barrister or a traffic warden
• Disturbing a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer
• Obstructing workers from carrying out repairs to the Dockland Light Railway
• Offering for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day
• Allowing an unlicensed concert in a church hall or community centre
• A ship’s captain may end up in court if he or she carries grain without a copy of the International Grain Code on board
• Scallop fishing without the correct boat
• Breaking regulation number 10 of the 1998 Apple and Pear Grubbing Up Regulations
• Selling Polish Potatoes

There are many more. However, there were also some more serious breaches of civil liberty.

One common tactic of the Blair government was to use a moral panic to pass radical new legislation. For example, in 2006, he passed the Terrorism Act that overturned habeas corpus and gave the British police the right to detain anyone for any reason for 90 days. At the time, this got widespread public support because of the recent 7/7 bombings in London. This means that, in the UK, the police can arrest you without you necessarily having committed a crime if they can brand your activities as “terrorist” or “extremist.” Although these laws were ostensibly brought about to combat Islamic terrorism, the ever-expanding definitions of “far right” and “extremist” demonstrate how they can be weaponised against the British people.

Another area in which the Labour government used moral panic cynically to overturn longstanding common law principles was the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which they used to eliminate the double jeopardy rule and, as per the MacPherson report, to put an end to colour-blind policing.

Recently there have been an increased number of cases in which the British state has encroached on civil liberties in a near-openly tyrannical way. The Count Dankula case, for example, in which a man was arrested for “hate speech,” then tried and made to pay a fine for telling off-colour jokes about the Nazis on Youtube. Then there was the young woman who was found guilty of being “grossly offensive” for posting Snoop Dogg lyrics on her Instagram account. And, most recently, the political activist Tommy Robinson was arrested and tried in mere hours for recording outside a courtroom. In each of these cases, despite some protests against the legal rulings, the media broadly sided with the courts, citing the technicalities of the law – in the former two cases section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 (another Blair special) – and brand anyone who would protest “far right” or “extremist.”

“Gaslighting” is a word from the world of psychology; it is a technique of manipulation to achieve power. Here are eleven warning signs:

1. They tell blatant lies.
2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.
3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.
4. They wear you down over time.
5. Their actions do not match their words.
6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.
7. They know confusion weakens people.
8. They project.
9. They try to align people against you.
10. They tell you or others that you are crazy.
11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.

The British state has become increasingly Orwellian in its gaslighting of the British public since at least 1997 with near-total complicity from the media. In a recent article for Quillette, I argued that this has been the case in both Britain and the USA for years.

This has especially been the case in the area of crime. During a period in which both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party have become increasingly statist and interventionist on both an economic and civil level, we have been continually told that one of the positive effects of ever-increasing government control is that society is becoming more peaceful. This is the narrative, for example, of Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. In 2005, The Guardian told us that since 1995 overall crime had decreased by 44%. Almost a decade later the same publication wondered out loud what could be causing the continued decline in crime rates in the UK. And just a few years after that, they had changed their tune completely decrying sudden increases in violent crime and blaming this on cuts in police numbers. In the first few months of 2018, the shocking increases in instances of violent crime in Sadiq Khan’s London, which in the past year has seen rises of 31.3% in knife crime, 78% in acid attacks, 70% in youth homicides, 33.4% in robberies, 18.7% in burglaries, 33.9% in theft and 30% in child sex crime.  But this story told by The Guardian – of a general trend down in crime over the past twenty years followed by a sudden and inexplicable spike – is simply not true, as I will demonstrate in this paper.

In 1997, Tony Blair famously ran on a platform of being ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. Unfortunately for him, the reality of empirical crime data had stubbornly refused to comply with his anointed vision through his first years in power. “New Labour” were famous for the efficiency of their propaganda machine. American readers will no doubt be aware of Mr. Blair’s complicity in making exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” in the run up to the war in Iraq, but few readers – British, American, or otherwise – will know that the Blair government was also lying about the extent of crime in Britain. The Labour Party, who were so much about media perceptions and political spin, needed to find a way to show on paper that their “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” agenda was making good on its promise. So, in 2003, Tony Blair permanently changed the way crime is reported in the UK by introducing the National Crime Recording Standard’ (NCRS). Up until that point, crime in the UK was reported using hard data drawn from actual arrests and convictions from the police. However, from that point onwards, the official statistics were to be drawn from the British Crime Survey which estimates crime based on a survey of 50,000 people aged 16 or over. This works much like how television companies produce estimates for their show ratings. So that means that the statistics you see quoted in newspapers like The Guardian are not hard figures, but estimates drawn from surveys. Whatever the merits of this method, it produced a graph for the Blair government that looked like this:

This change ostensibly came about because – as part of the “tough on the causes of crime” part of their pledge, Labour wanted to count victims as opposed to the total number of offenders. Of course, this takes a huge number of crimes out of the data. For example, as it was introduced in 2003, because only over 16-year olds could be interviewed, crimes against minors were not registered in the official statistics. Also, because interviews had to take place in private properties, street crime habitually would not show up in these numbers. Of course, so-called “victimless” crimes – fraud or online crime – do not show up in this data either. Once you start to account for some of these caveats, it becomes more obvious why this extraordinary change in methodology would produce a downwards trend in the data. In fact, it was explicitly designed so that, because of these changes, it could not be compared with numbers before 2002.

In 2007, Ken Pease and Graham Farrell estimated that the survey data could be underestimating violent crime by as much as 82%, with the real number of victims closer to 4.4 million than 2.4 million. This massive margin of error means that the real crime rate becomes a matter for debate as opposed to a question of hard evidence. It seems to me that this was a deliberate choice by the Blair government. Hence, we now find the BBC wondering about what the real crime rate might be.   And this is where the true extent of the Orwellian nightmare of the Blair and Gordon Brown years dawns: by making the crime rate an estimate neither political party can reliably point to the facts, and it always becomes a question of one difficult to substantiate narrative against another. “Post-truth” did not start with Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump – Tony Blair was doing it from the minute he stepped into office.

However, real numbers of convicted offenders are still recorded and kept, although they are somewhat difficult to obtain. In the run-up to the 2010 British election, Conservative MP and Shadow Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, requested the real numbers from the House of Commons library which duly produced a series of independent reports. Incidentally, once the leader of the Tories, David Cameron, became prime minister in 2010, Chris Grayling became the Secretary for Justice and, to my knowledge, was happy to let this little detail slide and continue with the survey-based methodology. It is funny how power can change the incentives for action.

In any case, the numbers that Grayling requested are damning for anyone who claims that either overall crime or violent crime decreased in the UK between 1997 and 2010.

The population of the UK was about 58 million people in 1997. In 2008, that had increased to 62 million, an increase of 6.87%. In that same period male violent crime convictions in England and Wales increased by around 63.92% from 49,153 in 1997 to 80,574 in 2008. So violent crime convictions increased by more than ten times the growth of the population.

Increases like this can been seen across virtually every category of crime. Convictions for persons under 18, for example, increased by 60.18% from 12,806 in 1997 to 20,513 in 2008, in keeping with the average increase in violent crime, this is ten times the rate of population growth in the same period. Knife crime practically doubled during the Blair years, from 3,360 offenders in 1997 to 6,368 in 2008. In 1998 there were 5,542 robberies, in 2008 there were 8,475. From the year 2000 to 2008, the total number of arrests for any offence went up from 1.2 million to 1.4 million, an increase of about 17%.

For the claim to be true that violent crime went down 44% during the 00s in the UK, it would have to be at a time when violent crime convictions went up 64%. For the claim to be true that overall crime went down in from 1997 to 2008, it would have to be at a time when overall convictions for crime went up by 17%. Both claims seem extraordinary: how could there be a rise in convictions without a corresponding increase in crime? The methodology that measures victims through estimates from survey data clearly is not getting this correct.

If we use recorded convictions in this way, as opposed to estimates, we can make meaningful comparisons to the past as Peter Hitchens does in The Abolition of Liberty. As we have seen, the total number of convictions in England and Wales for 2008 was around 1.47 million for a population of 62 million people, around 2.25% of the population. According to Hitchens the comparable number in 1861 at the height of laissez-faire was 88,000 for a population of 20,066,224, or around 0.44% of the population. In 1911, before Leviathan and the welfare state had really had a chance to grow, the number was 97,000 for a population of 36,075,269, or around 0.27% of the population. The claim that crime has risen because of government cuts to the numbers of police also cannot stand since in 1911 there were 51,203 officers whereas by 2009 there were 144,353 officers. The increase in police officers from 1911 to 2009 therefore is 181.92% compared with an increase of 71.86% in total population. So the size of the repressive apparatuses of the state have increased greatly, and with it the total number of criminals.

It is clear that with less personal freedom and a bigger and more invasive state comes less personal responsibility and greater lawlessness. It is also clear that as the British state has become more top-down in orientation than in its common-law past, it has levied increased coercive legislative power against the British people it supposedly serves. The state is now behaving in an openly Orwellian manner with near-explicit contempt for the public.

Twilight Of The Roman God?

French president Emmanuel Macron as Jupiter (Source: https://staticmediapart.fr/etmagine/)

When Emmanuel Macron came from nowhere to be elected President of France
following a landslide victory a year ago, he pissed people off almost immediately by
telling journalists he would not answer their questions because they were not smart enough to understand his thoughts. Shortly after that he declared he would rule “in the style of a Roman god,” and compared himself to Jupiter, the Roman equivalent of Zeus or Odin. It’s no wonder then that just a year later the wheels have come off the bandwagon and the man, who was once seen as the saviour and deliverer of his country, a symbol of hope and renewal, seems to have turned into a source of mirth, widely ridiculed by the French for his grandiose posturing and inept efforts to deliver on his promises.