The Bramble Bush

A Response To Janet Daley Of the Daily Telegraph

Janet Daley of the Daily Telegraph posted a rather apologist article regarding David Cameron's U-turn on Europe.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/6521517/Hate-the-EU-Then-I-beg-you-to-vote-Tory.html

 

An associate of ours at The Bramble Bush posted this response.

 

@Janet

 

So… let’s get this straight… you believe that the EU is fundamentally anti-democratic, directly opposed to the will of the people, and deliberately designed to “dismantle the great 200-year-old experiment in modern democracy”.

 

OK, got that and personally I agree with every word. What I fundamentally disagree with you about (and I am not alone in this) is the way forward from this point.

 

I also agree with you that a referendum on Lisbon is now an exercise in futility. It is fact and it is fact NOT because of Cameron and chums but because of Brown and chums, we should not and many of us never will forget that fact nor forgive them for their betrayals, but that’s them, that’s a different argument altogether. However, having acknowledged that questions over Lisbon are futile that does not mean the arguments for a referendum are dead. We were promised a referendum by all the main political parties and one by one all of them have let us down. Having acknowledged and I presume factored in the cost of a referendum on Lisbon, the cost would be no different therefore in asking the people a different question, Eu in or out? Maybe. What type of relationship do we want with Europe? Possibly. Whatever question was proposed would have fulfilled their promises, put Gordon Brown on the back foot, satisfied the Eurosceptics, coalesced the party and also gone a long way to restoring faith in politicians. And lets face it our sovereignty and self determination should have no price tag attached to them. Isnt this exactly why we are told, our brave men and women are fighting and dying in Afghanistan? To preserve Afghan soverignty and protect their right to self determination? Ditto for Iraq?

 

The reason why many of us are disappointed and frankly very angry with Cameron and chums is that we believe he knew very well that there was no way his cast-iron guarantee would ever come true. His cast iron guarantee was very clear and many applauded it, but his retrospective caveats were less so. Sophistry at best and any misinterpretations thereof were actively encouraged. When it became more and more obvious that the Czechs would finally give in the press, rightly so, became very interested in what the Conservative position would be, what indeed would “not let the matter rest” actually mean? Well… now we know.

 

You say yourself that you are unsatisfied with many of the new proposals and you are right to be. The vast majority of those proposals would require the explicit permission of all 27 members to come about. Do you really think that’s going to happen? Even once? The rest is window dressing. More sophistry I’m afraid Janet. Furthermore, there will be no more treaties to get worked up about any time soon in order to fulfil the promise of future referenda simply because under a self amending Lisbon, the EU now has all the power it needs to grab all the power it wants.

 

I just watched William Hague on the Andrew Marr show, and when asked about this very issue he said “we will certainly try to get these things pased into law…” Not we will get … or we are determined to get… but we will try…

 

Sounds like another cast-iron guarantee to me.

How To Snatch Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory (Or How David Cameron Got It So Very Very Wrong)

The Bramble Bush recently posted a piece critical of the Labour Party for it's betrayal of it's core values, core mission and core support in pursuit of power at all costs. This has led in some areas of our country, directly or indirectly to an ebbing away of support from Labour to mainly, though not exclusively the BNP. Spin meisters feverishly toiled, long into the night to find ever more weak and inept reasons for their disastrous showing. Reasons of course which largely excluded anything approaching the truth. But then we are talking NuLav what else do you expect.

Unless NuLav is capable or willing to examine questions of why the traditional working classes are deserting them in their droves, then it will remain a discredited and disreputable organisation, more interested in remaining in power than being powerful. After all you cannot fix a punctured tyre by fiddling with the spark plugs.

One would have thought that these lessons would have been learned by the other main political parties in our once great country, or rather, one would have hoped that the right lessons would have been learned. Sadly this doesnt seem to be the case. In announcing his rather meaningless new policy on Europe, David Cameron (or should that now be Cast-Iron Dave?) stood shoulder to shoulder with each and every deceiver and betrayer of our country's sovereignty who has gone before him. The lesson he learned is that it is better to pursue power no matter the cost (integrity, honesty, credibility) than to make good on promises, pledges and yes "cast iron guarantees".  He has now painted a glowing, neon lit sign on his back saying "KICK ME" and boy oh boy has the despicable Broon and his pack of lickspittles enjoyed the last few days. Well, Kick Me Dave has brought this upon himself, has only himself to blame and deserves everything coming to him. Sympathy meter at 0.

We at the Bramble Bush accept that, in the light of the Czechs signing off on the European Constitution (for that is exactly what it is, regardless of what the swivvle eyed Europhiles and semanticists would have you believe) any referendum on it would be rather meaningless and a huge waste of time, effort and money. However, what we do not accept is this argument that somehow the case for any referendum is now dead. Of course we would have preferred a simple yes/no, in/out question in the first place. However, having given a "cast iron guarantee" on a referendum he could have, no, SHOULD HAVE gone ahead with "plan A" but merely altered the question to take into account the change of reality on the ground. Imagine the headlines the following day "SHOCK HORROR PROBE: Politician Is A Man Of His Word" and so on, it would have been a vote winner, in fact it would have probably given DC an absolute landslide victory at the next GE and probaly have caused Michael White over at the Grauniad to choke on his muesli. Instead of which, this inept and wishy washy wish list of a policy has probably handed the keys to No10 to a rag tag coalition of NuLav and the Clegganistas NOT because the issue of Europe dominates the day (although it probably should) but because the issue of integrity and trust in our politicians does.

Nor do we accept the facile argument that it's the economy stupid. On the one hand Kick Me Dave stood there and said he would have found the money to ask the people a question on Lisbon BUT he wouldnt be able to find the money to ask the people a different question...?? But then we are idiots, stupidistas, vote cows, we arent supposed to notice such flummery, such clumsy sleights of hand. Oops.

Nor do we accept that just because Broon & Co have sent this country's economy to hell in a hand basket (we couldnt afford the hand cart) that this supercedes any and all other issues. Rubbish! Without our sovereignty we are nothing, it is from our sovereignty that all else flows NOT the other way round and if Kick Me Dave cannot understand that his prime responsibility as PM would be its protection and preservation then he truly is lost.

Cameron is living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks he can deliver on any of his new raft of cast iron guarantees. I'll put it simply, there will be no new treaties passing power and sovereignty to the EUSSR, there will be no new treaties passing power and sovereignty to the EUSSR because there is no need for any new treaty to pass power and sovereignty to the EUSSR, there is no need for any new treaty to pass power and sovereignty to the EUSSR because Lisbon is self amending. IT DOES NOT NEED any new powers, it has all the power it needs to grab all the power it wants. Seemples. And if he thinks for a single second that any of our compatriots in the EUSSR will allow any repatriation of any power to the UK well... the poor lad is frankly delusional. As you will be able to see from the following paste from todays Guardian.

Europe ministers from Poland, the Netherlands and the Irish Republic – historically among the friendliest to Britain in the EU – as well as Spain, said Cameron would not achieve his demand to repatriate social and employment laws to Britain. His plans would need the agreement of all 27 leaders of the EU because they would involve rewriting the union's treaties.

Frans Timmermans, the Dutch centre- left Europe minister, told the Guardian the Tory plans would have a "paralysing effect on Europe … There is more chance of a snowball surviving hell than the EU restarting debates on treaty change."

Timmermans said no EU leader would want to reopen treaties to accommodate the Tories. "You can still hear the sigh of relief across Europe that we have finally finished with treaty change. Everyone is so relieved that we can finally stop talking about the internal rules of the EU and start doing something about the crisis, something about the climate change issues and about international affairs. There is no member state that wants another round of debate about the rules of the game." 

BUT let us never forget who has got us here, Broon and Bliar before him are directly responsible for this. THEY are the ones who truly deserve our most vicious bile for their betrayals and lies but Cameron, faced with (so far) his only statesman like moment completely blew it and became an enabler post facto.

Thanks only to the Daily Telegraph, to whom we all owe a huge debt of gratitude, we have had to endure months of sleaze, and lurid tales of trough snufflers gorging themselves at tax payers expense while millions lost their jobs, bankers, richer than Cresus, fleecing the tax payer for every panny their ludicrously overpaid and laughably incompetent hands could grasp because the regulations put in place by those very same trough snufflers were so weak and ineffctual that they were ripe for abuse, and Boy Oh Boy were they abused. Green Book anyone?

Against this backdrop politician after politician has promised to clean up politics and reduce the democratic defecit that this country has in spades. But how can you do either of those things, how can you even attempt to restore faith in politics if politicians continue to treat those they hope will lend them their democratic madate like total fools? An accusation Cameron himself has used time and time again against Golden Gordon, how hollow it now sounds, and I suspect we will not be hearing it again any time soon. In this respect Cameron has now conjoined himself as the siamese sibling to Bliar, Broon, Clegg et al, he has firmly cemented another brick in the "They're all the same" wall.

Fortunately they are not all the same. Fortunately we do have a choice away from the three main parties who have all betrayed us to an ever encroaching Euro Federalist future for let us not be under any illusion, this is the future that others have marked out for us never once giving us the opportunity to decide our own future for ourselves. Luckily, those nice people at UKIP have decided that the British electorate are not children, or fools to be brow beaten and frightened into meek acquiesence. Almost alone now, UKIP stands not only for the (forced if necessary) repatriation of power and sovereignty ceded to an unelected and fundamentally corrupt monolith but for a return to honesty and integrity not only in politics but also in politicians themselves. It is easy for detractors and fear mongers to spout lines like "a vote for UKIP is a wasted vote" or make accusations of UKIP being a one trick pony. Neither are true, and the fact that so many try to make this kind of mud stick is testament to the fear that honesty causes in politics and politicians. Contrary however, it is becoming increasingly obvious that a vote for any member of the LibLabCon Alliance will be a wasted vote. None of the main three parties are offering anything near the radical and fundamental changes our society so desperately needs and deserves. Vote for any of them and you will get a continuation of the status quo, some window dressing maybe, some tinkering at the edges of course but meaningful? Not on your life!

The senseless misadventures in foreign lands will still continue, the sight of our young men and women sent to die ill-equipped in the deserts and oil fields of foreign lands to prop up despicable and corrupt regimes will continue. The weekly heartbreak at Wooton Basset will continue, the breaking of the military covenant will continue, the ceding of what is left of our sovereignty to those who care naught for it will continue, the depravation prevalent in large swathes of our country will continue, the drunken mob rule in most of our towns will continue, the mindless thuggery perpertrated against the weak and innocent will continue, the inability of our police, our teachers, our parents to do anything meaningful against the rising tide of yobbery perpertrated by a generation well versed in their rights but ignorant of their obligations will continue. The rape of our seas, the destruction of our sea-beds and the marginalisation of our farmers will continue. The bonuses will continue, the propping up and bailing out of an inept banking system will continue while the bankruptcies and hardships suffered by solid, honest, going concerns will continue. The spin, the lies, the deceit and betrayals WILL continue.

All of the above and much much more will continue if you dear voter persist in the blind tribalism that brought us here in the first place and press the "business as usual" button at the next General Election.

S ’not Me Guv, s’the System Innit

Something surely is rotten at the heart of Westminster these days, though perhaps it’s been this way for years, who knows? We surely don’t, nor will we ever fully understand the true scope of the MP expenses bonanza extravaganza. After all if it wasn’t for the FOIA and the courage shown by the Telegraph to bring us, the great unwashed, the unredacted, unsanitised truth, inviting us to make our own minds up, (yes politicians, even we, the great herd of vote cows have minds) none of this would have come to light. After all, just look at how hard they fought to remove their expenses claims from the scope of FOIA in the first place. Well done Norman Baker MP and others for making sure this particular jolly wheeze failed.

If you listen to any of those caught with their hands in the cookie jar that is MP’s expenses, they will all tell you the same thing: 

"The expenses currently in question were claimed in full consultation with the Fees Office in the House of Commons, and I have always followed their guidance and stuck to the rules.” – Margaret Moran MP 

“All Hazel Blears’ claims for allowances are in line with the rules, and have been approved by the fees office.” – Spokesperson for Hazel Blears MP, Communities Secretary 

“All of his claims have been approved by the Fees Office as within the parliamentary rules” – Spokesman for Ben Bradshaw MP 

“Everything I have claimed has been legitimate and approved by the fees office.” – Alan Duncan MP 

And so it goes, on and on and on. Contrition…what contrition? Of course the system’s rotten but it’s THEIR system, they put it in place and they maintained the status quo throughout the last 30 odd years and it’s absolutely no good to say that one or two may be whiter than white if they too have kept schtum in regard to any changes to it. 

Of course, the Lib Dems as a group may fare better than most (and the latest polls seem to bear that out somewhat) but they wont escape some individual criticism Im sure. They have after all, campaigned tirelessly for substantial changes to the system for years, but such is the imbalance in our political system that without the help of Joanna Lumley it seems Lib Dems victories will be few and far between for some time yet. 

So now of course, as Parliament drowns in a sea of David Heathcoat-Amory’s horse manure (£388.80p cost to the tax payer over three years) instead of reaching for the hair shirts and humble pie (paid for out of their own pockets of course) they are seeking a scapegoat, a deflection, a smokescreen, anything to avoid taking responsibility for making rotten decisions under a system rotten to its very core. 

Throughout the autopsy on the financial crisis it was Robert Peston who was to blame, the BBC, the FSA, the Americans, the bankers, especially that pantomime cad Sir (but maybe not for long) Fred “The Shred” Goodwin, the Press, the system, the philosophy, the shadow banking system, offshore tax havens… all of them, each and every one was to blame and true to form, just like Macavity no politician allowed their own fingerprints to be found at the scene. But rest assured all you citizens of these sceptered isles, lessons will be learned. I didn’t realise running this country was a YTS scheme, but I shouldn’t be too surprised. 

True to form the scapegoating has begun again in regard to MP’s expenses. It’s the system, it’s the Press, it’s the Telegraph, it’s the person who leaked the documents, it’s Kate Hoey, it’s Norman Baker, it’s Sky News, it’s the Commons Fees Office. MP’s are surely just as much victims of the system as everyone else, no? The Common’s Fees Office didn’t need to sign off on Barbara Follett’s Chinese rug repairs (£528.75) after all and if only Norman Baker and his mates had just shut the hell up none of this would have ever come to light and MY GOD the Press… don’t they have a celebrity divorce to cover or something? 

Of course all of this mess is having a terrible effect not only on the participants in politics but the process of government itself. At the time of writing, our great leader was delivering an “important” speech on crime… he was? Oh yes, he certainly was… or so I was informed… but no-one seemed to care…typical response to the utterances of Golden Brown you may say and I would be the very last person to disagree but this issue seems to be so pervasive that it threatens to if not de-rail then to side-track the business of running this country until the mess is sorted out.

We have very big problems in this country and we rely on our politicians to at least have some clue as to the process of sorting those problems out. If they don’t even have a clue as to how foaming at the mouth angry most people are at the arrogant “other planet dwellers” how the hell can they get a clue on anything else? 

Some suggestions: 

–        House of Commons Commission should resign en mass

–        All MP’s living within reasonable commuting distance to London should be denied any and all second home allowances

–        MP’s within London should be paid a “London Weighting” allowance in addition to their basic salaries to recognise increased costs of things like transport within or to and from the capital

–        Any MP receiving grace and favour accomodation should not be allowed to claim for any second home, anywhere

–        Commons Fees Office should be replaced by a professional independent body of accountants and auditors with full FOIA obligations

–        Any MP found found guilty of “flipping” to avoid taxes or to make a pecuniary gain at tax payers expense should be sacked from any ministerial position, have the whip removed and face possible deselection depending on the severity of the incident (s). Playing the property markets should not be a perk of the job. 

        Salaries should be linked to cost of living index and all matters of pay should be and should remain the remit of an independent body outside of Parliament

–        All MP’s regardless of party or position must be forced to repeat 100 times before bedtime, the following, until they not only recognise the words but understand their meaning… 

“Claims must only be made for expenditure that it was necessary for a Member to incur to ensure that he or she could properly perform his or her parliamentary duties.” – The Green Book p7