John Galt speaks

I saw this over at Old Holborn's site and yes, I watched it. All 15+ minutes of it.

You are no doubt aware that I'm a fan of Ayn Grant's magnificent opus "Atlas Shrugged". I will no doubt be reading it again in the coming months. Her "hero" is a character called John Galt.

Here is a video of Ryan Air's CEO Michael O'Leary speaking in Brussels earlier this year. His speach could have been written by Rand. Please take the time and watch it all the way through. See if you don't find yourself agreeing with him long before the end.

The French have short memories

I've been thinking back to Sarkozy's blaming of the UK for refusing to rubber stamp their lunatic scheme to save the Euro.



I think that the French President has a very short memory. He is conveniently forgetful of the role played by British troops in the liberation of his country 65 short years ago.
When bolshie French President de Gaulle withdrew France from the common NATO military command in February 1966, he ordered all American military forces to leave France. US President Lyndon B Johnson asked Secretary of State Dean Rusk to seek further clarification from President de Gaulle by asking whether the bodies of buried American soldiers must leave France as well. Rusk recorded in his autobiography that de Gaulle did not respond when asked, "Does your order include the bodies of American soldiers in France's cemeteries?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Rusk)

Perhaps Cameron might remind Sarko that his freedom was bought with British blood?

Just a thought...

One thing about the present Eurocrisis puzzles me.

Over the last ten years Germany grew rich by selling cars to peasants in Greece, Portugal and Ireland. Now these countries are broke and will sooner or later default on their debts.

All the current strategy is based on Germany economic strength, of how it's the powerhouse in Europe. But hang on- they grew rich by selling cars. Their European market has shrunk, so who is going to buy the cars to get the EU out of trouble?

Not Ireland. Not Greece. Not Portugal. Not Spain........

Just a thought...

It's not just about money

The European debt crisis continues to dominate the news, As I write Cameron is meeting Merkel, Sarkozy and the others in an attempt to fudge yet another "cure" for the Euro. It will fail. It will always fail. And all the time the bailiffs are at the door.

Around about 2003 I started to get a premonition about the coming storm. At that time Gordon Brown was Chancellor and he expressed concern about the sluggish economy, which was dominated by consumer spending. It must have been close to Christmas. As usual, the retailers were moaning about how slow the sales were. Brown commented that he was concerned about the level of debt that the general public was running up, but at the same time expressed the hope that we would continue to spend in the shops in order to keep the economy moving.

In November 2003, Vince Cable asked Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, "Is not the brutal truth that ... the growth of the British economy is sustained by consumer spending pinned against record levels of personal debt, which is secured, if at all, against house prices that the Bank of England describes as well above equilibrium level?" Brown replied, "As the Bank of England said yesterday, consumer spending is returning to trend. The Governor said, 'there is no indication that the scale of debt problems have ... risen markedly in the last five years.' He also said that the fraction of household income used up in debt service is lower than it was then."

Put simply- Brown said, I know we're in a mess but keep spending (or I know we're in the shit, but keep paddling). We've lost the paddle.

I kept dreaming that we'd wake up in our beds to find bailiffs downstairs with papers to say that our building society had gone bust and had been bought up by foreigners and the new owners wanted their property back and we had but a few hours to get out before we would be forcibly evicted. That hasn't come true (thank God) but Europe is in a desperate situation.

1. We've given all our manufacturing to the Chinese who are no respecter of details such as copyright and patents. When we closed our factories, the machines were sold and exported and the factories demolished. We couldn't restart production if we wanted to.

2. We've based our economy on the Germans selling their cars to countries like Ireland and Greece who couldn't afford them, but bought them on credit. David McWilliams in his 3 part TV series "Searching for the Pope's Children" put this point most convincingly. I recommend you watch it if you can.



3. The Euro was launched under a false premise, and to his credit Gordon Brown refused to join. The UK was probably the only honest country. One of the conditions of joining was that our debt should not exceed 60% (I think) of GDP. Our debt was above that so we waited. All the other countries lied.

4. The solution to the Euro crisis is the reason why it was doomed from the start. The only way a common currency will work is if all the countries have the same economic strategies and budgets. It US dollar works because the central government sets budgets and economic policy for all 51 states. How can 17 countries with different economies, languages, cultures and parliaments share a common currency? The EU now wants to impose a central government that sets budgets for each of the member states. When we signed up to the Common Market, it was just to allow our goods to be traded across borders without the imposition of tariffs. We're a long way from that.

5. If the UK government caves in and allows Brussels to set our budget, then what?

I can see a number of threats to our way of life and to the distinctiveness of Britain.

The most serious is the threat of change in our legal system. English common law is based upon the simple premise that a man is innocent until proven guilty. Another way of looking at it is that in the UK everything is allowed unless it is prohibited.
Europe follows the Napoleonic Code where a man is guilty unless he can prove his innocence. That is the exact opposite of our legal code. Put another way- in Europe everything is prohibited unless it is allowed.
Such a change in the law will undo every statute going back to Magna Carta. Every law that is imposed by Brussels acts against our interests, and now you can see why. Their laws are based on an entirely different premise.

The UK's tradition of driving on the left hand side of the road while sitting in the right hand seat dates back to Roman times. It meant that the driver could pull his sword and wield it while driving with his left hand. Napoleon ordered his army to enforce driving on the right hand side of the road whilst sitting on the left hand seat in order to identify his troops, his supporters and his enemies- who were driving on the other side of the road. That is why the US drive on the left. They were also in conflict with Britain and sided with the French who were in Canada to the North, and Louisiana in the South.
If we become European, with Napoleonic laws, we will then be compelled to drive on the right.
Would that be a road too far?

UPDATE
I had another broken night's sleep and eventually went downstairs for a cup of tea. I switched the TV on and caught Cameron's press conference. We are now the fall guys of Europe. The EU is still doomed, the Euro is still doomed, but now they have someone to blame.
A commenter on the excellent Biased-BBC website has summed it up perfectly

"Beneath all this France and Germany cannot agree, as so cannot address the issue of the euro zone imbalances. But they need someone to blame, so the bumbling incoherent fool Cameron is just the job. He thinks he has a victory, Germany and France blame the British, and we have status quo.
I think it is as simple as this not that anything is simple with the EU

France is stuffed and can see its Banks going down the tube and wants the ECB to buy Bonds
Germany won’t allow this until there is fiscal union with budgets controlled by the EU. (Big treaty change taking forever) Austerity and punishment is all they have to offer NOW
France does not want the EU to control its budgets, as they will then have a problem with all their farmers and other small matters like that, many of which would be very similar to those in the UK truth be told.

So whatever power grab the EU is looking for they are just the hyenas circling for the scraps."
Read the complete post here
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-war.html

Ash & dust

Heres the map showing extent of the ash/dust cloud from the Icelandic volcano as of yesterday. The area marked in red is the no-fly zone.

Spot the difference? Last week they shut down the European airspace based upon a computer model, without any testing or sampling of the atmosphere.

So the actual risk area is revealed to be tiny, and once again weve been dumped on by numpties who spend all day looking at computers instead of measuring the real world.When they actually sent planes up there to measure how much dust and ash there is, the risk was downgraded and the world was allowed to get back to normal.

Im puzzled by all this. One, planes fly through dust and sand every day without harm. So why was this dust cloud considered so dangerous?
Two, it seems that those who rule us take great delight in keeping us guilty and scared. They manipulate data to try and scare us into believing that the world is going to end in a fireball, or that polar bears are going to swim down my street because the ice caps have melted. Next they scare us into panic over a flu virus that ended up killing fewer people that the ordinary kind.

There is a motive behind it. The only weapons they have to control us are guilt and fear. Its always been this way. For centuries we were ruled by kings who had armies and the church to administer the fear and guilt.
Now we are ruled by......
Whoever they are, their weapons are still the same.

UKIP won't field a candidate in Kettering

Lord Pearson named the Conservative candidates Ukip would not run against as Philip Davies (Shipley), Douglas Carswell (Clacton), Janice Small (Batley and Spen), Alex Story (Wakefield), and Philip Hollobone (Kettering).

It will also not run against Labour's David Drew in Stroud and independent Bob Spink in Castle Point.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1265680/General-Election-2010-UKIP-wont-stand-key-marginals-Tory-candidate-anti-Europe.html#ixzz0l0eGRXhr

That's actually made choosing who to vote for easier.

Farage Rules!!

I know other bloggers have posted this, but it deserves to be seen. Here's UKIP's Nigel Farage asking the question that's on everyone's lips



And thanks to Wrinkled Weasel, here's part of what he said
"I don't want to be rude, but you know, really, you have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk."
To loud protests, Mr Farage continued: "The question that I want to ask and that we are all going to ask is: who are you? I had never heard of you; nobody in Europe had ever heard of you. I would like to ask you, Mr President: who voted for you? And what mechanism - I know democracy is not popular with you lot - what mechanism do the peoples of Europe have to remove you? Is this European democracy?"
"Sir, you have no legitimacy in this job at all, and I can say with confidence that I can speak on behalf of the majority of the British people in saying: we do not know you, we do not want you, and the sooner you are put out to grass, the better."

Atta boy. Go get em.

Stop spending our money promoting mythology!!!!

The Register and the Grauniad are both running stories about the government's "drowning dog" tv advert that was broadcast in December and January.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/24/ofcom_drowning_dog_probe/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/24/ofcom-climate-change-bedtime-stories

I saw it and almost threw something at the TV. Here's the offending advert. (Caution- liable to induce stress related vomiting)



It seems that Ofcom are to investigate claims that the advert is blatant political advertisng, while the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) have received about 1000 complaints that it breached advertising standards. Too right it did.

The truth is out on AGW. It's a money making scam involving carbon trading credits.
Read this story for the full sick making extent
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/protecting-big-carbon.html

The advert cost £6m of our money and the news comes hard on the heels of the announcement that the department that produced this rubbish spent £600k of our money on Google adwords last year.

As a postscript to the Carbon Trading scam. On the day that the BBC made Tiger Wood's fake confession its no1 news item, Corus closed its Redcar steelworks.
Corus is owned by Tata.
This article may help explain why they closed it.
http://www.matador94.nl/global-climate-related/u-n-climate-chief-pachauri-cashes-in-on-tata-owned-corus-carbon-credits

" Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in European Union carbon credits simply by closing a steel production facility in Britain with the loss of 1,700 jobs.
The Tata Group headquartered in Mumbai anticipates receiving windfall profits of up to nearly $2 billion from closing the Corus Redcar steelmaking plant in Britain, with about half of the savings expected to result from cashing in on carbon credits granted the steelmaker by the European Union under the EU’s emissions trading scheme, or ETS."

Here's the link between Tata and Pachauri
"In 1974, the TATA Group provided the financial resources to found the Tata Energy Research Institute, or TERI, a policy organization headquartered in New Dehli, India, of which Pachauri has been chairman since the group was formed."

No wonder they chose to bury the news.

Excellent !

First posted by Raedwald, and picked up by Guthrun at Looking for a Voice, here's a speech by Dan Hannan MEP complaining about the 27 European Commissioners, and how they are appointed to decide European policy without having to submit to the electorate. His particular gripe concerns Baroness Ashton, a woman who has risen to the top of the greasy pole without once ever stood in a election. She is the European Foreign Minister. The French don't like her because she doesn't speak French.
Listen to Dan Hannan's speech (reading the subtitles) and marvel at the delicious irony. The MEP campaigning to end the corruption that lies at the heart of Europe, and Europe's foreign minister not being able to understand it.
Priceless!