Some basic truths about leaving the EU

I just happened to stumble across something on Radio 4 the other day. It was in the wake of the CBI conference in Westminster, where some business leaders called for the referendum on Europe to be held as quickly as possible to stop all the upheaval caused by uncertainty.

People who know me will know that I consider myself European and I am quite passionate about us staying in the EU. Apart from UKIP, who must have some kind of agenda otherwise they really are just a bunch of racist ignoramuses, the only people who wouldn't mind us 'going it alone' are the heads of major businesses, because they'd be the only people who would benefit from us being outside of the EU.

Eurosceptics - answer this - you don't want us to be in Europe, that's fine, but how is us being in Europe directly affecting your life? This isn't a question to business leaders, because as I stated they would only benefit from us not being in the EU; this is a question to people who casually say, 'We should pull out of Europe; all that cost, all those bloody immigrants, all that child support flooding into Romania...' The sad truth is most people simply don't understand what the EU is for and because our right wing press and our infotainment providers do not wish to educate us, the myth is perpetuated and grows and becomes 'law'.

Walking round Sainsbury's last week, the first thing I noticed was the amount of fruit and veg that comes from non-EU countries. A little bit of research allowed me to discover that Egypt has a trade agreement with the EU; the UK doesn't, it benefits from the EU agreement and as a result you can buy 500g of green beans for £1.50, even if the food miles alone make that fact abhorrent. A little bit more research discovers that the EU has a trade agreement with Peru, that means we can have asparagus all year round for £2 a bundle rather than just May and June. The crazy thing about asparagus is that the stuff that has been flown halfway around the world is cheaper than the stuff grown down the road from you. To cost conscious hipsters and ignorant airheads (the kind who spout off about things they have little or no understanding of) this is great, they can have their asparagus and not bankrupt themselves in the process.

You can argue that being in the EU costs too much money, but the money it costs doesn't directly affect you, does it? If the UK pulled out of Europe then we'd have to renegotiate the trade deals with Egypt, Peru and every other non-EU country and do you really think that we're going to be able to negotiate a better price than we already have? No. As I've pointed out before, Norway buys capsicums from The Netherlands, the average cost of a pack of three multi-coloured peppers is about £5 as opposed to the £1.50 we pay over here. I dread to think what the cost of green beans from Egypt or asparagus from Peru costs in Oslo, or Tromso, or Svalbard...

The withdrawal of the UK from Europe - should a referendum vote that way - wouldn't just mean more expensive imports from the rest of the world; it would also mean more expensive imports from the EU. The Norway example would become the UK example - fruit and veg that is not sourced in this country would go through the roof (and there would be a quality issue - Norwegians are convinced Holland treats them worse than other importing EU countries). The same fruit and veg we buy from the EU would also be more expensive because we would no longer be part of that negotiated trade deal so would have to go it alone - without the collective bargaining power. it's not going to be cheaper is it? The Spanish are not going to say, "Oh it's the British, we'll do a better deal for them."

So, the cost of food will go up, but the cost of fuel might come down, especially if we align ourselves to Putin's Russia - so that's not going to happen. You could argue that pulling out of the EU will be good for our farmers, but as I mentioned in the opening sentence, I was listening to Radio 4 and it was a farmer who made the point that while he was a Tory voting agriculture specialist, pulling out of the EU would require a lot of things from those further up the food chain. Farms would lose the subsidies they get, but there would be extra pressure from supermarkets and punters for food prices to stay relatively stable - the supermarkets aren't going to want their shareholders to have less, so the onus would be placed squarely on the farmer and they simply wouldn't be able to afford it.

The farmer talking on R4 said as many as 30% of all farmers would go to the wall if the government didn't match the subsidies the EU gave them and we all know we live in a time when the last thing the government wants to do is subsidise anything. The coalition farming and fisheries representative said that farmers would have to diversify and produce more affordable seasonal crops - which sounded to me like Cameron telling them to stop whining.

The upshot is that the retailers would have to go back to Europe to import basics such as eggs and milk because these can be produced much cheaper in Europe - cheaper for them, not for us. So, while pulling out of Europe should at least create an environment where we're educated to be reliant on seasonal and locally produced goods, the consumer doesn't want this. The consumer doesn't want unusual shaped British apples, they want anodyne South African apples with no taste, but all the same size. The consumer doesn't want deformed British grown beans, they want uniform Egyptian ones, because...

The Tories (and UKIP to a certain degree) want to be in Europe but they want to be in charge and set the rules and pick and choose what suits us (them) best. Altruistically this is an admirable thing if they were doing it for the betterment of us, but they do it to line their own pockets and to ensure they get away with things they shouldn't. Pulling out of Europe would allow the right wing to abolish the human rights act and make it impossible to protect yourself from the system. They claim this is down to the growing threat of terrorism, but it is just a gagging ploy because the Internet has allowed people to see things that no government wants us to see, even if most people dismiss the memes and propaganda as scaremongering lies created by people with vested interests.

Pulling out of Europe will vastly change the average person's life. The cost of living would, for at least the first five years, be disproportionately higher than ever before. It would plunge an estimated 5 million more people into food and energy poverty - that's almost 7% of the population would be drastically worse off and something like 70% of the population would simply be worse off than they were the day before they opted to pull out.

Obviously, it would allow us to close our borders and not spend all of that time and money in Strasbourg so that would suit all the xenophobes and racists out there. Except, it wouldn't.

When interviewed about not being in the EU, a Norwegian trade minister said that while they had no say in Europe, they still spent as much time in negotiations and meetings as their EU counterparts and they spend almost as much money just being there as they would have if they were full members.

Norway also has one of the worst poverty to rich ratios in Europe. A country that is oil and gas rich but does not use that money to subsidise the country in reduced taxes or costs. The owners of these companies do not pay enough back into the country to stop its poor from being desperately poor in a country with the highest standard of living costs (apart from Finland) in all of Europe.

Norway also has approx 1 million immigrants or 15% of their overall population - these are mainly from Eastern European countries or children born of foreign parents - and because Norway is part of the European Economic Area (which allows them some discounts on trade deals), all EU member residents have free access to move in and out of Norway. The Norwegian government is quite happy about this because immigrants do the jobs no Norwegian wants to do and for considerably less money. So pulling out of Europe won't necessarily spell the end to a flow of immigrants, we'd probably end up with more from outside of the EU, because that has been Norway's biggest issue with foreigners.

As an amusing aside - the UK features much higher than Norway on the occasionally spurious chart that measures a country's overall happiness. Speak to a Norwegian and he'll tell you that £10 for a pint of beer is not unheard of and while they earn considerably more than we do, everything there is mega expensive apart from fish. The main issue among your average Norwegian isn't the immigration problem, it isn't banks and tax evasion, it's simply the cost of living.

If there is a cost of living crisis in the UK, which there obviously is taking into consideration the amount of people using food banks, imagine what it would be like if you had to take a loan out to buy a bag of food?

There is also another important factor that people are completely ignorant of. If we closed our borders to 'foreigners' we'd end up with even higher priced trade deals, or none at all because countries would class us as xenophobic and racist and wouldn't want to do business with us - maybe not all, but many. Plus, if we kicked out anyone who wasn't British born and bred how would we deal with the kids born here of immigrant families, or who would we get to clean the shit up or do all the jobs that the Brits don't want to do? And don't say force them to do these jobs if they're unemployed because that is just ignorance and idiotic thinking - simply put, you give a job to someone who doesn't want to do it and they'll do a substandard job. If you start penalising them for being unhappy then you start getting into totalitarian government and we all know how happy these are.

The simple truth of pulling out of Europe is it will cost us all a lot of money and considerable hardship (and all the immigrants would still be here).

What we need is for the infotainment channels to educate us about the harsh realities not just shove Farage on screen with a pint and a fag while bemoaning about us losing our Britishness. That just enhances the xenophobia at a time when we really need to be seen as an inclusive and caring country.

Nothing is Fair in Politics

I might have told this story before, but it's only short, so I'll tell it again.

When I had my comic shop in Wellingborough, my landlord was an old Chinese guy called Mr Chan. He ran the Golden Dragon Chinese Takeaway next door to Squonk! and he was a genuinely nice and considerate man.

I was standing at his counter one day, just chatting and this was back in about 1991 when interest rates had hit an all time high and there was another of those recessions sweeping across the country. Thatcher was gone, but moderate John Major wasn't doing anything to enhance the mood of the poor or disenfranchised, despite it being pretty much nowhere near as bad as it is now. Mr Chan looked at me over his glasses and said, "I don't want or expect a better life, I just want a fair one."

I've probably misquoted him slightly, but the gist is there. I think, but I might be altruistic that if you offered the majority of the population the chance for everything to be fair rather than some have and some not, I still feel that's what most people want. A fair life is hardly a difficult aspiration.

When I listen to the 30 minutes of pantomime that is PMQs, I just hope anyone else watching it gets the same impression of the government sitting there being smug, while being led by the two smuggest people in the country - Cameron and Osborne. What is the point of PMQs if the PM's answers are not actually answers at all, but just a way of blaming the Labour party for the mess we're in. What angers me is the insipid responses of Millband, unless protocol prevents him from producing figures and statistics that categorically prove it wasn't just their fault, but also Cameron's for voting for a lot of the things that dumped us in the crap in the first place.

I wish there wasn't this etiquette in parliament, but equally having some passionate Labour MP tell the PM he's a callous, uncaring buffoon who stands at the box and lies through his teeth, or obfuscates the truth to suit his purposes, probably would mean some terrible reprimand for the offending MP, probably a public apology for saying what 50% of the country agrees with. It isn't just Cameron; since PMQs has been televised it has been a way for the government to pretend to be Leonard Sachs and lord it over the rest of the ineffectual opposition MPs. Any casual observer would wonder why we even have these things if all that is going to happen is 30 minutes of bluff, bluster and lies. No wonder people are switching off from politics, they are just so detached from these people who walk into that chamber and become something we probably didn't ask for.

PMQs isn't a fair representation of anything, but fair isn't a word that sits comfortably with Tories. It's not fair that if they get elected in May they'll dismantle the NHS while telling us its for our own good and it will improve things - unless you can't afford it, then by the time you've waded through the pages of bureaucracy you'll probably be dead.

Had someone close to you who has been saved by the fantastically free NHS? Don't crow about it in five years, you might get a backlash from those who lose someone special because there wasn't enough proper nurses or doctors, or they couldn't prove they were on benefits. I'm not suggesting the nurses and doctors who do fabulous jobs will stop doing it, but with no resources, no investment and no fairness, they will become overworked and probably patients themselves. Most Tory MPs will have private medical insurance anyhow; they wouldn't want to be in an NHS hospital through choice.

I was talking to someone at the NBC - Northampton Borough Council - who told me that most councils owe the government money, the government owes money; every one owes money to someone and suddenly there's this Greek leftie suggesting he's going to make sure Greece is not the pooh on the sole of Europe's shoe any longer. What's he been met with from the European politicians and the right wing leaning media is a mixture of incredulity, hostility and ignorance. Greece's people are fed up with being a Third World country; they are a proud race with a rich culture and they, or rather someone in their usually right wing government, messed up and the people have been paying and paying and paying and if you kick a dog for long enough it will bite back.

Politicians should be worried; this isn't a UKIP moment; this is a tide of people, in a country that usually has coalitions, who have voted one party in with more seats than anyone for a long time. The people want this guy to change things and he'll try, even if it means getting into bed with the Russians and the Chinese. Greece could signal the end of the EU because the poor and disenfranchised have spoken and if it spreads to Spain and Portugal and maybe Ireland, it will grow and the left and the right will struggle to coexist harmoniously.

What the new Greek PM wants is fairness. Less stringent measures, more hope for his people. It's a good ticket; it's one that people with little hope for the future will look at and grasp for. UKIP, the Tories, even Labour and the LibDems don't offer fairness; they offer the same in different measures.

If you get doorstepped during the election, ask whoever it is why we have to pay for their mistakes, when there's over £120billion in corporation tax avoidance that has been ignored by HMRC, while persecuting those with nothing for less than £1billion? Ask them why we have to pay for rich people to stay rich and get richer? Ask them if they think it's fair and if they say they think it is then tell them they're not getting your vote.

The Knives Are Out

My wife, often quite unassuming when it comes to politics but not averse to the odd conspiracy theory, made a very pertinent observation: why is the NHS suddenly setting the news agenda rather than having its agenda set? This was in direct response to the sudden media exposure of the so-called 'Winter Crisis' - for this is the media season of hyperbole with Weatherbombs, Thundersnow and Omnishambles! Suddenly and obviously not sanctioned by the appropriately named Jeremy Hunt, the NHS is informing us that it's going to the dogs and without pointing any fingers it has made this year's General Election all about the future and present of the NHS.

Forget Farage - immigration was so yesterday and besides, who's going to look after you when you have that hip operation? There are not that many British nurses because despite having the mickey taken out of him in 1992, Neil Kinnock said that the nurses needed protecting and now without those plucky Romanians cleaning pus and wiping bottoms, the NHS would be a bit like one of those pop-up car wash places.

The Tories have tried to swing the agenda away from the NHS - because there isn't much they can say about it without making them look even more like the key holders to Auschwitz - but the NHS swing it right back and unlike many things the press likes to manipulate - there's simply too much NHS to ignore.

This pretty much would suggest that Labour will, at least, be the party with the majority of seats, even if they won't have a mandate and will have to form coalitions - probably with the SNP, possibly with Plaid Cymru, who knows, the five LibDem MPs left might have a say in the matter, while they sort out who their next leader is going to be. I think the NHS as an entity proves that the next Tory target will have to be the NHS, as there's barely anything left for the Tories to slash and burn and it costs a lot of money to just stand still. This means a Tory government would realistically see a rise in the death rate over the next six years; more dead babies, more dead parents, more Logan's Run style diplomacy in Oncology departments - if Tory sympathisers cannot see, from the last five years' evidence, how the NHS will only be a provider of health care for those that can afford it, or afford to wait, then there is no hope for them.

I'm of the opinion that a vote for any party apart from the two right wingers is okay. You only vote Tory if you're all right and likely to stay all right. You only vote UKIP if you are a racist or believe that the lies that spill from Farage's mouth on a daily basis are worth believing (normally because you are too ignorant fat and lazy to find out the real facts).

If you vote Tory, just hope you have enough money to cover your medical bills for cancer, when you get it; or for when your grandchild faces death because there are no midwives or your heavily pregnant daughter is told she's simply going to have to hang on to it because there are no beds available! Even if you think they look after the economy better; they just want to sell off the NHS to all their own people to make even more money from you for something you've paid for all your working life. They've taken away just about everything good people fought for you to have; are you going to let them steal and sell off the NHS the way they did with energy, the railways, phones, so someone who doesn't care one jot about you can afford to buy 25 yachts this year?

That's what a Tory vote will do. If you're happy with that then let's all hope you're an exception rather than the rule.

Common Sense is Dead

My theory about no one (with any common sense) wanting to win the next General Election seems to be gathering some credence.

For a while it seemed that Labour were beginning to take it seriously, then the press got on at Milliband.

The Tories - Dave and Gideon specifically - are telling us that the world is heading for another global crisis so we're going to have to have at least 5 more years of the poor being penalised and the rich getting richer.

UKIP are still not really being treated as anything other than a slightly popular sideshow anomaly that will go out of fashion quicker than the Penny Farthing (method of transport or monetary unit).

The Labour party then tried desperately hard to make sure no one liked them and actually failed to a certain degree - people think it's the same trick that UKIP supporters use to explain why no one likes them. And, of course, no one likes the LibDems now so they couldn't get in if they offered the electorate free sex, drugs and a working NHS.

The one slightly silver lining to this new impending globally catastrophic black cloud is Dave can't, without ridicule, blame Labour this time.

I look at the country at this moment in time and I'm struggling to see a future, let alone a bright one. Sensible people are being ignored. Sensationalist social network bollocks prevails. No one tells the truth about what is happening - not because they don't want to but because it isn't good enough copy or exciting TV - in this infotainment world - or if the press doesn't give the average viewer a massive reaction or make them horrified or disgusted or slightly offended, then no one cares. There is also a faint and really unpleasant whiff of Enoch Powell about things and the press are more concerned with other matters.

I read somewhere last week - it might have been The Guardian or Left Unity - that voter apathy is at an all-time high and the next general election could be decided with less than a 50% turnout... I don't know about you, but surely there's a fundamental problem that needs to be fixed if half the population is refusing to vote because they trust none of the candidates? I'm probably completely mathematically wrong here, but common sense suggests that any government formed next May will be doing so with something like just 20% of the population having voted for them - you get to screw up the country with just a fifth of the vote; that's democracy working for us.

Someone else also pointed out last week that considering the Tories claim the BBC is Labour-biased; how come the following people have high roles on their news team: Laura Keunesberg is called a 'Right Wing Attack Dog', Nick Robinson and James Landale are both staunch Tory voters and several high profile news editors and reporters also back blue over any other colour.

Presumably, the Tories telling us that the Beeb is left wing is similar to UKIP supporters telling non-UKIP supporters that they're just making things up about Nigel, because we're all scared of what they can do.

Someone very powerful likes the idea of UKIP in a coalition with the Tories to ensure that they and the other top 10% of earners in this country are guaranteed that income for the next 25 years - by pulling us out of Europe, destroying the social, health and welfare system, removing our statutory rights and making sure that it costs far too much money to fix it.

I wonder if people who support fascist dictatorships express regret in the intervening months?

Here's a reason why UKIP is becoming popular, especially with the working class. Their candidates aren't, on the whole, career politicians, they are or pretend to be normal people. They tick the boxes disgruntled stupid people want ticking and like people who believe the Tories are looking after their interests, the average idiot won't even realise that it's the government that is allowing all manner of people to economically rape you until you are a shell or a worthless husk with nothing to offer and no safety net except death. UKIP might have lots of 'Average Joes' in their ranks, but what happens when these disparate characters get their way with the EU and then start arguing about how to fix the problems. Remember, UKIP for all of its posturing is financed by and its two MPs are - Tories (not Labour or any working class or socialist group... but of course, if you like or support UKIP you won't believe that, you'll think I'm just scared of Nigel and making lies up about him...)

Politics is such a pariah now, the bastards can do what they want and you no longer care. The worst thing about this is those who no longer care no longer want to listen to the truth and are happy to let the lies sway every agenda there is, as long as it doesn't kill them as fast as it was.

The irony is more people care about the £1.2n in total benefits fraud per year than they care about corporations avoiding paying £120bn tax. Joe Average can't stand the idea of Fred Not-As-Disabled-As-He-Claims (or his Polish cousin Piotr) claiming £1 more than they should; they hate the fact that some bastard has screwed the country out of £1 unfairly. They will vote for whatever party says they will execute dole scroungers. Yet, as much of an anathema as it might seem, most people don't give a fig that the major corporations have avoided paying more money in one year than all the dole scroungers in the last 50 years have scrounged in total. Or that Take That successfully avoided paying tax for ages... Because it was Gary and Mark and Howard and the wookie.

If this country was to recoup just one year's worth of unpaid tax avoidance, it would be able to clear the budget deficit, all the interest, end the loans, fix the NHS, invest in new schools, hospitals, education and training programmes, build more council houses, fix things that have gone wrong and still be able to give everyone a 2p in the £ tax reduction for FIVE years.

Have you ever wondered why this isn't common knowledge, but easily verified?

Ask yourself this: if you had just £100 and someone took £10 off of you because you were poor and weak and couldn't fight back, it would be tough, you might struggle a bit, but you'd make ends meet. If you were a multi-billionaire with £100 billion and someone took £10 billion from you, how many billions would you have left?

I Have Better Things to Do

A little thing with wider implications.

I appreciate that, because of our politicians, we live in a less safe world and security is now a big business defending our heads of government from errant joggers; but has anyone else noticed the almost unreal stance taken by the media over 'Joggergate'?

Let's put this into perspective. There's a hipster guy running to his gym; he's decked out like a runner, he has an ipod playing and he, like many runners, is having his own tunnel vision moment. He accidentally happens upon a prime ministerial visit and bumps into the entourage. It was an accident, it could have been anyone.

Right, let's put some different perspective on it. Whether you like Cameron or not, he's the prime minister and he's got to be protected. What his security team did was no more than you would expect and the safety of our #1 has to be guaranteed. Except...

What happened after? We had a couple of hours of 'terrorist attack' on the news, then as the real story came to light there was a definite hardening of the media, the government and all the security advisors Sky, the BBC and Al Jazeera could rope in at short notice. Even though this was an accident, a mistake, a bit of mistimed fortune, suddenly it's all about ensuring our politicians are protected better; about enhanced security and yet there was nothing at all about the poor sod who got bundled to the floor, arrested on terrorism charges and had to spend two hours trying to explain to, I'd hazard a guess, rather unsympathetic or unrepentant MI5 and Special Branch officers, while trying to come to terms with how his life had suddenly taken an 'Enemy of the State' turn for the worst.

I can't understand why no one has bothered to even offer an apology to the guy. The police issued a statement saying he had been 'dearrested' [sic] and when it was suggested to a junior Home Office minister that this may well have been an over reaction and perhaps someone should seek out the hipster and offer some solace, this was dismissed with a subtle dig at the guy's appearance. He's a hipster and a young person, he won't vote for the Tories, why bother trying to make things right with him?

Yet this is endemic of our press and media at the moment. Do you know what the funniest thing I hear trundled out year after year by Tories? That the BBC is left biased and doesn't like the Conservatives. Take this EU budget debacle. All it needed was for Sky news and the BBC to donate 15 seconds of air time to the fact the 1.7bn euros it has to pay extra is something that happens every year and sometimes we've got a rebate. This has never been mentioned once; instead what we have is Cameron posturing and becoming more and more resigned to the fact that if he wants to hold onto power he's got to start sounding like Farage on European issues, so this is reflected in the media. All because he's crap scared of losing the next by election to the sweepingly popular Adolf Farage.

How come none of the news suppliers - TV or print - have bothered to spell out the real pros and cons of pulling out of Europe. The simple fact is economic analysts have said if we pull out of Europe it could take us 5 to 10 years to get to a situation where we can compete and negotiate with the rest of Europe without it penalising us in some way - in other words, we pull out, it takes 10 years to get back to where we are currently in terms of negotiating powers.

Also, why has UKIP suddenly become as important as the major parties? The media bias towards these halfwits wouldn't be so bad if they were being portrayed for what they are, but there's almost a sense of glorification. People with consciences will post things on Facebook and other social media highlighting the true nature of this new party; the fact they court fascism; have no real policies, have MEPs who do nothing and sound like they're making things up as they go along and yet citizens of this country dismiss this as fear, of people like me running scared of this steamroller. Because the media seems to think of Farage and co as media darlings now, the average idiot who will vote UKIP is obviously being lied to and mislead, but no one is actually questioning UKIP like a proper party - where is the discussion of their non-existent policies outside of pulling out of the EU? Surely that should be the purpose of the BBC if nothing else; to explain to the plebs how things work rather than having loads of time donated to what some bloke in Hemel Hempstead thinks about 'Joggergate'.

UKIP has got where it is because no one took them seriously. Now, no one is still taking them seriously yet their rise is just like the Nazis in the 1930s - fuelled by the middle aged and the middle class. The militants, the shipbuilders, the young never embraced Hitler, so he targeted national pride and stirred up passions in those who survived the First World War; those who believed Germany should be great and free from the shackles of the rest of Europe. Sound familiar?

Where have Labour been? There's barely a peep out of Millidee and co., and that's frightening because a real opposition leader would be chomping at every bit possible, but Labour are acting more and more like a party that doesn't want power because there are dark days ahead and I'm beginning to think the power behind Labour knows that if it gets in it won't be able to do what has needs to do to restore some balance to society because it costs too much money and they can't be seen to be frivolous again, what with all that infrastructure rebuilding to stop the country from decaying from the inside out.

The frightening thing is the Scottish referendum was supposed to encourage debate and reinvigorate the people to talk about and understand politics more, the problem is everyone has better things to do, in a lot of cases struggling to exist and when politicians come on the TV, most want to switch off because none of them ever say what we really want to hear. I said years ago we need a new politics, something that appeals to the people; maybe even a new way of electing our officials - some kind of scrutiny test. We need to stop corporate lobbying; tax fairly and evenly; support and look after the people who run the country on a daily basis not keep them in a constant fear. Fear doesn't help productivity in the long run - workers should be happy because happiness is key to productivity. Yet we live in this unwavering climate of fear (and loathing), stoked by a media that is almost isolated from the real world and is run the same way as every other cohort is run.

The world is getting better! The world is getting worse!

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, immortally, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" - he meant it in a different way, but his words ring so true today. we live in a world where you are scared into doing things, accepting things, obliging things because you're being told we have much to fear.

We do. We're just mistaking the thing we need to be fearful of.

The Battle No One Wants to Win

It’s October 3^rd and the last day of one of the better (best) summers of the 21^st century so far. The last vestiges of warmth are there, but the breeze is picking up and despite the 21 degrees, there’s that familiar old friend, autumn, biting at the edges. The temperature is often deceiving because of the air; if you get 21 degrees in March (less likely than October, but not uncommon), it never feels the same as 21 degrees in July; it’s because - during mid summer - the higher air and land temperatures keep everything at a slightly elevated ambient temperature. It’s why you’re more likely to take a thicker top out with you in October than you would in midsummer. 

It is a perfect example of how appearances can be deceiving.

While all this relatively unseasonal weather has been going on, there has been the political convention season; the last one before the next general election. 

Honest. 

There is going to be a general election next year, whether we like it or not, because the expiry date will have run out on this one. 

You might have noticed that none of the two likely parties want it.

The Tories have gone public and said ‘if you’re poor or didn’t vote for us, we’re going to punish you and your families, oh and we’re going to take your civil liberties away and convince you its for your own good.’ Labour have said, “Meh meh meh meh, we don’t have a clue; look we’ve got Ed and Ed so you’ll be sure to try and find an alternative to vote for on the list, look out for us when we get a leader and more of a clue.’

Both party conferences had an undercurrent of fear – not the usual ‘what if they get in’ more of a ‘what if we get in?’ It might have something to do with the fact that most MPs, who are clueless, should be representing their constituents and not their political parties. 

Everyone seems eager to get involved in another Arab (crisis), mainly problem because it detracts attention from what is happening at home, which is the slow erosion of our country, by the establishment, who are trying to get as much as they can before it all goes tits up when the Chinese start reneging on their debts.

The only party that senses they might benefit at the next election, apart from UKIP who probably think they’ll win by a landslide, are the Tories because whoever is left when the dust settles will have carte blanche to make as much money at as many peoples expense as possible. No one seems to notice that companies like Wonga only ever appear when there is a Tory government in power and no one today really seems to care enough that every time the Tories get a sniff of power we end up with higher poverty than ever before (in real terms), less social justice and arguably more of a nanny state than Labour could ever be accused of creating. But, you know, the Tories really do look after the working man, honest guv. I mean, just how many poor people aren't poor now because of them?

Labour seem convinced they’re going to screw up so have avoided doing anything that resembles pointing out that Osborne hasn’t actually done anything to cut the budget deficit, but has done wonders in reducing the living standards of their core voters. Everything about Labour at the moment smacks of Neil Kinnock on the beach falling flat on his arse.

No one really wants power because it means having to make tough decisions, penalising the people who aren’t responsible for the mess we’re in and attempting to keep the money in the country and not scare it away by Draconian tax measures. We’re screwed because governments don’t run countries, corporations do and without the money generated by these corporations everything starts to become unstable and it falls apart. That’s why we can rage against the machine that so-and-so is getting away with billions in tax, but the HMRC is actively pursuing someone who owes £50 with everything from threats of court to, I’m sure, debtor’s prison if the right wing gets one of its secret wishes. 

Not paying your TV license became a criminal offence rather than a civil one recently; that snuck in there quietly without any real attention from the press – one of the corporations that run the country – and the Tories are now talking about abolishing the Human Rights Act, because it prevents them from dealing with terrorism properly and allows them to disagree with Europe; it also allows them to gag anyone they feel could be detrimental to them. 

When examined properly, this alone is reason #1 for never voting Tory again; it impinges on everyone and in such a way that the excuse ‘well if I haven’t got anything to hide’ becomes irrelevant; if you are happy with the government having access to everything you own, everything you say and everything anyone you’ve ever loved is, has, and will be saying, doing and thinking, then welcome to the real 1984 and Maggie must be jumping for joy on/in her grave.

So surely none of the political parties must want power because they are not even hinting that it might get better; no one is even bothered about saying, ‘we’re sorry you’re paying for our mistakes, again’ or maybe they are. Maybe they’re saying subliminally – DON’T VOTE FOR US; we don’t care about you, you will get nothing from us but pain and misery, let one of these nut job parties run the place for a while and you’ll be begging for our unique brand of poverty and misery all over again!

Democracy is dead. Unless there’s a lot of money in your family it’s probably best not to think about having children, unless you want a lot of heartache. The future is bleak. It isn't bright, it's dark, with a cold uncaring heart and it will laugh and piss on your grave, for ever and ever...

A Cunningly Evil Plan

George Osborne has a cunning plan; unlike Baldrick though, this plan will probably work...

There seems to be a general consensus, although not particularly being publicly stated, that Milliband will probably be the next PM. It appears that he won’t win it, but the others will lose it, so he will end up in charge of the country because people will punish the Coalition for the austerity measures, which, of course, the Coalition will tell you was Labour’s fault in the first place. The one overriding thing I have deciphered from all of this is: as a country, we’re pretty much always going to be in debt, so it’s about managing it rather than getting rid of it.

I said many moons ago that Osborne’s plan was to dismantle the Welfare State (something he clearly finds an anathema) while ensuring his own position in the history books. He would either be forgotten like so many other Tory chancellors, or remembered as the man who ultimately saved the country from going bankrupt and therefore he becomes the only logical replacement for David Cameron and we get the Tory version of the Blair/Brown problem all over again.

We’re all now painfully aware that the budget deficit could be wiped out if everyone not paying tax were to pay it; yet someone very close to me isn’t chasing up corporations for millions, she’s chasing up the likes of you and me for a few hundred or thousand quid. Yes, it needs to be done; we can’t have people like you and me possibly not paying everything we have to, so why not Amazon, Starbucks, O2...? The list, I’m sorry to say, is pretty much endless. There’s a new tax dodger being unveiled every week, it seems.

With Cameron pretty much resigned to trying to defend his own image – he seems to have given up trying to defend IDS, Gove, Schapps, Hunt and every other screw up in ministerial residence – because he kind of hopes that he’ll have a future somewhere. His idol, Blair, is a high paid ‘diplomat’, Cameron doesn’t need the money, but he does like the spotlight, so he’s doing what he can to keep the sheen on his armour, he lets Gideon make his power plays and watches his hopeless MPs continually insert their feet into their mouths. Milliband would need to be in Jimmy Savile’s league to not be elected now and he will inherit a country that hasn’t got any money to change things back and why would he want to anyhow? It is too expensive being an average country in 2014; it is a thankless task to run a ‘business’ that is only still running because it can’t be run by someone else.

We hear about nationalising the rail network again – how much is that going to cost?

We talk about kicking out all the foreigners – who’s going to clean your public toilets and dispose of all the waste from our hospitals, or pick our fruit, or build extensions better and cheaper than cowboy British builders?

We want out of Europe – but no one has bothered to point out just how much we’ll lose by doing that.

In fact, the Tories have been astutely brilliant. They have rather incompetently run the country, with their hapless sidekick, but have not alienated everyone the way Melvyn King believed the incumbent government might; this means they can continue to undermine the next government; make it impossible to change without thrusting back into a deficit, so that Labour can’t change all the changes and they end up getting the blame and being unelectable for a generation and Osborne can come in as the Tory PM and tell everyone how well he did considering and he can then completely dismantle the country and turn us into a country of haves and will never haves.

The only thing about the current regime that truly bothers me is the way they’re victimising the disabled. We often joke that the best outcome for Tories would be to kill off all the ‘scroungers’, but it seems that this actually is the covert intention. This could be the thing they’re using to ensure they don’t get elected; but of all the welfare reforms this is the one that stinks the worst. If 0.6% of claimants of DLA are fraudulent, why punish the 99.4% who aren’t trying it on? The disabled are a small percentage of voters and at the last election estimates suggested as many as 60% don’t vote for varying reasons ranging from disillusionment to being unable to get to the polling station... So basically they are an easy target. That is almost like Nazism.

Osborne obviously fancies a slightly Aryan future, but maybe with brunettes rather than blonds.

Just remember, none of the political parties are actually going to do much for you that you will wholeheartedly agree with. In 25 years time, the concept of ‘social justice’ will be as alien as Marxism – which, of course, is the only really truly socially acceptable form of government. Whoever you vote for, it’s only going to get better for you if you’re one of the top 20% of earners – and very few of them don’t vote Conservative.

We are all going to die, but with George Osborne’s help we’ll die a lot unhappier and without two ha’pennies to rub together...