UK Referendum Voting System

The cat, as they say, is out of the bag..

Motivational Poster #1

 

I see these all over the place. I thought I might have a go myself… I’m looking forward to the UK’s referendum.

 

Camerons Deal–No Deal

Not even close as far as I can see…

I watched the BBC news this morning eagerly waiting for some details about this renegotiation business with the EU. Frankly, it was disappointing in so many different ways. There is no real alteration to anything of substance. He went looking for a big slice of cake. All he got was a few crumbs. As for the border issue, migration, the amount of money that gets paid in, sovereignty and powers of parliament, all these things remain untouched.
And yet, there was Cameron, seriously telling us, that Britain would be better off in a reformed Europe. Maybe. But Europe hasn’t been reformed by one little bit. That would mean a treaty change. No such change has been made. So we’re talking about a few small details in the larger picture. Gilding the lilies, if you like. No real European change there.

So Britain, I feel, would be better off out of the EU. Probably one of the best analyses of the whole affair was to be found, in all places, at the Daily Mail.

HE DIDN’T ASK FOR MUCH – AND HE GOT EVEN LESS

Analysis by James Slack, Political Editor in Brussels

TAX CREDITS

What he wanted: A ban on EU migrants being paid in-work benefits for their first four years in the UK.

Sticking point: In a compromise, Britain is being granted an emergency brake which allows for benefits to be restricted for up to four years if Britain’s public services or welfare system is under pressure. However, the EU insisted that the ‘limitation should be graduated, from an initial complete exclusion to gradually increasing access to such benefits’. This was still the subject of a huge row yesterday. Mr Cameron wanted the brake to be in place for up to 13 years. Eastern Europe objected strongly. Eastern European countries also want a guarantee that the brake could be used by the UK only – not nations such as Germany and Sweden, which have also experienced a huge influx of workers.

CHILD BENEFIT

What he wanted: The 2015 Tory manifesto promised that: ‘If an EU migrant’s child is living abroad, then they should receive no child benefit, no matter how long they have worked in the UK and no matter how much tax they have paid.’

Sticking point: A watered down agreement that child benefit payments will be linked to the cost of living in the child’s homeland has been agreed. But Eastern European countries insisted the rules should not apply to people who were already in the UK. The new regime is likely to be phased in over a number of years. Again, Eastern Europe does not want any other EU country to be able to apply the new rules.

PROTECTION FROM THE EUROZONE

What he wanted: A mechanism to ensure that Britain cannot be discriminated against because it is not part of the euro, cannot pick up the bill for eurozone bailouts and cannot have imposed on it changes the eurozone want to make without our consent.

Sticking point: France spent days fiercely resisting the idea that Britain can interfere in the workings of the euro. Other EU countries were opposed to the idea that any agreement Mr Cameron secures should be enshrined in future treaties.

EVER CLOSER UNION

What he wanted: Exempt Britain from the commitment in the EU’s founding treaty to move towards ‘ever closer union’.

Sticking point: The EU said it was content to acknowledge ‘that the United Kingdom, in the light of the specific situation it has under the treaties, is not committed to further political integration into the European Union’. However, EU leaders were opposed to the idea of enshrining this in future EU treaties – which is key if Mr Cameron is not to face accusations that his deal can be unpicked.

AND THINGS HE ONCE PROMISED BUT NEVER ASKED FOR:

Charter of Fundamental Rights. In 2009, Mr Cameron promised a complete opt-out of the charter, which further extends human rights laws.

Social and employment laws. In 2010, Mr Cameron pledged to claw back powers from Brussels, but this was quietly dropped.

Working time directive. In 2012, he promised to change the law that includes the contentious 48-hour maximum working week.

Common Agricultural Policy. Repeated calls for reform of farming subsidies, but no sign of any change yet.

Waste. In 2009, he promised to end the European Parliament’s ‘absurd’ practice of meeting in Strasbourg as well as Brussels.

He didn’t get much at all. did he?

Here’s the real deal-killer…

The EU needs to ratify all these changes at some point. All Cameron has now is a promise and a nod from his European masters. Nothing signed, nothing sealed, nothing delivered. No.
And the thing that really sticks out is…

..that the EU will vote on these changes for the UK after the referendum on the 23rd of June this year.

So, (and here’s where my scepticism really kicks in,) if the UK decide to stay in and then, after the referendum is done and dusted, the EU decides to scrap the deal, or parts of it, there’s no going back.

The referendum trap is set. I hope others can see it and decide to leave the failing EU and its corrupt leadership. Staying in will mean, that nothing changes.

A Valuable Addition?

Bosnia & Herzegovina have officially requested to join the EU. Being a newly formed social democracy, I’m sure the EU will welcome them. After all, they are used to living under
communism and used to being ordered about from a centralised powerbase miles from home without being able to have a say in who runs the show.

I couldn’t help but go and see what I could find out about this latest candidate for the European madness. It proved difficult to get any real figures that aren’t a little dated.
There is a link below to an informative website.

A couple of things spring to the fore:

Population: About 5 million.
That makes it about the size of Denmark or Holland.

Unemployed: 45%.
So, about 2.5 million out of work. Someone will have to support them, or provide them with work. I wonder who and where?

Religion:
Muslim 40%, Orthodox 31%, Roman Catholic 15%, other 14%. That’s another 2 million muslims to add to the EU.

Business opportunities? Well, yes…
Increasingly a transit point for heroin being trafficked to Western Europe; minor transit point for marijuana; remains highly vulnerable to money-laundering activity given a primarily
cash-based and unregulated economy, weak law enforcement, and instances of corruption.

Economy?
Economic aid – recipient: $546.1 million. 
Reserves of foreign exchange and gold: $4.525 billion.
Debt – external: $6.734 billion.

Looks like a perfect candidate. I’m sure the EU can wipe out the debt for them and the aid funds can cope.

After all, we’re all paying taxes, aren’t we?

 

http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infopays/wfb.php3?CODEPAYS=BOS

Alms for the Poor

We recently had one of those TV marathon evenings to collect money for ‘The Poor’. The poor and needy. Not our own of course, but the poor and needy who live in what we call ‘The
Third World’. Which I find a strange term as we only have one world, albeit in differing stages of development due to geography, human resilience, determination, invention and ability.
I make no apologies for my living in one of the better evolved places on this earth, mainly because all that I have, I worked for. Nobody gave me anything. I think I would have survived
no matter where I was born because I’m a stubborn old git and always have been. Even when I was a stubborn young git.
But I digress..

Back to the point. According to a rather well developed and well written website that I found it necessary to visit, ‘poverty’ is defined as having to live for less than $2,50 a day.
The website goes on to explain that nearly 1/2 of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day and that more than 1.3 billion live in extreme
poverty having less than $1.25 a day.
I presume that the latter are included in the former and I also allow myself to assume that the $2.50 / $1,25 they mention is per person.

Just to clarify the figures for my non-English speaking readers, 3 billion is  3,000,000,000: Three thousand million.

Now, back to my original train of thought and my opening gambit. Our telethon, or whatever you may like to call it, raised a healthy 98 million Danish Crowns. That’s about 14.65 million
U.S. dollars. Not bad for a country with a population of 5.6 million, if you don’t count todays immigrants, who probably didn’t get to see the TV…

So, let’s do the maths.. 3,000,000,000 poor people divided by USD14.650,000 gives about 0,0045 USD per person. Which will keep the poor of the world going for about two minutes at the
minimum amount required to call them poverty stricken. And, after these two minutes, they’ll go back to being poor and hungry. Still, they did have a good two minutes at our expense and I’m
sure they are grateful for this generosity and our philanthropic efforts to ease their burden in these times of general hardship.

Pardon me, but what a debacle this is. It’s like giving a starving man a bean. Pointless. It solves nothing.

I don’t have the answer to world wide poverty. I know that simply throwing cash at it doesn’t help. How do I know? Because we’ve been doing it for donkeys years and those people are
still poor. What is worse, is that they will continue to be so.

We have reached a saturation point.  The world is overpopulated as it is.
Perhaps reducing the population might bring down the numbers. The fewer there are, the more there is to go round.
Perhaps getting some industry going in these far off places would help. Or farms? I daresay that providing a clean water supply would help too.

Of course, if the ‘third world’ gave up tribal war and starting building instead of destroying everything around them, that would help too.

There is one other aspect of this generosity we have displayed. It sends the wrong signal to our politicians. If we have so much money to simply give away, then we still have money to be
taken in taxes. Which simply encourages them to continue giving large portions of our wealth away to pointless projects in failed states governed by their fellow fat and corrupt politicians
and despotic dictators.

For the record, I did not donate. I’m too busy looking after myself and those that are dependant on me.

Like, all those ‘refugees’…

http://www.worldbank.org/mdgs/poverty_hunger.html

https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-global-poverty

Footnote: I had to edit this as I found I’d got my maths wrong. Corrected now!

 

A Step in the Right Direction

Some good news today. The ‘out’ crowd have taken the lead in the great debate going on in the UK on the continued membership (or not) of the EU. I never wanted us to be in it from the start and voted ‘no’ back then. My own misgivings of what the future might bring have been realised in the worst way as the EU jackboot has marched over everything that is even slightly critical of it.

Referendums totally ignored, or to be repeated ad nauseam until the ‘right’ result was obtained. Courts set up to determine what policies were acceptable or not and then force those results onto an impotent population who are not even allowed to elect the EU leaders. The building of a supranational state. Foreign dictatorship.

All this was challenged by one party during the run up to the last UK elections. UKIP. Seeing that Britain’s only real viable future lies outside the EU, they campaigned hard for an exit poll to be taken. The Tory elitists were so rattled by the support for UKIP that they promised to hold the asked for referendum. And they won the election on that promise.

So now, they are caught out. The EU referendum will come. At some point.

I do see a way for them to weasel their way out though. At least, temporarily.

The PM, David Cameron, has begun a renegotiation of the agreement on membership of the EU. He has presented his ‘demands’. It really doesn’t amount to much and can hardly be called a renegotiation. It lacks teeth, vision and support. It will mean nothing.
The thing is, that while these ‘negotiations’ continue, he won’t call a referendum. How can he? “We’re still discussing the terms of our membership.” will be his war cry.

And knowing the EU, that can go on for a very long time….

See what Yougov has to say about it all…

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/01/28/4-point-lead-leave-eu-referendum-and-support-danis/

Proper Correctness

Occasionally I choose to sit by the window, smoke my pipe and observe the world going past me. Sitting still for any length of time serves the mind and the thought processes
that go on inside my head. Listening to the radio and hearing the news, it came upon me that we need a new way to describe our world and a new way to live in it. News of more
rapes and other atrocities being covered up by failing leadership and a failing police force under orders to protect the criminal more than the victim begin to move my thoughts.
 
I couldn’t help but wonder; How have we arrived here?

I noticed that no mention was made of the attackers. Not by name, colour or creed, religion or nationality. No statistics, no indication of the perpetrators. I think we all know the reasons
why but no-one of any importance is prepared to step forward and change, nor even to challenge, this sorry state of affairs, probably because of the fear of being immediately being vilified in the press and labelled as ‘racist’. Which is a simple way of avoiding the situation by attacking the man who does stand up instead of tackling the basic problem at large.

This has to stop. Name calling is not helpful, nor is it relevant in our society today. Society needs open debate to survive. That has been taken from us. No longer having the recourse
of open and frank discussion, when one part goes unheard and unheeded, society will fall into the unavoidable situation that is tribal war at best and civil war at worst.

One of the main reasons for all this, is the disgraceful and inelegant use of what we call ‘political correctness’. I see this as a tool to enable the reduction of any society to something
it can never be: a single homogenous population with an enforced single perception of reality and truth, even if that society is built on lies and deceit.
And I accuse the vast majority of our elected (and unelected) leaders of forcing this upon us and using whatever means they have at their disposal to do so, including the misuse of
the police, the law and the courts.

Go to any dictionary and one can read the following, or a paraphrasing of it:

Politically correct: adj. Abbr. PC

Conforming to a particular sociopolitical ideology or point of view, especially to a liberal point of view concerned with promoting tolerance and avoiding offense in matters
of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.

Demonstrating progressive ideals, esp. by avoiding vocabulary that is considered offensive, discriminatory, or judgmental, esp. concerning race and gender.

So I ask the questions. What happens if one doesn’t conform to a particular sociopolitical ideology or point of view? What if ones own perception of society differs from that?
And how do we combat it?

I believe we need to create a new forum to move in. Political correctness has failed us, as it always would in the end. We need a new yardstick to base discussion and behaviour on.

I want to have a little "Proper Correctness". I have no idea how to define that in simple terms But I know what I want…

I want to restore the proper values in society and replace the tortured world of fabricated speech, pseudonyms and actions that we have been forced to live by in the past two or three decades.
I want common sense to prevail over a state of enforced commonness and compliance.
I want a little indignation to bring a sense of dignity and decency back to our world.
I want to see the victim free of victimisation after the fact. Self defence should not be a crime, nor should it be treated as such. 
I want to be able to hear a man speak his mind without him having to fear derogation, derision and disparagement or having to face the courts for merely stating his honest opinion.
I want the law to be used to reflect and defend both public and personal opinion instead of oppressing it.

Feel free to join in….

I’m sure I’m not alone.

It just feels like it.

Re-writing the Dictionary..

Racist: A derogatory and now meaningless term used by (esp. left wing) politicians and news media to describe any person or persons voicing their concerns on:

(1) unhindered immigration and the following consequences of that immigration.

(2) the failings of the government in controlling criminal immigrants.

(3) the actions of police in defending and sheltering criminal immigrants.

(4) rising crime rates due to immigration (esp. rape, theft, fraud and acts of terrorism).

(5) the actions of one particular religious group that aspires to the complete and utter destruction of our civilisation.

The term is also used (esp. by left wing politicians) to describe any person or persons having a superior argument to said politicians or news media in any debate on any of the above subjects.

Xenophobe: See ‘Racist’.

Nazi: See ‘Racist’.

Islamophobe: See ‘Racist’.

 

See. The name calling doesn’t work any more. At least not on me.

I seem to remember the words of an old song that I loved as a younger man:

“Momma take this badge off of me,
I can’t use it any more….”

A Gift for a Would-be Rapist

We are supposed to be proud of our society. This society has been built on law. Notably, not islamic or sharia law, but a fair and just system of laws made to protect the innocent and punish the guilty and preserve order. It is failing.

Some days ago a 17 year old girl, or young woman, depending on how you view these things, was attacked and an attempt was made by her attacker to rape her. This happened in Sønderborg, a provincial town in South Jutland. Her attacker was a foreigner. He spoke English but was not of European origin.
Bravely, she fought back and managed to free herself from him by using a simple, non-lethal device known as a pepper spray. He fled and she reported the attack to the local police.

A bit of a non-story, you may think. And I’d be inclined to agree with you up to a certain point. That certain point comes when we examine the response of the local police. Never mind the attacker, he’s disappeared back into the hole he escaped from. No, no. Let him be. We won’t even look for him.

But you, young lady, are a criminal now. With a criminal record. The crime? Possession and use of an illegal weapon.

The girl has been arrested, tried and fined for possessing and using a pepper spray. No mention of self defence here. No mention of why she had it or used it. The full weight of the law has been used to punish her for this heinous act.

Excuse me?

In some far off and distant lands, well, not so distant these days, if a woman is raped she is immediately accused of adultery, found guilty and stoned to death. We find that to be abhorrent.
”How can she be guilty?”, we scream. “Madness”, we cry. “They are animals”.
Is this affair any different?

Here we have a young woman being attacked by some rapist thug from another world and culture who wasn’t even invited here, defending herself, going to the very people we expect to help and comfort her and give some redress to society by actually catching the offender and bring him to justice, but she is the criminal?
Abominable.
Worse still, that the courts uphold the charges, proclaim her guilty and impose a hefty fine.
Which tells other women in our ordered society that this form of self defence is not acceptable and you should actually give in to the rapist scum and let the police “investigate” the offense? To what end? Our police are no more than tax collectors these days. There is no money in catching criminals. There is money in fines imposed by the state to punish.. well.. this wrong-doing young woman, for instance.
Her attacker is still on the loose by the way. But now he knows, that any woman he chooses to attack in the future won’t be spraying pepper in his eyes.
And therein lies the problem. Here we have the police doing very little, if anything at all, to catch him, a court making self defence inadmissible and both actions encourage the rapist to try again.

The judge should have thrown this one out and commended her for her bravery. The police should be looking for a rapist and our oh-so holier than thou politicians should be addressing this fatal flaw in our law. The argument that criminals will use pepper spray to carry out crimes should not make its use in self defence illegal. The criminal will use it anyway. The criminal is intent on breaking the law.

Innocent victims are, apparently, not allowed that luxury.

It’s been a while…

In fact, it’s been four years. After the death of Osama Bin Laden and the signing of the Lisbon Treaty, I took time out to address a few things in my life. My family needed me, I needed a break and I realised that all around me was falling to bits anyway, whether I was here or not. No-one was listening. We were sinking onto the depths of European dictatorship and nothing was being done to stem the foreign invasion that is islam at its worst. I was considering finding a new land beyond Europe to live in and move my entire family.

Things have changed. The people have begun to stir. There are motions afoot to break up the evil EU. Or, at least, to limit its ever increasing dictatorial powers. The influx of millions of migrants claiming to be refugees have stirred people to action. Asylum centres are being burned, Migrants are being stopped at various internal borders and refused entry to some lands. It seems that we are no longer prepared to be led like lambs to slaughter by politicians who are out of touch with the people that put them in power. There is a growing dissatisfaction with the unelected leaders of the EU who no longer represent anything vaguely European and are intent on the destruction of member nations. The multicultural ideals of these pandering communist has-beens are being challenged on many levels. And rightly so. Some of us have been saying it for years. Nobody was listening then. They are now.

The recent developments of the last six months have changed the face of Europe and, I believe, changed the European people. We no longer trust our leaders. We no longer support them at every turn of the screw. There is dissent. And it is gaining momentum.

Because of this, I have decided to get back into the ring. Early retirement means I can take the time to reflect at my leisure and settle my thoughts before committing them to this tired old blog. I took the time to re-read a lot of it. I was not surprised to see how much has not changed, despite the need for that change. I was a little surprised to see how accurate my thoughts and assumptions had been on so many things.

Hopefully, I can repeat that now.

It is my belief that the EU must be destroyed. It is also my belief that islam brings no good with it.

It is my intent to point those two things out at every opportunity.