fahrenheit451:109

Elections, referendums* (* referenda is the correct Latin plural,but we're not in Ancient Rome ) here there and every bleedin' where. The thing with Democracy is that you can never have too much of it. Back in the 1640's the Levellers- the radical wing of the Parliamentary forces- were calling for annual parliaments for heaven's sake.Four Centuries on and we still haven't got there.  The current fashionable theory amongst left-liberal inclined intellectuals-manque is that in the event of any election/referendum result going against their expected and hoped for outcome,then the default explanation of any such unlikely occurrence is that those who contributed to the actual verdict were somehow misled,misinformed,mistaken and misjudged,miscalculated the consequences of them individually and collectively casting their votes in the way that they did; i.e. against the explicit,considered,expert and wise advice of the commentariat/academics,experts and men of vast experience who truly understood the issues being voted upon. My, that was a bit long winded - but I went for it anyway. Today happens to be Saturday, 3rd December and the metropolitan-domiciled elites' ideological war drums are already beating all across MSM. Tomorrow,Sunday 4th December there is to be a plebiscite in Italy regarding proposals from the incumbent Premier,Renzi on the streamlining of Italy's constitution, which he amongst others feels is too cumbersome and no longer fit for contemporary purpose. Across the border over in Austria, due to a preceding procedural cock-up, there is the re-run of what had been an excruciatingly closely run Presidential contest between the Green Party's Van Der Bellen and the Freedom Party's Hofer. the likeliest of outcomes in both referendum and presidential Election will not be to the liking of the elites and their shills in the political classes in western europe. The oppositional 5 Star Movement is mounting a dynamic campaign for a " No " vote against Renzi, and Hofer's Freiheitliche Partei ought to attain a valuable,if largely wholly symbolic victory. I shall certainly be celebrating with unalloyed joy and basking in either or both such tremendous outcomes tomorrow.

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I launched this missive earlier today posting it to the Wakefield Express.It concerns the local Labour MP, Mary Creagh one of the 200 seditionist #LabourIn MPs,who is particularly woefully out of touch with her constituents,and a 2015 failed Labour leadership contender who couldn't get enough endorsements to get on the ballot,unlike J.Corbyn who eventually did.

Wakefield Editorial

Today at 10:50

Sir- You  might find this to be of local interest given the Express' Politically speaking column.I'm sure the Wakey electorate - with whom our MP has been shown to be wildly out of step and at odds with-would like to read a coherent and plausible explanation for this.

Yours sincerely,

Louis Kasatkin 

.#MaryCreagh one of the 203 MPs (1 of 54 from Labour ) named in this article.

 

Guido Fawkes

2 hrs · 

This decision to appoint a crook to the Justice committee is one of parliament’s most shameful acts in recent years – and the Tories are the ones responsible…

Tory Whips Saved Vaz - Guido Fawkes

Tory Whips Saved Vaz - Guido Fawkes When 203 MPs voted for Keith Vaz to join the Justice select committee last night, everyone assumed Labour MPs ha...

On September 6,2016 the Labour supporting Mirror newspaper reported :-

Keith Vaz has resigned as chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

It comes after the Sunday Mirror revealed he had paid for sex with escorts in a flat he owns near his family home in London.

As chairman of the powerful Commons panel, Mr Vaz has publicly said he was “not convinced” that men who pay for sex should face prosecution.

But within weeks of a report from his committee, he himself paid money to escorts in a flat he owns near his family home in Edgware, North West London..

Clearly there is nothing further to be gained by expressing displeasure at the wantonly hubristic behaviour of the benchwarming rabble whose only response is to continually thumb their snouts up at the rest of us.

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Nearly 4 weeks after EU Referendum Day, the forces of Reaction & Remain continue to seek more ways to stymie and/or annul the decision of the UK Electorate to vote to leave the EU ( aka Brexit ). Petitions,demonstrations, legal actions,organised online forums, academics and prelates, commentators on every specialism - finance, foreign relations, international trade, have been brought to bear against the carrying out of the decision to leave the EU. Where does this heinous misbehaviour stem from, who are the main culprits? The facts are that Tory MPs were split roughly 50-50 on the issue, whereas Labour MPs were 90-10 for Remain.And given the enormous pro-Leave votes in a huge number of nominally Labour " seats ", it was #LabourInForBritain who were by some considerable distance wide of the mark. Not only were they not singing from the same hymn-sheet as their " traditional voters ", LabourInForBritain weren't even standing in the same pews in the same church as their core voters. And that is a good thing, irrespective of any other partisan ideological considerations, if indeed it can  still be argued that there are any of any merit left. Once upon a time matters such as Treason and Sedition meant something, the words and what they signified resonated with awe and gravitas. A fortnight or so ago, a pop-up campaign - The 48% - organised a protest rally in London.One of their keynote speakers, Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy actually preached Sedition and sought to incite the crowd against our lawful government and its acceptance of the EU referendum result. The metropolitan domiciled, self-referencing bien pensant with their faux-bourgeois manners and social affectations and faddish prejudices have been around for a very long time indeed. And it is something of a meta-historical phenomenon that they choose precisely this juncture in the overarching historical narrative to once again display and articulate in an unrestrained, undiplomatic fashion their utter contempt, loathing and hatred of the majority within British society.

Here's what I emailed to my local newspaper the other day, perhaps it'll get published, perhaps not.

Clearly our current MP for Wakefield has lost confidence in the electorate on whom she is dependent. It seems that our current MP is far from " chuffed " with the democratic and binding decision of the electorate. That's a pity because in over 40 years of community and Trades Union activism I have never witnessed such a mendacious and fundamentally dishonest campaign than that waged by the Remain block during The EU Referendum. Bear in mind that ‪#‎LabourInForBritain‬ provided Remain's pivotal,leading role with some 200 Labour MPs declaring for Remain. It is not the electorate that has to explain itself to its elected representatives,but rather it behoves those such as Mary Creagh to make an unreserved and unconditional apology to the Electorate.

Will any MP who supported and canvassed for Remain actually apologise? probably not. Will Brexit be declared null and void? probably not.

FOOTNOTE :- There is a General Election scheduled for May 2020, once invoked by the PM via Royal prerogative, Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty envisages a timeframe of 2 years for all subsequent negotiations. This government will not go into an election with that unresolved.

fahrenheit451:066

It's not even a full fortnight since the glorious result of the EU Referendum and already the World is a brighter, happier much more cheerful a place then many would've dared to imagine as Polling stations closed at 10pm on Thursday 23 June. #Brexit finds us amid the fratricidal ideologically driven mutual carnage both within Conservative and Labour parties, as well as a mob of superannuated former undergrads with right-on views playing at Sedition and wanting to overthrow constitutional governance in the UK. The self-styled " 48% " ,all dressed down to mingle with ordinary folk as is the custom among the privileged metropolitan-domiciled,Oxbridge educated elite;they want to riot vicariously and posture loudly and articulately that they're hard done to.One or two stalking horses from Tory & Labour are despatched to do stand up demagogue routines on their rostrums. They spout a gutless version of actual Sedition and claim the role of martyrs for the cause; the cause they steered unerringly onto the rocks and to inexorable abject defeat. But the piece de resistance, is the reignited banking crisis about to take down the entire Italian economy. Here's what  " Zero Hedge " reports; I just love it when Corporate Capitalist Money men talk explicitly. Here's the unexpurgated cert:18 original.

With all eyes distratcted by the post-Brexit euphoria, the last week has seen a far more existential crisis accelerating in Europe. Italy's banking system is in tatters (from a EUR40bn bailout 6 days ago, to EUR150 emergency support 3 days ago, to a bank bailout and chatter of further support from pension funds Friday) but, in what seems like a clear admission that things are really bad, The FT reports that Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi is prepared to defy the EU and unilaterally pump billions of euros into its troubled banking system if it comes under severe systemic distress, a last-resort move that would smash through the bloc’s nascent regime for handling ailing banks.

As we noted previously, Brexit will be just the scapegoat used by Renzi and Italy to circumvent any specific eurozone prohibitions. And if it fails, all Renzi has to do is hint at a referendum of his own. Then watch as Merkel scrambles to allow Italy to do whatever it wants, just to avoid the humiliation of a potential "Italeave."

And sure enough, as The FT reports, Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, is determined to intervene with public funds if necessary despite warnings from Brussels and Berlin over the need to respect rules that make creditors rather than taxpayers fund bank rescues, according to several officials and bankers familiar with their plans.

 

 

The threat has raised alarm among Europe’s regulators, who fear such a brazen intervention would devastate the credibility of the union’s newly implemented banking rule book during its first real test. In the race to find workable solutions, Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, has laid out options for Rome to address its banking problems without breaking the bail-in principles of Europe’s banking union. 

Italy is the eurozone’s biggest vulnerability following the shock outcome of the UK vote to leave the EU, with bank stocks plunging by a third. Concerns are building before the outcome of bank stress test results due this month and a constitutional referendum in Italy in early October, on which Mr Renzi has wagered his job. Citi has described the referendum as “probably the single biggest risk on the European political landscape this year outside the UK”.

After several of its ideas on intervention were rebuffed, Rome is considering whether to act alone. “We are willing to do whatever is necessary [to defend the banks], and do not rule out acting unilaterally, although that would only be as a last resort,” said one person familiar with the government’s thinking. European officials fear any Italian intervention would carry high risks, opening a battle over illegal state support that would put off private investors.

Angela Merkel, German chancellor , last week rebuffed Italy’s request for a suspension of state aid and bail-in rules in order to recapitalise its banks. Benoit Coeure, a senior European Central Bank official, has said any suspension of bail-in rules would spell the end of the banking union “as we know it”.

Mr Renzi has bristled at suggestions he is ignoring rules, saying he will not be “lectured by the school teacher”.
And #Brexit won! and the reverberations will go on and on and on and it might incentivise our next dumb P.M to get the hell on with it and invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. Who knows, I couldn't care less ,we won the Big One!

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In the belated, though nevertheless timely and apposite sequel, " Independence Day:Resurgence ".The heavily outgunned forces of Earth are called upon to battle an enemy they believed had been beaten 20 years earlier.Only they hadn't;they'd simply been planning their revenge. And so it is with that insidious nest of vipers the REMAIN campaigners, in particular #LabourInForBritain - the 200 or so MPs whose other hobby is to overthrow by extraordinary means outside of their own party's rules the popularly elected leader of their party! Treachery is a habit,cynical betrayal and an insatiable Borgian appetite for cunning and perfidy are standard job requirements for being a Labour MP. Or indeed a Tory MP or any other kind of MP as long as your parliamentary representation is spacious enough to allow the cultivation of factions. The fratricidal struggle engulfing the governing Party at present was in any event inevitable give Cameron's playing a losing hand in the Referendum. The only sliver of merit and indeed saving grace of the Tory imbroglio as opposed to the much wider implications of Labour's stygian machinations,is that all Tory MPs have accepted that #Brexit won and is now fully go. Labour by contrast has do no such thing. Firstly,the Tories split almost evenly over the Referendum, whereas Labour MPs went 90:10 Remain. Bummer. Not only did #LabourIn weaponise the murder of Jo Cox MP,with audacious,cold-blooded cynicism but they've followed it up post-referendum with a Goebbels-like media campaign reporting on a mass outbreak of what are now called " hate crimes ". Those " crimes " and the murder of Jo Cox both being attributed as directly linked to stemming from the rhetoric of the #VoteLeave campaign!  And so it goes.. whilst the Tory Pary quite rightly teeters on the verge of oblivion, Labour has already fully embraced its own predestined Historic fate. And in the movie, " Independence Day:Resurgence ",that actually premiered and I went to see,on June 23rd. the good guys overcame the odds,again.

fahrenheit451:064

Last Thursday 23rd of June's  witnessed  the great exercise of the inalienable historic rights and incontestable prerogative of the Sovereign British Electorate. That  many elected members of parliament -( themselves only in office solely by that very same Sovereign exercise of the Electorate's prerogative ) had the actual temerity,nay brass-necked insolence and insubordination to even cast the very merest shadow of doubt and contentious conjecture at the Victorious outcome for  LEAVE is breathtaking in its audacity. This is the very stuff of outright Sedition, tantamount to Treason against Lawful Authority,that Lawful Authority itself is predicated upon and is wholly dependent for its legitimacy and acceptance on the expression of  the Sovereign Will of the Electorate. Equally culpable of outrageously partisan class-based and hubristic demagoguery are the Press, the Commentariat,Financiers,Artists and Academics of every discipline who by and large caricatured the 52% who voted LEAVE as mainly thick,uneducated,racist,small-minded northerners.  Naturally most of this insidious ideological invective was orchestrated,weaponised and delivered via the some 200 #LabourIn MPs. Who were left bemused on Friday 24th.June as to why " their " core voters - 9 million and falling,  didn't do what they had been advised most fervently to do and vote REMAIN.

History belongs to the Masses. The Sovereignty of the British electorate cannot be countermanded. Thank God.

fahrenheit451:063

I sure do like the smell of Victory on a morning. I've been on a high since waking up just after 4 a.m. Friday 24th.to listen to the radio, expecting to hear all about a huge triumph for Remain. The disbelief in the broadcasters' voices was palpable, they were genuinely astounded. I imagined that BREXIT was having the kind of visceral impact that Orson Welles' notorious 1938  " War of the Worlds " broadcast had had on an unsuspecting  U.S. public tuning in mid way through that broadcast.  I am so chuffed that the first letter my local newspaper published,all those weeks ago now to start the EU debate, was mine.The one, here on record at this blog and elsewhere, " I hate, loathe and despise the European Union and all that it stands for and all that it does ". There you go.Vindicated by the Sovereign Will of The British Electorate.

However there are some sore losers, who actually refuse to accept that they were defeated. Mary Creagh MP for Wakefield and leading  #LabourIn campaigner.

THE STENCH OF HYPOCRISY:
It is customary when having lost in a democratic ballot,to congratulate the winner and by doing so admit one's own defeat at the hands of the Electorate. Note that this hissy fit of a missive does not commence " To The People of Wakefield,Honoured Citizens On Whose Sovereign WIll All Elected Politicians Rely."

" A message for people in Wakefield –
The country has decided to leave the European Union.
As you will know, I campaigned tirelessly for Britain to remain in Europe. But I accept that the majority of people in the country chose another path.
My priority now is to mitigate the negative consequences for people in Wakefield. "
And this from a careerist carpetbagger who tried to weaponise for Remain campaign purposes the murder of another MP.

Schadenfreude really, really does not get any better than this!!

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Entirely superfluous as in fact it is,the BBC nevertheless provides the occasional moment of light relief and respite, albeit wholly unintentionally. BBC Radio 4's flagship " Today " news program, Friday 10 June afforded the attentive listener two such interludes. Andy Burnham-failed Labour Party leadership contender- and Ed " The Talking Cretin " Milliband -the former failed Labour leader. Both had on behalf of the insidious Petainist #LabourIn campaign pressed the BIG PANIC BUTTON. " OMG We're gonna lose ! " Burnham complained somewhat in a partisan manner that labour's ineffectual doorstep campaign was more " Hampstead than Hull ".goodness that was terribly Class-based and patronising toward the lazy,skiving,self-aggrandising,non-contributory denizens of that pestilential sinkhole in the capital! And Ed, well he put the icing on the Grosse torte of Schadenfreude! Not only have mine enemies been cut down in public, I could hear them crack and break apart as they hit the ground.

Schadenfreude in its original,authentic German sense is simply more than a frisson or momentary experience of inner joy and celebration. It is a phenomenon to be savoured, for it is the quintessence of what defines satisfaction in a struggle in which we are wholly dedicated to the victorious outcome of a particular Weltanschauung. Schadenfreude is distinctive because it embraces the necessary corollary of our own triumph and success - that corollary being our opponents' failure and defeat.An obvious point to exponents of mature,robust philosophical dispositions but not so to liberoid westerners who imbibe and are conditioned through insipid Anglo-Saxon empirically based philosophical dogma. Such dogma is as spineless, bloodless and ultimately lifeless as the proponents and espousers of such trite quasi-intellectual, pseudo-moral dross intended to make it. The sort of endless, piteous maundering and whining that escapes from the mouths of intellectual weaklings, whether they are officially social-democratic, conservative or liberal. The despicable conformist  intellectual/philosopher manque who spends an entire lifetime kowtowing to the apparently insuperable vicissitudes of an existence given over to surrender and compromise in place of strife and combat. The chances of any of their  misbegotten ilk ever experiencing Schadenfreude are about as remote as a person born blind being able to describe the colour purple.

fahrenheit451:052

Our democracy and our very existence as a bona fide sovereign and independent nation state is in clear and present danger.This is not " scaremongering " neither is it empty rhetoric. All those campaigning for a REMAIN vote in the forthcoming Referendum on the UK's continuing ssubjection to the Strassbourg/Brussels yoke,are fully conscious of the fact that the EU's self-professed grandiose imperative and raison d'etre to become a Unitary Continental Superstate will be strengthened and greatly reinforced should the plebiscite go the way of the IN campaign.

And what the EU and its technocratic bureaucractic governing elites won't tolerate and will soon enough get around to dealing with in exemplary fashion is any kind of substantive dissent that might challenge their hegemony and stymie and perhaps even mortally jeopardise the full realisation of their Historic design, a United European entity.

What they did to Austria in 2000 - conveniently jettisoned down the Orwellian " Memory Hole " and in need of rediscovery,is vitally worth studying.

( This article was published in European Affairs: Volume number I, Issue number II in the Spring of 2000.)

Sanctions Against Austria Pose Troubling Questions for the EU    

 

Michael Calingaert

The entry into Austria's governing coalition of Jörg Haider's Freedom Party presented the European Union with an unprecedented situation: participation in the government of one of the member states of a party widely considered "undemocratic." The response of Austria's EU partners was equally unprecedented: lacking the means under the EU treaties to mark their concern, they impulsively imposed diplomatic sanctions as 14 "like-minded states."

The European Community, as it was originally called, did not deem it necessary to spell out the member states' adherence to democratic principles. Nor did it occur to the original members that the domestic politics of a member state would be considered an appropriate subject for comment - let alone action - by the others.

One of the criteria for membership established at the Copenhagen European Council in 1993 was that candidates had to have "achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities."

For that reason, the EU refused to open enlargement negotiations with Slovakia while the clearly undemocratic Vladimir Meciar controlled the government, and it added Slovakia to the negotiating countries only after his defeat at the polls in 1998. It was with the example of Slovakia in mind that the EU added the first explicit mention in the EU's treaties of general principles previously accepted only implicitly: the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, building on language in the preamble to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, declared that the EU was "founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law."

During the Cold War the perceived danger to the democratic system in EU member states came from the left, although the United States was far more inclined than European countries to voice concern about communist parties joining EU governments.

The rise of the Freedom Party in Austria was seen as a different matter - particularly after the previous governing parties opened the door to Mr. Haider by failing to resurrect their former broad-based coalition.

The concerns of some member states - particularly Germany, France and Belgium - related very directly to their own domestic politics. The National Front in France shares many attributes of the Freedom Party, and both the governing Socialists and the Gaullist President Jacques Chirac, feared the "demonstration effect" of the entry of the Freedom Party into government.

Next door in Germany the implosion of the Christian Democratic Union as a result of its party financial scandal has led to serious concern over what will fill the vacuum, in particular the possible resurgence of the far right. In Belgium, many are afraid of the Vlaams Blok, a right-wing party seeking Flemish independence.

But what could the other 14 member states do? Under the treaties, nothing. The Treaty of Amsterdam provides that the heads of state or government, acting by unanimity and with the concurrence of the European Parliament, may determine that a member state has engaged in a "serious and persistent breach" of the EU's democratic principles. In such a case, they may decide, by qualified majority, to suspend voting and/or other rights of the country in question. Clearly, no such "breach" had taken place.

Led by Portugal - acting unofficially, though speaking explicitly as President of the Council - the 14 countries informed Austria that if the Freedom Party were to enter the government, they would take three steps: not accept bilateral contacts at a political level with the Austrian government, provide no support to Austrian candidates for positions in international organizations, and receive Austrian ambassadors in their countries only at a technical level. When the Freedom Party entered the government a few days later, the member states made good their threat.

The 14 member states in effect they acted as member states of the EU. In so doing, they set an important precedent: they added to the range of issues addressed by the EU by adopting a position on the composition of a member state government - a subject hitherto regarded exclusively as the business of the member state in question. In addition, their "joint reaction" (as they termed it) was a way of getting around the national veto that Austria would have applied if the action had been proposed in accordance with the EU Treaties.

The action of the 14 member states raises several questions:

Standards: Against what standards should member states judge political parties in other member states? What constitutes "anti-democratic" behavior? Do the standards apply equally to parties of the far right and far left ?

Circumstances: Under what circumstances is it appropriate for member states to concern themselves with the composition of another member state's government? Is it appropriate to seek to block the entry into government of a party that has gained over one-quarter of the votes in a free, democratic election? Would the member states contemplate analogous action against for example France with respect to the National Front?

How great is the likelihood that, as often happens with economic sanctions, the 14 member states will find themselves locked into actions that they will subsequently want to terminate but cannot because they lack an exit strategy?

Effect on the EU: The Portuguese Presidency has stated that there will not be "business as usual" with the Austrian government. Can there be "EU business as usual"? The 14 member states' actions clearly run counter to the "Community spirit" that is an important ingredient in the operations of the EU institutions. Would their actions have been possible if Austria had held the EU Presidency? Will the ostracized government - in this case Austria - adopt a hostile attitude, which could impede work in the EU?

As these questions indicate, the implications of the actions taken by the 14 member states extend well beyond the particular case of Austria in February 2000. Without the luxury of contemplation or advance planning, the EU has established ground-rules in an entirely new area. Before embarking down that path, it would have done well to consider the wisdom of a more restrained approach - for both the present and the future.

( This article was published in European Affairs: Volume number I, Issue number II in the Spring of 2000.)

And from the Daily Telegraph

By Michael Leidig, in Vienna

12:00AM BST 14 Sep 2000

 

AUSTRIA'S Freedom Party leader, Jörg Haider, has hailed the end toEuropean Union diplomatic sanctions against his country.

His EU critics had been humiliated, he said yesterday. "We are leaving this with our head held high." Yesterday, as Austria's political classes celebrated, Mr Haider revelled in the climbdown by President Chirac. France, which holds the rotating EU presidency, announced the end of sanctions on Wednesday. It also led the original call for the measures.

The end of sanctions followed an EU-mandated report saying they were "counter-productive" and liable to cause further nationalist reaction in Austria. Most Austrians greeted the news with indifference.

June 23, 2016 #VoteLeave. Anything short of that ensure national self-annihilation.

fahrenheit451:047

Democracy.Voting.The democratic process.Ballots.Universal Suffrage. These are terribly important,not only concepts, but practices for the acolytes of that most noble of specious secular quasi-theologies, Democracy. It has always struck me as an indelible flaw in their national character for the British to have persisted for as long as they have,with the eccentricities of  " The first past the post " system. Back in the days of the Reform Acts, of 1832 and 1867, there was plausibly nothing amiss with such a constricted,parochial settled kind of way of ascertaining the will of the people. Time-honoured methods have without vigourous renewal become moribund and taken on the characteristics of arcane rituals. Geographic distances within the historically determined British national polity are no longer a precusor for division and rancour to any significant degree.Distinctions and differences matter far less than once they did. And yet the legitimate expression of this innate plurality is stymied and devalued at every major opportunity. A Vote,the universal currency unit of political expression,is not equal to any other given Vote at any one time. Parliament ought long ago have instituted a fair and credible system of proportional representation.Each contending Party's ideological and practical political aspiration and raison d'etre-to win a majority for its policies and goals would not be compromised. After all winning a majority of the Sovereign electorate's Votes cast is per se more democratic in truth than winning a numerical majority of arbitrarily defined  seats.  All Votes must be of equal numeric value irrespective of where they are cast. The alternative, as has been the sad dystopian reality for decades is the " marginals ". Usually calculated to be around 70 seats out of the 630 where historic voting patterns and voter behaviour subject to minimal shifts in opinion poll discerned party policy differences turn these seats into genuine contests which determine the overall outcome of all 630 seats. That is not democracy. Legitimacy is after all a learned behaviour. Given enough cynicism coupled with disappointment,disillusionment and a powerful,cogent counter-narrative, methods other than the democratic ballot and universal suffrage begin to be contemplated.

Footnote :- I emailed this to the Wakefield express and Yorkshire Evening Post the day after the local election results were announced on May 6.

Sir - i recall being in the Public gallery not so long ago when Wakefield's Labour Councillors unanimously voted through £27,000,000 in Budget cuts. I also recall Council leader Box inveighing against the Conservative government and its Austerity measures. The central point of his lengthy,self-indulgent diatribe was to call into question the legitimacy of the Tories mandate to impose Austerity measures having won an overall majority with only 24% of the votes cast in the General election. Let's put aside for the moment the Historic alliance Labour has with the Tories on the issue of first past the post system.Those two have been brothers-in-arms in colluding to maintain this palpably iniquitous and dysfunctional model of electoral representation. What,I wonder has Cllr.Box to say about last Friday's results in Wakefield ? The turnout was 30%, of the 245,000 registered electors only 74,000 cast their ballot.Of the votes cast Labour got just over half,which means that Labour's mandate to govern and implement without dissent let alone any form of active resistance the government's Austerity measures is 15% of the electorate. Go figure.

Louis Kasatkin ( TUSC Candidate,Wakefield West 2016 )

fahrenheit451:044

There's a little over another 8 weeks of nose to tail electoral campaigning to endure before we finally get to cast our ballots on June 23. And the blizzard of increasingly vacuous and contentious statements and reciprocal point-scoring is inexorably gathering pace. We have become unaccustomed to mature,nuanced,indeed clever political badinage and rhetoric here in the formerly " great " britain. Instead we've allowed ourselves to be alternately hectored and lectured by a seemingly endless cavalcade of preening,fatuous wannabe poseurs and parliamentary arrivistes who are for the most part are utterly devoid of even the merest scintilla of statesmanship and popular political acumen that might influence and resonate with the ordinary citizenry and electorate.

The EU Referendum debate,such as it is is being soundly buffeted by verbiage and flimsy assertions coming at it from all conceivable ideological and Party directions.For Labour it is essentially a tribal struggle vis a vis the Conservatives.Their worn out,dessicated mantras are being dusted off and brought back into circulation,wrapped in a faux-nostalgia and counterfeit,superficial class politics that long ago ceased to have any traction in the world post Thatcher-Blair. Following on from Shadow Foreign secretary Benn's wildly delusional and idiosyncratic exposition of his tenuous grasp of modern history during the " May we bomb Syria "debate ;Alan Johnson follows Benn into going over the top on an equally implausible rhetorical suicide mission underscoring the axiom that truth is the first casualty in war,but in Johnston's case as in Benn's earlier,Meaning itself is the biggest casualty of all. Gleaned from the eponymous Labour List site,Tuesday 26 April. :-

" The EU referendum is as important as the General Election of 1945, Alan Johnson says today in a rallying speech to trade unionists.

The “immediate consequences” of Brexit would harm both the country and society as a whole, the chair of Labour In For Britain is expected to warn at the Usdaw conference later today.

“I believe the vote in the referendum on the EU on June 23 is every bit as important as that election in July 1945. Perhaps more so,” Johnson will say.

“It is a vote about whether we remain or leave the EU, and there will be immediate consequences to that decision for everyone here, and every family in the land.  But it’s about more than that.  For me, it’s about what kind of country we are, what kind of society we want to be.”

“Nearly four million British trade union members are represented by unions campaigning to keep Britain in Europe this June.

“From nurses and builders, to railway workers, steel workers, postal workers and shop workers, trade unions will be campaigning for a Britain that Remains in Europe.

“The rights of working people are protected by our EU membership.."

This is absurdist installation performance art on an epic scale.Benn 's verbal necromancy sought to conjure the ghosts of a largely misunderstood Spanish Civil War of the 1930's -here Johnson trumps even that vainglorious essay with: “I believe the vote in the referendum on the EU on June 23 is every bit as important as that election in July 1945. Perhaps more so,”  The meds have clearly kicked in and someone ought to fetch the Nurse.

More important than the general election of 1945 ? The absolute zenith of Labour Party/Trades Union reformist mythology second only to the Keir Hardie Creation myth.And Johnson has gone and erased from the collective,historic working class memory absolutely everything else.The coup de grace being his repeating the outright figment of Blairite imagination,that " The rights of working people are protected by our EU membership ". Theologically this would count as Apostasy or even Heresy. coming from within the Vatican itself. And we all know what should happen to Heretics.

fahrenheit451:032

Nee, naw...Nee, naw !! Here comes The Plod combatting crime and keeping the Citizenry safe from ne'er do wells. Actually, upon reflection no they, The Plod aren't combatting anything nor keeping the rest of us safe from any and all forms of crime and criminal behaviour- or should that be the behaviour of criminals ?  Stupid, ideologically driven wiberals and their self-referencing " progressive " co-conspirators have indoctrinated virtually all of Civil Society and Polity with the insidious, debilitating poison of political correctness. Hence this risible farrago that was just so much poorly scripted farce rather than the tragedy/drama those forces had hoped it would be. As reported, ad infinitum on March 26th. ( this gleaned from The Daily Telegraph ) :-

11:38PM GMT 25 Mar 2016

 

A man is no longer facing a social media race-hate charge after Doyle, a partner at a south London-based talent and PR agency, allegedly posted a tweet on Wednesday morning saying: "I confronted a Muslim woman in Croydon yesterday. I asked her to explain Brussels. She said 'nothing to do with me'. A mealy mouthed reply." The tweet, which appeared to refer to this week's bomb attacks on the Belgian capital's main airport and Metro system.

Matthew Doyle, 46, from South Croydon, was due to appear at Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court on Saturday.He had been arrested on Wednesday and charged on Friday with publishing or distributing written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, likely or intended to stir up racial hatred.

On Friday night the Met police said the charge had been dropped after it emerged the police officer in question had jumped the gun and charged Mr Doyle when in fact he needed CPS approval to do so.

In a statement, the Met said: "Matthew Doyle, 46, of South Croydon was charged by police on Friday, 25 March, with an offence under Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986.

"Following discussion with the Crown Prosecution Service, Mr Doyle is no longer charged with the offence and will not be appearing at court.

"Police may not make charging decisions on offences under Section 19 of the Public Order Act."

A great big fuss over nothing ; a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. The Plod had itself acted illegally, violated due legal process ,how thick is the average Copper these days ? Don't they teach them about the Law of the Land -which they themselves as The Plod on behalf of the Citizenry must first and foremost without fear or favour uphold ? Of course not. And how the heck do 140 characters on a self-obsessing social media platform come anywhere close to the mickey mouse charge of  " incitement to racial hatred " ?

The wrongfully arrested and charged Mr.Doyle was lucky in one respect,given the fascistic manner and attitude of our everyday Plod.He ought to be grateful that he wasn't just some Brazilian electrician on his way to work, running to catch the Tube.....

fahrenheit451:031

As I'm writing this, it's some 50 hours since Islamic terrorists brought chaos and carnage to the city of Brussels. ISIL/ISIS/ DAESH, like some Rock band ought to bring out a " On Tour " sweatshirt itemising all their gigs. If nothing else, this latest insane farrago highlights,with a sense of palpable redundancy , the irrelevance and impotence of the European Union and its conjoined western imperialist sibling NATO.

The first order of priority after every major terrorist attack ( and the concomitant mass slaughter of civilians going about their law-abiding daily lives ),is for the Authorities and it usually falls to the Police,to speak out in defence of,offer reassurance to and shield Islam and its adherents.

The terrorists, we are informed are trying to goad us to respond in ways which would encourage and fuel the alienation and radicalisation of Muslims and hence add to the many thousands of volunteers who've been streaming to Syria and Iraq to join the monstrosity that is DAESH.

It is,of course a circular argument that leads us precisely nowhere.Because that is what motivates the authorities, i.e. western governments, to spout such utter bullshit in the first place. They whimper and cower before Political,Weaponised Islam because of their deluded,multiculturalised ideology that has poisoned and weakened virtually every national polity throughout Europe and the west in general.

And so it is inevitably scheduled to continue for many more decades still.Yes,the European Union will fall as a result.But we do seem to be going about it in the hardest way possible.

This from the Daily Telegraph,the day after the Brussels Massacre :-

The UNHCR said that migrant reception centres on Aegean islands such as Lesbos, where refugees have until been able to come and go at will, had been turned into grim detention centres.

The agency said it would no longer transport refugees by bus to the centres because they were being held there against their will.

“The camps now have limited freedom of movement. We do not support closed centres in principle,” Boris Cheshirkov, a UNHCR spokesman on Lesbos, told The Telegraph.

“The majority of arrivals here are from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. People should not be punished for seeking safety.”

And so it ends.

kulturist#5

"Yoo-ess-ay..yoo-ess-ay!!." is what the mob chanted repeatedly outside the White House when the news was broadcast of Bin Laden's death at the hands of US special forces.Like so many other "useful idiots" before him and no doubt with many more yet to come,Bin Laden had been bought and paid for by the West,trained and armed by the West and his "Best-before-date" expired as it was bound to.A carcass tossed casually overboard into the high seas is about as good as it gets for the likes of Bin Laden.Had back in '80, the thenSoviet Union been left to simply to get on with their "fraternal" and "internationalist"assistance to the Afghan government,no Islamic-terrorist threat would ever have seen the light of day.Alas,it was the era of the Cold War and the doctrine of"the enemy of my enemy is my friend"prevailed.And so right here and now is where we've ended up,at least for the forseeable future.The illegitimate offspring of the West's pathological fixation with "PC"(and the beneficiary of the West's intolerant doctrine of promoting/espousing "multiculturalism") Islamic Terrorism will be alive and well for years to come .