And so it begins

I've been predicting it for a couple of years now, but the main event of the "recession" is about to get under way. Strikes, chaos and disorder are already taking a grip in Europe - especially France - and here the coalition is about to announce the scale of the cuts to public sector spending as they attempt to get to grips with the debt monster created by the stupidity and profligacy of Blair, Brown and New Labour.

The non-existent recovery is stuttering to a halt while the banks and foreign companies feast on the entrails of our dying industry like vultures devouring a once proud lion that still breathes, but no longer has the strength to fight off the beaks and claws that tear at its flesh.

The unions are on the rise once more - boosted by membership from the bloated non-productive public sector of people in non-jobs - and are belligerent and confident once more. What is more they are now armed with a tactic - the repeated one or two day strike - which causes the most harm and disruption to the employers and the public with the least inconvenience to themselves and their members.

Our armed forces will soon be no longer fit for the purpose of defending the nation - although I'm not convinced that they have been for twenty years - but it doesn't matter. We've sold our nation to the EU anyway and the only thing our soldiers are likely to be doing in the next ten years is putting down internal insurrection and civil chaos. They won't need tanks, planes or aircraft carriers to do that.

And all this as a result of spending cuts that will do nothing to stop the inevitable. This isn't the end of the cuts, the chaos and disruption - this is merely the beginning.

Where are they now?

Just been watching BBC Breakfast talking to one of the stars of the new British film "Made In Dagenham" which is about the strike by women workers at Ford's Dagenham plant in the nineteen seventies. The strike was about the women wanting to be classed as semi-skilled workers rather than unskilled and the higher pay that would bring and led, eventually, to the introduction of the Equal Pay Act, allegedly.

Now, it's all very well "celebrating" this landmark strike, but the question is - where are all those jobs now? Ford don't make cars in Britain - let alone Dagenham anymore. Those female strikers may have struck a blow for women's rights, but they also struck a blow to the future of British manufacturing.

And yet, this fairly significant point seems to have been missed by the liberal media who are so busy telling us what a great thing this was that they've forgotten that the eventual result was that those women - and future generations of women no longer have the opportunity to work at Ford's Dagenham plant.

Minority self-interest groups

My previous post has prompted a couple of commenters to accuse me of "socialism".

First of all, I have never denied that there are elements of my politics which some would clearly label as socialist - so what? The idea of a state owned monopoly is "socialist" but I still think that the only way to provide such a service as a universal postal service is through a state run monopoly - and so did many great conservative leaders. Does that make them "socialists"?

Secondly, the previous post was aimed at the vast amount of attention that the relatively few Britons stuck abroad were receiving from the media and the government in comparison to the lack of interest shown in the millions of "abandoned" Britons at home that are never given a second thought.

My personal political philosophy has always been a mixture of left and right - I am a social conservative. My over riding belief is that the principle job of a national government is to manage the country to the benefit and with the least inconvenience to the majority of the nation's people.

My main complaint about progressive liberal governments and the media that supports them is that they do not do this. Instead they manage the country to the benefit of various minority self-interest groups at the expense of and with the most inconvenience to the majority - and this flight ban episode has demonstrated this all too well.

What else can you call 150,000 people stuck in foreign airports because their flights back from their very expensive Easter holiday (one of the most expensive times to fly) have been cancelled but a minority self-interest group?

If you believe these people deserve special attention from the government and the media then you accept the principle that other minority self-interest groups also deserve such special attention.

I do not.

Big state or "big society"? It's the same thing when government is involved

So Dave has revealed his grand plan and what makes him "different" from Brown. Dave's going to replace the "big state" with a "big society". Yay!

Oh dear, oh dear. Is that it? Really? Is that what all those Cameron supporters are pinning their hopes on?

Because, when you strip it down, all Cameron is proposing is a big state through different means. All he is offering is more quangos and more fake charities gobbling up government funding (our money) to pay for various government initiatives. In other words - it is exactly the same thing that we've been getting for the last 13 years under Blair and Brown.

Cameron claims that this is a "bottom up" process - but he is wrong. He is wrong for two reasons. First of all, in a bottom up process, the "community" decide what they want and decide how they will fund it. There is no government involvement whatsoever - but under his plan the community may decide what they want, but government will decide whether it is acceptable and will decide how it is funded.

Forget the fact that the decision may be made by some regional authority or "charity" and that the funding may not come directly from a government department - it is the same thing with a different name.

The second thing to bear in mind is that we do not have society because we have a government - we have a government because we have society. This is essentially the problem for the socialist ideology because they attempt to model society to what they want which, ultimately, can not happen.

A society is a group of people with shared values, mutual interests and a common culture. There are obviously levels of society - both geographical and class - but the ultimate conclusion of that society is the nation state. It can not go beyond that - as I have said many times before - because there isn't a group of people with the shared values, mutual interests and common culture beyond the nation state.

Government does not make society. It can not make society. All it can do is impose state directives on a society - i.e. big government. Dave's idea sounds different - but it isn't. It's the same thing with a different name.

Much like the Tory and Labour parties.

Campaign or coronation?

The prospect of a President Blair has reared its ugly head again over the last couple of weeks. As the EU Constitution edges ever closer to taking full effect (many parts of it have already been introduced) the talk has moved from if to when.

Cue various politicians and political commentators telling us why we should or shouldn't accept Blair as EU President - as if we have any say in this whatsoever!

The reality is that we have no choice in this matter. Blair may or may not be appointed EU President regardless of what we or anybody else in Europe think or want. There is no election for this post - just a simple coronation followed by a huge salary and entourage for the new President.

And don't fool for all this garbage that we're hearing from the geeky Milliband or grumpy Brown about Blair being there to represent British interests. The post of EU President requires that person not to represent the interests of any particular nation. What he will do is represent the politics of his preferred ideology - socialism - and with the vast majority of the EU in the thrall of socialist doctrine there is no doubt that the appointment of Blair (or any other candidate) will not be in the interests of Britain.

This isn't an election. This is the coronation of the new socialist Emperor of Europe.

All hail Anthony Blair - the new Charlemagne.

In built bias at the BBC

As revealed by a senior controller.

Ben Stephenson, the controller of BBC drama commissioning, said that the corporation should encourage "peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking."

Mr Stephenson then tried to excuse his bias by claiming that the phrase had no political meaning.

"Like 'left-field', it is a phrase that I use with frequency when talking to the creative community to encourage them to develop and approach their ideas from a completely new perspective," he said.

In which case Mr Stephenson is either a fool - and I don't think that someone that stupid should be a controller in the BBC - or is being deliberately disingenuous. Unless he is a complete idiot he will know damn well that "left of centre" is a political phrase meaning socialist. He'll also know that it does not mean the same as "left field" and is not interchangeable with that expression.

I don't think Mr Stephenson is a fool - I think he knows only too well what is meant by "left of centre" and slips it in to promote his own particular choice of politics - and I believe he is far from being the only one who is left of centre in the BBC who does this. I think he's got so used to doing it unchallenged that it didn't occur to him that some people might disagree with him.

What you think or want is irrelevant

That is the message from the government.

Welcome to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Britain, comrades.

A touch of class

Around the blogosphere and in various newspapers there are still quite a few people who seem to think that the introduction of the 50p tax rate had something to do with raising revenue. It won't and it wasn't. It was about Labour doing something - anything - that would win them favour with the Old Labour class warriors and, to be fair, from what I've seen and heard it has mostly worked.

Over the last few years, Labour has kind of abandoned their traditional cause of sticking up for the working man - which, at least in part, has allowed the British National Party to flourish - and moved on to pastures new such as discrimination, immigration, multiculturalism, sexual orientation and so on.

There are a couple of reasons for this, in my opinion. First of all, let me say that it wasn't because the class system had been erased and was therefore no longer appropriate for the Labour Party to fight for the working man. The class system is alive and well - just slightly restructured with considerably less movement between social groups. The social mobility that characterised the forties and fifties has not only been frozen - it's been largely reversed and people find themselves entrenched in a social class with little opportunity to move on.

We have also lost the slow improvement in meritocracy that was, gradually, taking place in Britain before the advent of progressive dogma. Although it is true to say that it is less now about having the right school tie, it is now - as much as ever - necessary to belong to the right "club". It's not so much who you know, anymore - it's what you think that opens doors to the institutions of power.

Anyway - the first reason that Labour abandoned their traditional working class roots is that they realised that achieving their aims would effectively mean the end of their raison d'etre. The Labour Party was formed to support the working class man - but once the socialist model had achieved hegemony then working class man no longer mattered. So they had to find other reasons for being and other causes to support - hence the branching out into the areas above.

The other reason is that the Labour Party could not foresee any circumstance whereby their core voter base would vote any other way. Who else was white working man going to vote for? Yes, there were a fair few who switched to supporting Thatcher in 1979 - but given the mess Labour had made of things, who could blame them?

Besides, that disaffection was also driven by the Labour abandonment of social conservatism - pretty soon the electorate would realise that the Tories had also abandoned social conservatism as well and they'd all come back to the fold. They had to - there was no alternative - except not to vote which many many people are increasingly choosing to do.

But the Labour Party didn't reckon with the BNP or the Internet. They thought they could just continually smear the BNP as racist extremists and, with the support of the MSM and various other groups, that would be enough to ensure the BNP would always be seen as "right wing extremists".

Unfortunately for Labour, the BNP publish their views and their policies on the Internet and anyone can go and take a look for themselves what they really say and what their policies are - and when they do, as many thousands are doing every week by all accounts, they find that the policies of the "far right extremists" are actually fairly socialist Old Labour policies which, not that long ago, would have been quite at home in a Labour Party Manifesto.

Unsurprisingly, this has found favour with a considerable number of white working class people who feel abandoned by their traditional party of choice and led to a trickling of support away from Labour and to the BNP - but the trickle keeps getting bigger and soon it may be a stream and then a flood - and that worries Labour.

They've found that continually shouting down the BNP as far-right racist nutters isn't actually putting people off the BNP. Instead, all it is doing is alienating and offending those people who have taken a look for themselves and found themselves in considerable agreement with much of what the BNP say. Labour may have been able to win those people back with reasoned argument - but calling them racist scum isn't going to do it.

So Labour have reverted to their old ways - bash the rich. They would have liked to have done far more than they did, but they realise that too much would scare off many of the floating voters who, now more than ever, are essential to their chances of securing any future role in government.

Hence the 50p tax rate - nothing to do with raising revenue and everything to do with trying to stem the loss of support from the white working class. To be honest, I don't think it will work. Any kudos they regain from the white working class isn't going to be enough to sway the balance in their favour unless they can come up with other ways and means of showing that they mean it without alienating the floating voter into believing that Labour are back to their old tax and spend ways (which they never actually abandoned).

The next General Election isn't winnable for Labour - instead they will have to rely on the Tories to lose it. And I still don't believe that that is beyond the realms of possibility.

Love and hate

What motivates me to be a conservative?

Love.

Love of country, family, society, traditions, freedom, democracy, history and culture and a desire to retain all of these things intact for all time.

What motivates a socialist?

Hatred. Hatred for all the above and a desire to eradicate them.

Socialists don't do love - which is why any attempt to defend those things I list above are confronted by leftist arguments based on hatred.

I love my country? It's because I hate foreigners.
I love family? It's because I hate women.
I love society? It's because I hate the poor.
I love traditions? It's because I hate change.
I love freedom? It's because I hate equality.
I love democracy? it's because I hate minorities.
I love our history? It's because I hate progress.
I love our culture? It's because I hate people with a different skin colour.

None of this is true. I don't hate anybody or anything - except the prospect of losing all the things I hold dear to an idea that will destroy the things I love.

The measure of society

One of the things that annoys me most about progressive liberals is the way they claim that the old traditional ways of doing things had to be dismantled in the interests of society.

They readily admit that - yes, it is true that Britain before progressive liberalism was a more law-abiding society with safer streets, but there was also all that grinding poverty, domestic violence, low educational achievement and child abuse going on too - and that is what progressive liberalism was about eradicating.

My argument is that - even supposing the tales of grinding poverty, domestic violence and child abuse were true (more about that in a bit) - after 50 years of progressive liberalism they are at least as bad if not worse. In addition to which we now have dangerous streets and lawlessness. So clearly, if the true intention of social liberalism was to eradicate these things, it didn't work - not only that, but it made society generally worse overall.

If society has been made worse, then how can they claim that it was done in the interest of society? It just doesn't make sense. I've also had social liberals complain that although a socially conservative Britain had an ordered and law-abiding society, it also had polio - as if this had anything to do with social conservatism or liberalism!

The poverty claim is one of the most commonly applied misconceptions of pre-social liberal Britain. Of course poverty existed - as it still does - but compared to the poverty of Victorian Britain fifty years earlier the poor of fifties Britain were positively affluent. Progress - real measured and sustainable progress - had been made on alleviating the problems associated with being poor - far more than has been made in the fifty years since.

The biggest difference between then and now is that, although the poor of today have more "things", they are blighted by a moral poverty which largely did not exist fifty years ago - primarily brought about by social liberalism. We may not have had the latest pair of trainers, but we had the love and comfort of a married mum and dad and knew the difference between right and wrong.

Domestic violence is another one of their favourite anthems - although there is little evidence that domestic violence was any where near as prevalent as the progressives claim it was (most evidence to support the claim is anecdotal - i.e. some social liberal feminist tells how her mum used to be browbeaten and whipped by their dad when they were growing up).

Despite all that, and fifty years of progressive liberalism, feminism and social reforms designed to favour women the evidence suggests that domestic violence is far more prevalent now than it has ever been. No one is suggesting that domestic violence didn't exist - but the idea that progressive liberalism has solved it is patently ludicrous.

The same for child abuse - it is at least as prevalent today as it has always been - quite possibly more so given that so many children end up in single mother households where they then have to watch mummy go through several "boyfriends" who might occasionally kick, hit or otherwise abuse the kids in one of their periodic drug enhanced rages.

By every valid measure, society is worse or no better now than it was when Britain was socially conservative. Fifty years of progressive liberalism has not solved the problems it claims to have been interested in solving - and in many cases has actually made it worse.

But still our politicians insist that social liberalism is the panacea! Can anything be more obviously wrong? Why can't they see it?

I'm not advocating returning to 1950's Britain in terms of material or medical progress - just a return to the social conservatism and values that were once the foundations of our stable and much admired society. Society was far from perfect then, but it was considerably more ordered and law-abiding than it is today - and the problems of those times are still as much a problem today if not more so.

As the old saying goes - when you're in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

The reactionary left

Over on Iain Dale's Diary there is a quote from the architect of the Red Rag website, Derek Draper.

"We believe that what is true of political communications and consumer marketing is true of any and all communications: human beings decide what they think of you with their gut. If your emotional message leaves them cold, then your argument won’t matter."

I've tried to leave a comment on this on the site, but for some reason it won't accept my words of wisdom. So I'll post them here.

Basically, Draper is right - but only because we let him be right.

Once upon a time, political discourse in Britain was based on rational, fact based argument - but that was when Britain was a reserved nation not given to emotional outbursts and mawkish sentimentality. Unfortunately for the left, their arguments have very little impact when faced with rational argument which is why left wing politics made very little progress in Britain until the left introduced emotive argument.

I suppose the exact moment this happened is debatable as the origins of this lie in the suffragette movement - not directly, as the suffragette movement's main argument was actually quite rational - but as a consequence of middle and upper class women being exposed to the harsh realities of the prison system through their illegal activities.

This led to the movement for prison reform based entirely on irrational, emotive arguments rather than rational thought and was a turning point in political terms. Even so, it would still be another 40 years or so before it became mainstream. The reason for that, as I mentioned, is that Britain was still a reserved and conservative nation driven by an overriding belief in rational thought as the guiding principle for action.

The real change, however, didn't occur until the sixties when the left finally started to break down the traditional British reserve which was always their biggest obstacle. Instead of being encouraged to keep our emotions in check we were encouraged to "let it all hang out" as if this was a good thing. This was propagated through a series of reactionary movements designed to kick back at the "establishment".

Since then the left has relied entirely on reactionary, emotive argument to put their case and to close down any dissenting voice. Whatever the subject, the response of the left is to use emotive language to win the argument - so if you argue that spending cuts are necessary, they insist this means closing schools and hospitals.

The biggest mistake of the right was to fall into the same trap and start trying to argue their case on emotive terms. Cameron is a prime example of this with his ridiculous publicity stunt early in his leadership to demonstrate the dangers of "global warming".

AGW is a perfect case in point. Rationally, the anthropogenic global warming case is slight to say the least. The belief that mans contributions to greenhouse gases (a mere 0.03% of the naturally occurring total) is the main driver of global climate. Rather than concentrate on the facts - i.e. climate variability is entirely natural and nothing out of the ordinary; that warming is generally more beneficial to life on earth than cooling; that CO2 is not a pollutant, but an essential trace gas and airborne fertiliser helping us to produce higher crop yields and feed our growing population - instead of that the left use emotive arguments.

So AGW is all about drowning polar bears, flooded nations and drought ridden deserts where arable land once flourished - all of which, apart from being dubious assertions anyway, are emotive arguments.

This is the way the left works - whatever the subject. You want to discuss immigration? You're a racist. You think education was better with selective grammar schools? You're an elitist. You think the first principle of the criminal justice and prison system is to punish wrongdoers? You're inhuman. You think social conservatism is better than social liberalism? You're an authoritarian.

The left can do this because the right has let them. And because we've let them we've had to join them. So now all the arguments take place on their terms - and this is why the Tories have moved so far to the left.

Rational argument has been thrown out of politics because we now let our hearts rule our heads. We know in our minds that Britain is descending into an anarchic hellhole. We know that the policies of the last fifty years have failed to produce a better nation, but we're unable or unwilling to argue the rational case.

Until we on the right start to argue the toss using rational argument we will never be able to beat the left. As long as we continue to let them dominate the debate with their emotive reactionary arguments then we'll always be second best. Draper knows this.

Chutzpah!!!

Stephen Pollard writing in The Times about Guido Fawkes and blogging.

So I am no starry-eyed fan of blogging per se. But I am evangelical about the benefits that it can bring - and I accept that the price of being able to print genuine exposés may be the freedom to print rubbish.

The MSM thrives on having the freedom to print rubbish.

That said, Pollard makes a serious point and one which I've been trying to push.

Guido Fawkes had 147,689 unique visitors last month. A big number for an independent website, yes; but small fry compared with the millions who, for instance, watch BBC News.

The real impact of a blog story happens only when it moves into the traditional media. Many stories emerge online about politicians; but they only affect their careers when a newspaper makes them part of the broader news agenda.

The point Pollard makes is that the MSM still controls what the vast majority of people get read or hear about - and my point is that the MSM is overwhelmingly leftist in its make-up. The BBC itself is institutionally leftist by its own admission, but it is far from being alone.

The right does not have such an outlet for its ideas and opinions - all we have is the blogosphere which relies entirely on someone coming to find specific content. The left don't have this problem - they are able to disseminate their world view through the MSM.

They don't even have to use news, current affairs or political discussion programmes or stories to push these views. They promote them through comedy, drama and even documentary. They quite happily use childrens television to push a leftist viewpoint about all manner of subjects thus indoctrinating the young at the earliest opportunity. They also dominate the schools, universities and colleges. Pushing a particular political doctrine on to children is supposed to be illegal, but that has never stopped the left doing so.

Not only do the left dominate these areas but they actively work to recruit only from the left into those areas. And if, somehow, someone of a right wing opinion manages to slip through the net and get into education or journalism, the left have a programme of indoctrination which they will be forced to go through to ensure their conversion or, at the very least, compliance (usually it goes under innocent sounding titles such as "diversity training" - but indoctrination is what it is).

It is this domination of the MSM and the establishment that allows progressive liberalism to maintain its iron grip on the political topology of Britain - but it only maintains that grip while the reality of the world view they push remains hidden from the electorate.

As soon as the reality starts to dawn on people - whether it be the reality of crime, education, immigration, economy or what have you - only then does that grip diminish. That is starting to happen now. The dreadful state of our education and high levels of crime are affecting the youth of Britain in particular and the next generation are showing signs that they do not like what is happening. The impacts of immigration hit the white working class far harder than they hit the metropolitan elite as it is their homes that are going, their streets that are being colonised and their kids that are finding it hard to find school places because the schools are full of immigrant children.

And now the economy is bust and the ordinary people of "Middle England" (a horrible phrase which is largely incorrect - in truth they are the real working classes) are starting to see that the leftist world view is nothing more than fantasy.

The bulwark against this pressure is the public sector and welfare state - the vast army of leftist state dependents - which is holding this thing together and prevent it from collapsing at the moment. But that can not last. The public sector and welfare state is and always has been unsustainable - especially for an economy which is not based on manufacturing.

I've no doubt that the left wing domination of Britain is coming to an end, but my big concern is that it will not end peacefully. Because the left has fought so hard to deceive the electorate and hide the reality which is now becoming impossible to deny I fear that the resulting anger may boil over into hatred and vengeance - with all that entails. I hope it isn't the case. I hope that traditional British stoicism, reservation and preference for quiet revolutions rather than violent confrontation means we can move back to a conservative world view and allow us to recapture that traditional British nationalism and centre right social conservatism that was our hallmark for so long.

That's what I hope for, but I have serious doubts.

Welcome to Toyland

From the Telegraph.

The government is pinning our future economic prosperity on Noddy cars and Toytown power generation.

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, is also planning to create 400,000 jobs in the green sector over the next five years. Other measures will include the Government relaxing planning rules to allow the building of more wind farms to ensure Britain hits its target to generate 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Yep - welcome to the future, where you'll be able to travel from London to Birmingham in just 4 days! As long as the wind is blowing. Eh? Faster by coach and four? You jest, surely. Our brilliant PM, the Saviour Of Democracy, Gordon Brown has thought of that - you see, we're going to have lots of charging stations on the roadside ..... yeah, it will still take all night to charge your car up, but what's the rush.

The SOD also deigned to tell us about the future New World Order.

He continued: "This is going to be a progressive decade. I think people do understand that some of the problems we had can only be solved, first of all, by governments working together with other governments, nations co-operating with nations. There is a new internationalism, a new strategic role for countries working together to solve common problems."

Yep - a liberal progressive decade of profound, prolonged and very very deep depression. This is what it is all about people - the "new internationalism" which is the old Marxist stepping stone to world socialism.

It will fail, of course - but the longer we let it continue the more painful and dangerous the failure will be.

Non-judgemental social services ....

... unless you are a man and a soldier.

Because he was a man and a soldier - accustomed to fighting for Britain in war-torn countries - he was, they said, more likely to be of a violent disposition, and therefore more capable of abusing his baby son, Louie.

You can probably include white and heterosexual as attributes which exclude you from not being judged by social services - oh, and smoking cigarettes. Any of those will put social services on full alert and bring the full wrath of their judgementalism down upon you.

I, like many people of my generation, am a child of a man and a soldier - one who fought to protect our freedoms from tyranny.

Seems like they wasted their time.

State sponsored deceit

According to The Telegraph, the government's (currently the biggest advertiser on television) anti-smoking ads are to be screened only after 7:30PM.

More than 60 people complained that the Government's "Scared" campaign on TV and radio would cause children stress or worry by suggesting their parents could die imminently if they smoked.

I've seen the ads and thought they were particularly daft - not least because they showed children of around 11-13 saying they weren't scare of this and that, but were scared of their beloved parent dying from smoking - then cut to the parent involved who looks to be around 30. Yep, lad - your dad's going to die .... in about forty or fifty years time.

Alternatively he could quit smoking and extend his life by ten years to become a dribbling, incontinent wreck shunted into an old folks home that you maybe see twice a year when you can be bothered to take a break from your busy life to travel the hundred miles to visit him from the town you moved away to when you were thirty yourself.

The Department of Health defended the advert thus.

Research also showed that children had a "real emotional fear" of their parents' smoking and that many smokers failed to realise the emotional and mental consequences their habit might have on their loved ones, the Department of Health said.

Yeah - they have a "real emotional fear" thanks to this sort of advertising and the general anti-smoking message that goes out from the government and various organisations - but that doesn't mean the fear is justified. Both my parents smoked - my mum still does - and I never had a "real emotional fear" that my parents would be killed by it. That fear comes from this sort of advertising which - if it were for anything else - would be deemed misleading and inaccurate.

My dad died in his mid-seventies from something completely unrelated to his 40 a day 60 year habit (even though the doctors were keen to attribute it to smoking - it was only because of another incident on the ward forced the hospital to perform an autopsy that the real cause of death was discovered). My mum quit smoking for two years on the advice of the doctor, piled on two stone in weight and became lethargic and inactive. Back to ten a day she is now a stone lighter and thinks nothing about walking the couple of miles to my house and back - she's nearly 80.

I've known hundreds - if not thousands - of smokers over the years and none have died particularly young as a result of smoking. All the people I know that did die young died as a result of something else - mostly car and motorcycle accidents, a few from AIDS (all gay, all dead before they were 50), two from cancer (not related to smoking) and a dozen or so from using drugs.

If the government and their associated agencies put as much effort into anti-drugs advertising as they do anti-smoking then I doubt we'd have half the problem we do have with drugs. Instead they waffle on about "harm-reduction" and getting the "facts" across. Of course, by the time the kids start to take any notice of this they are a couple of years older than those targeted by the anti-smoking ads, are starting to rationalise things, noticed that their parents aren't dead and come to the conclusion that the government are a bunch of lying hypocrites.

All of this is by the by as these adverts cross a boundary that nobody should allow in as much as they are actually designed to flagrantly undermine parental authority and replace it with the authority of the state. That alone is cause to have these sort of "pester power" advertisements taken off the air for good.

Them and us

The public sector can look forward to "inflation busting" pay increases while the private sector struggles.

NHS staff, police officers and teachers were all told yesterday that their awards will be met in full - on the day the Retail Prices Index, which is used to set pay rises, fell to zero for the first time in 49 years.

Nice for them - not so nice for those of us in the private sector whose pockets are being picked to service these arrangements. Still, no one minds teachers, coppers and nurses getting more money, do they?

Meanwhile, senior civil servants earning up to £200,000 a year are pressing for a 3 per cent increase in the pay pot used to boost their salaries.

Officials from their union, the First Division Association, claim the boost is needed for around 4,000 Whitehall staff on at least £60,000 because their pay lags behind equivalent posts in the private sector.

Fine - go and get a job in the private sector, then. Oh, there aren't any. Nor do you get the security, fat pension and the opportunity to retire at 60 either.

John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: 'The public sector is at present an entirely recession-free zone.

Recession free? Hey, it's still boom time at the public sector trough - it's just a question of how many more people can stuff their snouts in it before the private sector is sucked completely dry.

Last week, official figures showed that 30,000 jobs were created in the public sector last year, while 105,000 were lost in the private sector.

Not too long at that rate. Enjoy it while you can, public sector piggies - the revolution is coming.

From hippy to hypocrite

The Met are warning that the upcoming G20 summit will stretch them to the limit as anti-globalists line up to vent their anger at world leaders.

Given that I'm always banging on about globalisation being a bad thing you may be forgiven for thinking I'm on their side - I'm not.

For starters, they are not just anti-globalist - they are usually anti-capitalist as well. I'm not and never have been. For me the capitalist economic model is still the simplest and the best - but within a national context so that you, as a nation, can manage that capitalism for the benefit of your nation. Not that I think it requires that much management - I'm in favour of keeping regulation to a minimum, but I do accept that regulation is necessary and also that capitalism has a natural cycle which includes booms followed by regular, if small, downturns. The management capitalism requires is restricting imports that can distort the local markets and lead to the inevitable spending boom which leads to the inevitable credit boom, followed by the inevitable huge market crash.

Most of the people who will be protesting at the G20 summit will be radical socialists and new age hippys, though. They all moan about "globalisation", but you can bet your ass that there will be plenty of protesters dressed in cheap t-shirts made by 8 year olds in Indonesia, expensive trainers that cost £5 to make in China and bellies filled with booze from Germany and burgers from Brazil. A good number of them will be smoking spliffs which they believe to be filled with the best Thailand has to offer, but was actually grown in a maisonette in Catford. A delicious irony.

I don't like their attitude. I believe the best way to protest against globalisation is to do as much as you can to avoid having anything to do with it. Buy local goods from local producers in local shops. I know that the vast majority of people who go to these demonstrations don't do that - they voice their anger at these events and chuck bricks through the windows of McDonald's then go back to their own little hovels filled with cheap junk from all over the world to binge on a Big Mac, fries and chocolate shake.

They want to be seen as "radical" - but when they get home they're as globalist as the next person - and stinking hypocrites.

Cuts to the police reveals the leftist mentality

What public services do you use? No, roads and streetlights don't count - they are public utilities, not services. You don't "use" the guys who mend the road, the council does.

I mean what public services do you directly use?

I reckon I'm like most people and all I really use to any regular sort of degree are the bin men, schools for my kids, our local GP and the Royal Mail. I've never had any need to use countless hundreds of other services that the government provide - drug counsellors, five-a-day co-ordinators, youth offending outreach workers and so on. I've also been quite fortunate to never have needed to use the Labour Exchange - or whatever it's called now - but I suspect over the coming months and years millions of Britons will find out what that is like for the first time.

Bins, schools, health, post. That's about it for me and most people as far as "front line" public services are concerned - plus one other.

The police.

Whenever people like me suggest that the public sector has grown out of control in recent years the lefties always counter with the "what schools and hospitals will you cut?" question. The answer for most conservatives is, of course, none - there is ample scope for the public sector to make cuts without touching the services that most of us use on a regular basis.

I now realise why they ask that question. They are not being disingenuous as I originally thought - they genuinely believe that the first place you need to make public sector cuts is in the services we most use.

Why is this? Well, socialism is all about victims as groups rather than victims as individuals. Hardly surprising I suppose, given that it's all about "collectivism". The whole leftist movement is based on identifying various victim groups and then supporting their cause.

Originally it was the cause of the working man, but leftists soon cottoned on to the fact that any "victim group" is worth supporting - it's not about the who, it's about the how. The more victim groups they can identify and support, the more support they get in return. The more support they have the more they can build the society they envisage.

The trouble with that is, once you've exhausted the basic victim groups - working man, women, blacks, homosexuals and so on - you start running out of victim groups to support. So they invent new ones. Drug abusers are no longer self-harming idiots - they are "victims" who require "front-line" services. Criminals are not morally reproachable, but victims of their circumstances and in need of "front-line" services.

All this means that when a recession strikes and there is a need to cut public spending, they just can't bring themselves to cut spending on their favourite victim groups - firstly because they really believe their own bullshit, but also because that is where their key support now lies.

So instead of cutting the myriad of services which most of us will never have any reason to use, they cut the services which we will.

Balls of confusion

Ed Balls is suggesting that the global depression could lead to a resurgence in fascism which, given the authoritarian nature of our current government, is kind of ironic.

What Balls is trying to do is equate "nationalism" with fascism - but they are not the same thing. It is true that those fascist regimes we most usually think of - Nazi Germany and 1930's Italy - were nationalistic as well as fascist, but it's also worth remembering that Britain was also a nationalist country up until relatively recently and the USA remains hugely nationalist, but neither were or are fascist.

Nationalism and fascism are two separate political concepts - and like many political concepts they can co-exist. The general view - propagated by the left - is that fascism is nationalism with a racial element, but this is something I disagree with. In my view, fascism is socialism with a racial element. The best way to describe this is by looking at two nationalist countries and comparing them - the USA and China.

Yes, the USA is nationalist - strongly so. It is, effectively, at the point Britain was at around 50 years or so ago (yes, Britain also used to be strongly nationalist) and is now facing many of the challenges that Britain faced back then. Whether it will come through those challenges better than we did remains to be seen.

China is also strongly nationalist. Like the USA, China arrived at the nationalist state through a revolutionary war, but unlike the USA China applied the ideology of Marxism as the political doctrine while the USA reverted to liberal democracy.

If you now compare the two states for the elements of fascism you will find that China meets most of the criteria - authoritarian, dictatorial head of state, oppressive state, crushing of political dissent, intolerance of government criticism, intrusion of the state into individual freedoms, intrusive state surveillance on the people, an informer society (to the extent where family members inform on other family members) and a single party political system.

Compare that to the USA and, although many leftists will disagree, none of those things exist in the USA. So both are nationalist, but China is far more fascist than the USA even though it has no racial criteria in its nationalism. The USA once did, though - but even when it did it still wasn't a fascist country! Do you see the difference? Even though the USA once had a strong racial element and was also a nationalist country it still wasn't fascist, while China which has no racial element to its political ideology is very much, in every other way fascist.

So what is the difference? The difference is, of course, authoritarianism. but because of the nature of socialism - the requirement for the state to take more control over peoples lives - socialism always leads to authoritarianism. So both socialism and fascism share a key element - the only difference between the two is that socialism does not include a racial element (at least, not an expressed one. The only significant difference between the USSR and Nazi Germany was that the USSR never actually admitted to wanting to exterminate the Jews - although they had a pretty good go all the same).

So fascism is not nationalism with a racial element - it is authoritarianism with a racial element. Balls suggestion that fascism could rise once again is, presumably, based on a concern about the possible rise of the BNP, but although the BNP have a clearly expressed racial element to their policies, I've seen nothing in those policies that would lead to authoritarianism - so they would not be fascist.

Indeed, the BNP (if you believe their policies) appear committed to real democracy based on popular sovereignty and political plurality - which, combined with significant, constitutional checks and balances on political hegemony, are all essential to avoid authoritarianism - and that stands in stark contrast to the party Balls supports.

If, in the incredibly unlikely event, the BNP were to win a General Election there is nothing to suggest in their policies that we would become an authoritarian nation - and therefore we would not become fascist. Racist - possibly, fascist - no. Of course, the BNP could be lying about their intent, but unless they get elected we'll never know.

What is certain, however, is that if we continue along the lines we are currently on we most certainly will become authoritarian. We're halfway there already and if the continued erosion of our true democracy, political plurality and constitutional checks and balances continues unabated then we may soon reach the point of no return (or rather, no return without significant upheaval).

I am a fervent nationalist. I believe that the nation state is the ultimate development of a community - a people with a shared language, history, heritage, traditions and culture. I believe that race is no barrier to membership of that community - only the willingness of an individual to accept the things I mentioned - language, history, heritage, traditions and, most importantly, culture.

I know this is not a problem for many (if not most) Indian Asians, black Africans and Afro-Caribbean's who originate from countries which share many of those things with Britain thanks to the legacy of empire and I know that many (if not most) have no desire for Britain to change any of that. They are happy to be British within the confines of British culture because, essentially, that is what they are used to anyway.

I also know that it is impossible for a single nation to be multicultural. A single nation depends on having a culture - the norms, practices, traditions and laws - which all accept, but you can not have two different cultures competing for the same space. Either one will come to dominate the other - leading once more to a mono-cultural nation - or the nation will divide.

This has been a long post - sorry about that, but it is something which I feel very passionately about. I'm fed up with toerags like Balls painting nationalists as "fascists" when nationalists are nothing of the sort. Nationalism, in the context of a liberal democracy, is a good thing. We have nothing to fear from nationalism, but lots to fear from authoritarianism - and that is the road on which Balls and his like currently have us headed.

Sovereignty, democracy and education

Janet Daley seems to like David Cameron's ideas for education "reform", but remains a little sceptical to say the least.

What they will discover is what every previous bunch of politicians has discovered when they have tried to make the schools accountable to exasperated public opinion: trying to cure what is genuinely wrong with state education is like wrestling with an octopus. That infamous Education Establishment has a grip on the training of teachers, the appointment of heads, the admissions policies of schools, and the devising (and revising) of the curriculum. It is an ideological closed shop which, in spite of the rage and frustration of parents, employers, and political leaders, remains almost undaunted.

Very true - which is why we need to start restoring some proper democracy to our country.

Democracy is a much understood term these days. We seem to think it just means being able to have a free vote in General and local elections, but it is so much more than that. At the heart of democracy is something called "popular sovereignty". In political terms this means that the legitimacy of the state is dependent on the belief that this is the true will and with the consent of the people.

These days we like to call it "accountability" and the question then, in a democratic nation, is whether a particular arm of the state is "accountable" to the public. Increasingly, it is not. We cast our votes in elections thinking we are making a difference, but whoever we select for central or local government is largely irrelevant because they have very little influence on what each arm of the state does or how it does it.

At local level, whether you have a Conservative, Lib Dem or Labour Council is irrelevant - the heads of departments will still be the same and they will still be predominantly left wing. They are not answerable to the people in any way, shape or form and until this changes then we will continue to struggle to reform our state - whether that be education or health or anything else.

The reason for this is that more and more of the state has become centralised - and as that has grown then various governmental departments have passed sovereignty to more and more unelected and unaccountable agencies. This is the corporatism I have mentioned before - where true power increasingly lies not with the electorate but with various unelected boards and bodies over which we, the people, have no control.

All this has led to the slow erosion of our democracy. When we talk about loss of sovereignty we usually think about how our government has passed control over large areas of our lives to the EU, but they have also passed large areas of sovereignty to other non-governmental, unelected and unaccountable organisations too.

All this is inevitable with centralised, big government socialism. The usual response of both Labour and Tory governments to this problem has been to pass control to a local level - but they have done this in the worst possible way by passing it to unelected and unaccountable quangos - the Local Education Authorities, Health Trusts, Regional Development Authorities and so on - none of which we vote for and none of which are ever held to account by the people they supposedly represent.

The only way to restore democracy is to restore popular sovereignty and the only way to do this, in my opinion, is to reduce government. As a simple rule of thumb, the more "departments" a government has the less democratic it will be. The more control is given to "local" but unelected bodies the less sovereignty we have.

Cameron's ideas for "reform" are flawed for two reasons. First of all, they are based on what they consider they can possibly get the various education bodies - including the teaching unions - to accept and secondly because they do nothing to address the fundamental problem of education (and the state in general). Institutionalised leftism.

What we need now more than ever is a government that is prepared to stand up for true democracy. That's not about giving the vote to more and ever younger people - it is about ensuring that what the government does is the true will and with the true consent of the people.

That requires something of a revolution in our public services - and I see no sign or indication from Cameron that that is something he is genuinely considering. Just the opposite in fact.