[Part 1 of this essay was published yesterday, here]

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Living here as I do in St. Mary in the Wold, we have our fair share of commuters. Many of my neighbours work in education, the emergency services and the various local government agencies and leave the village between 7:00 and 8:00am. I’m an early riser and a few, a very few, and mainly women and older people like me, are also out and about at that time. Usually as I’m on my daily 10,000 steps route, the kids catch the school bus at 8:15, many having been delivered by parents to the pick-up point, and by 9:30 it’s just the odd retiree and the courier vans driving around. The reverse happens between 3:00 and 6:00 and by 7pm St. Mary returns to basking in the sun or maybe just goes to sleep.

So, these ‘busy’ people who work longer hours than any other generation, are in the main back home by seven in the evening. Then what do they do? Not a lot it seems. One thing for sure, the vast majority of these busy people don’t help out in the local organisations, they don’t  turn out to vote in large numbers, don’t stand for the council, don’t turn out for a litter pick or help to clear the snow from paths in the winter. The local church is never that busy these days so these busy people don’t go there, cars are parked outside of the village shops all of half a mile away, where quite a few stop off to buy a coffee on their way to work or on their way out, too busy you see to make breakfast at home.

But, to be fair, the local football teams are busy on Saturdays as the kids are driven in by their parents, and the local prospective Olympic cyclists get their practice laps in on local lanes and roads, many driving to the village car park with their cycles on the cars roof. And we also have our fair share of trainee Badminton horse riders jockeying for position with the 30 plus cyclists on the local lanes and highways along with the ‘bikers’ practicing for the Isle of Man T.T. Races. Then suddenly it’s quiet again, the busy busy people have all gone. But gone where to do what?

I spent some time delivering leaflets here in St. Mary earlier this year. Now, just like on a T.V. soap, the area is full of executive homes and prestige cars and all the rest of the essential paraphernalia that is so necessary these days to impress the other important people who live near as neighbours. What a surprise, many of the ‘homes’ were not of the manicured lawns, herbaceous borders and clipped hedges appearance which you may have thought just by driving by. On the contrary, these busy people obviously had no time at all in their hectic schedules to do basic things, such as cutting the lawn (unless they pay someone to do it!), sweep the drive or clean the windows. Just what do they do? They certainly don’t spend time, effort or money on their homes. Many can’t be bothered even to clean the car; not worth it and too busy it seems and anyway there’s that nice East European hand car wash at the supermarket. It was quite an eye opener just how down at heel and quite frankly dirty many homes were.

So, I started to take notice. Many of these people, as far as anyone can see, do absolutely nothing. Perhaps they think manual work is somehow beneath them (or more likely they don’t know how!); this would seem to be borne out by declining sales of D.I.Y. materials, and garden centres obviously full to the brim with people buying soft furniture and eating in the cafes but not actually buying garden tools, seeds and so on. Talking to the manager of such a centre recently, I remarked on how people buy tens of pounds worth of bedding plants already in flower and at the most inappropriate times. The conversation started when the person in front spent £200 on bedding plants well into their flowering period. Makes good business he said, nobody wants to actually grow things from seed or bulbs or cuttings these days; they want what we call instant gardens. They lead hectic lives you see and are far too busy to do what you might call active gardening.

The same with D.I.Y. material for minor jobs like painting and decorating. It seems the days when Dad did a major kitchen refurb or fitted and tiled the bathroom have long since gone. Work on the car or motorbike best left to the professionals would seem to be the attitude. How many homes have a tool kit in the garage these days?

I wonder then, if this not doing a lot but being very busy, has been a result of the decline or disappearance of the manufacturing industry. Many jobs were skilled or semi-skilled, but they meant that people used their hands, worked out problems and had skills that were transferable out of the workplace, skills that could be used on hobbies, D.I.Y, and so on. Could it be that people who were used to long hours doing manual work were more able physically, or perhaps they were just more motivated and didn’t have the money or credit card to pay someone else to do the work.

It’s odd then, these busy-lifestyle people, perhaps they are spending their time working out at the gym? Not so, say the health club owners, lots join in the new year, come two or three times and we don’t see them again. Too busy? “Nope,” he said, smiling, but it’s good business.

Going back to those people in the easier, apparently slower, less stressful, days of the early to mid-twentieth century, when people worked from 8:00am to 5:30 pm and 12:30pm on Saturdays, and still had time to build things at home, decorate, garden, run the scouts, the guides, play cricket, darts, socialise in the pub. How come they had the time? After all, they still had to travel to work, worry about paying the bills and all the rest of it, and my feeling is if you worked in a factory 5 1/2 days a week you would be fairly tired at the end of it.

There is something going on here that perhaps some of us have missed. Is it that many people have been told they can’t do this or say that, so much so that they have become demotivated and content to sit on their backsides and pay somebody else to do even simple jobs, or make a donation to some voluntary charity instead of actually helping with it? They are quite happy to sit around telling everyone how busy they are while in fact doing absolutely nothing but watch the grass grow and the paint dry.

Are they what a previous generation would call… well, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Written by Harry Weston

This article was first published in Briefings for Brexit and we re-publish with their kind permission

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It seems increasingly likely that the next leader of the Conservatives, and UK Prime Minister, will be Boris Johnson. On the face of it, this looks like good news for supporters of Brexit given Johnson’s record on this issue and his recent statement that the UK will leave the EU by October 31 ‘do or die’.

Yet given the history of the last two years, during which the genuine Brexit envisaged at Lancaster House was watered down to the Brexit in-name-only of Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement (WA), Brexit supporters should avoid euphoria and be very cautious. There were key moments over the last two years at which it became clear the May administration was abandoning the Lancaster House vision, and there are key things we believe a Johnson administration must do to prove it is serious about pushing through a real Brexit.

Disown entirely the Treasury’s doom-laden reports of 2016-18 and totally overhaul the Treasury.

The Treasury in 2016 produced two pre-referendum reports predicting short-term and long-term economic disaster if the country voted for Brexit. As we have written, the short-term one has been totally discredited by events, while the long-term one used flawed techniques to hugely exaggerate economic costs. Incredibly, the Treasury was then allowed to produce several more reports after the referendum – continuing to use flawed methodologies and selective use of/manufacturing of evidence to produce doom-laden forecasts of a ‘clean’ Brexit, i.e. one based on a free trade agreement with the EU or trading on WTO rules. That a body that supposedly supplies neutral advice to ministers was allowed to run a partisan campaign against government policy is quite extraordinary and very disturbing – the more so as the Treasury has refused to discuss its work with critical outside experts.

Therefore, a Johnson administration must not only publicly disown the Treasury’s analyses but also needs to bring in root-and-branch reform of the organisation – replacing senior officials and restoring the organisation’s reputations for expertise and neutrality.

Make the right appointments to key positions.

Following the 2017 election, Theresa May surrounded herself with Remain-supporting advisors and kept Remain-supporting ministers such as Chancellor Phillip Hammond in key roles. The result was inevitable – a steady drift to a Remain agenda and the neutering of Brexit.

A Johnson administration must be a clearly Brexit-supporting one and this must show in key appointments. The Chancellor must be a committed Brexiteer, willing to undertake the overhaul of the Treasury mentioned above and promote an economic strategy aimed at making the most of the new freedoms the UK will enjoy after Brexit in the areas of trade, tax and regulation. A clear-out of Remain-inclined officials such as Olly Robbins who have been working against Brexit is needed as is an entirely new team to negotiate with the EU. Ministers involved in this area must be committed to Brexit. Negotiations on trade should not be handled by officials but instead be led by trade experts, including external experts, with the civil service in a supporting and implementing role. It would make sense to have an active role for Crawford Falconer, hired as one of the world’s top trade negotiators but until now frozen out of negotiations. Individuals like Dominic Raab and Steve Baker must have important roles, and there must be no return to ministers and officials conducting negotiations behind the backs of Dexeu ministers. It is also crucial that sensitive ministries like business and agriculture/fisheries are given to Brexiteers and that Johnson’s personal advisors are not drawn from the ranks of Remainers.

No deal preparations must be accelerated and broadened.

No-deal preparations ahead of end-March were more comprehensive than is often understood – including a workable and liberal tariff schedule and series of mini-deals between the UK and EU on aviation and other sectors, and between the UK and EU member states on citizens’ rights. Nevertheless, preparations should have been more open (much in fact has still not been publicised), come earlier and been more properly tailored to helping businesses prepare. It would also have made sense for the government to commit to a big upgrade of UK border infrastructure and transport links connecting to it (lack of movement on this by May’s administration was one of the key tell-tale signs it was not serious about leaving the customs union).

A new Johnson administration needs to act immediately on these points, putting together a proper national changeover plan for borders and firms involved in international trade and committing to funding state-of-the art IT systems and overdue infrastructure upgrades.

Categorically state that May’s Withdrawal Agreement (WA) will not be revived under any circumstances.

The WA has now been clearly rejected by the House of Commons three times – rightly so. Its flaws extend far beyond the unacceptable Northern Ireland backstop provisions: it has rightly been described by leading lawyers as ‘a legally binding death-trap for Brexit’ and as a ‘political Chernobyl disaster’. Similarly, the legally integral Political Declaration (PD) cannot be supported. Among other things, it makes clear that the ‘future’ relationship of the UK with the EU will be based on a customs union – which would make the UK an economic dependency of the EU – and subordinates UK national security to the EU (see below).

A new Johnson administration must denounce the toxic package of the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration and make clear these texts will not form the basis of any future agreement with the EU.

End ‘mission creep’ over the Irish border issue.

The laudable aim of avoiding intrusive checks at the Irish border has been allowed to steadily expand – from keeping the border as ‘soft’ as possible to ruling out ‘any checks and controls’. The latter formulation has been used by the EU to claim that effective economic annexation of Northern Ireland (NI) by the EU is the only way ahead. And the EU has even been allowed to go further than this, claiming that huge areas of North-South cooperation (including, absurdly, the protection of certain butterflies) are dependent on EU law and regulations remaining in place in NI.

A new Johnson administration must end ‘mission creep’ over the Irish border and return to the initial concept of making the border as soft as possible subject to the requirement that NI will join the rest of the UK outside the EU customs area and single market. New commissions recently set up to look at ways to manage the border must be fully supported and not be mere window-dressing. Johnson must also make clear that in the absence of EU and Irish cooperation on this issue, the UK will go ahead with unilateral measures to avoid intrusive border checks on the UK side.

End the stealthy ceding of UK defence and security autonomy to the EU.

A number of interlocking defence provisions have been agreed with the EU since November 2016, almost entirely under the radar – provisions which the WA, as a treaty, would copper-fasten irrevocably. The May administration’s reversal of policy in May 2018 has led to the UK signing up, by unscrutinised executive action, to large areas of EU defence and security structures. If ratified by treaty, this would lead to the UK ceding huge areas of defence autonomy to the EU and risk the UK’s vital security cooperation with its ‘Five Eyes’ partners.

A Johnson administration must move rapidly to annul the defence and security giveaways noted above. Changes of personnel are also crucial in this area: Sir Alan Duncan cannot continue at the FCO and officials such as Alastair Brockbank, Angus Lapsley and Bryan Wells need to be replaced. They should be replaced by new security experts such as Sir Richard Dearlove, former Chief of SIS.

It is too early to tell how a Johnson administration will act on these issues and so far the indications from his campaigning for the Conservative leadership are limited. His broad-brush statements have been generally positive, although we are wary of Johnson’s suggestions that the citizens’ rights part of the WA might be revived: in our view that has a number of unpalatable elements and the UK government would do better to pursue additional bilateral deals with individual EU member states. Key for us are that Johnson repudiates the toxic WA/PD package and makes the right key appointments, not least at the Treasury. After the events of the last two years, we will be watching a new Johnson administration very carefully on all the above issues.

Some years ago, I had some time to kill and so turned up with my paraglider to a remote flying site. I set up my tent near the site in a field where we were allowed to camp. There was just one old caravan in the field, a caravan occupied by an old soldier. I’d had a life time’s passion for extreme sports and whether it was at sea, in the mountains or in the air, the military were always well represented in these sports and so I wasn’t surprised to see this man.

Being the only two people around we got to chatting and he told me that he’d retired from the army. He had been as he put it: “an infantryman – the steely eyed killers of the night.” I looked at the man to weigh him up; highly intelligent, very confident, he’d probably succeed at anything that he did. As he stood there, built like a brick outhouse with fists like lump hammers and dressed in old combat clothing, I couldn’t imagine him as anything else but a soldier: he’d have made Rambo look gay.

Our first task was to go and get a pile of slabs of beer from the supermarket. Over the coming days we had lovely flying weather and we fell into a routine of loonying around at cloud base all afternoon before landing and getting into the beer. Without telling me too much, the man told me a little of his military experience.

It turned out that this man had an expertise in guerrilla, insurgent type warfare, he had some amazing skills, for instance, he could improvise weapons from virtually anything, weapons to stab, explode and shoot. After a few days, he produced a big box of very old assorted firearm parts, it looked like a pile of old junk. He rummaged through and selected parts for an improvised assault rifle that he’d been building. He knew exactly which bits were interchangeable, which bits he could modify and so on.

A couple of days later, he produced a Frankenstein concoction of a weapon that he demonstrated worked extremely well by sending a burst of tracer rounds into the night sky. He loved the sight of tracers in the night but after he’d emptied another magazine, accompanied by a great deal of noise, I suggested that it probably wasn’t a good idea. The police were going to take a dim view of this.

He went and stashed his weapon. I knew he wouldn’t hurt anyone with it, he’d just strip it down again. We cracked another slab of beer and never did see the police. After a few more days the weather deteriorated and I headed off and never saw this man again.  I’d say he was a little more than an ordinary infantryman but I know when to mind my own business.

You may wonder why I’m writing about this but I am horrified at what our country is turning into and I think many people still just don’t realise what is happening.

As Theresa May promised us dozens of times that leave means leave, behind our backs she was plotting with the EU to sell us out even further and give away our military: what’s left of it. Treason is so commonplace now that the word just doesn’t have any impact anymore, what was once the most serious capital offence is now a daily event committed without fear

Telling the truth it seems is now a crime. The industrialised brutal rape of a million young white girls for example has been ignored by our government. They have tried to cover it up, hence they are complicit in these crimes. I think this it what really made me realise just how evil our government is behind their smiles and reassurances and just how much contempt they have for us.

Tony Blair was the first politician to openly embrace globalism, the EU, UN and other supranational organisations, he couldn’t wait to use his premiership as a stepping stone on to the world stage and didn’t he profit nicely. Since then, every government and political leader we’ve had has been determined to follow in Blair’s footsteps.

The United Nations is using immigration as a weapon against us, we don’t have the resources to cope with it, yet the UN won’t be happy until the western races are absorbed, destroyed and a part of history. Already our social and health services are crumbling as our cities are becoming violent third world hellholes.

The UN’s response to our discontent is to restrict our free speech (see this video). They won’t be content with this though. I’m very sure soon they’ll find a way to control our thoughts too.

We are under attack, we’ve been to war for a lot less but this time we have to do it without a military or representative government. Rioting will achieve nothing. It looks good on the news but even the Yellow Vests have abated although they’re not yet quite gone. Riots are soon forgotten after the damage has been repaired.

Soon all we will be left with is full on insurgency, something that needs careful planning, a lot of skill, happening mainly in the dead of night with extreme prejudice. I’m not advocating this course of action, indeed nobody in their right mind would want it. Ultimately though, the decision of whether we fight for our country or just pass quietly into the night as a nation is a question that soon we’ll all have to ask ourselves and needs to be answered: the choice is yours.

By Sir John Redwood

[This article was first published in Sir John Redwood’s Diary and we re-publish with his kind permission.]

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The main  continental EU countries are out to strengthen their military collaboration. Over the years they have worked away at joint exercises, common weapons procurement, common standards, exchange of personnel, unified commands and shared missions.

There are now military interventions undertaken by EU directed troops or naval vessels. The UK has been particularly concerned about being pulled into a European army, owing to the legal constraints that operate on a  member state once it has accepted the competence of the EU in any given area.

Some think the UK has already consented to more collaboration than is desirable and is now entrapped. Others accept that as we leave the EU we cannot be forced to co-operate or to participate against our will.

The UK has been keener on joint working through NATO, including our US allies. NATO too has a long tradition of common action, shared defence procurement programmes, common standards and procedures, exchanges of personnel and unified commands for given tasks, exercises and missions.

It is clear under the NATO  charter that whilst we and the other members sign a mutual pledge to defend each other, a NATO member is free to determine their own commitment to any resulting NATO action. NATO is a coalition of the willing, that makes up missions from members in the light of the needs based on consent.

Under President Trump the USA would like the continental countries to make a bigger contribution to NATO defence. The USA points out that European members of NATO rely on US engagement and the common security guarantee for their ultimate protection. Surely, the US asks, the Europeans could at least meet the minimum funding requirement for NATO membership so they are making a bit better contribution to the collective defence?

The UK does meet the minimum requirement, and does possess military capability to join NATO engagements around the world, contributing naval vessels, aircraft and mobile soldiers. UK forces have worked  hard to ensure they can co-operate with US forces, as well as undertaking training and exercises with European forces.

Setting our armed services in the context of collaboration and assistance with others does bring a downside. It might mean that we lack particular capabilities where we rely on others, which would limit our own ability to undertake a mission for ourselves.

The UK needs to ensure it has sufficient capability to go to the assistance of our own territories or allies, and to defend ourselves at home, whoever the aggressor and whatever our principal allies might think.

Global warming is happening. The only SLIGHT doubt is how much human activity is contributing. The consequences of a wrong decision could be a total calamity.  It’s better to err on the safe side. There are other reasons to abandon fossil fuels (except for metal and cement production where they are unavoidable.) Eventually, they will run out. Nobody is quite sure when, predictions have been made for the last forty years at least, (all wrong.) However, they will become more expensive as they become harder to find and extract.

They are poisoning us, mainly by reason of air pollution. At least forty medical conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s to previously unknown childhood diseases. They may even be affecting our DNA, thus affecting our descendants. There are NO “clean technologies” to burn fossil. fuels, especially in the internal combustion engine These are an invention of the fossil fuel lobby. Fossil fuels can be burned in a more controlled way at power stations in that the combustion gases can be “scrubbed”, i.e., the pollutants removed. However, the detritus so collected still has to be disposed of as it contains heavy metals (including uranium), not so easy to permanently dispose of. (Yes, coal ash may be radioactive.)Years ago they made “cinder blocks” out of it. You might have radio-active walls in your house.

The extraction, preparation, and transport of fossil fuels are also extremely damaging and costly.

We depend increasingly on dodgy foreigners for our supply of all our fossil fuels; there is ample scope for hostile countries to cause disruption, leading to future energy wars: the Middle East, Russia, and South America spring to mind.

In the medium to long term, only renewable energy is pollution-free, endless, and can’t be taken away from us. It has massive disadvantages too, mainly in the matter of initial investment costs/times, intermittency, and utilisation factor.

However, it will provide thousands of jobs, and the primary fuel is free. It excites the NIMBYs who were happy to see coal mining and power stations away from their own localities but not to see renewable energy projects in their own neighbourhood (e.g. wind turbines). It’s important to note that renewable energy projects are not necessarily eco-friendly. There are some problems for which no solution is even on the horizon. (Eg aviation and agriculture) THE FUTURE IS ELECTRICITY.

Fossil fuels are described as primary fuels. Energy derived from them is deemed a secondary fuel,  electricity is one of them.  Electricity can be transported efficiently, i.e., with little loss.

By far, the most important aspect of future energy policy will be energy efficiency, domestic, commercial, and industrial.

It’s possible to build homes that are net energy neutral or even energy negative (i.e., export more energy than consumed.). I own such a house myself. As it’s energy negative, it profits me by £2500/year.

Domestic gas is to be banned from 2050. Gas will go instead to generate electricity as an intermediate solution before 100% renewable energy is achieved. This can be done in new technology power stations that are twice as efficient as traditional coal and oil-fired power stations with much less pollution.
We need to search for “frack gas”. There may not be any in the UK, but we need to know what our options are.

Instead of gas as at present,  home heating will be done by heat pumps which you will already see on some new houses. These multiply the electricity used to power them by a factor of three or four depending on weather conditions (if they are “air source heat pumps”) so making them an economical proposition.

Also to be decided, what ratio of small and large scale electricity generation is desirable and technically achievable. Dispersed small electricity generation (e.g., domestic solar PV panels) has the advantage that electricity generated is used locally so obviating transmission losses.

Cars powered by internal combustion engines are also to be banned; this gets rid of fuel originated pollution at street level, though not the pollution arising from brakes and rubber tyres. The total energy needed is much reduced and can have multiple sources. The progress of electricity storage devices will be critical to future policy. (Here the future does not look good, there are numerous technical and financial problems.) With the increase of renewable energy comes increasing control and stability problems on the electricity grid.

There are lots of steps being implemented right now that are not understood by the population who are therefore hostile to them. (Eg smart meters, ending of domestic gas supplies, electric cars, etc.)The implementation of some of these projects has been less than perfect.

The 2050 zero-carbon target is unachievable. To get 75% of the way, there can be done using existing technology; the last 25% will need vast expenditure and new technologies. Far more will have to be done with tidal resources which are abundant in the UK.

Our nuclear industry was originally set up to facilitate the manufacture of nuclear weapons; electricity was a by-product.

Nuclear power stations are carbon-free in running cost (though not in the construction). Aside from the issues of nuclear leaks and terrorism, no-one has yet worked out how to safely dispose of nuclear waste. If they had, they would be doing it, and they’re not. Instead, they are just stashing it away for future generations to deal with. Securely burying various toxic wastes (nuclear and non-nuclear) is not as easy as some people imagine.
All the nuclear promises have come to nothing; we were once promised that nuclear-generated electricity would be so cheap, it would not be worth metering. The pigeons have well and truly come home in the French nuclear industry with vast decommissioning costs. (And no money to carry out the work). Our own nuclear project at Hinkley Point is looking increasingly disastrous as time goes by.

I was an energy efficiency engineer in the NHS for twenty years prior to retirement.

The article by Stewart Jackson in the paywalled DT deserves a closer look. Stewart Jackson was a Conservative MP from 2005-17 and was Chief of Staff to Rt Hon David Davis MP when Brexit Secretary 2017-18, so he knows his Remain colleagues and he knows their anti-Brexit ways. 

The article has the title “With Brexit on a knife edge, Boris must banish Remainer saboteurs from government” – something any Leaver will certainly agree with. Jackson’s summary is brief and to the point “It is imperative to cut anti-Brexit rebels off from power” (paywalled link). The extensive quotes below serve to build the case for his conclusion. The first paragraph shows which way the argument will go:

“Who’d of [sic!] thought that Boris Johnson – ridiculed, undermined, written off and dismissed as a has-been by the media and Tory colleagues as recently as February – would now be on the verge of a landslide win in the Conservative leadership ballot? 

The Government’s defeat [yesterday] on the potential option of suspending Parliament in the event of a failure to agree a new deal with the European Union, is a sideshow and hardly fatal to his cause. It’s the beginning of the end for Tory Remainer MPs who have run out of road in their increasingly desperate efforts to thwart the democratic mandate and the instruction of the electorate to leave the EU, back in 2016.”  (paywalled link)

If it’s indeed the ‘beginning of the end’ for Tory Remainers as Mr Jackson said, then I’d caution that, like dying dinosaurs, these Arch Remainers may well be able to wreck their Party and indeed Parliament with their death throes. Jackson continues with a delicious tirade:

“Talk of “making a stand” to ensure Parliament is not “locked out” of the Article 50 process is dishonest humbug too. Parliament has voted three times in primary legislation – Acts of Parliament debated over hundreds of hours – to hold and abide by an in/out referendum, to trigger Article 50 and to leave the EU on a set date – and yet it wilfully refuses to honour the law of the land and in the process, tarnishes what little vestigial authority it retains.” (paywalled link)

I confess I also like the following, acerbic paragraphs in which Mr Jackson judges what happened in the HoC yesterday

“It’s also otiose: The Commons defeat, entirely predictable as Mrs May has allowed the collapse of Ministerial collective responsibility and the erosion of party discipline, merely allows MPs to play for time. Without new primary legislation, Parliament cannot stop us leaving the European Union on October 31 and even a vote to revoke Article 50 would be indicative only without a new Act of Parliament. 

The Speaker’s pernicious and corrosive undermining of established Commons conventions and interpretation of Commons standing orders is not in any sense a one-way street; it means that imaginative and unprecedented Parliamentary thinking and tactics can be utilised by a new Prime Minister and Cabinet. In extremis, prorogation is still a live option, as is a decision to pull the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill, which the new Prime Minister could announce next week.”  (paywalled link)

Look at that last sentence! I do hope BoJo and his advisers have taken note. It’s a bit like a bucket of cold water thrown over the heated heads of the Grieves and Hammonds. Moving on:

“Sir John Major’s foolish threats of judicial review have been firmly contradicted as a straw man argument by finer minds who actually understand constitutional law, including a former Supreme Court judge.

In the same way that Mrs May (mis)used the Royal Prerogative at her disposal to extend the Article 50 process to 0ctober 31, when Parliament only legislated for a delay until April 12, MPs underestimate the power of a new Prime Minister and a united Cabinet to drive events and utilise both a strong public mandate and a decisive party membership vote.

They have also hugely misjudged Boris Johnson’s toughness, resilience and campaigning elan. His message discipline – focusing on delivering Brexit by 31st October, uniting the Conservative Party and defeating Jeremy Corbyn, has been exemplary.

Above all, the Tory membership want no more of May’s weak supplication, but instead a confident and authentic Conservative Cabinet and not one set on the orderly management of decline and defeatism.”  (paywalled link)

Leaving aside the praise for BoJo, we can all agree that it’s not just the Tory membership who’ve had enough of Ms May. The next part is encouraging:

“The appointment of Daniel Moylan as Brexit advisor, a strong-pro Boris supporter from the latter’s London City Hall days, and a consistent and principled Brexiteer, should be a strong signal to the party in Parliament that the new management will not countenance attempts to thwart Brexit from inside government.

That is why the new PM’s Cabinet appointments are imperative and will be interpreted so forensically: those existing Cabinet Ministers who plotted to take no deal “off the table” in March and in so doing, helped lead us to our current impasse, should really be aware that their actions must have consequences and they may not be favoured.”  (paywalled link)

And now it gets personal:

“One of them, Amber Rudd, is a talented and articulate representative of a key Conservative tradition – Europhile and socially liberal – but second guessing the putative new Prime Minister’s position on no deal, admonishing him on the need to face reality in coming negotiations and chastising him on his reaction to Sir Kim Darroch’s resignation – all in this week alone, was injudicious and hardly counts as a viable job application. It’s symptomatic too of the ill-discipline and freelancing which has bedevilled the current fractious Cabinet. This must and will end.” (paywalled link)

It must indeed – for the sake of the country. Stewart Jackson concludes:

“The last two years have shown that a Cabinet riven by endemic disputes and bad blood is impotent, ineffectual in the face of avoidable errors by the Prime Minister and merely encourages wider low level party civil war.

Boris Johnson will need a team of loyalists and not a team of rivals on 24/7 political suicide watch. They will have be willing to walk together through political fire and fury this autumn. That means the top jobs will need to be held be principled Leavers and true believers. They will need courage and integrity and an eye on the big prize: A post-Brexit Conservative Commons majority and a party united again as an election winning machine.

Party unity is possible, vital and will come in time. But it must unquestionably be on the new Prime Minister’s terms if it is to be durable.”  (paywalled link)

Well – the proof of the pudding is, as the saying has it, in the eating of the same. We’ll have to see if Johnson is really capable of grasping this nettle, and if he’s going to surround himself with Brexiteers who will stiffen his spine. Since so many of the Remainers in the May Cabinet are now preparing to resign, he may find himself enabled to select Brexiteers without having to make too many concessions.

The next week will be … interesting.

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds 

A couple of years back we had a winter that went on and on, dragged through a cold dark February, a dull, still March, a cold, dark and still April. Those on oil central heating cursed the darkness and ordered more from their supplier. Those lucky enough to be on the gas grid turned up the thermostat and worried about the bill. Those on electrical heating shivered because they didn’t want to be bankrupted.

The UK was down to two weeks supply of natural gas, the gas used by the combined cycle power stations that are the basis of our electrical supply. Without a top-up the lights would have gone out. Without energy – and when the clouds gather and the winds drop that means hydrocarbon energy – everything stops. Cars. Lights. Hearts.

A car is made only incidentally of steel. The brain of the man who manipulates the computer controlling the production line is made only incidentally of food. The computer chip in this computer on which I type this is made only incidentally of silicon. All of them are made of energy, and chiefly in our civilisation they are made of electrical energy. Electricity drives the line, grows the food, powers the foundries, pumps the water and clears the sewage. And electricity is primarily, overwhelmingly made by the combustion of hydrocarbons.

If some invading alien were to power down the electrical Grid then our civilisation would descend into chaos in days. 

Let me introduce you to that composite alien, the multi-bodied creature that has for the last eleven years been working tirelessly to break the Grid, to turn off our lights, close our factories and kill hundreds of thousands of our people in inadequately-heated winter homes. These are the Secretaries of State for Energy and Climate Change:

Ed Milliband. PPE Corpus Christi Oxford. MSc LSE in economics. Straight into politics after completing his degrees, initially in television then as a bag carrier to various Labour grandees. Science background, nil. Industry nil. Practical world experience nil.

Chris Huhne. PPE Magdalen College Oxford. Worked in the City and financial journalism. Science background nil, unless you count economics. Which I don’t.

Ed Davey. PPE Jesus College Oxford. MSc Birkbeck College London in economics. Economics policy developer for the LibDems.  Industry experience: worked in a pork pie factory as a teenager. Was sufficiently aware of the need for reliable energy to advocate exploitation of UK shale gas.

Amber Rudd. History, Edinburgh. Various jobs in financial management, apparently thanks to family contacts, without conspicuous success. Contact with the real world as aristocracy coordinator for Four Weddings and a Funeral.

In 2016 the role was taken over by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the relevant minister being:

Greg Clarke. Economics, Magdalene College Cambridge. 

Are we seeing a pattern here? Could that pattern be the reason that the UK is suicidally signing up to every crackpot decarbonisation scheme, wilfully ignoring the potential (and actual) costs of being a world leader in turning the lights out? That’s “world leader” as in first lemming over the cliff – I’d prefer to leave that to Germany which has jumped off the reliable energy generation cliff and is at the ‘it’s OK so far’ stage in the tumble to the rocks below.

The DNA of the renewable energy scam comes from City spivs crossed with a load of politicians who fancy themselves at the same game. Here’s what wiki says about energy CfDs:

“Contracts for Difference (CfD) are a system of reverse auctions intended to give investors the confidence and certainty they need to invest in low carbon electricity generation. CfDs have also been agreed on a bilateral basis, such as the agreement struck for the  Hinkley Point C nuclear plant.

CfDs work by fixing the prices received by low carbon generation, reducing the risks they face, and ensuring that eligible technology receives a price for generated power that supports investment. CfDs also reduce costs by fixing the price consumers pay for low carbon electricity. This requires generators to pay money back when wholesale electricity prices are higher than the strike price, and provides financial support when the wholesale electricity prices are lower.

The costs of the CfD scheme are funded by a statutory levy on all UK-based licensed electricity suppliers (known as the ‘Supplier Obligation’), which is passed on to consumers.”

And now in English? It looks to me as if CfDs are just a fancy way of hiding the fact that big companies are allowed to build inadequate power schemes – inadequate because  they give no guarantees for continuity of supply – and they will be paid top-whack regardless. In any market in the UK this is known as the ‘open your wallet and repeat after me ‘Help yourself’ agreement.

But it’s OK. After the market huckster has emptied your wallet, the great British public is forced to fill it up again – you did see that ‘which is passed on to consumers’? Who pays most? The old. The poor. The sick. The people who proportionately spend most on electricity. This is not just inefficient, unreliable and wasteful. It’s immoral.

We dodged the bullet in that cold dark spring. With two weeks to go, two Liquified Natural Gas carrier ships arrived from Qatar, with two weeks to go to the lights going out. That’s how close we were to a real emergency.

How did we get here? 

We got here by electing a lot of career politicians who wouldn’t know a Guy Fawkes rocket from a Saturn 5.

Emails were received from these organisations in the last two days.

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38 Degrees

An email received from 38 Degrees urged me to phone my MP.  Of course they knew my MP, which immediately makes me wonder what other information they keeping ‘on file’.  Sorry to sound paranoid but it seems organisations and companies can snoop with impunity.

38 Degrees made some suggestions of what I could talk about if I was lucky enough to get through.  Here is the text:

• You could talk about how a no-deal Brexit could impact our NHS and mean there are shortages of crucial medicines like insulin.
• What would it mean for you if the price of food goes up in the supermarket? A no-deal brexit could mean food costs more.
• You could say you’re concerned that a no-deal Brexit could mean businesses close across the country and people lose their jobs. 
• Maybe you’re worried about British farmers being undercut by competition from countries like the US.
• A personal story could be powerful. Maybe you, or someone you know, relies on medicine supplies that could be threatened. Or has a job or business at risk.

They go on to say:

“Boris Johnson won’t bear the brunt of a no-deal Brexit – we will. Those of us who rely on the NHS, or who will struggle to afford the weekly shop will. And your MP needs to know that – because a no-deal Brexit will risk it all.”

My word, how negative! Surely not the words one would expect from a nonpartisan campaign group.  In their Wiki spiel they are described as ‘progressive’ and claim, among other virtues, to “deepen democracy in the UK”.  They had based themselves on a number of groups such as Avaas, Moveon and Getup. Its Executive Director, until he was found guilty of sharing illegal drugs last April, was David Babbs, formerly ‘Head of Activism’ at Friends of the Earth.  FotE are against fossil fuels, and are also against nuclear power, which to most rational people, would put them in the position of wanting human extinction.

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SumOfUs

Here is part of an email received from SumOfUs:

“Yesterday we were hit with the gut-punching news that Boris Johnson is now in charge. His new reign puts so many of the things that matter most at risk.

That’s why hundreds of incredible SumOfUs members just like you have chipped in to fight Boris’ worst plans for the country. Plans that put Boris and the wealthiest first — at the expense of jobs, public services and the natural world.”

They kindly repeated an email they sent earlier:

“The news is in: Boris Johnson is Prime Minister. And he’s determined to wrench the UK out of Europe at any cost.

“Boris doesn’t care that a no-deal Brexit could land us with medicine shortages, environmental laws torn to shreds, and corporate power unleashed like never before.

But SumOfUs members like you care, (my name). And right now, we need you more than ever.

If we work together, we can protect the things that matter to us most – despite Boris’ reckless new reign. He and his cronies may have the big bucks to steamroll our rights, but we have you.”

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Unlock Democracy

An email from Unlock Democracy, a group campaigning for improved Democracy, asked for support to ‘help take on Boris Johnson’.

Why would this group want to campaign against Johnson in particular?   Boris Johnson was lauded as a Leaver by those who believed in the Democracy of the 2016 Referendum.  Of all the contenders for the Conservative leadership race he was the most supportive of that democratic vote. (His sincerity is debateable).

On reading the content of the mail they also malign him as being supported by climate change deniers.  An unnecessary slur involving a controversial subject which is divisive.

Further down the page they write:-

“We recently met with shadow chancellor John McDonnell to see how his team can support our campaigning”.

This seems to me to be playing blatant party politics especially with those who are clearly reneging on the Referendum result and their own manifesto commitments.

Intrigued by this incriminating and discriminating mail I checked their website and found that they had had a campaign to pressure the Met Police to complete an investigation, “We showed the Met Police they couldn’t get away with stalling their Vote Leave investigation”.

This was, as most other people have realised, a politically motivated move to undermine Vote Leave funds, credibility and support.  Probably one of the clear pieces of evidence for this was the lack of any reciprocal investigation for those wanting the UK to stay in the EU.  No mention of that in their literature.

“We teamed up with investigative journalists and politicians to pile on the pressure”.

Then, looking deeper, they also published this on their site:-

“Unlock Democracy was formed in 2007 out of a merger between Charter 88 and the New Politics Network. The New Politics Network was the legal successor to the Democratic Left, which in turn was the legal successor to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB)”.

They state in their ‘Theory of Change’ that they are ‘independent’.

They state that they want a vibrant and inclusive democracy, responsive to the aspirations of all people. “We bring people together”.

By even hinting at predetermined views on specific policies they have overstepped the line into those arguments and therefore become partisan and partial.  How can they defend such divisiveness?

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I personally don’t have a problem with fighting corporate power, or making the right decisions for the environment.  Neither have I any love for our useless politicians.

The point I am making here is that these groups are run by political activists with an agenda.

They use the tribal tendencies to manipulate support for socialist and globalist objectives.  Yes, they are big clappy happy clubs gathering support all the time. Unfortunately there is a price.

The truth, unlocked, is that they are wolves in sheep’s clothing!

Boris Pledges Fishing Won’t Be Negotiated Away.
Industry Says His Government Must Now Legislate To Truly Take Back Control

Today new PM Boris Johnson pledged that Britain’s fishing industry would not be negotiated away in response to ex-Defra secretary Owen Paterson. A statement welcomed by the long beleaguered fishing industry:

Fishing for Leave said:

“Following today’s PMQs we are delighted both at how well Mr Paterson raised the point and welcome the new PMs answer.

It was good to hear Mr Johnson say that we will take full control and that fishing won’t be traded away as part of a wider agreement as Ted Heath reprehensibly did.

FFL – and a public invested in their nation’s greatest renewable resource being repatriated – will hold him to that. Mrs May fatally undermined trust in the sanctity of despatch box statements, we hope Mr Johnson salvages this by proving he will deliver what he pledges.

With his statement we at least know we aren’t not going down lower than current arrangements – unlike May’s rotten deal would have achieved.”

However, Fishing for Leave said what is done with the control Britain takes back is still what rankles and concerns:

We would have cheered Boris like a winning penalty had he confirmed the government would heed Mr Paterson’s well put points, stating that his government would ensure that the UK would be like Norway and Iceland. Holding onto our rightful resources and withholding all access and swaps to those resources unless reciprocal annual deals were negotiated.

Then we would know we were going to aim above just taking back control merely to maintain the status quo on access and resources (as the DexEU Secretary Stephen Barclay confessed to the Brexit Select Committee last week) and instead were going to repatriate all our resources worth £6-8bn to help rejuvenate our coastal communities.

To avoid squandering an open and easy goal, the Johnson government must not roll over current access and resource share arrangements as suggested by Stephen Barclay under Mrs May’s tenure. This is totally unacceptable – especially when leaving gives us a clean slate as the EU recognises.”

Fishing for Leave set out the bare minimum that must be legislated for, stating that the new leadership and government must:

1) Legislate that UK will not only take back control, but exercise that control exclusively for our national benefit – being in no way tied to or following the CFP – no different to Norway, Iceland and Faroe.

2) Legislate that we will take back control of our rightful share of international Total Allowable Catches(TACs) based on the international principle of Zonal Attachment.

3) Legislate that the government will only ever agree any limited annual fisheries access or resource swaps where the UK receives a reciprocal value of fishing opportunities and only once the EU recognises our rightful zonal attachment shares.

Fishing for Leave said that only when all of the above – which is the bare minimum required to truly take back control – is legislated for in the Fisheries Bill will the Conservatives have exorcised the ghost of Ted Heath that Boris alluded to:

“We hope the new administration delivers on all the above. Any less would squander a golden opportunity to prove and fulfil that the government means business on Brexit and in redeeming itself in the eyes of the electorate who see fishing as an acid test.”

In the 1970’s, Ted Heath, his fellow politicians such as Tony Benn, civil servants and unions etc,  had first destroyed the aircraft industry, then the ball-bearing industry, fishing, then the car industry, and were in the process of following up with the shipbuilding industry and others. And helicopters. And the political destruction of GEC (employing 250,000 and the biggest company on the FTSE ). And we’re still doing it. Just three examples among hundreds of thousands of others: ARM, Cadbury’s, almost Unilever, now Vauxhall and British Steel. All huge world class industries. Gone! Squandered to feed politicians ego. Idly doing nothing.

Note: Industries were being softened up years before their actual death or dismemberment or sale.

Britain was the sick country of the West. Going downhill rapidly. And still is!

At the time there were three glaringly obvious things wrong with us: taxation, unions, and government interference. Industry was and still is to this day the perfect golden-egg-laying goose.

Government after government deliberately and with malice and stupidity either did nothing or made it worse. Successive governments seemed to believe and still do that the hysteria of Union leaders and Labour party MPs were the voices of the people. It was easy. Civil Service and a lot of substandard but noisy Labour MPs allowed the trap to be sprung.

In 1974 we joined the Common Market. Ted Heath and the establishment had already virtually destroyed Britain. They could see no other way out.  They had no appetite. Brexit shows that they’re still failing. However, the 2016 Trade Union capture of the Southern Rail fiasco shows that they still have no clue. Nothing has been done or even discussed. They’re still just hoping it’ll all go away. Politicians have learned nothing.

From 1975 till now the EU managed to destroy all our Fishing, High Tech Manufacturing etc and left us with fraudulent finance, sandwiches and low tech cars. And industries made up of vices like gambling and drugs. And foolish bureaucracies such as compliance, fair trading, crime prosecuting services, regulators. Quangos to the left of us and NGOs to the right, and charities with sympathetic names to entice the weak minded.

From 1960 to 2000,  the EU was flexing its muscles, and constantly making things more difficult.  Making and selling British goods of world quality and technology world wide became more and more impossible. It became easier to sell goods to Papua New Guinea or Argentina than to Europe, but it became more difficult to make them. Staying in the EU became the soft (in the head) option instead of solving the real problems.

The real problems were taxes (obvious and hidden ), regulation (needed, but botched) of the financial sector, legal sector, education etc, and crazy Unions, their power structure, their corruption of purpose and power, by politicians of all parties.  At least Cameron and Osborne tried to bring some sanity back. Some unions by the seventies were already moving on from the old model, but politics stopped all that.  

We come to the crux of the matter. The three things wrong with  us. In simple terms they were Taxation (tax kills companies ), Unions, Over-Government. Some new and simple ones can now be added for the future: Globalisation, feral banking/fiscal management, education, and (a mixed blessing ) the financial sector. Into this mix, Ted Heath, by arrangement with the EU, threw ‘The Abolition of Price Maintenance Act’ which purpose , despite the name, was to destroy manufacturing in Britain and replace it with Retailers Heaven: importing rubbish and selling cheap with no responsibility, no monetary or economic understanding, nothing … just take the money.

Every year this act destroys things a bit further and delights politicians with its absurd GDP consumerist measure. Destroy it and we gain in quality, curtailing the internet retailers who are basically smugglers and  parasitical. GDP is increased (bad), but hides the fact that GDP/ person (GDP/C = per capita or living standard ) is dropping. Another example of proud politicians boasting while destroying.

GDP announces to the world that we are here to be screwed.

The world wants to trade with us, and always has. The Government doesn’t care. Governments hope they might be helping. They aren’t. At best only rarely or rather only as unintended consequences.

Chapter and verse on these matters are simple but need to be taken one simple, single step at a time. But they can be treated using simple project management tools or, if you prefer, simple maths tools or, preferably, by common sense and thought.