The White Cat

 

“All happy families are alike. But each unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way”.

So wrote Leo Tolstoy. But in Russian, obviously.

Similarly, all who hope that Dominic Cummins will ride out the current storm are alike in thinking that he is that rare example of someone pulling the levers of power who is clever, imaginative and determined, and who is not trying to turn the United Kingdom into a sludge of pallid subservience. And, it turns out, someone who is prepared to do something brave and useful to protect his wife and child.

In contrast, what an awe-inspiring and colourful array of spite and vindictiveness we see from those trying to pull him down! Here are a few attitudes:

Greta Thunberg; Climate change activist

The cost of his trip to Durham is that people are DYING! Whole communities are being WIPED OUT! All he can do is to give EXPLANATIONS! In WORDS! How dare he? How DARE he?

Lord Adonis; Remainer

He had it coming. We told people how to vote in the EU referendum, and he conspired to encourage people to think for themselves. The little shit!

Baroness Hale, Judge

Off with his head. (Blah blah blah). For the foregoing reasons, we find that the defendant, in looking after his wife and child, had failed to observe the human rights of other members of the European Community, who have a legitimate interest in the United Kingdom placing itself in a comparative economic disadvantage. Accordingly, he and everything he has done is a nullity.

Steve Baker, Conservative MP

The Brexit Moment

It is cold and wet right now here in South Australia, but I am not bothered by that at all.

The hard-won independence of the UK from the EU came at 9.30 this morning, local time. I celebrated here at The Phenelry with my lovely Louise and a busy breakfast table of like-minded friends. We played Rule Britannia – loudly – and a recording of Big Ben. We drank French champagne and South American coffee, with bread and bagels freshly made from Australian flour. And of course, sausages, bacon, mushrooms, fried tomatoes, scrambled eggs (free range of course) and other good things.

It rather looks as though British fortunes will be something of a mixed bag over the next few years. On the one hand, Britain can look forward to increased prosperity, free from foreign control and (for most people) with a re-found self-confidence and pride. That will be good news, not only for the British, but also for its many friends around the world, including of course Australia, as Britain is freed up to do the trade deals that it wants to do and to put in place a sensible immigration policy.

But for quite some considerable time, the corridors of power will still be full of left-over remoaners. In the United States, Donald Trump said that he was going to drain the swamp, but it is very evident indeed that the swamp there does not want to be drained. Something of the same is likely to happen in Britain. By way of example, someone on the BBC evidently thought that it was a good idea to spend public money having the very unfunny socialist Nish Kumar put on an absurd and insulting piece about Queen Victoria. I’m not sure anybody could seriously regard this as comedy – rather

Predictions for 2030

 

It is New Year’s Day, 2020. The newspapers are replete with remarks about the way the last decade went. Few are unwise enough to make predictions about the way the coming decade will unfold. But hey ho. Someone has to do it.

Looking back at predictions that other people have made in the past, a couple of themes emerge. The first is that predictions of impending catastrophe almost always turn out to be groundless. There is obviously something about the human psyche which is attracted, in some way, to notions of terrible times ahead. And so if you are straining in your seats waiting for awful predictions, take a step backwards.

Secondly, even when predictions are more or less right, they tend to overestimate rates of change. By and large, things happen in the world pretty slowly, and probably rather more slowly than they did century or so ago.

Trying to keep these thoughts in mind, here is my brief time capsule, to be opened in 10 years’ time. It would be hopeless to expect that they will all be right.

 

Global warming

My guess is that there will be

Where is the Bus?

When Brexit won the 2016 referendum, the flopsie remoaners complained that it was only because of lies. In particular, they focused on the Brexit campaign bus which gave the gross UK weekly contribution, when they thought it should have been the net figure, after deduction of what the EU spends in the UK.

Boris Johnson has just won a considerable majority in the general election. The flopsies will not like that at all. They will want to say the election was stolen by lies.

But this time, there is no very obvious bus.

My guess is that

Payback time

Clearly, UK politics is presently in something of a state of stalemate. It is 2-2.

On one side, we have the majority of the British people, and the British government, who want Brexit to happen. On the other side, we have the majority of Parliament and the courts, who do not want Brexit to happen. The Remainers in the House of Commons to not want to admit that they were lying through their teeth when they made their election promises to honour the result of the Brexit referendum, and so their policy is to obstruct and delay at every turn. The judges on the Supreme Court do not want to admit that they have now entered the political arena, but they will, if they possibly can, declare illegal anything the government does that gives effect to the democratic result of the 2016 referendum.

This wouldn’t be a problem, but for the Fixed Term Parliament Act. But for that ill-considered measure, there would be a general election by now, the Remainers would have been cleared out of Parliament and then it would be 3-1 for Brexit. Easy.

In the end, there will have to be a general election. Presumably, the Remainers are hoping that if they put it off long enough, the British economy will have been trashed, and the British people will have lost hope of ever gaining their freedom.

So maybe the government should chivvy things along a bit. The advantage that Parliament has is that it can, with the assistance of a conniving speaker, pass legislation to prevent any move towards Brexit. The advantage that the government has is that it has a huge number of powers, which it can exercise with machine-gun rapidity. The trick for the government will be to ramp up the fire rate. Here are some thoughts on what the government might do in the next

Les Miserables

One may safety say that Sir Oliver Letwin has brought the same world-wide regard for the dignity and respect of the UK as Sir Les Patterson brought to Australia.

Which is …

Batting for a Foreign Power

A price that England has long paid for its openness and tolerance is that, when the country is under threat of foreign powers seeking to take over, there have been traitors who have engaged with those foreign powers.

The latest threat is of course from the EU, which is desperately seeking to retain and then expand control over the UK’s laws, waters, animals, trading arrangements etc etc.

Bizarrely, Dominic Grieve and others do not deny that they have been engaging with the EU behind the government’s back, to assist the EU in the bringing about such vassalage.  They think that is perfectly fine!

It is not clear that they have a very good grasp of history. Happily for them, hanging (with or without the drawing and the quartering) has been abolished.

Spain, under Philip	Anthony Babington, hanged, drawn and quartered 1586
France, under Napoleon	Wolfe Tone, committed suicide 1798, having been sentenced to be hanged for treason
Germany, under Kaiser Wilhelm	Michael Collins, shot in an ambush 1922
Germany, under Hitler	William Joyce, hanged for treason 1946

Battles and Wars

A really thoughtful interview with Nigel Farage.

In summary, he is modest enough to admit that he really cannot be sure. But his best guess is that Brexit will lose the battle (no Brexit on 31^st October) but will then win the war. i.e. a General Election and then a clean break Brexit will follow before long.

He is probably right. The fundamental point is, I think, this. The British people voted for Brexit in a vote that they were promised would be implemented. You might think that the EU is a corrupt neo-Nazi cabal of old-fashioned German industrialists and French farmers who mistreat their animals according to 18^th century standards. You might think the EU is lovely. Either way, the country has spoken, and the country’s voice should be respected.

In the end, the people will

Carrot, Sticks and Fish

I have noted before that the UK might discourage the EU from extending the Brexit agony by promising to veto all and any EU business it can whilst the UK is still a member. It is hard to see that it is good for the EU have a really stroppy member in its club. That is the stick.

The Telegraph leads with a story today that Hungary might veto any extension.[1] That would do the trick of avoiding another damaging extension.

The cost of an extension is huge. Not only does it cost around £1 billion a month in direct costs; it is causing massive costs in terms of economic uncertainty. And of course the country loses the advantages of cheaper non-EU imports (food, clothes, footware etc) as long as EU-imposed tariffs are keeping those imports out. We all know that, for the plotters, this is not about “no deal”; it is about “no Brexit”. And so Tony Blair et al will have been scheming with the EU for a long extension, or perhaps one extension leading to another, and another and so on until we all give up on ever winning independence. The Surrender Act is designed to give the EU the power to impose as long an extension as they like.

It is not only British humans who suffer. The Dutch have deployed a massive trawler – the FV Margiris[2] – in UK waters. It is said to be some 14 times bigger than the British trawlers which fish sustainably.[3]  This EU trawler now is seeking to extract as much fish as possible, killing many short-beaked dolphins (we like dolphins), bluefin tuna (they are endangered) and sea bass (they are overfished) on the way,  in the next few weeks. Just in case the UK does achieve freedom from the EU on

Brexit & Global Warming: Gnostics v Faithful

It has been remarked that there is some commonality between those who advocate for British independence from the EU (Brexit) and those who are sceptical about climate change alarmism.[1] The point might equally be put the other way around: that the more likely someone is to believe in the UK’s continued partipation in the EU project, the more likely that person is to believe in impending disaster resulting from anthropogenic global warming.

What is the link between these concepts? It is an interesting question, and the answer is by no means obvious. Certainly, it is the case that a number of the sharpest minds in Britain today (Matt Ridley[2], Nigel Lawson[3], Jacob Rees-Mogg[4] and Daniel Hannan[5] to name a few) – let us call them the Gnostics – are in favour of Brexit, and are also sceptical about the beliefs of the climate change lobby. But then again, there are also