A Change of Theme

Regular readers might notice the imagery has changed.  I've decided to go with a poppy theme.

It felt so apt given that it's November.  It felt apt for a blog that laments what has become of a nation that so many laid down their lives for. 

One wonders if they had possesed the ability to see into the future, they would have refused to go into battle because they would have decided we weren't worth their sacrifice given what Britain has become.

Some of us still want to say thank you and hope that we too can one day give you the nation you died to protect.

Experimenting

I'm trying a small experiment.  I don't know which way it will go and some might think it a bit odd for someone whose blogging can be a bit erratic to say the least.

As readers will know I've been going on about local voting blocs.  My premise is that that is where the real power base of the electorate lies.  Local crops up time and time again.  Richard North over at EUreferendum writes about local "battlegrounds" and I know David over at Witterings from Witney has a fair bit to say on the matter as well, to name just a few.  I've written numerous entries calling on people to get themselves involved on establishing their local power base.  I even offered to list their blogs in the sidebar of Restoring Britain.  Unfortunately such calls have gone nowhere

Because of that I'm running a small experiment.  There's a new sister blog to Restoring Britain now starting.  I'm calling it Restoring Nottingham (how imaginative).  Strangely enough it bring the focus from the national level to the local level aimed at the people of Nottinghamshire. 

The reason is that sometimes I wonder if because as bloggers, we comment on things of a national / international level, people don't always see the connection them despite our efforts to tell them exactly how it applies to them.

So I'm going to try and put my money where my mouth is (so to speak) and begin something to try and wake the people of Nottinghamshire up.  It might work but it might fall flat on its face with the only thing passing through being an empty Stella can. 

It won't just be politics.  I'm also looking at commenting on other things.  Things that strike me as being potentially beneficial to the place as a place to live and visit.  My comment is going to try and appeal to the people that live there.  Nottingham won't change if the people don't change.  If the people do what they did yesterday, they'll get what they got today.  That applies to their lives and their politics.  National or local, it's a numbers game.  I'll also try and bring some of those national / international things into their homes and help them to see that it's not something out there and unrelated to them, but is pushing them around.  Hopefully some of them will decide it's time to establish their own long march through the institutions.

I hope ultimately they get it and that some of the things we've talked about here such as local voting blocs start to take hold where I live for their sake and for their children's sakes. I'm also hoping to introduce them to things like the Harrogate agenda to move the debate out of the blogsphere into everyday homes.  

Restoring Britain won't be disappearing.  I'm going to try both blogs and see where we go. Hopefully new bloggers will come to the fore to spread the word.  The offer still stands to link to local blogs as well (as long as they keep it legal).  I still intend to find practical advice for those who want to become our Mia Love and make a difference as well as getting the whole local movement going.

Let's hope the folk of Nottingham are ready for it and they find my little blog.

Make It Go Away

Last night my wife and I lounged on our sofas and found ourselves watching Panorama's special Jimmy Savile episode.  It wasn't comfortable viewing for a whole host of reasons.  Not just for the vile stories and the constant failure to put a stop to it, but also for the faint allusion that the lid is about to come right off this thing.  I see veteran DJ Paul Gambucini has made particularly stomach churning claims on a live radio show today, that has certainly taken it up a notch from his observations in yesterday's documentary.  One really gets the sense that this thing has picked up a momentum that will make it not easy to control and that somehow we might learn some things that a part of our national psyche is going to wish we didn't know about.

As I watched it, I marvelled at how many people seemed to know about this man and his cohorts hiding in plain sight.  ITheir knowledge and inaction was  dressed up in all manner of weasely words.  I think some of the worst of it was this notion of it being a different time.  I'm sorry, but that's bollocks.  Yes, the 70's in Britain was a different time but different in such a way that the opposite outcome should have been the result.  We had a tendency to be more judgemental in the 70's.  People we considered "strange" stood out more whether our viewpoint of them was justified or not.  People who the local populace felt were taking what they perceived to be an unhealthy interest in youngsters were more readily pounced on.  In other words, society was more likely to spot them as opposed to letting them continue their nefarious business as is being claimed about the inexplicable approach to the Savile situation.

I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that if all of this is true, this justification for missing him and his ilk is down to something very different than is being claimed and it isn't isolated.  This would add to two other scandals that have come to light this year that I think also contain seeds of the same issue.  Those two issues are the Rotherham and Rochdale abuse scandals, the reports of which were released a few months ago. 

For me, the perpetrators though they disgust me, are not what I focused on.  What has struck me in all three cases are those who saw and who knew, yet did nothing.  We will learn more on Savile in the future but I suspect we are going to learn about that what we have learned about Rotherham and Rochdale.  There were lots of people who could have done something, but didn't.  They can bleat and plead all they like but their hear no evil see no evil approach puts them right at the heart of the scandals and not just as witnesses.

At the heart of all three stories of all three failures to protect the youngsters involved is self interest.  The overriding motivation behind non action by those who could have said something but didn't was their concern for themselves.  Just like a child in a difficult situation, they effectively held their head in their hands and wished that the problem would go away. The police wished for it along with social services in the Rotherham cases. Such people found themselves in a place and time where there was something they just didn't want to deal because to do so would have led to greater discomfort and they needed to avoid it. Rather than deal with it, they lashed out at the vulnerable.  How else do you explain the situation in Rotherham in which the family of one of the victims are arrested by the police for trying to stop it.  The pain of dealing with the real issue is greater than the scandal of abusing the innocent.  They wished it would go away because to deal with it would have upset the relatively cosy arrangement that was their everyday life.

Horrible isn't it?  I just hope that somewhere they get to be honest with themselves, acknowledge their shame (even if only to themselves) and atone for their inaction.

Shame

Readers will know that by my absence of posting that I am one of those who Witterings from Witney correctly identified as hitting the wall. I've been absent, not because of the lack of anger but more due to the idea that we as a people and a nation are surrounded by detritus that those who spread it have the gall to call public service.  It seems to come from all angles and to the relatively small number of bloggers trying to engage the 60 odd million people of this island to wake up, it can be an energy sapping experience.

David's kind words to me yesterday got me back into the saddle and I find myself on a second post in two days.  I thank David for encouraging me to get back into the fray.

Surrounded as we are by a torrent of self interest and corruption I started thinking about positive aspects about the apparent dominance of those for whom nothing matters but craven self interest.  It came to me after stumbling across a few seemingly unrelated stories.

First up was an article that I thought when opening was going to be a bit of a short piece.  How wrong I was.  The article in question was a suggestion that Jimmy Savile was the tip of the iceberg.  To read it is truly scary when you read about the efforts to cover up any attempts to get to heart of what happened on Jersey.  The other article was about the efforts by the speaker of the House of Commons to avoid releasing details of MPs expenses.  This was dressed up in the premise that such obfuscation was for security reasons which does not really seem to stand up to scrutiny and looked to those examining it, that it was more about hiding something.

On the face of the two seem about as unrelated as it is possible to get and I would agree if taken at face value.  There is no suggestion on my part that the ongoing criminal investigation of Savile is connected with Westminster (just so we're clear). There is however a common denominator on another level.  For me that common denominator is about keeping something hidden from the eyes of the public. To a point those taking the p*ss are brazen, but once the attention of the majority focus on them they look to hide it.  In the Jersey case, although efforts to thwart the investigators initially succeeded, the end result was that certain individuals allegedly connected to the sabotage efforts were caught red handed and committed suicide.

Please do not mistake this post as one taking pleasure in the loss of life. It is far from that.  I use the example to illustrate a point and it is this.  If there is something positive it is that even amongst the most craven and  most vile of actions, shame still exists.  Shame exists because we see it every day.  It dresses up as cover ups, lies, buck passing, sabotage - you name it.  Every effort to deflect attention from wrong doing to somewhere else is a behaviour that has its roots in the shame of the perpetrator.  In other words they have a fear of being found out.  We can find it when we saw the wriggling of our PM around his cast iron guarantee of a referendum on the EU and in all the claptrap about repatriation of powers back to Britain currently found in the verbal dysentery from those in Westminster.  We can find it in the lies of one Edward Heath in the joining of the common market. We can find it wherever a public servant conveniently leaves something out of a statement that would leave their credibility on an issue lying in tatters if it were known by the public.

Is that a positive?  I say yes.  In some things they are seemingly brazen but their dominant behaviour is to dance around the truth.  They will not stand and make a case to you on what they truly believe and that should tell you the whole story.  What it should tell you is that having what they do laid bare for examination scares them.  They fear accountability.  They fear examination.  They fear their lies being exposed to the wider public. They know that there is a power in your hands that they do not have.  They know that you, yes you has the power to remove them from their place at the trough filled by the public purse and it scares them. They fear shame which is something that can be attached to them by the public and the people of this nation. 

Reread that last sentence - because you are the nation and you are the public. Wake up!

My Two Pence Worth

Fraser Nelson has written his view on the battle for Elected Police Commissioners.  In his eyes it's becoming something of a balls up with very few suitably qualified candidates.  As Nelson cites, it has attracted the big political parties or other people for whom it's not clear what they will bring to the table.

Personally I'm not surprised.  It's window dressing for me from a man and a political process that isn't really interested in lifting  a nation off its knees.  It's a misdirection.  An attempt to make you think that that they're looking to take the fight to the criminals, something I have concluded they are not really interested in.

Why?  Well you only have to talk to serving police officers as I do with my friends.  One thing you will often get told is how they arrest people, often catching them bang to rights or with what should be an overwhelming amount of evidence, only to have the CPS decide not to proceed further.  One of my serving friends often refers to them as the Criminal Protection Service or Couldn't Prosecute Satan.  That is where the pinch point lies.  The police seem to be serving up a ready amount of work for them but for some reason they don't seem to have an appetite for it.

I'm sure there are fine people within the organisation but there's got to be something wrong when you pick up stories like this.

If you're looking to elect a role in the judicial process, you might want to consider the merits of electing a regional or district crown prosecutor.  Labour tinkered with a similar notion in their 1997 election manifesto when they said the public would know who their regional head of the CPS was.  We never did learn that but I believe Witterings from Witney did a recent post that referenced the farce of Labour's Election Manifesto with the observation that people shouldn't take a manifesto of a genuine indication of what they would do once in power. 

Probably the reason they didn't tell us who our regional crown prosecutor was probably had something to do with accountability and if there's one thing I've learned is that accountability is like Kryptonite to our political class.

That for me is why the Police Commissioner thing is a farce and pure window dressing.  It was give the illusion on tackling crime with actually having to tackle crime.  The real power on tackling crime lies elsewhere and they certainly don't want you having some power over that.

Betrayal - A Janet & John Explanation

Yesterday I posted about Nick Clegg's new soak the rich strategy and why I thought it was, to say the least, stupid.  I questioned the 'why' having admitting to be perplexed as to whether it was political posturing, a genuine plan or a combination of both.  I remain confused even after the latest revelation that he seems to have checked his plan out with none of his advisers and that the absence of analysis on their part means it is no more a plan than a pipe dream.  It should worry us all that a man who holds such high office and who seems to have such sway on the PM sees no issue with opening his mouth and letting the wind blow his tongue around.  It does not surprise, but it worries me.

There is something else in Clegg's 'strategy' that speaks volumes and shows his betrayal to whole swathes of the population including those because long term his plan can only end in disaster for all.  His thinking will run all of us aboard HMS Great Britain onto the rocks, but not before throwing the genuinely disadvantaged overboard.

 

Clegg's 'proposal' , along with all those politicians who agree with it is flawed from the outset.  It works from the presumption that there is a revenue problem.  

 There isn't a revenue problem but there is a spending problem

Westminster has a spending problem, pure and simple.  Even if they took every penny this year, next year they would want it all again and more. They year after that would be the same.  It's their answer to everything and there's a reason. In these modern times we have professional politicians running the country as opposed to leaders and statesmen.  Leaders work and statesman focus on the national interest.  Professional politicians operate in the self interest.  At the heart of their strategy is what is best for them as opposed to what is best for you.  Their trick however is to dress their self interest up in the notion that they are doing good deeds for you and they do it through spending.

 But there's a problem.  It's one deep down that they know about, regardless of their ideology.  They know about it and they know they need to do something, but the fact that they won't because it will hurt them in the short term is precisely why I titled this post betrayal.

 

Firstly they have handed out money through welfare schemes and such like.  Slowly year by year, this group of recipients has grown.  "Eligibility" and "Entitlement" has grown, year on year, decade on decade.  more and more people become recipients of the state's generosity.  That takes more and more money.  Eventually as we have now, politicians come to realise that not enough tax can be generated from the population so it has to borrow money from elsewhere.

 

In reality this spending needs to be rolled back, slowed down and cut down for reasons.  Modern politicians won't do it however.   They've been so generous that we've lost sight of what we need as a nation, families and individuals. We've had years of conditioning that we're entitled to the fruits of the tree for no effort whatsoever and that we should have these fruits year after year after year.  This generosity has gone on for so long that we have been conditioned to see it as normal.  Therefore any attempt to roll it back and curb spending is seen as evil and draconian.  They've created addicts of us all and we've gone along with it.  Politicians won't try to roll it back because if they do, the blow back threatens their feathered nest, which they will not compromise on.

But now we have another problem - those sources of borrowed cash are drying up.  In other words this charade cannot continue forever.  There are too many countries playing exactly the same game our politicians are playing, effectively buying votes.  No matter how much they want it to continue politicians know we're running out of money for the game and we have nothing more to hock.  

Keep going and it will go bang!

It's at this point the nightmare begins.  Any nation repeatedly conditioned to be fed, clothed and watered ( and plasma tv'd and top end sports weared and annual all-inclusive holdayed) by the state on such a large scale sees too many people become absolutely dependent on the outside sources.  Conversely any self reliance they had simply disappears.  So when the whole thing goes bang, they will have no notion of what to do to feed and clothe their family. 

First they'll turn to the politicians who will turn their back on them.  Despite politicians breeding this problem, they will accept no responsibility for it.  They will leave the dependents to solve it for themselves.  The genuinely poor, needy and desperate will be the first to go under.  Those who took to the welfare state because they were struck with the curse of idleness will be the next to go.  When they go under, we'll see violence as the repeated indulgence of that idleness will first see them take from those nearby who still retain some self reliance.  When that starts we are in dark days indeed.

This is why I call this betrayal.  This self interest and continued spending in Westminster ends up in a very dark place indeed.  Those who will suffer it the first and to the harshest degree will be those whom the welfare state was supposed to be for in the first place.  It has become like a disease that devours everything and that when everything is gone it can only devour itself and will be forced to.

Soaking the rich will not solve this problem and is no strategy.  Another path is needed, one that frees people from dependency and gives those who can, the means to strengthen their resolve, their self reliance and the capacity to make something genuine of their lives.  We have to have a strategy that can fund only those who can't and not those who won't.

What other word can there be for any other path than this by our politicians but betrayal?

What I've written here is not a revelation so some might question why I've written it at all, not least in such Janet & John language.  I've written it and in this fashion, because this is something that needs telling across the country, time and time again.  It should be in the forefront of their mind when they hear any politician continue to peddle more money on more schemes to "help" more people.  It needs telling till it sinks in.  It needs telling by any fourth force (or third if if the Lib Dems face the collapse anticipated for them) in the nations politics in every marginal seat they look to contest.

It needs telling because the big lie that has been told for so long needs to be stopped once and for all.

Oh dear!

Nick Clegg, that great statesman, has apparently pronounced his miracle for solving the downward spiral in our economic circumstances.  According to one newspaper I've briefly seen the website for he's looking for what looks like a one off tax on wealthy people, arguing that without it we could see a breakdown in social cohesion as seen during last summers riots.

To be frank I'm not sure where to start with this.  If this is a serious notion in the mind of Clegg because he thinks it's a real way to solve the problem, then any adviser worth his salt should walk away right now rather than be perceived to be advising the village idiot on advanced stupidity. That said I can believe he holds such views due to ideology.  I suspect that it is more a case however in that he's looking to bolster his ratings, which at a time like this is truly perverse.

But Clegg is Clegg and I've come to expect little more from modern politicians like him.  I cannot bring myself to be bothered to take his arguments apart one by one.  My concern is for those sucked into believing this story is the answer. They are being taken for a ride and they'll pay a price beyond comprehension because of politicians such as this.

So I offer some food for thought.  It comes from across the pond where there is the a strong, well produced counter narrative.  Although the precise numbers are different, they are in a similar boat so the parallel, for me, remains the same. 

Ladies and Gentlemen - I'll leave the explanation of what's wrong with Clegg's argument to Mr Bill Whittle