Category: Politics

How does David Cameron overcome UKIP?

David Cameron has got a problem. It’s a problem nearly every post-war prime minister has had, and not many of them have found a satisfactory way of dealing with. What do you do when your party becomes unpopular in Government and voters start to drift towards alternatives?

Most people knew that by this point in Parliament the Government would be unpopular. Cutting public spending at rates not seen for decades and restricting benefits for those most in need was never going to lead to cabinet members being paraded through the streets on the shoulders of grateful electors. But not many people predicted the way that voters would go, and the effect this seems to be having on political debate in this country.

Governments are always unpopular half way through their term, and they very rarely gain seats at by-elections. What usually unites them is the ability to brush it off and say “None of this matters, we’ll still win the next general election.” Blair successfully did it for seven years, and Gordon Brown continued it for the next two, just with slightly less eventual success.

The problem that David Cameron and the Tories have is that they can’t just brush off their unpopularity. They can’t say “We’ll win again next time” because they didn’t win last time. They haven’t won an overall majority for a generation, something many Tory MP and lots more of the wider membership continually remind Cameron of.

Another thing that makes it harder for Cameron to shrug off his unpopularity is, unlike the last Labour Government, there is a refuge for those traditional right-wing Tory voters. Some former Labour voters flirted with the Lib Dems, but they tended to be those who were only attracted to the New Labour project. When the hard-core of the Labour membership fell out of love with Blair over Iraq, top-up fees, foundation hospitals or being too close to business, they largely drifted away from party politics. Cameron’s deserters are drifting to UKIP, and it’s changing the political debate of the country.

UKIP might have come a long way since it was founded in the early nineties, and the leadership of the party has undoubtedly worked hard to promote it as much more than a single issue party available for protest votes at unimportant elections. Despite all this work though, UKIP still mainly focuses on withdrawal from the EU and the subsequent control the UK would regain of domestic policy, especially immigration.

It’s no secret that the Tories are split on the issue of Europe. In fact every political party is. I know Labour MPs who despise the way the EU has imbedded capitalism and halted the evolution of European Socialism. I know Tory MPs who hate the EU because it has restricted capitalism through its forced implementation of European Socialism. In fact about the only party that stands united on Europe is UKIP. And the public like it when political parties are united.

So David Cameron has decided to tackle the issue head-on. He’s not going to hope that the arguments on immigration and Europe will disappear and that the Tory faithful will forgive him everything else by 2015. He’s made two speeches this year in a bid to meet the UKIP threat head-on. On both occasions they have been spectacular failures.

The first speech in Europe came in January, with the Prime Minister promising a renegotiation of the UK’s relationship with the EU *if* the Conservatives win a majority at the next general election followed by a referendum with an in/out option *if* those renegotiations are successful. Critics immediately spotted that Cameron would be going into the process wanting to stay in the EU anyway, hardly the best starting point for talks and without a clear idea of what powers he wanted to bring back from Brussels. UKIP immediately came out and said it was all too little too late and they would withdraw immediately, no questions asked.

Then last week there was the speech on immigration, and the way that immigrants were able to access benefits in the UK immediately upon arrival. As with many politicians discussing issues of immigration (not all on the right either) the speech strayed dangerously close to what some would call ‘incitement’ and others may label even more strongly. The thrust of the speech was to severely restrict access to benefits for those who came to the UK as immigrants, with the cost on the NHS the main focus. Cameron said in the morning that the cost was tens of millions per year, only to be trumped by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt not two hours later saying the cost was hundreds of millions. The truth is probably that nobody knows.

The right-wing press seemed to like the speech, the comments section on the Daily Mail website was approving. But then out come UKIP to say not only would they stop immigration completely, but they would also severely restrict benefits to those already in the UK. All benefits, that is, except those being paid to UKIPs core vote (state pension, winter fuel allowance, free TV licence, bus pass). Once again Cameron’s rhetoric is lost in the tub-thumping of the mainstream extreme right.

The beauty of all this for UKIP is of course they have absolutely no chance of ever being asked to put any of it into action. We all thought that about the Lib Dems before the last election, presuming that’s why they were offering to abolish tuition fees. UKIP starts from an even lower base, and with the added advantage of everything they say being recorded because the main governing party is terrified of them and they continue to do well in the opinion polls.

Not all Cameron’s efforts have been in vain though. He has managed to somehow draw Labour and the Lib Dems into this Dutch auction on benefits and treatment of migrants, having previously done so with the EU issue. We now face the prospect that all three parties will spend the next two years telling us how they are going to ensure that the most vulnerable in society deserve to be treated badly. The next leadership debates will feature Ed, Nick and Dave scrambling to outdo each other in how tough they will make it for sick people to get treatment and for the working and non-working poor to survive.

It may well be the only thing we remember about David Cameron in 20 years’ time.

The Inmate of Rome

“But what are kings, when regiment is gone,
But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?”

— Edward II (Christopher Marlowe)

It’s a relief to be able to call him Joseph.  And it will be a relief once he’s treated just like any other Joseph.  It’s been said before and it will be said again: there’s a Ratzinger-sized space in Rome’s nearest prison cell just waiting to be filled.  The former Bishop of Rome should soon become the Inmate of Rome.

It shouldn’t have taken me by surprise when I discovered recently that the Vatican doesn’t actually have a prison system.  Earthly justice doesn’t seem to apply to the elect, after all.  Not to a man who personally granted the abuser of 200 deaf and dumb children in a Wisconsin school his wish to die without the oh-so-unconscionable spectre of a canonical trial hanging over him.  Not to a man who delayed the defrocking of a convicted child molester for four years, before writing and personally signing a letter asserting that the “good of the Universal Church” and that of the offender had to be considered for longer still – without even a hint of a mention for the trauma of his 11- and 13-year-old victims.  Not even to a man who disseminated the disgusting memo to every single Catholic bishop in 2001 that encouraged – nay, demanded – secrecy and silence with regard to every last case of child molestation and rape under pain of excommunication.  ‘Tackling’ the issue head on was something of a speciality of his, it seems.

In any other walk of life, that man would already be locked up.  And that’s just what he is: a man.  No more, no less.  Vaticanites may reason that elevating him from mere primate to venerable and venerated Primate lifts him above the law, as if a capital letter and a Latin intonation automatically give you special privileges; but strip him of his robes and his cronies, and you’ll soon find out that he’s no different from you or I.

Is this how brittle our values really are?  So brittle that we’re willing to excuse from justice anyone who can persuade us that they’re running a rather important errand for God?  ‘My apologies,’ he says, ‘but I happen to be infallible too.  Fancy that?’  Maybe what we should actually be questioning is the kind of God that would endorse such arrogance, such malevolence, such a sickening brand of despotism.  This is not morality; this is delusion and depravity.

And I, for one, am having none of it.  Think of every single one of the many thousands of victims of child abuse by priests; think of all those cases that Ratzinger could have stopped – and chose not to – as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  Just think.  And then imagine looking into a young child’s eyes and telling them that the man who put the welfare of a 2,000-year-old Church over that of 12 year-old children is likely to go unpunished.

Any decent human being simply couldn’t.

When Ratzinger announced his resignation, he talked about having “repeatedly examined my conscience before God”.  He can say that again, and again – in the jail cell where he belongs.  Apologies and excuses and stage-managed contrition won’t cut it anymore.  The most courageous thing he could do now is to hand himself in.  If the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church can’t subject himself to civil law and emerge unscathed, his 1.2 billion followers have got to question whether his ‘divine’ mission is one they want to be part of.

The Vatican is shaken, no doubt.  An institution that has insisted on being its own judge and jury for so long suddenly finds its carefully sealed totalitarian tinderbox at risk of being prised open.  Reuters recently quoted a Vatican official who commented revealingly that it was “absolutely necessary” for Ratzinger’s future place of residence to be within their jurisdiction.  Otherwise, he might end up as defenceless as the children abused at the hands of Father Keisle or Cardinal Law or Father Hullerman or Father Murphy: “He wouldn’t have his immunity, his prerogatives, his security, if he is anywhere else”.  What more needs to be said of the constipated morality that underpins the Roman Catholic Church?

After Ratzinger’s final disrobing, we mustn’t let ourselves be persuaded that he’s to be handled with care.  There’s no reason for us to respect his rights in a court of law any more or less than the next man.  There never has been.  But now, we can either make it our duty to challenge him and the institution he represents – on behalf of the children whose lives have been blotted by his signature, and on behalf of an entire civilisation whose progress surely relies on unflinching inquiry and scrutiny – or else face being complicit.

For if you look on impassively as Ratzinger slinks off to his very own 4,300-square-foot convent for the rest of his days, you’re like the kid in the playground who’s too timid to stand up for the victims of the mother of all bullies.  Only the stakes are higher this time.  Much higher.

Don’t Be Afraid To Listen: Protecting Free Speech

 
“Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”

— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

Oxford and Cambridge Universities have an awful lot in common.  And last week was no exception.  By inviting polarising political figures from the left and the right – George Galloway and Marine Le Pen, respectively – both institutions reaffirmed what is at once perhaps the most sacred and the most imperilled of all our values: the freedom of speech.

Le Pen was shuffled past protesters into the Cambridge Union last Tuesday – an organisation that prides itself on being a forum for all kinds of discussion and debate – to deliver a lengthy diatribe about the EU’s dilution of national identity.  The patina of xenophilia and inclusiveness that she wanted to solidify for the audience was derided and scoured away once the floor was opened to questioning.  In short, her politics were as unconvincing as ever.

So too with George Galloway.  His decision to refuse to communicate with an Israeli opponent at a debate at Christ Church college was juvenile at best, discriminatory at worst.  It did him no favours.  But his words as he swept up his coat and opened the door to exit made me shiver: “I don’t debate with Israelis,” he said.  Words full of hatred and ignorance and thoughtlessness.  But, as I listened to him, I couldn’t help being reminded of the message those protesting against Marine Le Pen’s speech at the Union were effectively giving out as I headed past them into the chamber: ‘We don’t debate with Fascists’.

This is not a marginal issue.  This is about me; this is about you; this is about the richness of the conversation we want to carry on when we can no longer participate in it.  If free speech is something we want to protect, we’ve got to be prepared to put our necks on the line sometimes.  Compromise is not an option.  For to protect our freedom to speak as we please is to commit ourselves to hearing ideas that we consider rebarbative, repulsive and untrue.

Indeed, the best – the only – response to sinister and disgusting speech is more speech: truth, not censorship.  Rather than give in to the temptation to stifle all that makes us cringe, we must be brave enough to engage with it.  Our moral authority is never stronger than when we stand up for our beliefs: for whomever, wherever, whenever.  The most admirable and effective response to bigotry and falsehood is to give them their say – because only then will we find out how baseless they really are.

Which is why the attempt to put a lid on ‘dangerous’ speech terrifies me.  (Who decides for us what is ‘dangerous’ and what is not?)  Sitting in the civil arena of the Cambridge Union during Le Pen’s lecture, the baying, drumming, chanting sounds outside prompted but one thought: why wasn’t all that energy being channelled into proving her wrong?  Hardly courageous.  More like cowardice, if you ask me.

If we’re confident of possessing arguments sound enough to defeat those of the Front National, then why should we be scared to engage in debate?  Her risible and reproachable ideas are what should be opposed, not her right to say them.  We should be using our voices not to hurl abuse from the other side of a brick wall but to defend our democracy, our freedom and our rights on our terms.  And the last time I checked, they didn’t include suppression or censorship.

So bring it on.

We can’t be so myopic.  As soon as we inhibit Marine Le Pen’s freedom to speak and think, our liberty suffers too.  It’s a self-inflicted wound.  Not only do we jeopardise our own thoughts, which are at any moment liable to be deemed too toxic to be heard, but we also willingly refuse perhaps the most critical intellectual duty we owe ourselves: the duty of listening.

Each and every time we muffle a dissenting voice, we forego the chance to reacquaint ourselves with why we believe what we believe.  It was John Stuart Mill who posited that even if every living being were in agreement on the absolute truth of a concept, except one person, then it would be imperative – more so than ever – to hear him or her out.  If he had a point, we would be better off for taking it on board; and if he were wrong, even in the most appalling manner, we would benefit from being forced to re-examine our greatest certainties.  There would be nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

To be sufficiently brave to listen to opinions we find uncomfortable or contemptible is to be intellectually honest and rigorous enough to ask just how sure we are of what we believe as often as we possibly can.  That’s all it boils down to.  It’s never a waste of time to wonder how we can prove that the earth is spherical or that two and two make four, let alone to question why we hold our idiosyncratic political and religious convictions.  We can’t afford to shirk self-criticism, forensic self-examination.  No pursuit could be more worthy; nothing could be more precious.

An Interview with Peter Hitchens – Shouting into the Wind

“I didn’t arrange that,” Peter Hitchens blushes.  A stranger has just told him of her appreciation for everything he stands for and, for once, he’s been caught off guard, disarmed by praise.  The stone wall of rhetoric, dogmatic conviction and obduracy against which I’ve been fighting an attritional struggle for the past hour is felled in an instant.  And I can’t help feeling relieved.

We’re in Starbucks showing our solidarity with their tax avoidance – well, Hitchens is.  “I’m a very bad interviewer,” he opens, slipping into the rich baritone of the ‘Hitchens’ voice that so melodiously beguiles and bewitches, “partly because I’m usually more interested in myself than the other person.”  And he has reason to be.  After all, Peter Hitchens is a hell of a lot more interesting than most other people; I’ll give him that.  Columnist and blogger for The Mail on Sunday, author of five books on drugs and God, crime and politics, reporter from more countries than you can count on two hands – it’s a CV that would dwarf most.

But, if you’ll believe him, no one’s taking him seriously.  Never mind, though: the fact that they aren’t will hardly matter soon enough.  Indeed, the world as we know it is preparing for its final curtain call.  This is the end of civilisation according to Peter Hitchens.

Characteristically, Hitchens has been one of the more outspoken commentators on the recent Sandy Hook massacre that has reignited the debate on gun laws in the US.  “People don’t think about anything most of the time,” he notes about the arguments against gun ownership in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, “It’s just intellectually moronic to close your mind to the possibility that something other than guns are at issue.”  He’s thought, he’s decided, and I’m not about to change his mind: “I’m bored by this subject.  If someone produced a gun in here I’d be as scared as the next man – probably more so because I’ve seen what happens when a bullet passes through a human body.  It’s not nice, I’m not in favour of it.”

Hitchens rests his arm over the railing next to our table, as he attempts to deconstruct the myths of gun control.  To him, the reasoning is unsound.  Indeed, until 1920, he maintains, the UK’s very own gun laws “were so lax they made Texas look effeminate.”  And what about the rarely reported knife massacres in China?  Guns aren’t the only things capable of causing havoc, he argues.  “This problem of increasingly frequent gun massacres is new,” Hitchens goes on, “It’s not something that’s been going on during the entire period that the United States has had relaxed gun laws.  In fact, its gun laws have become increasingly restrictive over the past 30 or 40 years.”  His tone is such that it almost caresses me into submission.  Almost.  But I’m not convinced.  Fifteen of the 25 biggest mass shootings worldwide in the last half-century have taken place in the US, a country with double the number of guns per person compared with somewhere like Yemen.  Hardly coincidental, I might suggest.

“It’s theoretically arguable that the existence of law-abiding gun owners in places where people start shooting provides some protection,” Hitchens digresses as I inwardly cringe, noticing the tell-tale signs of the strand of thought with which he’s aligning himself – the NRA honchos and their ‘more guns, fewer shootings’ claptrap.  For someone who prides himself on logic being his weapon of choice, this doesn’t seem awfully logical to me.  “Take the Anders Breivik incident,” he explains, “Had there been anybody on that island in possession of a legally owned gun, a law-abiding sane person, they could have dropped him from 300 paces, and that would have been the end of that.  Good thing, no?”  Well, yes… provided that you haven’t taken into account how many more Anders Breiviks might crop up if guns were readily available.

Yet still his claim is that the problem lies elsewhere: “It’s a case of the old saying,” he recalls, “‘When the wise man points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger.’”  Focusing on guns is a lame distraction.  In the world according to Hitchens, we’d bite the bullet and scrutinise “a scandal as big as thalidomide” much more closely.  Most of these shootings, he’s convinced, have involved anti-depressants or illegal drugs (and sometimes both).  However, “the reason we don’t look there is because it’s fashionable to be against guns and it’s fashionable to be in favour of anti-depressants and marijuana.”  Hitchens takes a gulp of his coffee and shakes his head irately: “Fashion shouldn’t govern thought.”  I couldn’t agree more – but contrariness is fashionable too, I think to myself.

“The anti-depressant scandal is so huge,” and he’s cross with the failure of his trade to report it.  Hitchens carefully explains to me that it’s a “known fact” that the pills induce “suicidality, a tendency to feel suicidal,” but that nobody seems to care: “If people were constantly dying of a physical disease after having taken a pill that was supposed to cure them, the suspicion would be thrown on the efficacy of that pill.” But self-interest shuts the door to examination – on the part of “an awful lot of people in the media” who are taking these drugs, the “huge number of doctors” who prescribe them “out of laziness and a desire to get rid of patients,” and the pharmaceutical companies whose profits keep on soaring.

Hitchens fidgets in his chair slightly, before candidly admitting: “My engagement with the argument about drugs is purely to point out that everybody is talking balls.  I don’t have the slightest illusion that anything I say is going to make a difference.”  It’s the first sign of Hitchens’ distaste for the modern world – and its distaste for him.  “It’s coming, it will come,” he prophesies, “If you’ve read Brave New World, soma [the hallucinogenic consumed ubiquitously in Huxley’s novel] is on its way.”  Illegal drugs, according to Hitchens, have been systematically decriminalised in recent decades by the UK.  He rubbishes my suggestion that Portugal has seen notable successes since decriminalising possession of all drugs in 2001, regarding the Cato Institute’s conclusions as self-serving: “The evidence is that they had an agenda.  Besides, Portugal hasn’t decriminalised to anything like the extent that Britain has,” he explains, swooping up his coffee mug and leaning back once more.

Regulation of the drug market is a cowardly kowtow to the “stupid people that take them,” Hitchens believes.  But what about the tens of thousands of preventable deaths in Mexico, or the Taliban-swelling destruction of Afghanistan’s poppy fields (the only crop that yields its farmers any sort of livelihood)?  “Well, they’re caused by the selfish cretins who encourage the trade.  They’re on their conscience.”  He disputes the idea that decriminalisation would, in one fell swoop, eradicate (or at the very least, significantly reduce) the nefarious effects of just these two examples.  The way I see it, prohibition has been ineffective – it’s changed nothing but the girth of the criminal underbelly.  Peter Hitchens has no time for such arguments, though – indeed, his writings deny the very existence of a policy of ‘prohibition’ in the UK – and he’s not afraid to show his impatience with them: “Oh it’s pathetic, sub-intellectual drivel!  Any thinking person would easily see through it if they were given half a chance, but it’s fed to them as truth,” he complains.

Lazy thinking is a bugbear of Hitchens’, not least when it comes to God.  Which is why I’m a touch surprised that he appears jaded by the conversation when I bring it up: “I’m reduced to repeating things I’ve said over and over again,” he sighs, “It’s a matter of saying that either this is a created universe, and it is therefore the product of a mind in which we live and move and have a purpose that is discoverable, or it’s a meaningless chaos in which nothing we do has any significance.”  Life without faith, for him, is necessarily devoid of meaning and happiness: “You live, you die, it’s over.  There’s no justice, there’s no hope, those who are dead are gone and we have no souls.  Why would you want that?”  The trouble is that Hitchens’ argument smacks of teleology, even though it’s dressed up as rationalism – he wants there to be a meaning, a narrative he can follow with his finger down a page, a universal and unalterable understanding that is discoverable.  Therefore God exists.  Persuaded?

Above all, what religion gives Peter Hitchens is justice and morality.  “I don’t care whether you need him or not,” he expounds in pugnacious style, “Human justice, as we know, is a completely fallible thing.  Yet we all desire justice – I bet you do.  If it isn’t happening in the temporal sphere, there’s only one sphere in which it can take place: the eternal.”  Hitchens believes that a world without religion would substitute morals for ethics.  And we’d be poorer for it: “Ethical codes change all the time.  What’s more, they usually change to suit powerful people who need them to.  But God does not change; justice does not alter.”  My mind wanders momentarily, and I wonder whether he would agree that Henry VIII’s divorce proceedings – on which Hitchens’ Anglicanism was founded – constituted precisely the kind of change to the Church’s morality (at the behest of a very powerful person indeed) that he’s disparaging in the secular world.

There’s no doubt in his mind, though, that the Church of England is in decline.  According to census figures, the percentage of UK citizens classifying themselves as Christian nosedived by 12.4 per cent between 2001 and 2011.  “Christianity has more or less talked itself out of existence,” Hitchens acknowledges, “It lacks confidence and in many cases is espoused and headed by people who don’t really believe in it anyway.” It’s a depressing indictment of his own dearly held faith.  “This will be an Islamic country in 60 or 70 years’ time, I think,” he continues, resting his hands lightly on the table, “When the fundamental religions of modern life – namely, uninterrupted economic growth and an endlessly expanding welfare state – have proved to be false, which they are doing as we speak, there will be a religious revival in the Western countries and Islam is very well placed to take advantage of it.”

A distinct sense of resignation penetrates nearly everything Hitchens says.  He appears to see himself as a modern-day Cassandra, shouting truth into the wind whilst everybody else’s back is turned.  There’s a certain earnestness in his voice when he laments that he has “absolutely no influence over the politics of this country.  Maybe you do,” he offers.  “The existing political system is incredibly intolerant of dissent.  And it keeps me out,” he notes as though he’s living in 1984, but still he keeps fighting his corner, “I’m treated as a sort of licensed lunatic.  Nobody reads my books; nobody listens to anything I say.  All I can say is that I’ve tried.”

And just when I think we’ve reached the nadir of this conversation, he hits back with a sucker punch: “The jig is up, the country’s finished, Western civilisation’s over.  It’ll be the Chinese writing the history of this place.”  His advice?  Emigrate: “If I were you, I’d leave tomorrow.  But I’m too old, I couldn’t make a living abroad now.  I’m stuck.”  He tells me how he’d board the first plane to Canada, because “it’s a sensible, well-governed place and its people have a good sense of humour.”  But that does nothing to take away the sour taste of his doom and gloom end of days story.  “We’re watching the end of an ancient and once rather wonderful civilisation,” he meditates wistfully, “You’re watching the end of it.  It’s how these things go – neither with a bang nor with a whimper, but with the country sinking giggling into the sea.”

At length, we get up to leave.  Maybe it was something in the coffee, but I felt sure I’d walked into Starbucks feeling about five feet taller than I did now.  We shake hands, and I watch as he flings a scarf over his shoulder and strolls back to another day at the office, another day in the world of Peter Hitchens.  It’s all well and good, but the trouble is that I’m not quite sure the world that Hitchens thinks he lives in really exists.  At least, I hope it doesn’t.

Holy Taxation Batman!

My daily commute to work  consists of driving around six miles a day and also consists of driving into pot holes that even a Challenger tank would struggle to get through. And year after year the roads get a cheap repair and subsequently end up as pot holes again within a few short months. And this in turn has me  a) on the verge of a cataclysmic mental break down as my spine is shattered by what appears to be a meteor crater , and b) makes me wonder what the council’s authorities for our area are doing with our cash.

And so, upon arriving at work today on ungritted roads I made a few quick calculations as to how much of my monies have been taken from me.

So, here we go.

Okay, my yearly Income Tax payments work out to a staggering £3423. I’ve earned a pretty similar wage for the last ten years, which tells me that over the last ten years I’ve paid approximately £34,236 in Income Tax. It also tells me that after ten years of the same wage that I’m probably due a pay rise.

Then I looked at my National Insurance contributions. In a one-year period I paid £2073. Over ten years this comes in at a princely sum of £20,730.

So after spitting some tea over my desk as my calculator returned these numbers I then looked at my Council Tax bill.

My council tax for the last 10 years has been over £100 a month, but I rounded off at £140, the actual number these days is £159 but with fluctuations over the years I’ve rounded off to a more suitable number to accommodate the rises. My calculator returned a number of £14000 for ten years. Tea was then sprayed out of my nose and a meek cry squeaked from my throat.

Now, basing the above figure of £14,000, I then looked at the number of houses down my road, forty-four, and as all the houses down my road are the same, minus the occupants, the ten yearly Council Tax payments return at, and this made me pretty much launch my cup across the room, at £616,000. Remember, this is forty-four homes over ten years and I’ve been pretty generous in rounding off to the lower denominator.

Where I live, Wikipedia has the 2001 census as showing 14,732 residential homes. I appreciate that perhaps 60% of these homes either pay a lot less in Council Tax or get some form of support in paying it, yet still, if for the sake of being generous subtract 60% off we are left with 8,839 residential homes; now let’s be even more generous to the Council Tax that the remaining households pay and let’s say that they all pay £90 a month, quite a large deficit but I’m being generous, but now we are left with a monthly tax to the Council of £795,510.

Then over a ten month period of tax, as they so kindly allow us two months free of payments, we reach the figure of £7,955,100.

That’s the year done.

Okay, so 10 years?

Add another zero to that figure my friend. £79,551,000

And this is for a small town where the Christmas tree that the Council put in our town was dubbed by tabloids nationwide as “The Worst Xmas Tree In Britain” and now small businesses are rallying other businesses to put some of their earnings into a kitty so they can provide the next Christmas tree!

So where does our Council Tax go? Well, a breakdown of the taxation can be found here: http://www.canterbury.gov.uk/main.cfm?objectid=1416

Note that my tax is a touch higher per annum than the example shown on the Canterbury Council website, but do note that section “7” shows that the annual charge on this example is £1307.39 Then scroll your eyes up to section “6” and look at the breakdown of this tax.

And now look out of your window and wonder how on a national scale of taxation that this country can be in recession.

And remember I’ve only used Council Tax as a larger example – to show how this cartel aggressively take your hard earned money yet collects my landfill bin waste every fortnight and only provide enough recycling sacks per year to allow for 4 sacks of recycling waste a month.

I appreciate that the Council don’t just collect our bins, but I’m looking at the big picture. The one where surely the expenditure of Kent City Council cannot be above the cost of the tax paid across our little South Eastern county?

I’m basing all the above figures on a town that probably wouldn’t even be missed if it fell into the sea, I’m not including the larger cities, towns and villages in the area, I’m basing the above on a town with an estimated population of 35,188.

So with this in mind after having my skull smashed into the roof of my car repeatedly I started wondering about car fuel tax.

See the link below of how this is made up. http://www.petrolprices.com/the-price-of-fuel.html

This is ludicrous, how can the tax be over 60%?

Or how the cost of fueling your home so you don’t have to start pulling down your fences and torching them in a metal bin in your front room to keep warm.

Or the VAT on every item you purchase at a 20%.

Car tax. This is a big “Wow” for me, because again, with Council Tax payments and Car Tax payments I still can’t travel from A to B without my car breaking up like the Challenger Spaceship.

Cigarettes and alcohol – you can’t even kill yourself for cheap in this country.

And then you start getting really pissy and start looking at Congestion charges, Travel costs. TV licensing, the cost to use a public toilet, and I’m not talking about the fear of assault or STDs caught off the taps, airport costs, the cost of buying a house and so on.

The cost of living in the UK is now at a point where your wages are gone before you’ve even seen them. Disposable income is something we will tell our grandchildren about as we sit around a fire burning the coffee table and family albums.

Jesus H Christ, where is this all going? Can we smile? Or will that be taxed soon as well? But then again, the fact we are being raped of all that we earn; it makes it difficult to keep turning that frown upside down. It’s a good thing this country doesn’t have the same gun laws as the USA because this country is bleeding hard working folk dry. And there are only so much of us that you can consume before you end up in a revolt.

Gun Control: A Viewpoint

Three things happen when America hosts another gun massacre. Firstly, the rest of the world groans, “Really? Again?”, secondly, the NRA races to a media podium to declare that guns aren’t the problem, and thirdly, sensible people speak up and acknowledge that something needs to be done. Of course, what makes discussion particularly difficult is that gun control is an issue we automatically judge with emotions, but which needs objective analysis.

Most of the time, nothing happens. The ruling president will announce his sympathies and mutter that action must be taken to protect the innocent Americans, and then it’s business as usual. Newtown, however, seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, as President Obama has announced that he will be taking action. Pleasing to many, the decision has also upset the NRA and many pro-gun folk, on the assumption that this is Obama showing his true self of wanting to oppress the American people and, so the hyperbole goes, essentially frog-march the people to concentration camps for Holocaust II.

We are told that the Jews were disarmed first, and thus, by default, if Americans can keep their guns they will remain safe from their government; that the government and military are unable to take the people over if they have their guns. The necessary logical fallacy here is the huge disproportion between what weaponry the Nazis had compared to modern day America – after all, the American military is the biggest in the world (a fact that America is always boasting), and its job, for which the soldiers are, ironically, routinely praised by the military-phobic public, is to take over other countries and fight armies. I wouldn’t imagine the nation with the crown of the World’s Fattest is going to stand much of a chance, M4 or no M4. The American military has drones, stealth bombers, tanks, rockets, Kevlar and, well, basically the tools and training to engage in warfare to succeed at the end-goal – which means the American public would have no chance of surviving a takeover if the government truly wanted it, with or without guns.

There also seems to be an attitude of defeat in the minds of many Americans; that yes, these massacres are tragic, but nothing can be done about it. As someone told me after Newtown on Twitter: “If Jesus could’t [sic] stop from being crucified then the world will always have nut jobs No law will ever stop a psychopath”. We’ll sidestep the theological problem, that ‘Jesus was sent to earth to die, and in doing so fulfilled his purpose’, and instead rebut with two simple facts: countries with gun bans suffer almost no gun deaths, and America has more guns and more gun violence than any other developed nation.

Those facts are swept aside much of the time though, and the party line from the pro-gun side of the debate is that if more people have guns, less people will use guns. The logical mind would simply assert that actually, if the criminal is pointing a gun at your face, he isn’t going to permit you the opportunity of getting your own gun out of its holster to protect yourself. In other words, criminals will always pull their guns first, and the law-abiding innocent will always be on the back foot. Indeed, if the country became one where everyone had guns, criminals would just aspire to be the most aggressive, the most heavily armed people on the streets – by their very nature, criminals will be willing to go further than the common citizen and they will always exist; America’s Gold Rush and prohibition history tell us that criminals exist and operate even under threat of murder by other criminals. Nonetheless, there was a loud declaration post-Newtown that teachers should be armed, and they can then kill any would-be mass murderer. Aside from the obvious difficulties that would pose, is turning back the clock to America emerging once again as the Wild West really what people want to see? Should children have to go to school with an omnipresent reminder to fear violence and death each and every day? There is an inherent problem with the idea that only “crazy” people shoot people: the reality is anyone can snap – and that problem is exacerbated when a gun is at hand. What happens if one teacher (and of the millions in America, the odds are strong that it will happen) shoots a child, will the Republicans be rallying that children themselves carry guns, so they can protect themselves?

The pro-gun side is also quick to say that overall gun violence has decreased over the past decade, but, of the 12 deadliest shootings in American history, six have taken place within the past five years. Since Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson in 2009 there have been 65 mass shootings; there were 10,000 firearm murders in 2011 – at a rate on the increase – and most of the developed world’s worst mass shootings have occurred in the USA. Figures like that would suggest to any reasonable mind that the situation needs amending, but instead we’re greeted with this line: “Anyone who wants to ban guns supports the rape and murder of women and children.” Of course, one could easily respond with, “Anyone who doesn’t support gun control supports the near-constant firearm homicides and injuries of innocent people, as well as the slaughter of children.” Both statements represent extremist views.

Surely the answer lays somewhere in the middle, but we’re told to reject any measure, because it is all a slippery slope to total eradication of firearms held by the American public. There’s no denying that there are groups who want a gun-free America, but the NRA is one of the biggest lobbying groups in the nation. That means that eradicating guns will not be as simple as some people seem to think it would be – because the opposite is big, rich, and powerful. What most people in the gun-control camp really want is sensible restrictions – and in a country where an assault rifle is cheaper than an iPad and less restricted than car ownership, there are numerous options that can be explored.

The pro-gun side often points to Switzerland as proof that a well-armed country has lower crime rates (although Switzerland could equally point to the USA as proof that a well-armed country has higher crime rates), but what isn’t taken into account is how Switzerland regulates its guns. For instance, most men are conscripted into the military at the age of 20, as Switzerland has no dedicated army it is formed by the civilians. Time in the military includes weapons training, as well as psychological tests. To purchase a firearm in a shop, buyers need weapon acquisition permits, with which a buyer can purchase three guns. When buying a gun from an individual, Swiss rules state that a permit is still required, and the seller is expected to establish reasonable certainty that the buyer is of a sound and stable mind. There must be a written contract between both parties, detailing the weapon type, manufacturer and serial number, and both parties keep the contract for a decade. Automatic and selective fire weapons are forbidden except to those with a special permit, obtainable by the cantonal police, and it can be acquired only when additional requirements have been met, such as owning a specific type of gun locker. In addition, every gun needs to be marked with a registered serial number, and a gun carrying permit is necessary to carry a loaded gun out of the home – and these are usually only issued to people working in such occupations as security. Switzerland also requires State agencies to maintain records of the storage and movement of all guns and ammo.

In short, Switzerland does not freely allow the purchase of guns but instead goes to great lengths to ensure that owners are responsible and able to own a gun properly. In America, there is no limitation on private sale, weapons training is not necessary to own a gun, no tests are undertaken to prove the person is of a sound mind, there are no records of the movement of weapons, and no lockers or safes are required in the home. Any of these provisions would be “gun control”, but may help to reduce the number of firearm murders and mass shootings. There are weak rebuttals to the idea of controls as being “unconstitutional”. That same argument overlooks that it is already illegal to own such things as tanks, rocket launchers and automatic weapons, and would mean it is unconstitutional to have the age restrictions and background checks already in place, but would many Americans truly feel comfortable removing those provisions? And if not, if it’s agreed that those measures are warranted, then there is no reason why a few more cannot be enacted – because ultimately, Switzerland shows that strong provisions work, and its gun ownership is not particularly restricted, rather the government knows who has what gun at any moment in time, and the owner must be mentally stable. That seems reasonable enough to a rational mind. Constitutionally, the right is to own guns, and all the while Americans are able to own at least one type of gun, the Constitution is not being overruled.

Guns do not need to be banned entirely, and the pro-gun camp is probably right that at this juncture in American history, there are too many guns on the streets for the average citizen to want to give them up and still feel safe from criminals. However, by borrowing some sensible precautions from Switzerland, America will be able to enjoy gun ownership and a higher degree of personal safety from those with guns. But if there is one stark fact, it is that the NRA and its advocates need to be bringing suggestions to the table; the ground is shrinking beneath their feet and each time they declare there is no gun problem in the wake of a massacre, they further alienate their stance. The line that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, may be factually true but it is simultaneously dishonest. The reason being that guns make it so much easier to take a life, or multiple lives, and other weapons – a knife, for instance – lack the same potential for disaster. That statement was demonstrably proved accurate on the same day as the Newtown massacre, when a man stabbed 22 children in school. Not one of his victims died, but each and every one of Adam Lanza’s Newtown victims were killed, thanks to the efficiency of firearms. That stark fact alone should be enough to demonstrate a need for change.