DAVID'S SOAPBOX

The above is not the result of a friendly football match. It is a reflection of the number of votes for the Labour party as against the number of votes for the BNP on a pro-rata basis in the recent European elections in England.

It may be apparent from previous soapboxes that I lack affection for some politicians and police.

These two institutions have excelled themselves and shown their true colours since my February soapbox.

The nature of this government and its politicised police was exposed to the world on the 26^th November 2008 when the police arrested the Conservative MP Damian Green.

We know that Gordon Brown made much of his name and reputation through leaks that were given to him when the Labour Party were in opposition.

What is apparent was that civil servants had called in the police on the grounds that there was a threat to national security.

Let us for a moment ponder what these threats to national security were.

1. A series of Home Office memos appearing in the Daily Mail on the 13^th November 2007 showed that Jackie Smith, the Home Secretary, had been warned 4 months earlier that thousands of illegal immigrants had been cleared to work in a sensitive, vital security job. An email revealed that Smith had appeared to accept Press Office advice in August not to disclose the number of illegal immigrants.

2. An email to Liam Byrne, then a Home Office minister, in February 2008 which showed he was informed about an illegal Brazilian immigrant who allegedly worked in Parliament on a fake ID card. The memo was published in the Sunday Telegraph on February 10^th.

3. A letter from Smith to Gordon Brown warning that a recession would lead to a rise in crime. The letter was drafted by but had not been cleared by Smith and had not even been sent to Number 10, the Home Office said.

4. A list of Labour MPs likely to rebel against the government’s plan to detain terrorist suspects for up to 42 days without charge.

The 26^th November 2008 was, I believe, the same date that problems arose in India, known at the time as “the Mumbai massacres”. These involved a number of Muslim extremists committing a considerable number of atrocities involving substantial loss of life.

The officer in charge of the Damian Green arrest and the search of his home and, more disgracefully, his Commons office was a Bob Quick. His additional claims to fame were that he was clearly not a lover of the Conservative Party, as evidenced by some remarks he made which he had to withdraw, and was not overly gifted with foresight as further evidenced by the expose of some top secret documents to the Press which brought forward an anti-terrorist operation which then ended in a fiasco.

The Speaker of the House of Commons allowed the police in without even checking that they had the proper authority and he, like Bob Quick who has gone, will shortly go and well deserved it is.

We must clearly be concerned that national security seems to revolve around covers-up by the Home Secretary, the employment of thousands of illegal immigrants working in sensitive White Hall security jobs (one could ask what illegal immigrants were doing here in the first place anyway), an illegal Brazilian immigrant working in Parliament on a fake ID card, a warning that a recession would lead to a rise in crime and a list of Labour MPs likely to rebel. We know now, of course, that Labour MPs may huff and puff about rebelling but given that many of them may soon have to find other work (perhaps I should just say “work”), possibly with a rather less extravagant expenses pot attached to it, the chance of them actually doing anything to hasten the next election only exists in one’s dreams.

At the end of the day the Director of Public Prosecutions had to acknowledge there was no evidence of a crime by Damian Green and, in the sort of mealy mouthed words that these people come out with, the whole thing was clearly a travesty.

Reverting briefly to the Mumbai situation, I would have thought that if terrorists were committing an atrocity in one part of the world there was a slightly heightened chance that terrorists elsewhere might try and emulate and do their bit to create disharmony. So on that basis what do you think our allegedly under-staffed (according to them) anti-terrorists police were doing on the day of the Mumbai massacre? Were they filtering through their records checking emails, taped conversations etc. for a hint that we, the great British public who pay their salaries, might be at risk? Were they out on the streets following known terrorists in a blanket security operation? Were they perhaps all sitting in a room with the benefit of their collective brain-power, such as it is, planning how they could avoid anything like this happening in the UK?

No – they were out in huge numbers arresting a perfectly harmless Conservative MP for doing what he is paid to do, namely exposing what a rotten and corrupt government this is. Doesn’t that make you sleep easier in your bed at night.

Governments tend to have a natural shelf-life. Once past their “for sale by” date the public want a change. In the same way that food goes off and smells so do governments and the public want something fresh. Why this is I do not know save it is.

When Tony Blair left Gordon Brown enjoyed the usual honeymoon that the public tend to give a new face. Perhaps the public have a streak of decency in them, lacking in me, designed to give someone a fair chance.

What was strange was that Gordon Brown had been around for a long time so the public should have known what they were getting.

There had been created a sort of myth that he was a fantastic Chancellor and had created prosperity for us all and, according to him, no more boom and bust.

The opportunity to go to the public for an election just after he became Prime Minister was lost and his popularity waned.

Then came the credit crunch. Amazingly Gordon Brown’s popularity soared in an upward movement pretty similar to the upward movement of the national debt that was being created and which our grandchildren will have to pay off. Why I know not because he was a useless spendthrift Chancellor and hasn’t inspired much as a Prime Minister.

Flinging money at the public sector is apparently “investment”. What a joke. Gordon Brown keeps on about investment when he really means feather bedding the public sector so they will vote for him.

As Gordon Brown’s popularity crept back so his rhetoric expanded so that he considered himself to be the world leader in sorting out the global problems. What was entertaining was that whenever asked about the problem and how come we were now back to boom and bust, he would blame it on the United States. As an example of how not to make friends and influence people only Gordon Brown was surprised at the rather luke-warm reception from Barack Obama.

Following the disgraceful treatment of Damian Green the public focused on the economy and certainly Damian Green’s arrest and the palpably pathetic response by both the police and the Speaker of the House of Commons as to the violation of the fundamental laws of this country, caused Gordon Brown’s popularity to wane or at least the Conservatives’ to increase.

We then move on to a series of events which show people in their true light.

Gordon Brown arranged on the 2^nd April 2009 for a Summit of the G20 to take place.

The G20 is a group of 20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors which was established in 1999 of important industrial and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy.

Its members include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of American and the EU. No prizes for spotting the past and present bad boys in that lot.

A summit was organised in London because the United Kingdom chaired the group of 20 in 2009. This was turned into a media circus for Gordon Brown and the opportunity to spend a huge amount of tax payers money that could have been saved by the simple process of having video links in the individual countries. However, video links do not buy you votes – strutting around the world stage looking important does.

It may be that I have misread the situation but it seems to me that whenever you get a bunch of self-important people together you are going to get protestors. Amongst those protestors will be a handful of people hell-bent on causing trouble but the vast majority just wish to make their point that they don’t agree with what’s going on.

There are different ways of dealing with protests.

The problem is that the host of whatever international meeting it is is going to look pretty wimpy if he can’t control the protestors. Some of his guests are either monsters themselves and/or used to using strong measures to curb free speech. Mention the words “free speech” to a few of these people and they would reach for their dictionaries.

Fortunately for Gordon Brown there was little chance of him being put to shame amongst those of his guests who came from somewhat less loveable countries no matter how badly the police behaved. The boys in blue were well up to dealing with demonstrations. I well remember in the days when I used to watch Brighton & Hove Albion play football, seeing the police gather in Hove Park prior to the game. In anticipation of a bit of sport there would be a number of over-hyped, over-excited police getting themselves into a frenzy and looking forward to potential crowd trouble. You stopped and looked at your risk and frankly these adrenaline-fuelled, retarded morons were a disgrace to their uniform.

Moving on to the boys in blue for the G20, such was their intelligence they forgot one very simple thing. We are the world’s leading surveillance society. CCTV cameras abound as, of course, does the interception of mail and tapping of telephone calls. The latter two, however, are by-and-large unknown quantities as it is not “in the public interest” to disclose how often it is done.

The problem with CCTV cameras is that they are not selective. The camera does not say “I am just about to record 4 or 5 yobs beating up some old lady which is OK so I’ll continue” with “I am just recording the police using their truncheons on a somewhat drunk but harmless individual who is not moving fast enough so I will stop” or “I am just about to record an irate martial-arts dressed police thug beating a woman on the back of her legs so I will stop”. The cameras keep rolling and the film is there for all to see.

Why is it that I keep telling myself that nothing is going to happen as a result of this? Will anyone be prosecuted? I doubt it. Will any lessons be learned? Well, we shall get some mealy mouthed words from top policemen that if the public behaved better then these things would not be necessary and it is perhaps regrettable that people have died or got beaten but then they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Moving on from that, is the police tactic known as “kettling”. This consists of hemming people in and not allowing them freedom of movement. Now apparently the Courts have approved that as a lawful tactic.

I have some difficulty in my mind in coming to terms with what can be lawful about herding people into a corner for many hours on end, refusing them the opportunity of leaving to go to the toilet or whatever and claiming that that makes us somehow a better freer democratic society.

Television footage of the police beating people and generally being oppressive was one of the more depressing sights of the G20 and fortunately it took much of the gloss off Gordon Brown’s ego trip.

We then came on to the Downing Street “dirty tricks” department. Apparently it was nothing to do with Gordon Brown although the main perpetrator was one of his closest allies and had a reputation as an attack dog. But never mind, as soon as the deplorable ideas were exposed large hints were issued that the boys in blue should be brought in to check how these people had got hold of this information. Never mind the public interest – let’s bring the boys in blue in and arrest a few people for exposing tactics that belong to the gutter. Fortunately some common sense come into play and Gordon Brown even offered an apology.

What concerned me is the mental state of people who could have thought that the existence of a sexually transmitted disease, cavorting around in women’s clothing watching a couple of people making love, a gay MP taking his partner to the House of Commons in order to impress the partner’s business associates and a female MP having it off with another MP and then getting told off, could conceivably firstly be of the slightest interest to the public, even if it were true which it wasn’t, and secondly was behaviour which somehow made them unfit for public office. What it did expose was how sick some of Gordon Brown’s closest aides were.

We then move on to the rumours that somebody was trying to sell MP expenses secrets. The rumour became fact and the Daily Telegraph has no doubt increased its circulation ever since.

What astonished me was not so much the fact that these MPs had been milking the expenses system but that the public seemed to be surprised and upset about it. What did they expect? Or is it just me that was not surprised? The first reaction was predictable. Bring in the boys in blue and find out who leaked it. The disgraceful Michael Martin demonstrated why he was never fit to be Speaker albeit he will retire on a healthy index-linked pension which will soften the blow to him. Not to us though as we shall be paying for it.

I have no intention of getting involved in commenting in detail on the expenses because the Press have done a far better job than I ever could do and are still milking it for all its worth.

In fairness to the Daily Telegraph, which is a Conservative newspaper, they have been pretty even-handed in their exposure.

We then moved on to a combination of local Council and euro-MP elections. I will be the first to admit that historically I couldn’t be bothered to vote in either of them. However, there is a real pleasure now as I realise it needs every person in this country to register their votes in order to change this government and have another one for a few years before that too will need to be changed.

Do you remember Swine Flu? It was apparently going to decimate the earth and kill us all. For days wise men and women appeared on television telling us about pandemics, millions dying, billions dying, god knows how many were going to die. Armageddon was here in our lifetime. Only by spending more money and creating more jobs could we survive. Well, it would appear that MPs fiddling their expenses are far more interesting and you will note that although Swine Flu is still with us and is now apparently a pandemic, it gets very little publicity.

The local elections removed the Labour Party from control of any counties in England. You may ask why I keep mentioning England as I did at the beginning of this article and am now.

The reason is that Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales all have their own Assemblies. They have a reasonably powerful form of local democracy. England, which is by far and away the largest of the four countries, does not. England, however, pro-rata, has less Members of Parliament per head of population than the other three.

English MPs are certainly not entitled , nor would they even suggest they should be, to vote in the Northern Irish, Scottish or Welsh Assemblies.

The Northern Irish, Welsh and Scottish are not only able to vote at Westminster on matters which only affect England but because of the built-in bias towards either nationalist parties or the Labour Party, English matters are effectively decided by the other three countries and their MPs who vote at Westminster.

That is not democracy.

Then we come to the Euro election. I believe there are some questions about Europe which need answering. There is a myth that we need Europe to trade with and sell our goods to. But we buy far more from Europe than we sell to them. So who would be the loser? If we insisted the EU should be merely a trading block can you imagine the European countries who sell their goods to us saying they won’t do it. Nonsense.

Then there are the vast sums of money we pour into Europe but which do not find their way back to us. About a quarter of the money in Europe goes on the Common Agricultural Policy which benefits French farmers and big national companies but doesn’t seem to do an awful lot for our farmers.

I am not suggesting that we should get out of Europe – all I am suggesting is that we, the British, should have the opportunity to vote on a referendum whenever something happens which materially affects our sovereignty. We were promised this but by changing the name of a constitution to a treaty the Labour Party has been able to avoid a referendum. The reason was nothing to do with the change of name but all to do with the fact that the referendum would be lost because we are an independently minded cussed lot and Europe does not accept the will of the people unless it suits them. So the Labour party gets less than 16% of the vote in Europe yet will sell us down the river against the public’s wishes.

Labour got less than 16% nationally on the vote in the Euro elections and the BNP got 9%. However, in England the figures make interesting reading.

The combined BNP and Labour vote was 2,892,365.

Of this the Labour vote was 2,013,055 with the balance of 879,310 going to the BNP. So for every 7 Labour voters there were 3 BNP.

Of those who did vote all but 85% voted for parties other than the Labour party.

It is a fact that the BNP have some pretty appalling policies. However, I have yet to see any evidence that they have been responsible for killing men, women and children by bombing them indiscriminately, executing people who do not agree with them because of their religion, or murdering members of the police and armed forces who are upholding the law. Ring a bell does it? And now the leaders are MPs in this country. I may have missed the BNP doing similar but I can’t remember them doing it!

So let’s get it into perspective.

Their views are obnoxious and some of their followers could do with a makeover. What we need to do is to find out why it is that a substantial proportion of the population is prepared to vote for them, what the concerns of that part of the population are and what, if anything, can be done to persuade them that their concerns are ill-founded. That is democracy not throwing eggs or having riots every time these people appear just because their views are not agreed with. What has happened is that because Communism was mixed up with idealism the left attracted intellectuals who were, of course, quite content to sell their own country down the river and impose upon it a system which believes in mass genocide. Russia, China and Cambodia are just mere samples of this, not to mention North Korea. There has been a confidence trick whereby left-wing views are considered to be quaint and something which everyone (fortunately I managed to escape it) has to go through at some stage in their lives. Never mind the 10s of millions who were slaughtered by their own people in the interests of “the people”.

Now the fact of the matter is that centre-left views can be perfectly fair and reasonable and sometimes the matters raised need to be addressed. However, sometimes they just talk nonsense but we are too polite to tell them because “they mean well”. How pathetic is that.

There is no place at all for the imposition of Communism in the manner in which it was in the old Soviet Empire, China, Cambodia and still is in North Korea.

The same can be said of extreme right-wing views based on racism and an irrational fear of foreigners. However, there are concerns and they need to be addressed other than by throwing eggs and renting a left wing mob.

I have a simple philosophy. If somebody has a point of view and you are not able to persuade them that that point of view is wrong by argument, then maybe you should look more closely at your arguments. Slick left wing commentators on Sky TV or the BBC scoring quick bullet points are not the way of dealing with the problem.