Posts Tagged 'Socialism'
Collectivism, statism, authoritarianism…
Tags: Authoritarianism, Education, Socialism, Subliminal Mind Control
Call it what you will, no matter how you dress this up it shows the disturbing, even dangerous, mindset of socialists (h/t Liberty Blitzkrieg). Speaking as a parent of two children, the message in the clip below is utterly appalling.
When people like Melissa Harris-Perry want to take responsibility for the education of your children you've got to ask why, what's in it for them? Clearly they want to dictate the way the child will think when he is older.
For socialists it is too much of a risk to let a family influence the way the child might think – after all, the chilld might not accept the distorted, fallacious secular shibboleths that underpin the authoritarian, statist creed the collectivists cling to. Parents cannot be trusted to indoctrinate the children with the 'correct' viewpoints. Free thinking and independent, critical analysis that might lead someone to question or challenge the statist orthodoxy cannot be permitted.
So confident are these people, they don't even try to hide their nefarious agenda any more.
Sadiq Khan MP and a lesson in historical ignorance
Tags: Education, Hypocrisy, Self Loathing Liberal Elite, Socialism
From the Daily Wail…
A left-wing MP has claimed that new immigrants know more about the nation's heritage than many Britons.
Labour justice spokesman Sadiq Khan said that it 'frustrated' him to see newcomers obliged to sit citizenship tests when many people 'know b***** all' about British history.
Mr Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants and MP for Tooting in South London, said he met many people who have gone through the citizenship ceremony who feel 'so excited and enthused'.
But he added: 'Then I'll be canvassing in my area and there'll be people who have lived in the same home for three or four or five generations who know b***** all about our country, about our heritage.
'It frustrates me that you've got new citizens who have an obligation to learn about our country but we aren't doing enough to make sure everyone shares that knowledge.'
It is hypocritical of Khan to protest in this way. For many years Khan and his socialist ilk have strived to demonise the history of this country and teach only a slanted and pejorative version of our past. They have consistently cited our imperial and colonialist history as something of which this country should be ashamed and therefore should be swept under the carpet – denying younsgters the chance to learn with balance some of the positives of what we also contributed to the world in those days.
The socialist airbrushing of our past has been reflected in the history syllabus in state schools as the focus switched from teaching historic facts about our country and its place in the world to indoctrinating youngsters with the kind of marxist nonsense spewed forth by the likes of the arch-apologist for communist inspired genocide, Eric Hobsbawm.
Putting the threat to our freedom into context
Tags: Censorship, EU, Liberty, Parasite Class, Revolution, Self Loathing Liberal Elite, Socialism, Terrorism, Vested Interests
In a private exchange with a fellow blogger several days ago he speculated that the Anders Breivik mass murder would bode ill for dissenters. Well, one assumes it was private, but who knows what is being monitored and by whom…
Anyway, being a 'glass half full' kind of chap I replied that seeing as the Norwegian intelligence service has shown Breivik up to be a dangerous and well armed Walter Mitty, attempts to tar dissenters with the same brush will fail. I stressed the importance of continuing to cite evidence and push our arguments so the powers that be will be forced to speak to them.
After all, I pointed out, 7/7 didn't really change anything and subsequent plots haven't really changed anything, so therefore it follows a Norwegian mass murderer will not change anything either.
At this point my blogging friend said he was not so sure. He qualified his concern by providing me with a link to a piece on the French language version of EurActiv, translated roughly by Google.
Reading and reflecting upon it made me reconsider my inital assessment, hence my post yesterday. All bloggers should take a few moments to take the article on board.
Mentioned in that piece is European Commission spokesman Michele Cercone (pictured). It seems old Michele has had a fair bit to say lately – some of it extremely illuminating and far reaching. Consider this, attributed to Cercone by Balkans.com:
The European Commission is building a security system to issue early warnings on threats of extremism, xenophobia and other forms of radicalism
Or this quote reported by Hurriyet Daily News:
Compromises are more easily reached after shocking events like those that happened in Norway.
And International Affairs Magazine, explained that: 'Various forces will be trying to capitalize on Norway's bloody drama. Interestingly, the European Commission championed the cause. Breivik left a thorough description of the costs of the bomb ingredients, the result being that the EU rushed to impose regulations on the sales of chemicals that can be mold into explosives,' and reported Cercone as saying:
The European Commission will speed up the introduction of new regulations on chemicals sales after a Norwegian extremist who killed 76 people in last week's bombing and shooting spree admitted he used fertilizers to make explosives.
But virtually none of this has been reported by our world beating media corps, which is too busy devoted column hectares to its navel gazing over phone hacking. Should we be worried by this? Absolutely.
It is a fact that the European Commission, an arm of the EU, is now increasing its efforts to apply control over people in the member states. No crisis must ever be wasted. The EU, being unelected, unaccountable and therefore wholly anti democratic, is seizing the moment to empower itself still further at the expense of our personal freedoms. We are being dictated to by an entity that is taking an opportunity to use the actions of one individual as justification to clamp down on anyone who opposes this essentially socialist construct – hence the focus on right wing 'extremism' where the EU decides what constitutes extreme.
The issue is one of mission creep. We have seen it all before, where legislation enacted for one purpose becomes a convenient measure that is applied for a different purpose that was never intended. The EU is engaging in naked opportunism to exert greater control, while setting itself as the sole authority to determine what dissent against it will be tolerated.
It is frightening that the EU, with its goal of eradicating the nation state, will be deciding whether its opponents are too radical, whether their views can therefore be shared on the internet, and will define what constitutes xenophobia and whether that should be punished – all backed by European courts and European arrest warrants.
In hindsight I got it wrong. We are indeed staring into an abyss where our enemy, the EU, could take advantage of the Breivik attacks to effectively criminalise anti EU sentitment, or at the very least prevent people from sharing those sentiments with others, citing them as 'extreme', 'radical', 'xenophobic' or even potential 'lone wolf terrorists'. This response isn't being driven simply by Breivik's actions, but crucially the rationale he gave for them.
Mehdi Hasan – what an unpleasant piece of work
Tags: Extremism, Fifth Column, Hypocrisy, Intolerance, Islamism, Media, Moral Relativism, Socialism
Watching Mehdi Hasan on television has long given me a sense of the man's intolerance for anyone who disagrees with him.
But that intolerance has previously manifested itself in a different way, something I was unaware of. The clip below demonstrates Hasan's casual bigotry and disdain for non Muslims, and his misplaced sense of moral superiority. What a thoroughly unpleasant individual.
He may use his frequent BBC appearances spout the usual buzz words such as 'equality', 'diversity', 'multi-culturalism' and 'Islamophobia' but we can now see what exists behind the carefully moderated public face. No wonder he is the pride of the New Stateman.
(Hat tip: commenter in another thread)
How to defeat Mehdi Hasan
Tags: Big Business, Big Government, Idiocy, Our Tax £s, Socialism
After his bombastic performance on Question Time last week and his ill-tempered Twitter exchange with Archbishop Cranmer, it seems there is a way to shut up Mehdi Hasan, the Senior Editor (Politics) at the New Statesman magazine.
You just need to counter with facts that which he casually denies when he lets ideological fervour over take him. It was laughable that in my exchange with him on Twitter earlier today he said it was 'not true' that Barclays bank sought private money instead of a taxpayer funded bailout during the banking crisis…
Notice how Hasan tries to move the goalposts after his fallacy is exposed? The fact is it's true that Barclays took funding from the Middle East – at quite a rate of interest I might add – rather than take money from the government on Gordon Brown's terms.
But while the banks that took taxpayers' money should pay it back without delay, it is arguable that as a private company Barclays should alter its bonus arrangements for employees when it has no debt to repay the taxpayer.
As for the indirect benefits of the bailout of other banks, it was not just the banking sector that benefited. So should other private companies that have benefited from the recapitalisation of the banks also stop paying bonuses? Hasan doesn't say – but then, he wouldn't as his attempt at political point scoring doesn't lead him to think in such depth. If you read tweets perhaps you might like to…
UK budget deficit warning on eve of election
Tags: Big Government, Economy, EU, General Election, Incompetence, Labour, Politicians, Socialism
An election present for Gordon Brown from the EU. With polling set to begin in hours, this story says it all about Labour. At the end of every Labour government the economy is revealed to be a basket case in need of dramatic and painful remedial action. Socialist economic incompetence underlined by damaging tax, borrow and spend, has saddled us with massive public debt for decades.
As the world agonises about the financial crisis in Greece, the UK is shown to be in an even worse economic position. The damage has been done by spending money we didn't have on non-essential programmes we didn't need. What is almost as bad is that we will only get a piecemeal response from the not really Conservative Party, which will continue to pursue an approach that is 'big government' in all but name. Stuck in the middle of this dog's breakfast, and footing the rapidly rising bill, is the poor bloody average voter, devoid of a voice and ignored by the political class. It would be comedy if it wasn't such a tragedy.
BNP's Collett arrested in alleged Griffin death plot
Tags: BNP, Idiocy, Racism, Socialism
By their friends shall ye know them. Bubbling within the British National Party (BNP) alongside the extremism that denotes that group, has always been an undercurrent of aggression, violence and hatred. Many people have been duped by the plausible and smooth talking BNP leadership into voting for the party, because of the lack of immigration controls, transforming British society and the paucity of robust alternatives within the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative consensus.
The language BNP representatives use in public may be measured and their attire more respectable, but behind closed doors the party remains the same racist collection of violent extremists it always was. The news today that the BNP's head of publicity, Mark Collett, has been arrested in connection with an alleged plot to kill BNP leader Nick Griffin, (pictured together above) suggests history is repeating itself.
Of all the political parties in the UK, if any was to experience such a plot, it was always going to be the BNP. The authoritarian national socialist and fascist parties of the 20th century, both grouping of the left despite wrongly being labelled as right wing, were regular venues for this kind of vicious in-fighting and plots to overthrow their leaderships. It is a mindset peculiar to the kind of person who would gravitate to a party like the BNP.
The BNP is demonstrating that it is an opportunist throwback to a bygone age. It remains a party inhabited by dangerous individuals and an internal security operation worthy of the Stasi. It is still characterised by identity politics that defines people by their race, and which possesses a dictatorial desire to impose a centralising and controlling system of governance on the UK.
Perhaps those people who are so frustrated at the current state of politics in this country they have given the BNP their vote, or are considering doing so, will now realise the true nature of that party and understand that is isn't the alternative they have been seeking.
Home repossessions up by 15%
Tags: Failure, Labour, Politics of Spite, Socialism
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has revealed that 54,055 people had their properties repossessed during 2009, an increase of more than 15% on the 46,945 properties repossessed in 2008.
This must be a red letter day for Labour's Housing Minister, John Healey MP. You remember him. He was the Minister who in February, during an interview on BBC Five Live, said with breathtaking flippancy that in some cases repossession is the best thing for the people who are struggling with those mortgages. But let's stick to the numbers issue for now, which Healey also covered during the interview when he said:
'The important thing is that people are informed about the help that's available, able to deal with their lenders, confident that they know that the lenders must only use repossession as a last resort because of the rules we've got in place and so that's part of what we've been doing in government… a campaign to make sure that people know there's help available and can get it.'
Clearly that is absolute tripe. A 15% increase in repossessions is an indictment of the failing big government approach Labour loves. It is the consequence of the economic devastation brought about by high tax-high borrowing-high spend policies and a needless increase in the size of the public sector at the expense of the private sector. Under Labour, which repeatedly spins that its policies are helping people (at great expense to the taxpayers), things are getting worse, not better.
We surely owe Jeffrey Sachs our thanks
Tags: Big Government, Economy, Idiocy, Our Tax £s, Socialism
Last month we had Professor George Irvin holding forth on EUObserver as he pressed for a Tobin Tax. Of course as we explained here when it comes to left wing economics it is ordinary people who feel the pain in order to make the state more powerful and the elites richer than before. This is true of the Tobin tax, which will make ordinary people poorer and is an inadequate substitute for effective banking regulation.
This month we have the delight of being treated to the multi-talented leftist economist Jeffrey Sachs taking a break from being a climate change expert and adding his voice those calling for a Tobin Tax in the EU.
What would we do without these esteemed experts, telling us what we should do? Surely we owe them our thanks. After all, how would we cope without them, as they demand that we make ourselves poorer in order to underpin a Tobin Tax, in the childlike belief it will help the public good? Until their craving for an all powerful state that makes our decisions for us is met we can expect to be subjected to more of the same socialist bilge.
Regardless of how often the likes of Irvin and Sachs tell us that a Tobin Tax is the only way, and that we have a moral responsibility to tax the very institutions we rely on to provide finance to help businesses and consumers, their argument is fundamentally flawed. Repeating it time and again will not make it right. It is coloured by their political leanings and worldview, not based in sound economic principles that befit a free market economy – or for that matter even a mixed economy. (Title of this post may contain traces of sarcasm).
EU increases the cost of employment
Tags: Big Government, Economy, EU, Our Tax £s, Socialism, Sovereignty
At the Council of Ministers yesterday, EU employment ministers agreed to extend the minimum period of parental leave to four months per parent. The leave period applies to all workers, regardless of what kind of contract they have, so everyone who is on a fixed-term contract, working part-time workers or a temporary agency contractor will be eligible to take leave and it must be respected by all employers.
Naturally this diktat from our real government in Brussels will require the UK Parliament to change the laws to ensure compliance. In addition to the UK this change affects Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Romania and Malta.
Our masters may have spoken but it will be left to businesses to meet the costs incurred of losing an employee for up to seven months, in the case of women this is on top of paid maternity leave which is currently granted for a minimum of 14 weeks. Where the employee is self employed an allowance paid for from our taxes will subsidise this time off. Either way, if you are a taxpayer or a consumer, more of your resources will be taken to make this parental leave possible. The costs of this social policy will be borne by an already creaking economy.
Small businesses stand to be particularly hard hit by this new foreign legislation imposed on them. It might be good news for older people, because a law such as this will act as a disincentive to employ people who are of child bearing age. It certainly doesn't bode well for the prospects of getting the millions of economically inactive younger people into work.
This is just another of the joys of independence and national sovereignty this country enjoys within the European Union.
A response to Trevor Phillips' attack on caring parents
Tags: Abuse of Power, Big Government, Socialism
'The most blaring and substantial thing that best predicts disadvantage is class and place: who your parents were, what they did and where you grew up.
'At the moment there is too much advantage given to people who shout loudest and have too much knowledge.'
So says Trevor Phillips, controversial head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. What complete and utter rubbish.
My father was the sole breadwinner working shifts in the industrial sector. My mother spent her time helping other people in a variety of capacities, but didn't earn a wage. I grew up in a working class household on a council estate. I always had what I needed, was properly fed and nicely turned out, but it was always a struggle to make ends meet financially. Kids around my way didn't often go to college. It was a rough area where you needed to be quick witted and handy with your fists, although at times that wasn't enough. But I had a happy childhood.
The reason why I was happy was I had parents who loved me. They brought me up to respect the law and other people. I didn't get into trouble with the police like many of my peers. My parents encouraged me to do better. They always gave me support and did what they could to ensure I had opportunities. Sometimes that meant picking up the phone to fight my corner. Sometimes it meant them having to know to whom they should speak if they were concerned that I might miss out on something in some way. I was lucky because many of the parents of other kids living on our estate didn't bother. They just wanted to lounge around, drink and smoke their income and chuck the kids into the street until it was time for bed.
My parents are the kind of parents that Trevor Phillips is trying to undermine. Phillips thinks he's fighting a class war for equality by singling out 'middle class' parents and suggesting they undermine families lower down the scale. He's an idiot. He's attacking parents who care about their children and do all they can to give them the best start in life. He's attacking them because they are motivated to do the right thing by their offspring.
If there is any advantage it is often one that has been hard earned by many parents, like mine, who went the extra mile to look out for the interests of their children. To try and undermine this is insanity. How completely and utterly idiotic is it to call for a levelling downwards in this way, instead of encouraging other parents to up their game?
Instead of attacking caring parents who do their best and set a good example, Phillips should be going after the feckless morons who don't give a toss about their kids. He should reserve is large reservoir of venom for those who are frankly uncaring and disinterested in their kids. You know, those parents who can't be bothered what becomes of their kids, who don't care what they do or where they go, and don't take time to develop the 'knowledge' Phillips would rather parents did not have?
But as that would not result in additional responsibility for the state and increased control over the lives of private individuals there is probably no interest from this bunch of intrusive control freaks in such a course of action. The Nanny State is trying to become the Parent State too, taking control from mothers and fathers and handing it to apparatchiks. That must sound like utopia to Phillips.
EU being encouraged to impose a Tobin tax
Tags: Big Government, Economy, Our Tax £s, Socialism
So says Professor George Irvin on his blog, Political Economy 101, on the EUObserver website. If anyone is trying to understand the mindset of those who stalk the corridors of power, dispensing economic advice to political leaders, then a read of Irvin's blog is instructive.
Irvin is worried, worried I tell you. His worry stems from a nervousness that Gordon Brown, Nicholas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and other EU leaders might be cooling in their support for a Tobin tax. For Irvin this is a crucial issue because he sees that there are widespread plans for what he describes as 'swingeing' budget cuts in many EU member states, possibly accompanied by rises in VAT. Left wing, Keynesian, big government socialist Irvin tells us:
A Tobin tax (also known as a 'Robin Hood Tax') would be a fairer and more effective money-spinner than raising VAT. Such a tax was first suggested in 1971 by the American Keynesian economist, James Tobin, and was designed to slow down the volume of speculative currency dealing by traders—what Lord Turner has recently termed 'socially useless' activity. Although the idea was rejected by the Commission in 2002, much has changed since then; most particularly, currency speculation has risen by several orders of magnitude.
Do you see how he tries to give the impression of the Tobin tax being a good thing by equating it with the positive perception of Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor? Cynical doesn't begin to describe it. Irvin wants the EU to implement a union-wide Tobin tax. He explains that the foreign exchange trade in euros is estimated to be worth nearly US$300tr (€220tr) per annum. A 0.1% tax on euro trading would raise over €200bn a year—and that's based on a tax rate of £1 per £1000, one-tenth the rate originally proposed by Tobin, or roughly double the size of the EU budget. He wants European leaders to be seduced by the euro signs in their eyes and the thought of treasury coffers swollen to bursting with all this lovely cash.
But this is less Political Economy 101 and more Room 101. These trillions of euros are not just sloshing around like a cork on an ocean. This is money that funds pensions, facilitates mortgages and loans, enables business start ups and enables businesses to make money from their investments. Listening to George Irvin, it might appear that skimming a tiny percentage off the top of currency dealing hurts no one and benefits everyone. But stripping €200bn a year out of the private sector will impact all of us, not just the bankers. Costs will rise and that increase will be passed on to consumers.
There will be less money for investment, hindering our economies. Our pension pots, already plundered by wasteful government, will be reduced still further. The only difference between raising VAT and imposing a Tobin tax will be the blurred line of sight between emptier wallets and the government that hoovers up the money. People's resentment will be focused on the higher cost of goods and services provided by businesses, rather than governments who brought it about. Irvin argues:
We need a Tobin tax. Why should ordinary citizens be made to pay for the financial sector's gambling debts? After all, currency speculation is just another form of gambling.
This is complete crap. It's nothing more than an excuse for government to make a power and money grab. Consider the motives of the Tobin tax's biggest advocates. When ones stops and consider the billions and billions of pounds that have been spent wastefully by the UK government alone, why are budget cuts such a bad thing? Why shouldn't governments live within their means? Far too much money, instead of being spent efficiently on well structured front line services, has been squandered with little if any benefit to taxpayers. Think of the billions that were overpaid in tax credits and left unrecovered, the billions spent on military equipment completely unsuitable for the kind of conflicts our armed forces have been committed to, the billions handed over to special interest groups and for the creation public sector non-jobs that add no value to public services. When Irvin asks rhetorically of a Tobin tax 'why not?' none of these reasons surfaces.
That is because none of this matters to the likes of George Irvin and his ilk. The name of the game is ensuring government has ever greater control of our money and determines how it is spent. It is an ideological objective to reduce the ability of the individual to enjoy any measure of choice or financial freedom. Big government knows best in Irvin's world and we must leave it to the political elite to tell us what is good for us. The problem is a Tobin tax makes us all poorer and is an inadequate substitute for effective banking regulation. This is the most blatant example of political opportunism, which would enable governments to cover up decades of economic incompetence by levying a huge tax to plug the gaps – again at our expense.
Take a second look at Labour said Gordon Brown
Tags: Dishonesty, Hypocrisy, Incompetence, Labour, Socialism
So I did and I am grateful for the delusional one's urging. For I remembered that Gordon Brown's Labour government wants to impose a so called Tobin tax on bank transactions and for political cover is trying to get the world's other major economies to follow suit. I was reminded that the Association of British Insurers thinks the scheme is ridiculous, describing it as unworkable and counter-productive.
I was also reminded of the 'Labour way' by Brown's refusal to listen to any dissenting voice and ignore any criticism. Brown was pressing ahead regardless because of the desperate state of the UK economy that has been wrecked by Labour's financial mismanagement. He was claiming the world's top economies were close to agreeing this international levy on banks and that a deal could be thrashed out during a G20 summit in June. It reminded me that Brown's great delusion is that he saved the world and that he is some great economic brain that all other nations turn to.
Naturally I wondered if I was the only one with doubts about Brown's supposed brilliance. But then I stumbled across reports that those wonderful Canadians are opposed to Labour's global bank tax plan for the world's major economies. As the Wall Street Journal explained, the Canadian's decision to go public with their opposition is in part based on irritation that Mr. Brown is painting a picture of a global consensus, one that exists only in Brown's mind.
Having been invited to take a second look at Labour and being reminded of Labour actions such as throwing open Britain's borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a "truly multicultural" country, repeated raids on our pension funds, the refusal to give us the promised referendum on the Lisbon Treaty… not to mention the record £1.2 trillion public debt run up with nothing to show for it, decline in education standards, increase in violent crime, surge in the size of the welfare state, record number of economically inactive UK citizens, lies about the evidence for the invasion of Iraq, criminalisation of ordinary people with over 3000 new crimes created etc, I think Gordon Brown has made a huge mistake. All he has done is ask people to remind themselves of the spite and incompetence that has characterised the Labour party. That should secure a well deserved Labour defeat at the polls (unless David Cameron snatches defeat from the jaws of victory). Cheers Gordo!
Don't report facts inconvenient to my beliefs and propaganda
Tags: Climate Change, Dishonesty, Socialism, Spin
From the Jo Abbess school of climate censorship we see this laughably cackhanded attempt to criticise the media for reporting climate related information that contradicts the worldview of AGW's true believers. All credit to the Washington Post for being such good sports and publishing the almost tearful complaint of one David Hilfiker from Washington. In its own way the letter is comedic gold. How else can you describe a complaint that includes a caveat that undermines its own argument?
The Feb. 15 front-page article "Missteps weigh on agenda for climate" was infuriating, a perfect example of why so many Americans still don't believe in the coming crisis of global climate change. Read closely, your article was technically accurate, but the language and placement of information gave the impression that the overwhelming scientific consensus on global climate change might be in danger. (my emphasis in bold italics)
Wonderful stuff. Now we can see that many Americans don't believe the AGW hype because the facts contradict the claims of the warmists and undermine confidence in the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Who can blame them? One wonders if Hilfiker was similarly minded to write and complain about publications that claimed on their front pages that there is an increasing number of more destructive hurricanes than before because of mankind. Perhaps he wrote in and corrected nonsensical claims that the Arctic sea ice will completely disappear, despite the extent of ice recovering and increasing. Somehow though, I doubt it. So what were the main bugbears of David Hilfiker? Here, he can explain for himself…
What are these recent shocking revelations? Buried on Page A4 are:
— An obvious typographical error in the report — that Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035, rather than 2350.
— Attributing to a climate advocacy group the claim that up to 40 percent of Amazonian forests could react drastically to a slight reduction in precipitation. In fact, the claim was made by a respected climatologist, whom the advocacy group appropriately cited.
— The IPCC's erroneous claim that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level. The figure included land that's above sea level but at risk of flooding. But the reference was only in a background note and hardly challenged the science of global climate change.
Bless. If only it was that simple. The Himalayan glacier issue is not simply a matter of a typo, it was that even the 2350 date was not subject to peer review and was made with no supporting evidence. It carried the same weight as a drunk in a pub taking credit for the tennis skills of Roger Federer. The claim about the Amazon had nothing to do with climate change, but was concerned with the effects of deforestation and fire, as made clear by the author who condemned his reports use for the purpose of propaganda.
The Netherlands story was evidence of a clear distortion made to make the risk of flooding appear worse than it really was. As we are seeing in every AGW supporting comment, it finishes with a defence of the errors and claim that this doesn't change the science – while offering no evidence that transforms the theories into facts. Hilfiker, demonstrating a complete lack of self awareness of the hilarity of his deluded position ends by saying:
The real focus should have been on how climate-change deniers rely on bits of irrelevant information to distort the "debate" on a threat that is as near to certainty as science gets.
Perhaps the real focus should have been on how climate-change campaigners rely on unsupported claims and attributing naturally occurring events to the impact of man on the environment to distort the 'debate' on a threat that is in reality nothing more than a theory supported by increasingly discredited scientific 'evidence'. David Hilfiker is a shining example of the kind of unthinking, agenda driven drone who clings to the man made global warming narrative. Having snatched a free ride by jumping on the man made climate change bandwagon, he is now distraught to find it isn't going to his desired destination. What was that destination? Hilfiker explains on his website:
As long as profit maximization, the sanctity of private property, and distribution solely by supply and demand remain the unexamined bases of our economic system, we will not be able to feed the hungry or prevent ecological destruction.
Among those who ardently hope and work for change, there is a different opinion. Many believe that without a fundamental re-orientation in power relationships no change will be possible. It is power, they say, that determines the course of society; until those who rule society are replaced, we cannot expect justice or sustainability[…]
[…] We do not have much time left before environmental catastrophe overtakes us. We won't find environmental balance unless we deal with injustice. The current economic system cannot bring either justice or sustainability. The economic system will not change until we change its assumptions.
Unless we begin to think differently, we will not act differently.
Losing their home is 'the best thing' for some people
Tags: Labour, Politics of Spite, Socialism
So says John Healey MP, Labour's Housing Minister. In an interview on BBC Five Live today with Victoria Derbyshire (available for 7 days, interview starts at 1:07:40), he was reeling of a raft of impressive sounding figures in an attempt to tell listeners just how much this overbearing and wasteful government had been able to help people who had fallen behind with their mortgage payments, by throwing huge sums of our money at the problem. During the discussion, listeners heard this exchange:
VD: So why do you think 46,000 homes were still repossessed last year?
JH: Because in some cases there is no way around that. And in some cases it is the best thing for the people who are struggling with those mortgages. Erm…
VD: Is it?
JH: What I want to make sure…
VD: Sorry, did you just say that, it's the best thing for people struggling with their mortgages, to lose their home?
JH: Well sometimes it is impossible for people to maintain the mortgage commitments they've got. They may…
VD: But you're saying it's the best thing.
JH: I've said it may be the best thing in those circumstances. The important thing is that people are informed about the help that's available, able to deal with their lenders, confident that they know that the lenders must only use repossession as a last resort because of the rules we've got in place and so that's part of what we've been doing in government… a campaign to make sure that people know there's help available and can get it.
VD: Right, I'd be interested to hear from people who have had their homes repossessed if they did think it was the best thing for them.
This should tell any voter what they need to know about Labour and its mindset. If this government can throw taxpayers' money at a problem and it goes away for a while, it is considered a success, demonstrating how capable and effective the government is. When simply throwing cash at the problem doesn't fix the long term issue, then the terrible, distressing consequences that follow are 'the best thing' for those people.
Perhaps Healey is with his Marxist friends in resenting those who stepped onto the housing ladder and feels satisfaction when they come a cropper.
Perhaps he is longing for days gone by, where public bodies owned most of the houses and most people were trapped into reliance on the state for the provision of poorly maintained identitkit housing on sink estates where tenants were kept in deprivation. To Labour it didn't matter so long as the people knew their place and the elite determined what everyone else would be entitled to.
If the state can't fix your problem by getting involved and splashing the cash around, then you're not worthy of saving. What Healey doesn't mention is Labour's massive contribution to people losing their homes by encouraging them to buy now and pay sometime later.
Many homeowners were seduced into thinking boom and bust had been abolished, the good times were here to last and borrowing more than you could afford wasn't a problem because there's loads of credit and it's dirt cheap. The rest, as they say, is history.
Yes people are responsible for their behaviour, but they took their steer from the government that said have your jam today and the bill will be easy to deal with tomorrow. Therefore the responsibility must be shared, but the government is absolving itself of blame the role it played. Its behaviour is an absolute disgrace.