Carswell puts a bomb under Cameron.......

Surprisingly, the pit-bulls of the Tory propaganda machine have not been let loose on Douglas Carswell. The house-journal of the Conservative Party, the Daily Telegraph, has published articles by Peter Oborne and Norman Tebbitt  praising him as a man of principle, a conviction politician whose main motivation is service his constituents  and his country, unusual attributes in these days of ventriloquists dolls, party hacks and slippery careerists.

 

Carswell put his finger on what many voters suspect; that Cameron is insincere about the future of Europe and Britain’s place within it, that the referendum is a sham, and that Cameron will feed enough half-truths into the campaign to persuade people to vote on ‘the devil you know’ basis’ rather than launch out into deep and uncertain waters. An older, heavily Tory-voting generation will recall how a predecessor of Cameron’s, Edward Heath, lied and concealed the real truth about what the British were letting themselves in for when they voted yes in the only previous referendum.

 

Heath convinced the majority that they were voting for a ‘common market’ when in fact they were deceived into voting for ‘ever closer (political) union’, the basic principle of Jean Monnet from the very beginning. Monnet also advocated that Europhiles should keep quiet about in case they frightened the horses.

 

As we have seen, the outcome is that the supremacy of Parliament has been destroyed, along with the final  authority of the English courts.

 

But the Carswell thunderbolt is about more than the EU.

 

It is about our broken political system itself; the almost universal distrust of and contempt for politicians. Put simply, the people no longer believe them. Governance has become a cosy oligarchy of the political class which is motivated by ambition and power rather than ideology. ‘They are all the same’ is the common feeling. Carswell summed it up when he said that politicians of all stripes make promises, talk much and when in power do nothing and  casually break promises until the whole grubby round of mendacity begins again as an election looms.

 

The voting system itself has become an absurdity when the winner of an election can be a party that gets fewer total votes than those gained by the loser. It was further debauched when Nick Clegg blocked the revision of constituency boundaries in a fit of pique after losing his AV referendum. And so we continue with the nonsense of the Tories having to get far more votes to win a seat than the Labour Party simply because of population distortions.

 

But God forbid that we should adopt the ‘party list’ system in  which the parties have a pecking order with MPs elected on the total number of votes gained by each party overall. This completely destroys the nexus between MP and voter because there are no longer constituencies as we know them.

 

The solution seems to lie with the second transferrable vote; when a candidate is top of the poll but does not have an overall a majority the second preference is counted.

 

Will it happen?

 

No chance. Any changes will be those that strengthen the position of those in power, and the voters can just whistle.

Human rights and all that nonsense.........

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

 

We hear a great deal of loose talk about ‘human rights’, but just what are they?

 

The principles were set out some years ago by LCJ Lord Bingham. They are:

 

The right to life;

Protection from torture;

Protection from slavery and forced labour;

The right to liberty and security;

The right to a fair trial;

Protection from punishment without law;

The right of respect for private and family life;

Freedom of thought, conscience and religion;

Freedom of expression;

Freedom of  assembly and association;

The right to marry;

Freedom from discrimination;

Protection of property;

The right to education.

 

It is difficult to argue with that list.

 

And yet many of these rights are breeched on almost a daily basis by our governors. Freedom of thought and expression is set at nought by the plethora of laws that criminalise much of what might formerly have been expressed without any concern. Most of the ‘hate crimes’ stuff comes into this category.  People are constantly being prosecuted or disciplined for expressing their wholly personal opinions on Facebook and Twitter or simply down the pub.

 

 

We currently have two rather stupid football managers being disciplined for the vulgar views that they exchanged on social media. The Blair/Brown regime created whole body of law that limited freedom of thought and expression to a degree that would have seemed totalitarian to earlier generations.

 

Freedom of assembly is constantly breached when the police use force to break up peaceful demonstrations, the most outrageous being the beating of middle-aged middle class farmers’ wives for protesting against the hunting ban (the police did not show the same amount of diligence in  tackling the hunt saboteurs).

 

The right to marry cannot include same-sex marriage because no such thing exists, no matter what the law says, for the simple reason that it is not within the power of Parliament to change the English language by statute. Language is the method of communication agreed by the community, not something that is susceptible to arbitrary political change. ‘The legal union of a man and woman in order to live together’. This is Alice in Wonderland. `Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on. `I do,' Alice hastily replied; `at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know.' `Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. `You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!'

 

Protection from punishment without trial? Try telling that to the old men whose reputations have been ruined by Operation Yewtree with police releasing the names to the media of people who were never even arrested, never mind charged. And Cliff Richard will not think much for the human right to protect his property when his can be invaded by both the police and a BBC helicopter and sundry hacks in his absence and without his knowledge.

 

The problem is that the entire concept has been brought into disrepute by complainants, lawyers, and judges who try – and too often succeed – in stretching the interpretations to the point of absurdity. The ECHR is particularly adept at this. Owning a cat does not create a ‘family’. The right to family should offer no protection to a deportee for the simple reason that he can take his family with him.

 

Human rights per se do not derive from law. They derive from the values of a Western Christian civilisation. They were fought for over the centuries before Lord Bingham codified them.

 

But we have ceded the rule of law to the rule of lawyers.

EU: power, not peace.........

‘The rationale for Europe today is not peace; it is power’. Tony Blair.

 

So now we know. And we thought it was about trade.

 

Over-regulation is the enemy of the economy and the EU is a most deadly enemy. And the power vests with unelected Eurocrats. Eight EU countries lag behind Kazakhstan for ease of doing business. Only the UK and Denmark feature in the top 10. Admittedly much of this is self-inflicted, but it should be the duty of the EU to discourage over-regulation of business. Instead, it is the worst offender

 

John Redwood in The Commentator cites how EU ‘green’ policies costs thousands of British jobs, perhaps as many as 1.5 million are at risk in the energy intensive sector. Casualties already are an aluminium smelter, steel plants, furnaces, chemical plants, glass and ceramics and other high-energy users. British energy costs are twice those of the US due to over-regulation. The cost to date is reckoned at £90 billion. And an EU directive has closed 9 power stations at a time when we are facing a generation capacity deficit.

 

Show a bureaucrat  a problem and his first instinct is to pass a regulation.

 

It takes very little imagination to visualise suits in Brussels saying to themselves ‘I’m bored. I must think up a new regulation. I know. Everyone must have a separate refuse bin for paper, cardboard,  plastic, food-waste, garden refuse, cans, milk cartons, clear bottles, coloured bottles, rags, and anything else I can think of when I draft the regulation’.

 

European bureaucrats have  imposed bans or restrictions on thousands of consumer products, including bananas, clothes dryers, cosmetics, cucumbers, fruit jam, laptop computers, laundry detergents, light bulbs, olive oil, plastic bags, refrigerators, showerheads, television sets, tobacco, toilets, toys, urinals and wine cooling cabinets.

Europhiles will tell you that tales of bent bananas being banned are apocryphal. They are not. European Commission Regulation No. 2257/94 says that all bananas bought and sold in the EU must be "free from malformation or abnormal curvature, the measurement, in millimetres, of the thickness of a transverse section of the fruit between the lateral faces and the middle, perpendicularly to the longitudinal axis."

Here is the regulation on bent cucumbers:  European Commission Regulation No. 1677/88, "Class I" and "Extra class" cucumbers are allowed a bend of 10mm per 10cm of length. "Class II" cucumbers can bend twice as much. Any cucumbers that are curvier may not be bought or sold. Who measures them? Is there a career opening for a cucumber surveyor? Too late. After an outcry, this was withdrawn. The EU also had to back down on the amount of sugar in jam, the shape of some vegetables such as sprout, and the ban on refillable bottles and dipping bowls of olive oil in restaurants.

 

Last year, ‘they’ banned chocolate  cigarettes because they "appeal to minors and consequently form a potential gateway to using tobacco products." There has been a directive on water-saving showerheads and toilet cisterns. They reduce water flow to the extent that sewers dry out and crack. Years ago they banned beech-wood butcher’s blocks on the grounds of hygiene, and ordered them to be replaced by plastic. What they didn’t know, because they had not bothered to find out, is that plastic is unhygienic because it cuts quite easily and is difficult to clean, whereas beech-wood is not only very tough, but contains an anti-septic enzyme.

In August 2013 a vacuum cleaner ban was quietly introduced. This what it says

"As of September 2014, only vacuum cleaners that consume less than 1600 watts may be sold in the EU. From 2017 only a maximum of 900 watts will be allowed. At the same time, the vacuum cleaner must be fitted with a label that grades energy consumption on a scale of seven letters and colours: The letter 'A' on a green background means very low energy consumption and the letter 'G' on a red background means very high energy consumption."

Existing vacuum cleaners average 1800 watts, so the energy saving will be minimal because the new ones will have to be used longer to get the same result. Added towhich the weaker machines are liable to pump minute particles back into the air. Not good for asthma and allergy sufferers. The Ecodesign Directive (there’s a title to conjure with) brought in a raft of requirements affecting over 40 product groups. The Directive was responsible for banning our traditional light-bulbs, forcing us to buy expensive fluorescent lamps that contain mercury. That should do the environment little good when they are thrown into the garbage for landfill. Unsurprisingly it was the big manufacturers who lobbied for the ban, immediately creating a huge new market for themselves.

And there is something slightly amusing about the EU decreeing how much water can be flushed down the toilet ; "the arithmetic average of one full flush volume and three reduced flush volumes." So take your pocket calculator to the dunny. At the same time the Commission approved regulations to  standardize the flushing of all toilets and urinals in the EU. There is a baffling reference to ‘user behaviour’ at which thought the mind boggles.

But the average consumer would probably be baffled by the energy-efficient standard for a tumble drier, which is "the weighted condensation efficiency of condensation tumbler dryers must not be less than 60%".

And watch out, gardeners The  Plant Reproductive Material Law makes it illegal to "grow, reproduce or trade" any vegetable seeds that have not been "tested, approved and accepted" by the  EU Plant Variety Agency. This prohibits home gardeners from growing their own plants from non-regulated seeds.

 

Amusing though the antics of Brussels might be, it comes at a price.

 

The cost to the UK of all this lunacy is about £40 billion annually. And it is self-evident that Brussels is quite happy with things the way they are The unescapable conclusion is that Cameron will emerge from  his referendum negotiations completely empty handed. The EU is incapable of reform. Britain’s only hope of competing in this Brave New World is to escape from Brussels. And if Europe wishes to survive and prosper, it must destroy the whole rotten, corrupt, job-killing incubus, entirely and completely and with no hope of resurrection.

Deja vu in the EU?

If you had said to a German in 1925 that within 10 years Germany would be ruled by an absurd Corporal, an Austrian house-painter with a funny moustache, he would have put it down to incomprehensible English humour or that you were deranged. But it tragically happened; Hitler was voted in as Chancellor and then as Fuhrer, and Germany was destroyed as a consequence.

 

Hitler came to power in circumstances that are eerily resonant.

 

The German economy was in tatters. The currency was worthless. The middle classes were ruined. People were starving.

 

Hitler’s game plan was to create a single market throughout Europe with a single currency and a single authority; die Neuordnung Europas.

 

He created the necessary hate figure by demonizing Jewry. This was essential in order to give the people a choate focus on people they could blame for all their troubles; people who were usurious money-lenders, greedy bankers, crooked merchants who systematically cheated the gentiles; people who should be exterminated throughout Europe, giving the ordinary German a reason for war.

 

Fast forward to the 21^st Century.

 

There is a single market, a single currency and a de facto single (unelected) authority. The whole Eurozone area is in an economic tailspin. There is massive unemployment particularly among the under-25 age group, a sure recipe for civil unrest if uncorrected. The Euro is a disaster that its backers refuse to recognise. It has enabled Germany to wax fat on cheap money at the expense of the other members. The only reasonably healthy European economies are those that are not in the Eurozone. The whole economic situation has a whiff of sulphur about it. When every other continent is progressing economically the EU stagnates. There is a de facto 4^th Reich with Germany being forced reluctantly into a position of dominance within the EU.

 

Then there is the racial-religious nexus.

 

Right across the EU there is rising anger and concern about increasing numbers of adherents to a religion that is spreading jihad throughout large tracts of the planet; increasingly militant in staging violent demonstrations and trashing shops that stock Israeli products, refusing to integrate or even learn the language of their adopted  country. Some areas, such as Antwerp are rapidly becoming Islamised with a majority of the population.  The banlieus of Paris have become racial flashpoints. Ordinary people feel that the political elites pay excessive deference to Islamic sensitivities.

 

The present rumblings of discontent may soon become much louder.

 

Before the holocaust the Jewish population of Europe was 9 million which the Nazis reduced to 3 million. As is typical of their race, they were hard-working and loyal citizens, successful both in commerce and in the professions. And they regarded themselves as German, or French or Italian or whatever. These are not characteristics that automatically apply to the Muslim community that now numbers 44 million. And yet by a terrible irony we are also seeing a resurgence of anti-Semitism under the smokescreen of support for the right of Hamas to send rockets into Israel without retaliation

 

Right across Europe people are losing faith in both the effectiveness of democratic institutions and in the integrity of their leaders. Unchecked, this could lead to mischief. There is increasing dissatisfaction with government by an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels and the lack of democratic legitimacy. There is increasing disillusion with and dislike of the EU as an institution. It is even more unpopular in France, one of the original founders of the EU, than in the UK – which is quite saying  something!

 

This is not going to give rise to another Fuhrer. Today people would simply mock the rantings that so mesmerised the German people 80 years ago. But this does not eliminate the possibility of the rise of a Putin-like strongman in a susceptible country with little democratic tradition such as Italy or Greece, a quasi-Fascist kept in place by a wealthy and corrupt oligarchy, controlling the media, and confusing the people with Kremlinesque  lies. The enemy would be social media, and already we are seeing tentative steps to control the internet, Facebook etc. such as the recent ‘right to disappear’ decision of the ECHR. And we have seen a massive rise in repressive legislation and anti-libertarian politics.

 

But parliamentary democracy in the EU has shallow roots. Only the UK has had it continuously in modern times. None of the others have had democratic government for a continuous period of more than about 70 years. The Eastern European members have even less, around 25 years. It is vulnerable to demagogues and populists.

 

The only certainty in these uncertain times is that there will be massive changes in the way in which the world is organised.

                                                                                                                                                                                          

Fasten your seat belts. You’re in for a bumpy ride!

'Things fall apart.......mere anarchy is loos'd upon the world'............

The world is falling apart. Everywhere I look there is gloom and doom. I doubt anyone will take command of this broken world at least until localized terror goes viral. Then, as has so often been the case, necessity will deliver us a leader in whom we can have trust and confidence. In the meantime, we will have to live with whom we elected.

 

America is just beginning to learn about shades of grey. Our vision of good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats prevailed throughout much of our history. It was quite popular during the GW Bush administration where he and Dick Cheney and the boys reveled in referring to al Qaida as the bad guys. Obama also uses this expression; perhaps to dumb down the world of international politics for the American masses.

 

The leaders of Iran and Syria are decidedly in the bad guy camp. Saudi Arabia somehow got converted to good guys along with Kuwait and most of the emirates. For the most part, the bad guys fall into the Shiite Muslim category while the good guys are largely Sunnis. Enter al Qaida and what has become its successor, ISIS who are fanatically Sunnis. Nevertheless, they are really bad guys.

 

Since our leaders have painted the Middle East in such stark colors, we the people now have to be educated as to why we are fighting alongside the Iranian bad guys against the ISIS worse guys. In like manner, we the people need to rapidly develop sympathetic feelings for Bashar al-Assad who yesterday was public enemy number one and today is the unfortunate victim of an evil ISIS.

 

With a largely compliant media as a wet nurse to the American public, the masses pretty much swallow whatever the administration and its all-knowing advisors tell us. That includes national leaders madly removing and replacing  black and white hats on Middle Eastern leaders as rapidly as the sun rises. Just now, we can't find enough white hats to deck out each and every Kurd including men and women members of the Peshmerga.

 

Peshmerga? Suddenly this word has gone viral with commentators and politicians throwing it around with the frequency of Smith or Jones. It must have found millions of Americans scrambling to their dictionary or computer to help divine its meaning. It has been declared that instead of using the word 'army' to describe Kurdish soldiers, one is now obliged to refer to them as the Kurdish Peshmerga, or simply Pershmerga. As of today, every literate person in the world knows one Kurdish word. And in the process of blessing, sanctifying and beautifying the Kurds, we Americans will surely expand our vocabulary to include at least two or three more.

 

My problem is that yesterday, the Kurds were a tribal conglomerate that was seriously disliked by countries with Kurd minorities. Nobody liked them. Especially the Turks to whom the Kurds were terrorists. Iran couldn't get rid of them fast enough and as for Iraq, we all know what Saddam did to ethnically cleanse them. Now, suddenly, they are being promoted in the USA as the saviors of the Middle East and the only people in the world having the capacity, courage and determination to deal with ISIS. All they lack are weapons and the French have been happy to oblige by sending them some. So are, or will, the US and the UK.  I fully expect the US will include a million or so white hats for their soldiers. After all, they are our proxy in the latest version of the Desert War.

 

Clearly, the reward for confronting ISIS will be a sovereign Kurdistan complete with its own government, flag, seat in the UN and national debt. This will displease Iraq who, by hook or by crook, will be forced to cede part of their country to make this all happen. I fully suspect that terms to this effect are already written into agreements between the US and the new Iraqi government in its endless hours of need.

 

Turkey is suddenly delighted with the Kurds or alternatively, someone is rewriting history. The story goes that a Kurdish homeland will take the pressure off Turkey who has long been struggling with the Kurds as the largest ethnic minority in Turkey. One cannot help but wonder whether all of these ethnic Kurds will mass migrate next door to what will soon become Kurdistan, or will they try and carve out a piece of Turkey and thereby enlarge Kurdistan by shrinking Turkey.

 

It is not immediately clear what Iran is thinking on this subject, but with so many Kurds living there, and given their fierce determination for nationhood, it would be reasonable to expect either mass migration or efforts to remove a largish chunk of Iran as an additional Kurdistani province. And this is all quite possible given the reputation of the Peshmarga, their newly acquired weaponry and all of them sporting white hats.

 

Stay tuned for the next chapter of musical hats in the Middle East brought to you by the Clinton/Bush/Obama people and their dedicated industrial/military associates.

ISIS crisis...............

It is just possible that our leaders recognise that there is now an existential threat to the West, both external and internal.

 

What is happening in Iraq needs to be understood. ISIS is not a terrorist movement. It is an army that means to seize and  hold territory, create a new state that will roll back history to the 7^th Century and enforce adherence to the most rigorous form of primitive Islam. Its atrocities have been horrendous, but these are not just the barbaric behaviour of  savages; they are deliberately calculated to spread panic and terror amongst the opposition. This is why they have flooded the internet with pictures of horrors not seen since WW2.

 

Small wonder that Iraqi soldiers scarpered at the first whiff of powder and shot when they contemplated being summarily beheaded if caught. And western leaders must have pondered on what the media would make of pictures of decapitated US marines or RAF helicopter pilots.

 

The situation needs statesmanship. It is not getting it.

 

Cameron has no clout due not least to his incomprehensible slashing of the defence budget whilst increasing foreign aid by a staggering 38%. In any event, Britain has no coherent foreign policy as is witnessed by the mischief-making Cables declaration that there would be an arms ban on Israel in direct contradiction of Britain’s long-standing support for Israel and its right to defend itself.

 

Obama has shown mostly indifference. His low-key actions are typical of his de minimis foreign policy. His weasel words say that US  troops have been sent to Iraq protect US citizens in the region, whom he could easily have recalled when the troubles began. He speaks of ‘US military advisors. Now, where have we heard that before? He says the US intervention can be terminated because there are ‘only’ 5000 people left on the mountain

 

Merckel’s preoccupations are with not unduly upsetting Putin over the current unpleasantness in Ukraine, and with her other economic problems such as the news that Germany’s growth is in the ‘recession’ category.

 

Hollande? A man of straw who is the most unpopular President ever. The less said about his preoccupations, the better

 

IS is well-led, has a comprehensible strategy, is disciplined and – most importantly – successful. Which encourages youth to flock to its colours. A possible short-term outcome is that it will smash Iraqi resistance and take over all Sunni territory. Whether that will satisfy them we will have to wait and see. At this time it is fighting on three fronts. It is likely to win in Iraq; lose in Kurdistan, and take over a large chunk of Syria when that country fissipates as it surely must.

 

It could then have ambitions to spread mayhem in other parts of the most unstable region the world has seen in modern times. Those countries at risk must recognise that they must not only defeat IS; they must destroy it completely with utter ruthlessness.

 

The ability of IS to put the West in harm’s way has the potential to be the greatest danger since 9/11. It is not Al Qaeda. It’s strategy is unlikely to be to cause the occasional atrocity for the sake of some inchoate Islamic Dawn.

 

We don’t much appreciate the vulnerability and fragility of the modern state. A single mortar bomb discharged from the back of a van into operational area of Heathrow could bring it to a standstill for days. A bomb on a main water installation would be damaging to thousands. IED spaced along a motorway could cause extensive traffic chaos.

 

A 400 lb bomb carried in a cargo container under the Channel Tunnel would bring the roof down.

 

Far-fetched? Scare-mongering? Well, we must hope so.

 

 

 

 

Countryvile!

Do you watch ‘Countryfile’ on BBC TV?

 

It demonstrates the Beeb’s unfailing disdain for its licence-payers.

 

It has no fixed abode. It wanders around the early evening schedules from 5.30 p.m.to 8 p.m. withal stops in between (they are now doing the same with ‘Coast’).

 

But that’s not the main issue.

 

Years ago farmer friends regarded it as compulsory viewing because the programme dealt seriously with the countryside as a resource, an industry, a way of life.

 

Then there was evidently a change of production team and the new boss thought the programme should be changed to appeal to a wider and younger audience; in other words, chasing ratings at the expense of quality. At the time the presenters were all people who knew their stuff. Quickly out was the female who was first-class and knew her country matters, but was rated as too old, although they kept that grumpy old git who is in his seventies.

 

In came a selection of townie totty who would be more at home in the West End than the west country, wouldn’t know a bullock from a bantam, but gave the cameraman an opportunity to take long, lingering shots of the girl’s thigh as she clambered into a massive piece of earthmoving equipment.

 

Much of that particular episode was devoted to Cornish beaches, hardly ‘country’. But I guess they are more telegenic than cows and less arduous than trudging round a muddy field. And many episodes are devoted to the sea-side, messing about in boats or scuba-diving, and exploring the bottom. It looked more like a promo for the English Tourist Board than a programme about rural matters.

 

We still have ‘Adam’s Farm’ but now it is Adam who is the story not the farm. In any event it is not typical. Adam is a gentleman-farmer; the only thing he raises is his hat, and the farm is a very large operation that is clearly prosperous, neither of which represent most farming.

 

The programme is clearly not aimed at Suffolk swede-bashers.

Scots wha hae wi Salmond fled............

Nae doot aboot it. This was a case of indecent exposure. If media reports are at all accurate on the referendum debate, Wee Eck came across as an effective demagogue, a master of rant whose approach to Darling was a mixture of jibes and wise-cracks, and used valuable time in petty complaints about the conduct of the ‘no’ campaign. His case for independence was tissue-paper thin. If he imagined that he was going to ruffle the imperturbable Darling, Mr Driasdust who learnt his politics in the ball-crushing arena of the House of Commons, he made a serious tactical mistake.

 

He decided to debate (if that’s not an overuse of the word) the financial and economic issues when he should really have been focussing on Scottish pride, its great heritage, its stupendous achievements in science, technology, its literature and poetry (Burns and not forgetting the great William Topaz McGonagall), medicine, empire-building.

 

The financial and economic case for independence scarcely exists. ‘ It’s our pound and we are going to keep it’ he repeatedly declared. No, it’s not. And no, you’re not. It’s the United Kingdom pound. If you are not in the club you can’t use the facilities. If you want to keep the pound you have to keep the Bank of England, and if you do that you don’t have independence; your monetary policy will be dictated and decided by England.

 

‘Your’ oil (and Orkney and Shetland might have a view on that; they already have their own sovereign wealth fund) is a rapidly diminishing resource and tax cash-cow. A long way second comes whisky, followed by low-productivity manufacturing. Your biggest export may turn out to be people. Being outside the EU, as is inevitable unless Brussels fiddles the rules (as they frequently do in other circumstances) they will need work-permits to get a job in the UK.

 

Given independence, Scotland will be able to devote itself to solely Scottish matters. The benefit to the English is that it will no longer be able to call the shots in English  politics (9 PMs of Scottish origin in modern times, including the last three), and Labour will no longer be able to depend on its Scottish MPs to give it a Commons majority. It’s a wonder that the Labour Party is not out there fighting tooth and nail for the ‘no’ tendency.

 

But a ‘no’ vote by itself is not enough. 51 to 49 will merely keep the nationalist flame burning. Fortunately, it is becoming  clear that the SNP will get well-and-truly shafted. Afterwards we may say

 

‘And what became of it at last?’ quoth Little Peterkin.

‘Why, that I cannot tell; said he,

‘But ‘twas a famous victory!’.

 

What becomes of it may well be ‘devomax’ with Scotland getting most powers except foreign policy, defence, immigration and passports, and a few others. Scotland could have its own pound – as now – for internal transactions only.

 

Of course, its Commons MP’s would only be allowed to vote on these issues, answering the West Lothian question at last.

 

So here’s a message to the Scots.

 

With independence you will be sailing in a stormy sea to an unknown destination. You should stay with the old spouse Britannia. As the song says,

 

‘You’d better keep her,

You’ll find it cheaper

Than making whoopee!’

 

What, another immigration crackdown, Dave?

There are three fatal defects in Cameron’s latest ‘crackdown’ immigration policy. It is not practical. It is not principled. It is not policy.

 

Nigel Farage in a recent piece in the Daily Telegraph said that Dave’s intention to increase the waiting time before immigrants can claim benefit from three months to six would be illegal under EU law.

 

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

 

The proposal would only be within the law if it was restricted to new arrivals. Immigrants who have worked in the UK must be treated differently because they have ’worker status’ which puts them on a par with native British. The practical effect of this would be very small. Few new arrivals would be affected. Both Cameron and Farage are missing the point, which is that no-one should be able to claim benefit unless they have made a previous economic contribution. Immigrants should not be able to get something for nothing.

 

Farage also says that the real problem about immigrants is that there are just too many.

 

This is an over-simplification. Britain has always needed immigrants. But it also needs the right stuff. This should give politicians a starting point for a real immigration policy that at this time appears to be completely lacking. (Australia has got it just about right. An immigrant must possess needed skills. Stone mason? Welcome, mate! Second hand car salesman? Push off!). Instead we get too many of the wrong stuff

 

Farmers should be given a quota of seasonal work permits since the English are disinclined to get out of bed on a cold winter’s morning to pick sprouts for less money than they get on benefit

 

And politicians must face down cries of ‘racism’ by accepting that what most British probably have in mind in demanding controls is not the industrious Polish plumber, but people who have little in common with us in terms of culture, shared values, language, or religion, who flaunt their ‘difference’ by their dress, who may be a security risk, and who have little intention or ability to assimilate. A skills quota would deal with that problem without introducing a racial element.

 

Asylum seekers will be treated exactly in terms of EU law; they will be immediately returned to the first EU member country through which they entered. That should deal with the threat of Sudanese and Somali refugees currently disturbing the peace in France because they all want to come to Britain

 

Some fairly simple rules could flesh out the policy.

 

Initial entry should be supported by a work-permit, not just an entry visa. A permanent residence permit should be granted only after the applicant has paid tax for five years and on proof of fluency in spoken and written English. There should be no entry for families until a residence permit has been granted, and certainly no payment of benefits to non-resident families.

 

There should be official guidance for new hopefuls. It should tell them that life will be difficult if they don’t have a modicum of written English as henceforth all official documents will be in English only, and if they need an interpreter they will have to pay. If their religion, customs, dress or traditional practices cannot conform to British norms that should be advised to go elsewhere. They must be made to understand that they must assimilate or stay away. And they must understand that discovery of genital mutilation will inevitably result in jail and deportation no matter where inflicted.

 

That should give Cameron a framework for a principled policy, not just a vote-catcher. But at the same time he might shoot the UKIP fox.