Working More Closely

Today, we learned that "Irish republican terrorists tried to blow up a police building in Belfast and murder police officers in an ambush in Fermanagh last night", both attacks part of what police say is "growing terrorist activity".

Last week a mortar bomb was discovered hidden on a roadside in Armagh. Police said it was designed to kill officers.

Earlier this month, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) reported that the republican terrorist threat in Northern Ireland was at its highest level for almost six years.

The IMC, which collates information provided to it by all the security services, said that the two main republican groups, the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, were working more closely together to increase the threat posed to security forces.

This is the same weekend that the Northern Ireland First Minister, DUP leader Peter Robinson has to deliver a pledge that he "would not be walking away" from power-sharing with Sinn Fein, although he could no longer guarantee the future of the assembly.

Terrorist violence, of course, feeds upon the hope of success. The Good Friday Agreement was a surrender to terrorism, from which comes that hope of success for the 'dissident' republican groups. So long as the faintest hope exists that Ulster can be removed from the United Kingdom and attached to a foreign country by force, terrorism in the province, however 'small', shall persist. And in forcing the unionist majority to share power with former advocates of republican violence, the Government is doing nothing but fueling that activity.

At European Level

There were some commentators earlier this week who, when it was announced that Van Rompuy was to be the President "of Europe", said that this was a victory for the European Commission. And so it is. The Council of Ministers is powerless as well as the European Parliament, and now the new executive figure is, to all intents and purposes, the EC's puppet.

Hence his words this week all replicate what Barroso and his ilk have said at some time or another. For patriots across the Continent, they're devastating:

"The financing of the welfare state, irrespective of the social reform we implement, will require new resources ... The possibility of financial levies at European level needs to be seriously reviewed."

We can see, then, that Van Rompuy is pushing for the full implementation of the governing apparatus and functions of a nation-state. And thus we begin to see the formation of a very bureaucratic, very wasteful, very European state structure.

She-Ogre Rising

Last week, I was unfortunate enough to have to listen to Carol Ann Duffy's The Last Post as I watched the Armistice Day service at Westminster Abbey. It was like throwing up and seeing the pizza you'd eaten six hours previous wallowing in the vomit, for I had to endure the cliche-filled whining of this enter-button crazed cantankerous cretin for three years prior to this.

For she - who looks like a fatter, manlier Eric Idle (sorry, Eric) - is the darling of the left-wing elite: female, bisexual, vegetarian, Marxist to the core, who has developed a seething resentment of all men thanks to growing up in a household dominated by her father and four brothers, and because of a failed relationship with a much older man in her youth. You can see, then, why them what run things are so eager to brush Keats, Tennyson and Wordsworth from the curriculum in favour of this egotistically and physically bloated she-ogre:

Fortunately, Sean Gabb has already taken it apart (as hard as it is):

Where is the exalted language? Where is the known rhythmical pattern? ... What we have here is not poetry. Its lack of rhythmical structure aside, there is nothing beautiful or memorable about it ... I say that Last Post is not poetry and is mediocre as prose ...

Go and read the whole thing. For some of us it's even educational.

The answer, I think, to Miss Duffy’s popularity and official endorsement is the democratisation of the arts. The modern movement was motivated in part by a snobbish elite that wanted things to praise that ordinary people could not appreciate. Since then, however, the idea has taken hold that anything that everyone cannot do should be shunned. When the Victorians spoke of bringing the arts to the people, what they had in mind was Beethoven at sixpence a head in the Crystal Palace. What it means today is praising stuff that anyone could have created.

The Way We Live Now

Cranmer writes today again on the Pope's invitation for Anglo-Catholics to rejoin the Roman Catholic Church, and the Archbishop of Canterbury's rebuke and converse invitation for more reformist Catholics to defect to the Anglican Communion. However, Cranmer does note that he feels too much "fuss" is being made of it, and, in a previous post, "wonders if the arrival of the Catholic-Anglicans might not be a Trojan horse of unintended reformation within the Roman Catholic Church".

But I think it does matter. The Church of England has never been a strict, uniform religious institution. What it was, and is, though, is the nation. The Reformation was not so much a religious event than a political one. It was an affirmation of the principle that the crown of England was subject to no other earthly authority, and that no law made for England should be made outside England. Crucial to it was a rejection of papal authority. With this, the national church became the nation.

Defectors to the new wing of the Roman Catholic Church must, then, not consider themselves 'Anglicans'. It would be a nonsense.

But we're not going to attack the 'defectors' here. Abandoning the church of your family and your country cannot be an easy decision, after all. Instead, questions need to be asked, and it is not whether "more orthodox-minded Roman Catholics may be as delighted to see the back of the pro-Vatican II liberals, progressives and ‘trendies’ as some in the Church of England may be delighted by the departure of the ‘closet-Catholics’". To me, because of the historical nature of the Church, that seems irrelevant. They should be questions like, why a church designed to be a 'via media', to be as all-encompassing as possible, is now splitting so tragically? How has a church that was once seen to be a symbol of the nation and its unity become so fractured?

The buck stops with the church leadership, and a succession of politicians who underestimated the value of a national church. They have let yet another proud and historical national institution fall into great disrepair. And what are such institutions if they are not the nation itself?

Remembrance

"They died in vain", says Dr North today. A similar point is made in a few papers, including The Telegraph. As much as today we want to be able to forget about such things as the EU Constitution, and focus solely on remembrance, how can we?

Don't forget that it's in their name that this is being done. For decades, politicians across Europe have used the scale of death in both of the wars that devastated the continent as an excuse to destroy the nations for which they fought. They have perverted our memory of the fallen.

Because the young men who went out to fight and die in 1914 and 1939 did not do so for some faceless, bureaucratic supranational construct, nor for abstract nonsense like human rights or 'tolerance'. They did it to defend their country and their way of life.

And right now, both are under siege.

Juvenile Incapacity

A terrific post by The Heresiarch on continuing calls to lower the voting age to 16 (via DK):

... in other ways, at sixteen many youngsters are much less "adult" than they were even a generation ago.

That's certainly the message that is coming from the government. New restrictions on the freedom and capacity of teenagers have been brought in continually under New Labour. The age at which it is legal to purchase cigarettes, knives or fireworks has been raised from 16 to 18, as has the age at which one can obtain a licence for such firearms as are still legal for anyone. The age for purchasing alcohol is still 18, but there's a growing campaign in some quarters for Britain to follow the repugnant American policy of raising it to 21 - and, in any case, the severity with which the law is now being enforced has effectively raised it, in practice if not in theory.

And this legal extension of juvenile incapacity in many areas has gone along with an ever more protracted adolescence. By the time they reached the voting age of 21, many people in the past would have experienced several years effective social adulthood. Leaving school at fifteen or sixteen, they would have been working, paying taxes, and, in many cases, marrying and starting a family (and, provided it was done in that order, with less disquiet about teen pregnancy than would be caused today). Many died for their country before reaching the age at which they could vote for its government. Today, it is expected that young people remain financially dependent at least until they finish university at 22 or thereabouts. The government that is contemplating a reduction in the voting age is also in the process of raising the school leaving age to eighteen. So whereas in the past many 16 year-olds had no say over the politicians who were deciding their tax rates, in the future they may have a say, but have much less moral claim to it than their predecessors. A paradox indeed. But is a quinquennial ballot really much compensation for the loss of the independence and trust they once enjoyed? Or, to put it another way, if adolescents can be trusted with a vote, why should they not be trusted with a penknife?

Platoist-like

BBC News: The government is set to produce guidelines to ensure the independence of its scientific advisers, Science Minister Lord Drayson has said.

... A statement from the academics was sent to government officials and ministers, and calls for them to back their academic freedom and independence and to properly consider their advice.

In a statement to MPs, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the reason for sacking Prof Nutt was not the work of the council, but because of "his failure to recognise that... his role is to advise rather than criticise".

Can't help but agree with Johnson here. If we let academics have their way, then we will be moving dangerously close to a Platoist-like rule of 'experts'.

As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong) Nutt offered advice, HMG didn't take it, Nutt threw toys out of pram. Not by publishing figures which showed (I leave methodology etc out of it*) that cannabis was less dangerous than alcohol/fags, something which is quite possible, but by explicitly saying the decision was wrong. At which point you can see why Alan Johnson lost patience with him. How can you ask someone for advice if the deal is that you HAVE to accept it or the adviser will go public on his disgreements ? At that point you may as well hand over policy to the adviser and democracy goes out of the window.

Let's be clear here about the nature of the debate. Some are trying to turn this into an issue of freedom of speech. That, it ain't. If I had an employee who was going out and slagging off the way I ran the business, I'd be having words.

A Bit Slow

The papers have been reporting that Cameron is hoping his new plans will "head off" a party rebellion over his abandoning of any plans for a Lisbon Treaty referendum. For some, it ain't worked.

But for others it has. They've been taken in by it. Which is a shame, because it's such a poor attempt at a con. One is Louise Bagshawe over at CentreRight:

A Sovereignty Act making British law supreme is vital. A commitment to ignore the ratchet clause and subject every new power grab to a referendum is wonderful. Renegotiation of the various areas where Lisbon has gone too far is very important.

The European Communities Act was signed into law in 1972. I understand some people are a bit slow, but all these years on, some just haven't quite got it yet: British sovereignty is no more. You even have a court ruling that proved it.

Not good enough? Try it in a context with another country, the Van Gend en Loos case, in which the ECJ itself stated, "...the Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the states have limited their sovereign rights." Such a concept should be abhorrent to us. It is completely against the traditional doctrine that the Crown-in-Parliament is the supreme legislative power. But if people like Louise keep living in ignorance, we have no chance. And with eurosceptics like this, who needs europhiles?

Of course, this is not the end:

... I remember asking my European Law professor whether there was any way of overturning the decision, or otherwise reasserting the sovereignty of Westminster. "Oh, yes", he replied breezily. "All you have to do is repeal the 1972 European Communities Act".

David Cameron is desperate to push this issue to one side. These proposals are the equivalent of jingling your keys to distract a small child. We cannot let him take away from us an issue of such importance for us and our country.

P.S., Actually had a modest tour of the Houses of Parliament yesterday. Felt quite sad knowing that despite all the work that had been put in to constructing and decorating such a wonderful building, it now means absolutely nothing.

Happy Guy Fawkes Night

Doubtless some blogs will be linking to that clip from V for Vendetta, saying that it's a day for freedom, etc. Well, yes ... but not that kind of freedom. Guido Fawkes was no freedom fighter, but a Catholic mercenary hired by a group of noblemen to destroy the ruling class of England, install a puppet, Catholic government, and restore papal supremacy. Victory over Catesby and co., was a victory for the British monarchy and the independence of the nation.

How ironic, in light of recent events ...

One has to wonder, on the day we commemmorate deliverance from a seditious continental terrorist plot and the treacherous subversion of Rome, that the continental powers have achieved the subjugation of England, her Monarch and her Parliament, and the Treaty of Rome has triumphed. The wheel is come full circle.

The Way We Live Now

Apparently, one of the receptionists at my college was told by an elderly visitor the other day that on the bus to the college, not one of the college students gave up their seats for him. The receptionist made the point that, as bad as it was, the college could do nothing about it.

This elderly gent thought this was bad. Imagine what the poor citizens of Orpington feel (via Laban) ...

Dozens of college pupils were involved in violent clashes with police yesterday afternoon (November 3), forcing the closure of Orpington High Street. The trouble flared at around 5.25pm when more than 40 Orpington College students waited for a bus outside Boots in the high street. Around 15 of them boarded a route 51 before the driver shut his doors and a patrolling PCSO told the remaining teenagers they would have to wait for the next bus. But instead the youths on the pavement tried to force their way onto the bus, kicking the front and back doors. The violence quickly escalated and a 25-year-old PCSO sustained a cut above his left eye. He was taken to a south London hospital by ambulance. Two other police officers were also struck during the incident. The high street was shut for around an hour while police fought running battles with the teenagers.

The locals comment ...

As a paper informing the public, you need to get your facts straight!! I was on that bus! there wernt 40 pupils at the bus stop, more like 100 (and about 60 police officers) behaving like animals because they have to wait to get on. The police officer didnt get a slash to the face, he got stabbed. Every monday and tuesday this stupid behaviour happens usually resulting in the bus driver turning off the engine. the school kids in the morning have their own bus, 1 needs to be provided at 5PM for the college lot then they can do what they want to each other( which is usually fighting upstairs!) instead of making the public who actually want to get home from work wait 2 hours!!!!!! When the kids who were upstairs causing trouble had to wait to be searched as they got off the bus, the police officers were saying sorry for the inconvinience to THEM!! what about the passengers that had to wait????? Passengers who used their last money on their oyster cards had no other way of getting home, and the police wernt bothered!

One of the comments repeats the oft-repeated message:

Are these students paid £30 to attend, I wonder? When this country was still sane, only the clever kids stayed on at school and went to college. Now, because the government wants to fiddle the unemployment figures, all the riff-raff are staying on and spoiling it for the students who actually want to learn.

Positive Action

There's been a lot of journalists in recent days that have jumped upon Cameron's ditching of his promise of a Lisbon Treaty referendum to proclaim that the 'eurosceptic' movement is moreorless dead, that after the 'victory' over the single currency it shut up shop, its best left for other causes, and now it is stuck on 'repeat'. No vision, no ideas.

And you have to say - given the relative ease with which they've managed to repackage the Constitution and tell the people of Europe it's ice cream - it's probably true.

Personally, I think the argument against British membership of the EU is always going to be a negative one, because more than anything it is a restriction on our ability to govern ourselves. What we do once we've left is fairly irrelevant. That's up to the political parties. The argument against EU membership is nothing if not one of patriotic principle.

But, Dr Lee Rotherham has written a book which wonders what this country would be like in ten years time if we left the EU now. What's more, if you're quick enough, you can get a free copy!

Fair play to Dr Rotherham for this positive move.