I suspect many supporters, like me, have no idea what ‘libertarian’ means. Internet searches bring up various interpretations, varying from those who want to shrink unnecessary government interference to those who want unfettered power ceded to those already too powerful. As such a libertarian party is a hard sell on the doorstep.
However, pragmatism is much easier. If I’m asked ‘what would you do about such and such a problem?’ then the way to deal with it is not to reach for generalities but to answer the question. Or if you’re not into ‘isms’ then ‘stuff that works’ is even better. UKIP is the party of stuff that works.
People ask questions when you knock and their door. They need answers.
“What would you do about the cuts to county budgets which are leading to the closure of libraries and children’s centres, are driving our roads into third-world ruin and are collapsing social care? What about social housing?”
Do what Surrey did, call the Treasury’s bluff and tell them to cough up more support or we’ll have a local referendum about raising local taxes to pay for essential services. Cut Council waste, amalgamate the ridiculous duplication of offices and personnel which Heath bodged. Release brownfield land owned by public bodies for housing, build council-owned properties for rent and sack the housing associations. Put the needs of our residents first. Make every penny spent on and by individual councillors visible to our taxpayers. Sell off unused land and buildings.
“What will you do about the coming crash in energy provision, the price of electricity, the exploitation of the poor, the old and the sick for the benefit of rich landowners with turbines on their land or who are invested heavily in offshore boondoggles? What about the loss of jobs to other countries which are using cheap coal energy to undercut UK businesses?”
Fund our nuclear industry to build prototype SMRs. Frack. Tax the wind farms and use the money to reimburse those in need. Cancel large nuclear generation projects like Hinkley C – why the hell should we subsidise the research being done by our competitors who sold us this European Pressurised Reactor shambles as a ready-to-build project? Tax solar.
“What about the deficit and debt?”
Cancel HS2. Reduce overseas aid by 10 billion, easing the pain by opening a bank account into which those who wish to pay more can signal their commitment to the welfare of deserving causes overseas. Seek the assistance of trustworthy partners like the Salvation Army to spend the voluntary donations. Implement the 2015 manifesto tax plan.
“What about immigration?”
Allow only those with assets or work to enter. Issue work permits for guest workers where required with a time limit on how long they can stay. End the importing of marriage partners as a business proposition. Police false marriage schemes. Incentivise work for welfare recipients to ease labour shortages.
“What about animal cruelty?”
Encourage local referenda about fox hunting. Allow selective badger culls but fund inoculation research to make its use eventually unnecessary. Forbid non-stun slaughter, research anoxia stunning to meet at least some of the religious objections. Allow import of religiously-slaughtered meat but tax it heavily to fund alternatives and to pay for basic research into non-animal meat and more ‘meat-like’ vegetarian food.
“What about over-development?”
The Tory party are committed to huge over-development in the next ten to fifteen years and they are very keen on this. For example, Norfolk and Suffolk are slated to take a housing increase of around 250,000 –
that’s enough to house the current population of Suffolk. They’ve even set up Local Enterprise Partnerships which get loads of money from central government with only a minimum of local democratic oversight.
When UKIP asked the Conservative Leader of the council to report on what was going on, he refused. If people don’t vote for UKIP then this will only get worse. Give us more influence and we’ll bring the LEPs under democratic control.
“Why can’t our children and grandchildren afford homes in our town/village?”
In the ten years from 2007 to 2017, the UK population ballooned by nearly five million people. That means there’s more competition for houses so prices go up. London’s Labour boroughs are seeking to shunt their homeless families away from the city and out to cheaper areas. Anywhere within an hour and a half’s travel from London is about to
come under immense pressure and there’s nothing we can do. Once again it’s our children who are paying the price for mass immigration encouraged by Labour and Conservative governments. UKIP will control immigration and give local communities more say over major housing developments.
There probably isn’t an over-arching philosophy that would match that lot, but you could call it pragmatism if you’re into labels. Or, as Guy Clarke sang, ‘stuff that works’. In a sentence, I’d say that we want to put our own people first. Maybe there is a word: patriotic.
Gerard has picked up on the ‘Zulu, there’s nobody else’ meme. Let me give him another one.
“Not Left.” Point left. “Not Right.” Point right. “Straightforward.” Point straight at the audience. “That’s the way forward. It’s you.”
Stuff that works.
JF
Oh, yes, one last thing. Apply massive emergency funding to Reaction Engines Ltd for their air-breathing/rocket hybrid engine. The country that commands space will be safe for a century.
Here’s the problem. In its constitution, UKIP is a libertarian party. And yet nobody would know that from its manifestos, and no policies are published. Here is what a libertarian manifesto would look like: (i) restructure the NHS to a system based on private insurance and privately-owned hospitals, (ii) end tax credits and let labour market adjust, (iii) end housing benefit and let housing market adjust. Doing this would be the 3 main actions to meaningfully reduce the role of the government and roll back socialism. As far as I know, the previous manifestos in 2015 and 2017 were all in favour of these 3 pillars of socialism, British-style. Together, they use £125+26+22 = £173billion. UKIP sucks people in with populist words, but then slaps them around the face with libertarian realities after they join. The reason the party has not moved forward is because the hardcore of libertarians in the party refuse to yield power to newcomers. Well that’s fine, but then please stop pretending to be a populist party! Any new policies being developed (we can but hope) and any future manifesto should be libertarian!
interested to know why paul j watson video taken off ukip.org
Indeed and there is no mention of him or the others anywhere on the site…… been wiped from existence…… I was thinking it was deleted to make room for some policies but no, none of them evident either…….
“What works” – was the Blair mantra.
Sorry it
s the wrong rallying cry - anything that phoney introduced or said is toxicve said before , when I joined UKIP in 2009, I had never heard of Libertarianism before (never been in a political party) so I looked it up. Was even more confused, explanations 180degrees apart..the other hand as I
So whether I signed up to it or not, I have resolved to have nothing to do with it
To be quite honest I prefer the Farage method “on the hoof” a week is a long time in politics, so they say! and in the words of that old chatlatan, MacMillan “it
s events dear boy" and thats true, youve got to be pretty nimble and prepared to abandon your position held the previous week - often by 180degrees - at least it is honest and I thought the UKIP mantra was to "tell the truth"s often painful and perhaps wonIt
t make you many friendst have many friends, but he was vindicated in the end and he always maintained it was better to nip a problem in the bud, rather than let it fructate and end up as a nearly unsolvable catastrophe (or at least only solved by war)Churchill did it in the 1930s - he didn
I agree with you on the “what works” mantra.
But you do realize that saying that when you joined UKIP, you were confused about what libertarianism meant but you decided to have nothing to do with it is exactly like saying that when you joined the SNP, you were confused about what the concept of an independent Scotland meant, but decided to have nothing to do with it, or that when you joined the Socialist Workers Party, you were confused about what “socialism” meant but decided to have nothing to do with it, etc.?
This sort of thing is certainly not unprecedented. Most of us would probably agree that the liberal elites ruling the Labour Party, when they joined it, must have been confused about what “the working class” meant, but they decided to have nothing to do with it (mind you, this has always been true of every left wing party, everywhere). But it is nevertheless somewhat unusual.
UKIP’s USP historically indeed has been (that is, at least until the Red UKIP coup) to tell the truth (“to tell it like it is”) but I’m puzzled by your view that you should change your position 180 degrees from one week to the next – the truth doesn’t change from one week to the next?
Strange I had and have a pretty good idea of what an independent Scotland meant, having married a Scottish lady, and having lived there for 20 years at the height of the period when both all the legacy parties treated Scotland as a fiefdom, just another county on the top of Scotland, my wife
s uncle went right back to the original Sandy Mactavish (?)Scottish Nationalists and I have also voted SNP on occasion, I did believe I knew what Scottish Independence meant then, much the same as we believed what Brexit meant; this of course, was in the days before the SNP had the strange idea of leaving the tentacles of the UK, just to swap it for the "warm" (irony) embrace of the EU committed to a United States of Europe. (Actually continuing with this stance they reveal themselves as one of the founder members of "WRECKERS UNITED")t know, but he was a school teacher in Coventry and Coventry was heavily socialist in Parliamentary and Local Authority terms – not to my taste!Socialist Workers Party I knew when to avoid having been born and lived in Coventry the home of its predecessor Colin Jordan, whether he espoused socialist ideas or not, I don
The truth, I always ask myself “Whose Truth” unless one is an actual eye witness of the event or occasion spoken of then it can only be an “acquired learned experience” and what truth is mouthed one day can often be found to be “fake news” and a 180 degree turn around is required.
Finally I believe it is a legal decision that a political manifesto can be a load of rubbish, governments can peddle all sorts of nostra before they get in, but can implement policies which represent a 180 degree reverse.
Puzzled by what you mean by the “Red UKIP coup”, do you mean that the grass roots have at last got a meaningful democratic handle on the party?
Have several upticks for ‘nostra’. There aren’t many of us left.
JF
In vino veritas.
The best always comes out when I`ve had a few.
I mean you are so forgiving
” just another country on top of Scotland” – really!
There is only one truth. While everyone makes mistakes and most people are a different person when they are 40 than when they are 20, doing about turns in the space of 2 weeks is a no-no if you don’t want to be thought of as a clown. If you don’t know the truth, keep your mouth zipped. Wait until you find out. You have two ears, two eyes, and one mouth – use them in that proportion (and use the brain occasionally too, if it is any good). A closed mouth gathers no foot. That sort of stuff. It’s OK not to comment if you don’t know what you are talking about. What is not OK is to take a stance, convince people they can rely on you, go on a limb and back you up and then leaving them high and dry when you knife them in the back by doing an about turn 2 weeks later. Do that once, and no one will ever take you seriously again – and rightly so.
The Red UKIP coup took place starting in 2014 when some infiltrators from the liberal left were shown the red carpet, were catapulted to great heights immediately after joining the Party, took over policy making, insulted the traditional UKIP members and supporters as being “away with the fairies” and pushed through the sort of 180 degree policy about-turn you are talking about. We went down from 27% to 12% and then lower and lower still in the polls as a result of that – and we deserved it. The coup lasted until about the departure of Bolton, Crowther and Oakden in February, it seems that those sort of people don’t have much influence now (Evans and O’Flynn still seem to be around but quieter), but I’m sure they will never stop trying.
You signed up to espousing libertarian values when you joined the Party, and thus to understanding what “libertarian” means; that is what the Party Constitution requires.
I don’t agree that selling a libertarian party on the doorstep is difficult at all; indeed, the zeitgeist of this time is crying for someone to do it. It’s just that nobody seems to want to try any more. Backtracking from being libertarian after the 2014 rise to prominence in UKIP of the left wing mole Patrick O’Flynn and our “convergence” towards the LibLabCon social democratic consensus is the primary reason why the party subsequently started to decline.
Libertarianism is in fact the most pragmatic approach: sourcing the wisdom of the crowd to do what works, rather than letting a few daft busy-bodies centrally plan everything and impose impractical solutions on everybody else.
How many small businesses do you know who know how to solve a problem, but can’t, because some petty bureaucrat has decreed that doing that is not allowed?
Trying to solve anything by “raising local taxes” is a classical example of a classical mistake and an impractical solution: that of considering only what is seen, and ignoring that which is unseen (cf. Bastiat). Wind farms would never exist if they weren’t subsidised, so the libertarian solution (=don’t subsidise) is the best way to solve that problem. There is no need to tax them – stop the subsidies and they will go away by themselves. The government should be involved in neither energy nor transport, but if private individuals want to fund Hinkley C or HS2 (and they get the voluntary consent of the affected house owners whose houses would need to be knocked down), let them. The original sin is the government allowing itself to build on land it does not own and the consent of whose owners it has neither obtained nor felt the need to seek. If the welfare state were either abolished or changed from being a hammock to being a safety net, it would be unnecessary to allow only those with assets or work to enter – because only those would want to.
It is thus precisely the libertarian solutions that work, whenever anyone has the guts to implement them.
Thank you for stating the ‘libertarian’ case — or at least one interpretation of the case — so clearly.
Stopping the subsidy for wind farms and solar would be to break a contract made by the Government. This is not a good look. However, no-one said anything about tax levels, so imposing a wind farm tax would produce money to recompense those who are disproportionately paying wealthy investors and landowners for overpriced power, namely the old,the sick and the poor. That is a good look and needs no breaking of contracts.
We must agree to disagree about big infrastructure projects like HS2 and Hinkley C. Government has a role to play in these, and my objection here is that it has made catastrophically wrong decisions.
Your point about the welfare state is interesting, but I can see no chance of any Party espousing such views getting within a sniff of election success .
In 2015 we got, I got, nearly 22% in West Suffolk, running on the O’Flynn Evans manifesto. Even our political opponents conceded in private that it was a solid, very appealing manifesto. If we ran on the points you made above we’d be making the same errors that May made in 2017 — we’d be alienating those hungry for change, for some common sense, for stuff that works.
Rgds
JF
Libertarians disagree on some things, but no libertarian espouses giving more power to the government rather than in the hands of the people. Anyone who does, isn’t a libertarian. This is not so much one interpretation of the libertarian position as the libertarian position.
I disagree that a party which believes the welfare state should be a safety net rather than a hammock is unelectable. I believe that a party which advocated that position would receive a massive boost in the polls. The silent majority are fed up with both domestic welfare abusers who laze about in their £2 million council houses playing with their Playstations, as they are of jihadis living off welfare and plotting terrorist attacks, while they slave away to pay for it and don’t have time to spend with their own children.
Of course the government made catastrophic decisions on HS2 and Hinkley, as it would on Brexit. The government always makes catastrophic decisions on such things. This is neither a coincidence nor an accident. It is a feature of the system. The interests of decision-making mandarins are always at odds with the interests of the people. That is why such decisions belong to the people, not the Government. That is the libertarian and the practical approach. The alternative – of waiting for a government of angels to emerge which won’t make catastrophic decisions, is impractical. You will wait a very long time.
Of course our political opponents liked the Evans/O’Flynn manifesto. It was their manifesto, written by their people. Unless you believe Suzanne Evans is the only person to have been invited to speak to the Fabians who isn’t a socialist. It’s our members and our supporters who didn’t like it. That’s why we went from 27% to 12% nationally after adopting it, even if you did better locally.
Many of us joined UKIP because we share the Party’s values enshrined in its constitution, i.e. we believe in freedom. We oppose socialism as a matter of principle. Making small compromises to be electable is one thing. Throwing out everything you stand for because someone suggests you need to to get elected (which isn’t even true) is another. I grew up in socialism and experienced its atrocities first hand. I will never support a socialist party, a socialist politician, or socialist policies. Even if you call them “pragmatic”.
Well said Tomaz. As P J O’Rourke observed ” Giving money and power to governnment is like giving whisky and car keys to teenagers”
May I make a guess? You’re an Ayn Rand fan?
JF
@Jake Bennet: thank you. I agree!
@JF: I’m not sure where you are going with this, but I will humour you nevertheless.
Ayn Rand was born in Russia before the October Revolution. She then grew up in the communist Soviet Union and experienced first hand the atrocities of socialism (i.e. of those who preach compassion and caring but are in reality just a bunch of authoritarians and thugs in it for the power and filling their own boots). This was enough to convince her to leave, to live in a (relatively) free country, to believe in, and advocate, freedom and to put – eminently sensibly, in my opinion – her faith in the people rather than in governments. Unlike the modern day liberals in the West (which phrase in my view also well describes our very own SE and PO’F), she actually knew what she was talking about when she spoke of things like socialism and compassion and the fact that the two are opposites. I can’t see anything wrong with any of that. Can you?
But a fan? I’m afraid hero worship is a collectivist trait. The fact that you think in those terms suggests that you may indeed be that way inclined yourself. I prefer to think with my own head to following the herd or being anyone’s fanboy. And that is a trait generally shared by libertarians. There will undoubtedly be many areas where I would disagree with Ayn Rand, any libertarian or indeed any other human being.
Tomaz Slivnik wrote>> I’m not sure where you are going with this, but I will humour you nevertheless. <> I prefer to think with my own head to following the herd or being anyone’s fanboy <<
Very commendable in a libertarian (although how you can disapprove of following the herd and simultaneously religiously espouse libertarian principles, which is itself a following of a herd, I do not understand). Surely you must concede that, just as you reserve the right to disagree with libertarianism in some respects, I must be allowed the same right without calling down your wrath. Incidentally, as a libertarian you should realise that you have no right to tell me how to think -that’s not libertarianism, that’s dictatorship, which is where unfettered libertarianism always ends.
The reason I asked if you were a Randian is that her philosophy, valorising the individual, the __ powerful __ individual, is very right -wing libertarianism, and it makes the error of assuming that powerful individuals must be admirable per se. A cursory glance at the world should be enough to disabuse anyone of that notion — Soros is the first example that springs to mind.
Democratic governments are necessary to defend the weak against the strong. They are not very good at this task, but they are better than any of the alternatives. They must be watched, they must be pruned, they must occasionally be overthrown, but their power to defend those without influence must be guarded.
Randians always think that they are the superman, they are the one* at the top of the heap. As far as it goes I’m an anti-Randian because I think that I’ll be at the bottom of the heap and the superman, the Übermensch, will not like it when I try to fight my corner or try to defend those who need my aid.
The job of a politician should be to defend his or her people, not to lord it over others. But then I would think that, I served twenty years in the RAF, most of it in the nuclear front line where that defence would have been personally very costly indeed.
The job of a politician is to serve, to defend the weak against the powerful in whatever guise they come, left, right or pear-shaped.
Service. Not domination. It’s quite simple.
JF
*There is only one.
Nobody is telling you how or what to think. You, however, voluntarily signed up to sharing UKIP’s core beliefs and objectives when you joined the Party. This is a requirement of UKIP membership, and you agreed to abide by the Constitution when you joined. These core objectives are very few in number and one of the is very expressly to uphold libertarian values. Nobody forced you to sign up to this compact, which is there to ensure members who put their energy into the Party voluntarily are not having their efforts undermined by saboteurs who pull in the opposite direction. Nobody forced you to promise to uphold and promote libertarian values and beliefs, you signed up to it voluntarily and of your own free will. Every club has some rules. If you join it and agree to be bound by them, it is perfectly reasonable to hold you to account over this. For you to join a club and then undermine its ethos by expressing contempt for its core rules is really quite despicable.
Having libertarian values – a world view I came to on my own before I even knew what the word “libertarian” meant certainly does not mean following a herd. Since you signed up to uphold the same values, it is really quite odd that you hold such hostility towards them.
I am not sure whether you really don’t understand what believing in people (=individuals) having “power” over their own lives rather than the elites lording it over them means, or whether you are just pretending not to so you can attack a straw man. This is certainly a strategy commonly employed by the left. And Soros – the poster child of the global socialist elite, really? I trust you are not suggesting that Ayn Rand in any way ever favoured people like him.
“I am your servant not your master” are the famous last words of every dictator. I would be weary of and run away as far as I could from anyone who claims that he wants to be my servant.
“Libertarianism always ends in dictatorship.” Really? Do you mean when socialist saboteurs rot away any society based on freedom from within with promises of “serving the weak”, it turns into a socialist dictatorship?
When you ran for Parliament in 2015, what was the manifesto? In 2017? What policies did you propose to those you doorstepped?
You’re not going to have much fun if all you can see in life is the struggle for domination.
JF
Julian Interesting comment on Ayn Rand. I have sneaking feeling that Ayn Rand and Adam Smith have something in common. Both of their philosophies have been hijacked and purposely misinterpreted and manipulated by corporations and globalists to suit their agenda. Corporations who tend to jump into bed with big government are both monopolists. They were the very antithesis of Rand and Smith’s social and economical philosophies. Essentially they were entrepreneurial capitalists. I like to think that an entrepreneur such as James Dyson represented their philosophy not George Soros. Entrepreneurialism good – corporatism bad.
@Jake Bennett: indeed.
@Julian Flood: Struggle for domination? I’m not sure what you’re on about. I did not run for Parliament. I am not interested in political office or lording it over anybody else, I just want myself and other ordinary people to be able to live our lives as we want to, without being lorded over by an out of touch elite. I gladly give the Party my time, effort and a modest amount of money in order to achieve something, i.e. change things for the better. This includes helping other decent people who share our values (i.e. getting out of the Eurosoviet, libertarianism etc., it’s all in the Constitution) get into political office and do the right thing there, although you don’t need to hold political office necessarily to make a difference. But I would consider my contributions being misused to help socialists and others who do not share or who denigrate our values an abuse of those contributions, as I know would many other members. In exchange for our voluntary contributions, for which we ask nothing in return, the Party has agreed to promote the causes enshrined in our Constitution – and that includes getting out of the EU, promoting libertarian values, small government, etc. Now you don’t promise someone you will do something and take their freebies and then sneer at the idea of keeping your promises, if you are an honest and decent person, do you?
The party at its peak had 45000 members and it still has over 20000, and rising. Many of these people worked hard to build up the Party’s brand, they distributed leaflets, promoted the Party, stood in early elections which they had no chance of winning, little old ladies donated amounts they could barely afford so the Party was funded and could campaign effectively. A very small number of our people stood for political office and their campaign benefited from the contributions of all these members. It wasn’t just your work that got you the 22% in your election, nor just the work of your local activists, the success was built on the back of the brand of the Party and the contributions of all our grassroots members over a period of 20 years. A few of our members got elected to public office or were employed in paid positions and regularly receive a fat paycheck – Patrick O’Flynn and Suzanne Evans being two very prominent examples. Some arose from nowhere to become celebrities and then basked in their personal glory while working against the Party’s values – Suzanne Evans being the prime example. I remember the NEC at one point discussing whether Suzanne Evans should be paid expenses just to attend a Party conference. And then these people denigrate the values of those who put them where they are and insult us – O’Flynn calls libertarians as being “away with the fairies” and Evans sneers every time the word “libertarian” is mentioned. Your attitude to libertarianism seems similar. When you do that, I wonder, do you feel any shame?
Whilst everyone here is having a spat about fox hunting there is a man made problem that the politicians seem to keep well away from and that is the problem that is the travelling community who seem to somehow exempt from the laws that govern the rest of us….any ideas ?
Because gypsies (or ‘travellers’ to the politically-correct) are a minority and thus in the minds of those controlled by identity politics they are ‘victims’ and must be protected like all minorities.
I have just been listening to a program on the steam driven wireless( yes I am that old) about John Stuart Milne and his philosophy about freedom . Basically people are free to do what they want unless they harm others … well the travellers are free but with that freedom they do harm the environment and people’s property and nothing is done.
And yes you’re right, travellers do whatever the hell they want, because they know they are ‘untouchable’, for the reasons I gave earlier.
To an extent, I do respect how travellers live outside the ‘norms’ of our own civilised society. But I do wish they would have some respect for those like myself who choose to live within those ‘norms’ of decent civilised society.
Many years ago, I used to work in a shop by myself, and I would dread it when travellers would camp up nearby, watching their kids as they brazenly tried to steal stuff off the shelves. They were well trained, no doubt by their parents, and the police were never interested, even back then.
I don’t think commanding space is going to save us from the demographic suicide currently underway, its the same logic as building huge aircraft carriers whilst importing hundreds of thousands of fifth columnists at the same time. Are you are familiar with the Planet of the Apes story, where the astronaut flies off, travels forward in time to a world where apes have taken over and humans are enslaved, eventually escapes this nightmare to return in his rocket to the present day so he can prevent the rise of the apes, only to find that the apes are already in charge and his hope is gone.
I love the photo that accompanies this article with the palm tree in the garden, the beautifully painted house, the lady in a straw hat….. do places like this still exist, if so hang on to them, you have about 10-15 years left to enjoy them before they are overrun with London overflow.
Nuclear power.
Nobody knows how to deal with the waste. If they did, they’d be doing it and they’re not. They are just storing it away for future generations.
Nobody knows how to build an economic and safe nuclear reactor either.
The pigeons are going home now as they are being decommissioned at vast cost.
(The French are in an even worse position re decomissioning costs with their aging nuclear power stations.)
As to fracking. nobody yet knows how much frack gas there is in the UK or even if it’s viable.
Even at best we might have enough to last ten years. Unlike the USA our frack gas will be expensive.
Nuclear waste can easily be stored or it can be ‘burned’ in specially designed reactors. It is a problem vastly exaggerated by Green zealots
Small Modular Reactors are worth exploring as a carbon free, factory built option with the economies of scale that mass production will bring.
You state that no-one knows how much tight gas is below the UK and also you say that there’s only ten years’ worth. The British Geological Survey disagrees, and anyway you can’t, reasonably, make both assertions in the same paragraph.
Julian, you’re right. We need more nuclear power, not less. Waste disposal is, as you say, a hugely exaggerated problem.
Freddy (physicist, retired)
This is the solution to our crazy blue , green and brown bins, urban foxes that feed from them and a couple of billion rats. Add a bit of nuclear power and bingo, 3 or 4 problems solved at once.
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/waste-resources/waste-disposal/thermal-treatment#textpart-1
“Thermal incineration” (didn’t know there was any other sort of incineration, but these names are dreamed up by civil servants bereft of common sense) can help lessen the rubbish problem but cannot provide even 5% of a country’s energy needs.
Nuclear energy, full-stop. China and India see this. Why don’t we?
That the evil hausfrau Merkel is/was a physicist is a matter of shame. However incompetent she must have been at her fielf, she must know that by killing the German nuclear power industry as she has, she is pandering to ignorance.
I am against fracking but more for the environmental damage it causes. The possibility of water supplies being poisoned with the residues it produces. I agree re. nuclear waste, storing the problem does not address it but leaves the whole world devastated if not dealt with. If scientists can work on this we can work with them.
Julian, please provide on one side of A4 and explanation of what is SMR, a cost/benefit assessment and timescale for the prototype build, why, apparently, SMR reactors are being decommissioned, and an explanation as to why investment in a thorium reactor would not be a better use of R&D funds.
That being said, I do agree with your general theme.
SMR, small modular reactor. We already build them, or at least Rolls Royce does — they power submarines. They are largely built in a factory which simplifies quality control. Large nukes, at least those which are currently being tried seem to be almost impossible to put together, the Finnish EPR is three times over cost and is taking three times as long as promised. (But they have a new design which will be cheaper and easier to build, vraiment, that’ll be X billion quid, merci, kerching!)
Thorium is the future but is not precluded — do both — but the standard uranium design based on submarine tech should not be beyond us. In an industry where the leading firms are taking 14 years to build a flagship project then I’s bet a pint of Adnams that we could better that.
JF
Thanks for the reply. Seems “SMR” stands for more than one thing.
The UK was the first country in the World to build a nuclear power station – how are the mighty fallen. Especially depressing bearing in mind your point on nuclear submarines, which means we must still have an inherent ability with the technology.
How about installing SMRs in military establishments, such as RAF airfields, army bases and naval dockyards. That way they would be in locations that have to address security in any event. It would also give independence from the main grid and improve security of supply in the event of crisis. Also, increasing numbers would reduce costs for submarines.
As to Thorium, it is an old technology. The USA built a thorium reactor power station in the 1960s which worked. There is current research around the World which seems to be more on the engineering implementation rather than the basic physics. There is no risk of explosion with thorium, much less problem with radioactive waste and less concern as to the long time availability of the fuel. Seems to me to have everything going for it – other than vested interests, perhaps.
You might Google ‘monazite Falkland islands’. Interesting.
JF
I did, Julian, thanks. I learned something of which I was wholly unaware. There’s more to those godforsaken islands than guano and petrodollars, clearly…
More fake technology.
We have twenty plus redundant nuclear submarines laid up in harbour. ie, every one we ever built.
There’s no money to decommission them and no-one knows how.
https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/the-painfully-slow-process-of-dismantling-ex-royal-navy-nuclear-submarines/
All this hooey about using nuclear reactors to deal with the waste.
Which reactor is that? They don’t exist.
Nuclear physicist = ostrich=charlatan..
They’ve lied to us since they said nuclear electricity would be too cheap to be worth metering.
Nuclear humbug!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As I understand it, Thorium reactors need a bit of uranium to kick start their nuclear reaction, and consequentially turns the uranium into something less difficult to subsequently deal with as a waste product. This is a side benefit in addition to the benefits of Thorium in the first place.
The “too cheap to be worth monitoring” prediction related to fusion reactors, which are still a work in progress. So the prediction might become true on day.
Hah! More mights and maybes.
They have been trying to make a fusion reactor now for sixty odd years with no success. Just more lies to justify their comfy jobs.
All the nuclear waste and cleanup issues are left out of the financial calculation in order to justify the fanatics.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR-UK-nuclear-clean-up-cost-estimate-dips-to-154-billion-15071602.html
And this is just to clean up the existing mess never mind what they propose to add to it with Hinkley.
Nuclear Humbug.
Why would anyone want to jump on a horse, wind up a pack of dogs and then chase another small animal across fields until the dogs rip it to pieces.
Fox hunting is for savages. Step away from such a contentious issue.
Millions of people like foxes. So much so that foxes are now a brand.
We will lose votes by supporting fox hunting.
There are those who support fox hunting. The suggestion above is to hold a local referendum which is a totally democratic proposal. If the majority of the local population want to ‘jump on a horse, wind up a pack of dogs and then chase another small animal across fields until the dogs rip it to pieces’ then that’s their prerogative.
It’s all about free speech and free actions, providing it doesn’t harm another PERSON.
Debbie – So Halal slaughter is wrong but killing a fox by having a pack of dogs rip it to shreds is ok as long as the locals agree to it. There are many cities where a referendum on Halal slaughter would get a resounding thumbs up, does that make it ok? Do you advocate a local referendum on hare coursing next? To many, including myself unnecessary cruelty to animals is a no compromise issue.
Now if those in favour of foxhunting were to agree to being pursued by a pack of Dobermanns prior to doing the same to a fox, and if they survived going on a foxhunt, I couldn’t really argue against that, because being the cowardly souls that they are it would never happen
John, percentagewise, fox-hunting is spectacularly happily unsuccessful. Basil Brush and Brer Fox get away almost every time.
But I’m with you and Bryan.
Politically, it’s suicide. “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable!” (Oscar Wilde)
Our stock answer on this from 2015 – local matter (unlike, say, abortion) : if the law is to be changed let a local referendum decide it. For detail, see our 2015 GE Manifesto.
“The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable!” (Oscar Wilde).
Very good Freddy.
Freddy You are correct, rarely was a fox successfully despatched by dogs in traditional hunting. In contrast foxes are spectacularly successful in culling the local feline population.
Do they really? The videos I’ve seen show Ms Puss huffing up all her fur, arching her back and Brer Fox either backing off or getting his nose clawed for his troubles, as feline reflexes are far more rapid and accurate than canine and vulpine ones.
Though surrounded by urban and extra-urban foxes, it is to cars that I lost all my beloved cats – killed by the shock of impact (as the old wives’ tales go) or (more likely) by unseen internal injuries.
It’s beyond me how to inform the highly intelligent, if unteachable, cat that while stationary cars offer nice warm places to lurk and snooze beneath, moving ones represent great danger. I tried all sorts of aversion therapy.
I’m betting that the vote would be overwhelmingly against. The problem then becomes one of pest control by farmers and not a socially divisive ecofriends against the toffs.
JF
Only idiot people in towns and know nothing support a ban on fox hunting.
But they could be disposed of humanely.
Harold if the words in your comment were changed slightly to “Only idiot people in the countryside and know nothing support foxhunting. But they could be disposed of humanely”, do you think that would be a fair comment or that of an idiot?
They wonder why UKIP are not popular to most voters. Chasing the 15% of votes instead of the 85% is amateurish.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/fox-hunting-poll-boxing-day-league-against-cruel-sports-ban-theresa-may-election-a8127851.html
In my experience, idiots are to be found everywhere.
Including here, where my stalkers, stuck in a time warp from 18 months ago, seem not to grasp that 19 is and remains bigger than 6, no matter what Diane Abbott and John McDonnell claims. And now it’s more like 21 to 3.
I agree entirely. STEP AWAY from contentious issues. Talk about the standard of living and housing instead. Of course, if Gerard makes any more crazy comments on Twitter about ‘Diversity Barriers’ and ‘God -NOT Allah – help us’ …. (and that’s a real quote regarding the alleged terrorist incident in Westminster today) , no one has a chance of being elected anyway
Mr Bav – But surely Diversity Barriers are exactly what they are. If we weren’t living in a culturally diverse UK due to unasked for mass migration these barriers wouldn’t be needed. Gerard has the courage to say what he believes and doesn’t mince his words. To me that is so refreshing. I have waited years for a leader of a political party who has the strength and honesty to say what he thinks and not give a damn about offending the perpetually offended. If Kippers don’t like it they can vote for another leader next year. IMHO Gerard is an absolute HERO
It was a deliberately provocative dog-whistle tweet and gets us nowhere. Diversity Barriers my ar*e.
It was also published before the facts were known, and lets face it, only done because the driver was black.
If he were white that tweet would not have been made until the facts were known.
We cannot win elections like this. We will not get Brexit like this.
The barriers around parliament, and protecting Christmas markets and other public gatherings have been called Diversity barriers for some time now. I’m sure I can recall Gerard referring to them as such previously, when no one black or any other colour had committed any act near them. So you can stick that in the same place as your comment, preferably sideways.
Classy.
I’ll remember you Sully…
I confess I have not heard the term ‘diversity barriers’ before. Can someone explain whence it originates and what it is meant to signify ?
Mr Bav, does stepping away from contentious issues also include scrapping the BBC licence fee and making it a subscription service?
It certainly does, because its a fatally flawed policy.
Coincidentally I am working on a research paper that will explain why, (I have had 25 plus years experience working in the broadcast industry ) . After peer review I will present it to Gerard and publish it.
However the gist of it is that the idea to force the BBC into subscription / advertising fails for many reasons. Inadequate revenue generation / soft power / programme quality / catastrophic job losses in many British -leading sectors are just a few.
However ….The licence fee as it stands primarily fails as television usage is near universal ( 95-97 %) and so the licence fee is really a regressive tax. It needs reviewing.
Our policy should be to create BBC revenue from general taxation ( a rise of c 0.5 – 0.6 % ) and totally eliminate the unnecessary prosecutions ( 10% of ALL court cases ) and the hundreds of jail sentences ( 99% of prosecutions succeed ) which fall ENTIRELY on the poor.
I believe that the BBC irritates many who believe it is institutionally biased. I will disprove that .
More when I can.
K
> I believe that the BBC irritates many who believe it is institutionally biased. I will disprove that .
It is institutionally biased. By employing key staff who are overwhelmingly lefties with a warped world view.
Andrew Neil? Dimbleby? Humphries? Paxman ?
OFCOM doesn’t get that many complaints either….
I’ll show you all the data first Freddy before going public as I respect your opinion and statistical skills.
K
////Your request for information
You requested:
• the number of complaints against the BBC under the categories of “Due Accuracy”, “Due Impartiality”, and “Elections and Referendums”, for each calendar year from 2010 to 2017; and
• the number of those complaints which referred to left-wing bias or right-wing bias.
Although details of all complaints we have considered about the programmes are listed in the Bulletins, we only hold searchable information on our complaints database for cases from 2014 onwards. We have therefore listed complaints from 2014 onwards.
For the first part of your request, we have searched for all complaints relating to BBC services in the calendar years 2014-17 under the categories “Due accuracy”, “Due impartiality/bias” or “Elections/Referendums”, with the number of complaints for each category in each period as follows:////
You forgot Jeremy Clarkson oops they got rid of him.
Economically, I am right wing and libertarian.
In other respects, centre to centre-right. As you probably concluded yourself.
Every interaction I have had with Al Beeb since joining UKIP has been adversarial, with me catching them out – each time – on some logical or factual gaffe. Most of them horrific. Further, I’m being very, very generous in calling them gaffes. Other words occur to me.
I couldn’t care less how many complaints OFCOM claims it gets. Firstly, OFCOM only became the BBC’s regulator 16 months ago. Check, if you don’t believe me.
And most people don’t even know it allegedly “regulates” the BBC.
Of the few who do, many or most – myself included – simply wouldn’t bother, knowing that it won’t make a blind bit of difference.
If OFCOM were doing its job, they’d shut the BBC down immediately.
It’s rather like reporting crimes to the police. I’ve stopped bothering… it is like showing card tricks to a dog. They’re institutionally corrupt, untruthful and incompetent. Inspector Clouseau would have fitted in perfectly.
Well said Freddy, as our licence fee pays they should be answerable to Freedom of Information requests but try as myself and hubby did.
Dear Mr Bav, more power to your elbow re the BBC and the licence fee.
My own view is that we certainly DO need the BBC for its cultural input into the life of the nation, and indeed its potential as a unifying force within society ~ it used to be a great force for societal cohesion…..Just a tiny example : I recall watching Dr Finlay’s Casebook when I was very young and it gave me a sense of Scotland ( I lived in the Midlands ) as a benevolent place where people were mostly kind and respectful.
Plus I loved Janet’s accent………
OK, it was fiction, but it had a benevolent effect. Was much loved and watched. Ditto Coronation Street.
One could go on and people are entitled to differ as to the examples.
But a national broadcaster does have the possibility of helping to unite the nation.
I think BBC had the right idea when they commissioned ‘ Goodness Gracious Me’ ~ just as it turned out the programme was totally unfunny, so probably had the opposite effect of that intended.
I am of course NOT saying or claiming that the BBC is perfect as it is : and certainly the current affairs , and general cultural bias towards ridiculing those who are concerned about mass uncontrolled immigration is an aspect that urgently needs reform.
But I do not think we would have a better kind of TV if we transferred in the direction of US style payment for programmes.
As it happens I subscribe to Netflix ~ but I am thinking of cancelling as it seems to me to be terrible value ~ yes there are hundreds of films, but no, most of them are not watchable unless you are brain dead. And it costs about half the licence fee over a year. For much much less in the way of watchable content .
I believe the Licence Fee could stay BUT, big BUT ( and derives in part from long and painful work experience clerking the TV Licences afternoon in Magistrates’ Courts ) the system for collection could be made much much simpler and fairer by adopting the system they have in Portugal ( and I think possibly France as well ).
This is to load the TV annual fee to local authority taxation ( so there is some approximation to affordability in the sense that people with larger houses would pay more than people with smaller ones or flats ) but provide people with an option to avoid the tax if they are prepared to sign a solemn Declaration to the effect that they do not have use of a TV within their homes.
The opting out thing is a bit of an unimportant detail ~ the main thing is that collection is automatic, via council tax. No one can evade it. SO no one gets prosecuted ( saving all the current costs of enforcement and court time / fine enforcement / misery in poor households and so on and on. )
I am not aware of TV licence collection being an issue in either Portugal or France : sometimes there really is a simple solution. ( Car tax going on the price of fuel at the pump being another ……Yes ~they did it in France and I believe Jersey .)
Whilst I would not want UKIP to get bogged down in the licence fee debate it is very clear that the BBC has a political agenda – a liberal left one. And if a liberal like Jeremy Paxman can state that the licence fee is an absurd mechanism I am not going to disagree with him. The BBC was a national treasure for forty years but when an organisation that is subsidised by the public becomes politicised then it is time for it to stand on its own two feet like commercial TV. In the early years the BBC reported news now it is acting like commercial TV and attempting to create or shape news. People no longer soley rely on the BBC for their TV viewing and news and why should people who pay to view have to also pay to support the BBC?
I do think there is a role for the BBC but the organisation needs wholesale reform minus the licence fee.
Mr Bav has history with another party and has worked for the BBC.
I’ve no history with any other political party and, given the chance, would do a lot more than merely abolish the BBC. A travesty of justice it would be, if limited to that. For one thing I’d pursue, financially, the individuals who have conspired to make it what it is, using the Proceeds of Crime Act if at all possible. ?
I trust his scales will fall away without painful assistance.
Why does anyone pay the license fee? Just unplug the BBC. In an age of Youtube you don’t need it. Things you might actually want to see, like Fox News, are on Youtube. If you have a smart TV it is simple, just unplug the aerial cable and delete the BBC iPlayer app, and send back any Sky/BT/Virgin TV viewing box. Watch Fox News on Youtube, PJW, Netflix and Prime, and you can still watch the catch-up apps from ITV, C4, still view BBC news website, still listen to radio.
I have not paid the licence fee for decades. I will most certainly NOT have a sewer running through my living room!
And I will subsidise neither paedophiles nor those seeking to kill me by throwing me from a high place.
So, my collection of threatening, begging and just plain idiotic letters from “TV Licensing” (just another name for the BBC) is quite large.
The letters are clearly of a business nature, and are from a limited liability incorporated entity, but fail to disclose the company name, its registered address, its number and uts country of incorporation, each failure constituting an offence.
Perhaps someone with more time than I have will make the necessary complaint?
I’ve a deserved reputation for not suffering fools gladly.
Which is why I would go for a referendum, campaign against and vote against.
JF
I can see you have never been fox hunting if you think that is what happens!!
It is quite different from the misleading episodes portrayed on the BBC and films.
Foxhunting is not for savages, they are more often found in rape gangs. Foxhunting has a strict code of conduct and one almost never sees the “dogs” chasing the fox out in the open. They are not “gaze” hounds like the Arab Saluki, they run strictly to a scent and usually are miles away from the fox when they pick up the scent. It is actually quite scientific but impossible to explain to one whose mind is already made up and who knows little of the countryside.
However, I agree that we should keep absolutely silent on the hunting issue.
Get off your horse, put the dogs away and chase the fox yourself.
Hunters ???
No different to the US dentist that shot the lion in Africa and then bleated that he’d received death threats.
I have a little piece of countryside across the road from me.
I go out and feed 3-6 foxes every night. One by hand, the rest within 10 feet away.
Foxes are part of our heritage and culture. What next for the blood thirsty fox hunting cowards ?
Hammer a hedgehog ? Shoot a squirrel ? Bait a badger ?
If anyone thinks chasing and killing defenceless animals is entertainment they need locking up.
How very sweet and kind of you Bryan. Where exactly do you live? In town I would think.
They are very far from defenceless, try picking up the remains of a flock of geese after a fox has got at them, heads off and bodies just left. It was a piece of fun for the foxes, not a kill just for food.
Or picking up dead lambs, or chickens or dead piglets in the morning once a fox has got at them during the night.
But you probably wouldn’t know about things like that unless you live on a farm – as I do.
@Adrianne,
You are correct, I do not live on a farm.
I also do not live above a chicken take-away but I still have a right to criticise grooming gangs.
If I did live on a farm I would do my utmost to protect my assets and want a lamb to be slaughtered for profit not for stealing by a fox.
I would spend my generous subsidies on electric fences, strong pens and employ staff to patrol my land.
I’d hate to do it but if my land become overrun with foxes I would have them ‘humanely’ removed.
I would not ask a bunch of Hooray Henrys and their subservient lackeys to play John Wayne against a small defenceless fox.
Fox hunting is for clowns and cowards
Typical town idiot.
If you owned poultry or sheep you would not be fond of foxes which often kill fort he sake of it. (ie don’t eat what they kill)
@Harold,
How many sheep and how much poultry did you lose last month due to foxes ?
Adrianne Smyth – I may be many things, but a townie is not one of them!
@John,
Bloody townies buying all my produce and paying most of my subsidies.
Considering we are ‘For the Nation’ and need Britons to stick together, there is a lot of bigotry by countryside dwellers against other people that aren’t.
‘Issue work permits for guest workers where required with a time limit on how long they can stay’ – and then monitor them closely so that they go when they’re required to, rather than fade into the black economy.
There is a question missing, Julian. The question that is the most important one to be asked in over 1,000 years since the Danish invasions. The question that, if we don’t solve it, England will cease being England in the middle years of this century, because most of the people living in England won’t call them themselves English due to one community’s far higher birth rate, The question that almost everyone at the top of UKIP apart from Gerard Batten and Lord Pearson would rather remain unasked, because they want UKIP to be ‘respectable’. What about Islam?
Keith – totally agree, time to start taking the p*ss out of them.
Here’s a video for your entertainment, the language is a bit course and the best bit is towards the end, but it made me smile.
“Irish Man Prank Calls Muslim Phone Show (Hilarious)”
https://youtu.be/eRJ2GaxP4l4
Thanks. The question of what the caller will say to his cousin Alan is one that has vexed many of us.
The answer is”Fit in or eff off”.
No exceptions.
Set ths Sikhs anf Gurkhas on ’em. I love them both. That’ll sort em.
They to should fit in or eff off.
I realise you’re not advocating violence. However, the country is infested with numpties in uniform who don’t do nuance and many have only a tenuous grasp of the language.
So, though London is overrun with knife crime, murder, robbery, rape and so on (thanks ever so much, Khan Mayor and Dick Head of the met), and the words
Cull “House of Lords”
produce about 380,000 matches on Google, with hundreds of these from MSM headlines, that didn’t deter PC Gump, in uniform, from appearing at my front door the day after I’d published a letter calling for a cull of of the HoL via demanding MPs took action.
Forrest wondered if he could have a chat with me. He wasn’t left wondering for long, as I said “Certainly not” and firmly shut the door. When the red mist dissipated, I went back to get his badge number, I found Gump had disappeared, and the local force denied all knowledge.
So, Mr Spokes, careful as you go.
As to your joke, there are about 440,000 Sikhs and 60,000 Gurkhas in the UK. Their populations now appear to be stable.
No one knows how many Muslims there are in the UK or, for that matter, in England alone, where the official figure is about 2,700,000. Many believe this is a preposterous underestimate. The supermarkets knew a decade ago how many millions more people were in the UK than the census-takers claimed, and the number of national insurance numbers in issue is tens of millions more than the UK’s adult population plus expats/emigrants who had been given one.
Could you be specific about national insurance numbers ~with source of the info , please ?