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Posts Tagged ‘Within the UK’

All Socialists are Pond Life…but so too are their equivalents on the political Right, both are stuck fast in “nostrums and remedies” based upon political dogma from the past that have little to no relevance in today’s world. The biggest problem when faced with the failure, real or apparent of one course of action, is to immediately correct it by steering sharply in the opposite direction which seems to be the reaction of the French people in electing Hollande to the Presidency.

Whilst this is natural, when it comes to nations and economies, perhaps this is not the wisest course of action to take in fact, it is most likely the wrong one and can lead to lots of unintended and nasty consequences.

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I returned to the “Britain and the EU” theme recently only because of an article in The Economist on the subject of a proposed UK Referendum on the topic. I posted a comment against the article and as a result got some interesting replies. Often most replies on this topic are a waste of time because both the For and the Against mob consider their opposites heretics that should be burnt at the stake, never a basis for rational debate.

However sometimes, debate is possible and it teases out the various threads to the subject which is a good thing so the following are really various ‘one sided conversations’ which may work in covering some ground, this may or may not work, I offer it as is…

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Apparently the former ‘Dark Lord’, an European Groupie if ever there was, Peter Mandleson has put forward the idea that we should hold a UK Referendum on an IN or OUT basis. As someone wryly commented, a proposition that only a person no longer seeking elected office could make. Of course it is more likely that as the EU isn’t a burning issue with the British public, his guess is that confronted with a straight choice, they could be easily intimidated by tales of what they might lose by leaving the EU, a very Brussels stance if ever there was.

However and even for those of an “Visceral Anti-EU” posture, the fact that someone like Mandy proposes it, of itself might indicate that there is no need for an “IN/OUT” Referendum because the EU as we currently know it, is unlikely to survive it’s Nemesis the Euro.

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In perhaps one of the more underwhelming announcements of recent days, the FA appointed Roy Hodgson as the new England Manager and frankly, whether voiced publicly or not, I suspect that most people would think “So what ?” There had been a lot of buzz around Harry Rednap as being the most likely candidate and he would certainly have been more the “people’s choice” if only because he is far better media and a bigger personality.

However, this is not a case of “Lions led by Donkeys”, it probably wouldn’t matter who the Manager was, the whole focus of both the players and the FA is the Premier League, that is where the money is, that is where their focus is, the England Team is a sideshow to them all and it shows in the consistently poor results at the International level.

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Whichever political party is in power, they always accuse the BBC of reporting and briefing against them which looked at dispassionately, would seem to indicate that they (BBC) must be doing something right. Unfortunately, I don’t think that matters are quite as simple as that and whilst Leveson is about the past, it does give us an opportunity to examine how all media outlets function which includes the BBC.

The Music and Film industries have failed to establish a successful business model to deal with the digital age, Newspapers are no different and if Murdoch is right that that they will have disappeared completely within 20 years, we really should be projecting our thinking forward towards a totally digital age and asking questions about both news delivery and news management within the UK. In this context because the BBC is paid for from taxation, this is where we need to start, both the staff and management need to know that the party is over, change will have to come.

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Reforming the Lords is always a “biggie” for the Left simply because they are called “Lords” but the reality is that today they are just the “Village Elders” in a very peculiar and British way. Broadly speaking and in an advisory capacity with no real powers, they do a good job as a revising chamber.

There have been calls for over 100 years to abolish or radically to reform the Lords but all attempts have come to nought largely. In fact the most radical thing to have happened apart from reducing their powers to delaying legislation only, was the Blair Government banishing most of the hereditary Peers from sitting in the House of Lords. As things currently stand there is no case for reform of the Lords, it would be a retrograde step in terms of governance.

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One of the key things about the whole issue of the Falklands is the outright bemusement the British people generally, have towards the stance and attitude of the Argentinian Government. For the British, the sovereignty of the islands is non-negotiable until/unless the Falkland Islanders want to look at the possibility. It is for the Argentinians to persuade the Islanders that they would have a better future as part of Argentina, it is not for the UK Government to “tell” the Islanders what they must do, after all, this isn’t Argentina is it ?

Hilariously and after apparently a 3 year gap which I suspect no one noticed over here, we have a new Argentinian Ambassador called Alicia Castro who set out her stall with an article in The Telegraph, it is rather dire to say the least but a good example of how NOT to take up your new post in a foreign capital I suspect. It is also quite amazing how out of touch the Argentinians are to even consider publishing this in the Telegraph, The Guardian or Independent would have been a far better bet ! To know how wrong they were, a quick look at the readers comments will make the point. It couldn’t be a delayed April Fools prank could it ?

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I really don’t know whether it is a change in my own disposition brought on by increasing years but of late and most certainly over the past 12 months, I have become ever more irritated by the greater number of people who write in to the “comments” sections of the Media just to complain. You may think that my objection is all down to my not agreeing with their opinions but to me, that is not important whether I agree or not, it is that their complaints are most often about something they declare they don’t care about anyway.

My reaction to that is if this is true, why bother writing in the first place ? What idiocy makes people imagine that they should have an opinion on everything and then give voice to it, imposing their stupidity on the world at large ? Still, it fits in with a culture that includes Twitter and Facebook, both the refuge of the intellectually barren.

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There were a number of interesting articles in The Economist on Scottish Independence and one was quite amusing: http://www.economist.com/node/21552572 “The economics of home rule: Scotland could probably go it alone now, but the economics of independence are steadily worsening”.

Quite hilariously I got involved in a “comments war” in the reader’s comments section but I must confess that whilst Scots Nats always have a chip on their shoulders, I really didn’t realise what had set them off until the next day. Because I read on line, I didn’t see the “tongue in cheek” map of Scotland the Economist had put on its cover which along with the headline “It will cost you…” also renamed it Skintland…

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As I have expressed previously, “gay marriages” are not really of much concern to me because it is really a cosmetic name change which socially will have no impact on society at large. My one strong reservation given what happened to Catholic Adoption Agencies is that there must be an unequivocal and legally binding undertaking that IF gay marriage passes into Law, there can be no question of a “Right to Marry in/on Religious Premises”.

The rather smug Lynne Featherstone has declared and emphasised that if civil marriages for gay couples were allowed, it would “not force anyone on religious premises to marry same-sex couples.” She added that she wanted to make that “crystal clear.” Now in France that has been made crystal clear by a ruling of the ECHR and Ms Featherstone is shown as totally wrong in her presumptions.

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