Well, the Monk is much more of an
international guru than I and I agree with many of the points in the
To be; or not to be post, particularly the Commission as a sink for
failed domestic politicians, also the attitude of Whitehall that the
Monk terms “gold plating” which has been an issue for years.
If some Whitehall plonker had not
raised the question of the possibility of CFC contamination of blown
insulation in fridges and freezers we would have had a simple and
effective recycling regime twenty years ago. I applaud the attitude
of those councils who simply take such appliances at no cost pro
bono, as those who do not risk fly tipping, but, it is only a
problem because someone asked a question to which there could only be
one response.
I recall the first civil servant in a
skirt ruling the roost in a former place of employment doing the same
thing: the site, for it was not simply one building, cost a fortune
to run if there were no customers on-site and between Christmas and
New Year there never were, so for some years, the organisation simply
closed the site from Christmas Eve until the 2nd or 3rd
of January and granted de-facto leave of absence to the staff,
they were “locked out” on full pay. Net savings ~£15,000.
However this el-supremo (el suprema?) felt so exposed in her
leadership that she would not ratify this process on her watch, but
asked Whitehall if it could be allowed... you can guess the answer...
overall result, £15,000+ of wasted funds, additional overtime,
because if you run even a skeleton staff, there is overtime to pay,
loss of morale, because the extra “free” day or two days leave
was a truly valued Christmas bonus and overall an undermining of any
respect as a leader for the Chief Executive. Would the Master of a
Royal Naval vessel signal the Admiral, or worse, the First Sea Lord,
to legitimise the issue of a Christmas tot for the officers and men?
I think not.
Josephus has for long considered that
if the emerging British Empire in the Seventeenth century had not
been so keen to wage war with the Netherlands, who we one generation
later invited to supply a Protestant Monarch, then Europe today would
most probably have a Protestant North and a Roman South, France would
most likely have been partitioned after the Peninsular wars, and we
might even still have had Trafalgar, possibly even Waterloo. Today,
the EU is trying hard to come to terms with the Catholic or Coptic
South of Europe bleeding the Protestant North, but it is not quite so
simple as that... my money suggests it would have been that simple 300
years ago. Oh, and the 1914 war probably would not have happened as
Germany would have been “North” and Austria-Hungary “South”.
However, as to the UK not having the army, navy or air-force to wage
war, nor did we in 1914 ( stand fast Royal Navy.) or in 1939. We
lost the BEF on both occasions, we started the 1939 conflict with HMS
Hood as the pride of the RN, although that didn't last long and our
air-force was all bi-planes apart from a handful of fighters such as
the Hurricane. What we “won” the war with was all built during
the conflict; what I do agree with is that we no longer have the
industrial capacity.
Now then, dates of wars and conflicts
are always a touchy subject, my generation knows full well that WW1
was '14-'18 and WW2 was '39-'45. However, for the US WW1 was '17-'18
and WW2 '42-'45. For much of South East Asia, that conflict could be
anywhere from 1936 to 1972. however, what we can look at here is our
“special Relationship” with the (dis... see previous blogs...)
United States of America. Give me the United States of Europe any
time, despite the fact that I am firmly mono-glot and believe that
Johnny foreigner aught to speak English. The pre-condition, however,
would be hinted at in the name “UNITED”, which currently they are
not. The politics of the EU is reminiscent of a 1950s girl's public
school where the Head Girl and the Captain of Lacrosse are forming
support teams that in the latter case resemble Ernst Roehm's Sturm
Abteilung, which gives us potential for an interesting if
distasteful sub-plot as I seem to remember one lacrosse captain whose
sexual desires were distinctly a single-gender issue as we are led to
believe Roehm's were. The Head Girl, by contrast, will be forming a
team that will tend towards the left as the less physical and more
bookish often do, strength in solidarity, not in might; the sorority
itself becoming the political drive to force the bully-girl
opposition to see sense. I think I have the imagination to work this
into a novel to rival “Fifty Shades of Grey”, I'm thinking “100
shades of politics”, but it doesn't have the ring, perhaps “The
Pink Cardies” would work.
The post-war political socialist
opportunism, mentioned by the Monk does have the origin of the EU
within it, in fact, it is possibly Weimar Germany that spawned it,
The great empires, or the vacuum in their wake spawned Lenin, Hitler,
unfortunately Stalin, Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tze-Dong and
others just as a brutally strict Headmistress sticking firmly to
post-war values as the world emerged blinking from social revolution
into the 1970s spawned the “Pink Cardies”. That does not mean
that everyone must become communist. Communism is an ideal, it
appears not to be a viable system of governance.
So, to the Monk's conclusions; broadly
I agree, however, the following are my jaded observations;
- Less dictat, agreed, but the English Legal System is now so
out of tune with the rest of the UK as well as the rest of the world
that it needs changing... no-one will want that, but then, no-one
wanted decimal coinage... have you tried adding 17/6¾d to
£5/16/4½d in your head lately?
- NO! not more election, but YES! More direct appointments,
government by committee will always fail, it always did, let us not
use the Melchett Approach here. ( And that is what is so
brilliant about it! It will catch the watchful Hun totally off
guard. Doing precisely what we've done 18 times before is exactly
the last thing they'll expect us to do this time! )
- The solution is
socialism, the concept of working together, it is the leadership and
the vision, not the name that matters; Didactic leadership will
always founder in the modern world where the “plebs” can read,
write and use social media. Democratic Socialism seeks to establish
socialism through democratic processes and propagate its ideals
within the context of a democratic system, that seems to fit the
bill. One definition is as a system “that follow(s) an electoral,
reformist or evolutionary path to socialism, rather than a
revolutionary one.” The words of Anthony Crossland quoted in
Chris Pierson, "Lost property: What the Third Way lacks,"
Journal of Political Ideologies (June 2005)
- This one can be simplified by doing what the USA fought so hard to stop, but that still exists there today, accept that those who live in lands of cold winters and cool summers will forever think differently and more frugally than those in the lands of hot sun and warm winters, January food would be sun-dried ham with sun-dried tomatoes, not the same as the turnip and chimney smoked sausage of the northern lands. In our pre-modern times, the north had to lay supply for winter, such an ethos in the Mediterranean never developed simply because it was never needed. Perhaps a new post of “Dictator South” is needed, let us appoint some cardinal or other for the job...
Captain Darling: I'm as British as Queen Victoria! Captain Blackadder: So your father's German, you're half German, and you married a German!
PS, much as it pains me to refer to anything Association Football related, but it's 2 World Wars and 1 World Cup as the chant goes!
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