Having just returned from a Solemn Requiem, it is time for a quiet reflection on the music and the lives in whose name the Mass was sung. THe setting was Faure's, the Pie Jesu was sung by Katie Etherington and we had a small string and brass orchestra with the Milton providing the continuo.
As ever Faure's setting is incredibly moving, particularly the Pie Jesu and the Agnus Dei. No matter how often I hear this setting, it always has the capacity to surprise and to move one spiritually. If you have only ever heard it as a concert, try hearing it in its proper setting, within the Requiem Mass and you will have a new perspective on it.
May those for whom we said it and all the faithful "Requisicat in pacem et resurgam in gloria tuum."
Friday, 31 July 2009
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Breeding for the future?
Humanity and one other member of the ape family, the Bonobo chimpanzees, are almost unique in their breeding practices. Humanity is probably alone in its expectation that every male will meet and mate with a female at least once. This is one of the reasons for the 'success' of our domination of the ecosystem that is the planet Earth. We have, quite simply, out bred everything else. But now comes the crunch - there are far too many of us and the promotion of having children as a "right" guarantees that we now breed far more children, each of whom will, we hope, also breed at least two children, than the world can actually sustain. Already food and water resources are overstretched, oil is under strain and so are many simple necessities, so, can we afford to continue to operate on this free for all, breed as you like, system?
I recently read a story that suggested a future world in which humanity is organised into "clans" in which only the Alpha Male was allowed to inseminate females and produce children. It skipped over how all other males would cope with this, but did point up the fact that the vast majority of the mammilian animal kingdom practice this system to control populations and keep them within the boundaries set by the available food supply. Hints that this practice may well have been followed in early human societies exist in a number of societies even now. The African practice of setting a "Bride Price" for any girl and the problem of "Street children" - usually unwanted boys for whom there is no "market" - is one such. Many early societies sacrificed boys, rather than girls, thereby reducing competition to breed and others simply exposed unwanted boys to the elements as infants, again limiting the number of breeding boys available. Some of our more primitive societies still practice this form of population control, though now, of course, Aid Agencies and UN organisations try to prevent it or gather these children and sustain them to adulthood. Early "civilisations" waged war on one another with two objects, territorial expansion and the acquisition of slave labour. Notably many emasculated captured men, castrated any preteen boys and sold the girls into the households of leaders and warriors. Even in Medieval Society (and in the Harems of the East!) the practice of "Droits de Signeur" or the right of the "Lord of the Manor" to have his dependents and peasants brides to his bed on their wedding night shows that some form of "Alpha" system operated until fairly recently in our history. There is eloquent testimony to the probability of an "Alpha" breeder in all early human societies in our genetic record - there are only seven key "male" genetic markers outside of Africa (45-plus in Africa) suggesting either that all humans are descendents of only those successful breeders who managed to get more wives than anyone else.
Humanity and the Bonobo Chimps share the use of sex for "recreational" purposes, but where the Bonobos limit their population (or have it limited by the stability of a "death/birth" rate) humans have interfered with this and slewed the balance. Ever since the introduction of modern medicine death rates have fallen dramatically among infants and at the same time life spans have extended. Populations have exploded since the 1940's and even the wars and the more efficient weapons we now deploy in them hasn't made a significant dent in the growing numbers of humans. Now I have to be careful lest this be taken in entirely the wrong way - modern medicine has overcome one of the key reasons for our early success. Defective infants didn't survive and if they did, they certainly didn't breed. Now transplants - in some cases of every organ in the torso - medicines to sustain us when we become "non-viable" and many more, sometimes quite simple, procedures which allow us to live far beyond the point our genetic programming starts to "shut down". We have removed evolution from our breeding programme and it now appears that we have done so to the overall detriment of every living thing on the planet.
Add to that mix the fact that we now expose large sections of our populations to chemicals that affect our genes, mutating them and damaging them. The result is that we are also having to find ways to deal with increasing incidence of disablities which in more primitive societies would have resulted in the infant being killed or exposed to the elements to die naturally. Morally and ethically such an approach is totally unacceptable in our society so we have no alternative but to look carefully at our attitude toward the whole issue of human breeding - a very sensitive and emotionally charged subject, especially for those most likely to find themselves excluded from the gene pool in future - which may well include something like 90% of males and possibly a large proportion of women as well.
Is it time to return to some form of "Alpha" male selection? It would seem so, but a key question which needs to be answered before anyone even thinks about implementing such a strategy. We need to have a very clear, and probably scientific debate (Excluding all politicians and all Civil Servants!), about what the selection should and should not include. And then we have to have a scheme for how we provide for all those boys who will not be allowed to breed! Is this a likely scenario? Not in a modern Western Society I am glad to say, but it could well be implemented in some future "socialist paradise" on the Marxist/Leninist model (And those always start with the sort of "soft" socialist idealists we currently have infesting universities and bureaucracies everywhere in the west). The worry there is that the selection process would then be based on a set of ideological criteria and not on genetics.
Of one thing I am certain, if humanity is to survive the changing climate and the threatened food and water shortages, we have to find some way to limit population growth. I am not suggesting that we should embark on some new form of "ethnic cleansing" or "Eugenics". What I am saying is that we have to put in place a responsible, moral and ethical system which does not involve force or mass extermination and does take account of the genetic diversity we need to keep the human population healthy - and we have to look at ways to reduce it from the 6-7 billion we have at present back down to the pre-1940's levels which were sustainable. We have proved that interference with natural selection threatens us all - now we have to find a way to work with it.
As I said, an explosively tricky subject, but one, I suspect, that is already being discussed by politicians behind tightly closed doors and in heavily screened rooms lest the slightest hint of the discussion leaked into the media. Can you imagine the uproar if it were discovered that our political classes were planning to ensure their genes were the survivors for the future (As their Bunker plans for the Cold War intended with only the politicians and civil servants guaranteed a place of safety reveal) and the rest of us were to be allowed to die out?
Quite. This is an idea that I do not think will find political endorsement (officially!) anytime soon. That still leaves us with three times the human population the planet can support comfortably. An interesting conundrum.
I recently read a story that suggested a future world in which humanity is organised into "clans" in which only the Alpha Male was allowed to inseminate females and produce children. It skipped over how all other males would cope with this, but did point up the fact that the vast majority of the mammilian animal kingdom practice this system to control populations and keep them within the boundaries set by the available food supply. Hints that this practice may well have been followed in early human societies exist in a number of societies even now. The African practice of setting a "Bride Price" for any girl and the problem of "Street children" - usually unwanted boys for whom there is no "market" - is one such. Many early societies sacrificed boys, rather than girls, thereby reducing competition to breed and others simply exposed unwanted boys to the elements as infants, again limiting the number of breeding boys available. Some of our more primitive societies still practice this form of population control, though now, of course, Aid Agencies and UN organisations try to prevent it or gather these children and sustain them to adulthood. Early "civilisations" waged war on one another with two objects, territorial expansion and the acquisition of slave labour. Notably many emasculated captured men, castrated any preteen boys and sold the girls into the households of leaders and warriors. Even in Medieval Society (and in the Harems of the East!) the practice of "Droits de Signeur" or the right of the "Lord of the Manor" to have his dependents and peasants brides to his bed on their wedding night shows that some form of "Alpha" system operated until fairly recently in our history. There is eloquent testimony to the probability of an "Alpha" breeder in all early human societies in our genetic record - there are only seven key "male" genetic markers outside of Africa (45-plus in Africa) suggesting either that all humans are descendents of only those successful breeders who managed to get more wives than anyone else.
Humanity and the Bonobo Chimps share the use of sex for "recreational" purposes, but where the Bonobos limit their population (or have it limited by the stability of a "death/birth" rate) humans have interfered with this and slewed the balance. Ever since the introduction of modern medicine death rates have fallen dramatically among infants and at the same time life spans have extended. Populations have exploded since the 1940's and even the wars and the more efficient weapons we now deploy in them hasn't made a significant dent in the growing numbers of humans. Now I have to be careful lest this be taken in entirely the wrong way - modern medicine has overcome one of the key reasons for our early success. Defective infants didn't survive and if they did, they certainly didn't breed. Now transplants - in some cases of every organ in the torso - medicines to sustain us when we become "non-viable" and many more, sometimes quite simple, procedures which allow us to live far beyond the point our genetic programming starts to "shut down". We have removed evolution from our breeding programme and it now appears that we have done so to the overall detriment of every living thing on the planet.
Add to that mix the fact that we now expose large sections of our populations to chemicals that affect our genes, mutating them and damaging them. The result is that we are also having to find ways to deal with increasing incidence of disablities which in more primitive societies would have resulted in the infant being killed or exposed to the elements to die naturally. Morally and ethically such an approach is totally unacceptable in our society so we have no alternative but to look carefully at our attitude toward the whole issue of human breeding - a very sensitive and emotionally charged subject, especially for those most likely to find themselves excluded from the gene pool in future - which may well include something like 90% of males and possibly a large proportion of women as well.
Is it time to return to some form of "Alpha" male selection? It would seem so, but a key question which needs to be answered before anyone even thinks about implementing such a strategy. We need to have a very clear, and probably scientific debate (Excluding all politicians and all Civil Servants!), about what the selection should and should not include. And then we have to have a scheme for how we provide for all those boys who will not be allowed to breed! Is this a likely scenario? Not in a modern Western Society I am glad to say, but it could well be implemented in some future "socialist paradise" on the Marxist/Leninist model (And those always start with the sort of "soft" socialist idealists we currently have infesting universities and bureaucracies everywhere in the west). The worry there is that the selection process would then be based on a set of ideological criteria and not on genetics.
Of one thing I am certain, if humanity is to survive the changing climate and the threatened food and water shortages, we have to find some way to limit population growth. I am not suggesting that we should embark on some new form of "ethnic cleansing" or "Eugenics". What I am saying is that we have to put in place a responsible, moral and ethical system which does not involve force or mass extermination and does take account of the genetic diversity we need to keep the human population healthy - and we have to look at ways to reduce it from the 6-7 billion we have at present back down to the pre-1940's levels which were sustainable. We have proved that interference with natural selection threatens us all - now we have to find a way to work with it.
As I said, an explosively tricky subject, but one, I suspect, that is already being discussed by politicians behind tightly closed doors and in heavily screened rooms lest the slightest hint of the discussion leaked into the media. Can you imagine the uproar if it were discovered that our political classes were planning to ensure their genes were the survivors for the future (As their Bunker plans for the Cold War intended with only the politicians and civil servants guaranteed a place of safety reveal) and the rest of us were to be allowed to die out?
Quite. This is an idea that I do not think will find political endorsement (officially!) anytime soon. That still leaves us with three times the human population the planet can support comfortably. An interesting conundrum.
Musica Deo Sacra
Is an annual feast of music and liturgy here at the Abbey and this is its 40th anniversary. It began on Monday with a stunning setting for the canticles and psalms, an amazing anthem and a prelude and postlude on the Milton that was just stunning. The Introit, Ecce vicit Leo to a setting by Peter Philips (1561-1628) set the scene for a service which mixed Samuel Sebastian Wesley's music with Richard Shepherd, George Garrett, Mathew Camidge, K John Pye, William Croft and Basil Harwood. The sermon by the Venerable Norman Warren was a gem in itself, setting the standard for the rest of the week.
Tuesday's service was the Solemn Eucharist in honour of Our Lady using the Missa Assunpta est Maria by Palestrina embellished by the organ prelude Ave Maris Stella by Grigny, Introit Rise up my love by Willan, Holst's Ave Maria, Archer's the Son most high, Sandstrom's Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen and finished by Flor Peeters Toccata, Fugue et Hymne sur Ave Maris Stella. The sermon by the Very Reverend Michael Tavinor, Dean of Hereford Cathedral took the standard of preaching to a new high.
Wednesday brought the Solemn Eucharist of the Holy Cross introduced by J S Bach's "O Mensch bewein' deine Sunde Gross" as the prelude. The Mass setting was "Mass for double choir" by Frank Martin with Purcell's "Remember not our offences", Orlando Gibbons "O Lord, in thy wrath", John Sanders "The Reproaches", Mawby's "Ave verum Corpus" and closed with the Praeludium in F Sharp Minor by Buxtehude. But even more was still to come as this evening we were treated to a virtuoso performance on the Milton and the Grove organs by Carleton Etherington. In a truly amazing programme it is impossible to pick out a single piece as better than any other, though I enjoyed the sheer exuberance of Grainger's "Handel in the Strand" on the Milton and Mendelsohn's Overture to the St Paul Oratorio on the Grove. And, as if that were not enough - we then moved to an unaccompanied Compline sung by the Choristers of the MDS Choir.
A musical feast that will be running through my head and others for days to come. And we're only half way through the week.
Tuesday's service was the Solemn Eucharist in honour of Our Lady using the Missa Assunpta est Maria by Palestrina embellished by the organ prelude Ave Maris Stella by Grigny, Introit Rise up my love by Willan, Holst's Ave Maria, Archer's the Son most high, Sandstrom's Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen and finished by Flor Peeters Toccata, Fugue et Hymne sur Ave Maris Stella. The sermon by the Very Reverend Michael Tavinor, Dean of Hereford Cathedral took the standard of preaching to a new high.
Wednesday brought the Solemn Eucharist of the Holy Cross introduced by J S Bach's "O Mensch bewein' deine Sunde Gross" as the prelude. The Mass setting was "Mass for double choir" by Frank Martin with Purcell's "Remember not our offences", Orlando Gibbons "O Lord, in thy wrath", John Sanders "The Reproaches", Mawby's "Ave verum Corpus" and closed with the Praeludium in F Sharp Minor by Buxtehude. But even more was still to come as this evening we were treated to a virtuoso performance on the Milton and the Grove organs by Carleton Etherington. In a truly amazing programme it is impossible to pick out a single piece as better than any other, though I enjoyed the sheer exuberance of Grainger's "Handel in the Strand" on the Milton and Mendelsohn's Overture to the St Paul Oratorio on the Grove. And, as if that were not enough - we then moved to an unaccompanied Compline sung by the Choristers of the MDS Choir.
A musical feast that will be running through my head and others for days to come. And we're only half way through the week.
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Long range weather
I have no doubt at all that the weather of these last few months - a world away from what the "Long Range Weather Forecast" issued by the Met Office earlier this year predicting a long, hot and very dry summer - will soon be seized on by the Global Warming Scaremongers as "proof" of climate change. Of course its changing, it has been changing for at least 10,000 years in the current cycle and quite probably longer. Something that seems to get forgotten by the hype mongers and so-called climatologists (And ex-politicians like Al Gore) is that the Norsemen who found Greenland a thousand years ago were able to farm it successfully, the climate was warmer there then and supported mixed farming. They also named a big chunk of what we now call Nova Scotia "Vinland" because they found vines bearing something like grapes there!
Thanks to the Gorse Fox I found this BBC website which actually gives a very interestingly balanced and rather skeptical report on the melting of the glaciers. They report that the researchers studying these glaciers have discovered that the rapid retreat and expansion of the key glacier all the predictions are based on appears to have happened several times in the past - and long before there were ever enough humans to have an impact. So who do the Climate Change scaremongers blame for that? T-Rex cooking his victims?
I do not doubt that the climate is changing. I don't doubt that overpopulation and the destruction of rain forests, the draining of the Aral Sea and a number of other large scale changes such as the damming of the Yellow River in China are having an impact. What I do take leave to doubt is that this is all the fault of the Western Societies. I also take leave to doubt that we can reverse it without a major reduction in population and even then I think we would very rapidly discover that the changes are driven by the Earth itself and forces so far outside our control that we have little influence on them.
In the meantime, I am enjoying a cool summer and we can probably look forward to a colder than usual winter. But then, I'm not a Met Office employee under Civil Service orders to produce long-range forecasts that reflect "official" government "The World Is Overheating and Its All Your Fault for Heating and Lighting your Home and using Private Transport". An agenda that I do not doubt has more to do with a Socialist hatred of personal choice and liberty and nothing to do with climate change.
Remember, the Climate Models the so-called experts at Fiends of the Earth and Green(Strife)peace and the Universities that produce these people are using don't model anything above 1.6 km from the surface and don't model the oceanic effect. If you read the BBC report they don't know why the Glacial melts occurred in the past and they certainly don't know now. Until they do - Long Range Weather Forecasts are about as accurate as someone keeping a collection of dried seaweed on the porch to predict the weather.
Thanks to the Gorse Fox I found this BBC website which actually gives a very interestingly balanced and rather skeptical report on the melting of the glaciers. They report that the researchers studying these glaciers have discovered that the rapid retreat and expansion of the key glacier all the predictions are based on appears to have happened several times in the past - and long before there were ever enough humans to have an impact. So who do the Climate Change scaremongers blame for that? T-Rex cooking his victims?
I do not doubt that the climate is changing. I don't doubt that overpopulation and the destruction of rain forests, the draining of the Aral Sea and a number of other large scale changes such as the damming of the Yellow River in China are having an impact. What I do take leave to doubt is that this is all the fault of the Western Societies. I also take leave to doubt that we can reverse it without a major reduction in population and even then I think we would very rapidly discover that the changes are driven by the Earth itself and forces so far outside our control that we have little influence on them.
In the meantime, I am enjoying a cool summer and we can probably look forward to a colder than usual winter. But then, I'm not a Met Office employee under Civil Service orders to produce long-range forecasts that reflect "official" government "The World Is Overheating and Its All Your Fault for Heating and Lighting your Home and using Private Transport". An agenda that I do not doubt has more to do with a Socialist hatred of personal choice and liberty and nothing to do with climate change.
Remember, the Climate Models the so-called experts at Fiends of the Earth and Green(Strife)peace and the Universities that produce these people are using don't model anything above 1.6 km from the surface and don't model the oceanic effect. If you read the BBC report they don't know why the Glacial melts occurred in the past and they certainly don't know now. Until they do - Long Range Weather Forecasts are about as accurate as someone keeping a collection of dried seaweed on the porch to predict the weather.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Proselytising Atheism
The news today that an Atheist Group are arranging and holding camps for youngsters as young as seven, in which to "counter Christian religious propaganda" should worry the churches. Although it is claimed that they are against all religion, they seem to be targetting only children from a Christian background and one of the statements they keep repeating is that "religion may inhibit morality". The trouble with that is that their brand of morality seems to have more to do with the "free love" ideals of the Hippy generation than anything the "man on the Clapham bus" would recognise as moral.
The thinly veiled "lessons" in anti-religion include an invented story which requires the children to "prove" that Unicorns do not exist even though a "Centuries old" book says they do. A reward is offered to the child who can "prove" by means of a logical argument and 'hard' evidence that the book is false. The claim is that they are teaching the children to exercise skepticism, logic and 'natural' laws to 'inform' their religious ideas - yet none of those teaching this course lnow enough about Christianity or any other religion to, frankly, know what they are talking about. Nor are the children given anything to show what does support the Bible or for that matter any other religious text. This is a blatant attempt - fully supported by that arch anti-Christian Dawkins - to brainwash children and poison their minds with this New Age founded Atheist claptrap.
The idea that morality is inhibited by the holding of religious views has to be challenged. Pol Pot was an Atheist, so was Joe Stalin and Hitler. Or perhaps their mass extermination of opponents and certain ethnic groups was simply a rational attempt to impose a new religion free order? Are we now to believe that these men were somehow more morally informed than someone who happens to believe that his or her religion forbids same-sex marriage? That is what this is really all about. Religious doctine (In all the religions based on the Judeo/Christian/Muslim philosophy there is a bias against samne-sex relationships) is now seen as standing in the way of the "anything goes" ideology of this atheist socialist government. Socialism in all its guises is the complete antithesis of religious morality and principles and that is why the government and the political classes are now trying their utmost to promote Ateism as superior to religious belief.
The amusing side to this, if there is one, is that in this pursuit of a Godless Society, they have created a new God for themselves. Its called science, yet their understanding of science is questionable at best since they 'believe' that science can explain everything which real scientists will tell you it can't. I think I'd be more accepting of this if the promoters actually knew enough about my religious beliefs to comprehend it. And perhaps that is the tragedy in all this. The 'religion' they are attacking is a Sunday School simple explanations/fundamentalist travesty, it does not represent true belief at all, but they do not want to engage in any debate. Any attempt to do so, simply ends up with the Atheist speaker becoming angry as he/her ignorance is exposed and then abusive. If that is their idea of "moral" or even "logical" - God help them.
The thinly veiled "lessons" in anti-religion include an invented story which requires the children to "prove" that Unicorns do not exist even though a "Centuries old" book says they do. A reward is offered to the child who can "prove" by means of a logical argument and 'hard' evidence that the book is false. The claim is that they are teaching the children to exercise skepticism, logic and 'natural' laws to 'inform' their religious ideas - yet none of those teaching this course lnow enough about Christianity or any other religion to, frankly, know what they are talking about. Nor are the children given anything to show what does support the Bible or for that matter any other religious text. This is a blatant attempt - fully supported by that arch anti-Christian Dawkins - to brainwash children and poison their minds with this New Age founded Atheist claptrap.
The idea that morality is inhibited by the holding of religious views has to be challenged. Pol Pot was an Atheist, so was Joe Stalin and Hitler. Or perhaps their mass extermination of opponents and certain ethnic groups was simply a rational attempt to impose a new religion free order? Are we now to believe that these men were somehow more morally informed than someone who happens to believe that his or her religion forbids same-sex marriage? That is what this is really all about. Religious doctine (In all the religions based on the Judeo/Christian/Muslim philosophy there is a bias against samne-sex relationships) is now seen as standing in the way of the "anything goes" ideology of this atheist socialist government. Socialism in all its guises is the complete antithesis of religious morality and principles and that is why the government and the political classes are now trying their utmost to promote Ateism as superior to religious belief.
The amusing side to this, if there is one, is that in this pursuit of a Godless Society, they have created a new God for themselves. Its called science, yet their understanding of science is questionable at best since they 'believe' that science can explain everything which real scientists will tell you it can't. I think I'd be more accepting of this if the promoters actually knew enough about my religious beliefs to comprehend it. And perhaps that is the tragedy in all this. The 'religion' they are attacking is a Sunday School simple explanations/fundamentalist travesty, it does not represent true belief at all, but they do not want to engage in any debate. Any attempt to do so, simply ends up with the Atheist speaker becoming angry as he/her ignorance is exposed and then abusive. If that is their idea of "moral" or even "logical" - God help them.
Monday, 27 July 2009
Democratic options?
It seems that all but one of the several Mayors, Deputy Mayors and members of state legislature arrested in the corruption scandal currently rocking the US East Coast is a Democrat. So much for the Democrats squeaky clean image I guess, but then, politicians are the same wherever. Some of them are just clever enough not to get caught. Mind you it must be some kind of record for a Party elected on the bandwagon of "look how corrupt the Republicans are" to be caught up to their necks in the pig ordure so soon after coming to power.
I would also have to say that it is typical of the arrogance of the so-called "liberal socialist" persuasion to corrupt everything they touch. Socialism seems to attract the types who cannot see that they are no better than their pet Bogeymen - the ones they label Fascists at every opportunity - and try to suppress any hint of their own wrongdoing. Watch the Labour Party in the UK as the election approaches. I confidently predict we will see them trying to revive every scandal that rocked the Conservative Party and talk up a negative take on every policy of the Conservatives while refusing to say what their own are or apologise for the corruption exposed by the Daily Telegraph - which arose on their Watch, was designed by their own Mandarins and promoted to their new MPs at the outset of their term in Government.
Seems the US Democrats must have been taking lessons.
I would also have to say that it is typical of the arrogance of the so-called "liberal socialist" persuasion to corrupt everything they touch. Socialism seems to attract the types who cannot see that they are no better than their pet Bogeymen - the ones they label Fascists at every opportunity - and try to suppress any hint of their own wrongdoing. Watch the Labour Party in the UK as the election approaches. I confidently predict we will see them trying to revive every scandal that rocked the Conservative Party and talk up a negative take on every policy of the Conservatives while refusing to say what their own are or apologise for the corruption exposed by the Daily Telegraph - which arose on their Watch, was designed by their own Mandarins and promoted to their new MPs at the outset of their term in Government.
Seems the US Democrats must have been taking lessons.
Sunday, 26 July 2009
Road Tax
If proof were ever needed that our political classes live in a different world/dimension to the rest of us the latest utterances from that House of Crass Arrogance has to be the ultimate proof. Now they advocate "Road Pricing" as an alternative to Road Tax, but not, I note, to Fuel Duty, which nets the Whitehall W*nk*r Brigade an astonishing 88 pence in every litre we put in the tank. The argument runs that we should poay for using the roads.
Excuse me, but I thought we were already - £10 billion in Road Tax and probably twice that in Fuel Duty! And not even a fifth of that is actually spent on roads or transport!
So now they want to introduce a sort of Toll system which will have each of us monitored as we drive and somewhere in Whitehall a meter will be running, measuring how much mileage you are doing and how much you must send them for the privilege at the end of each month. What they do not explain, since, as usual, they are looking only at the city and motorway traffic, is how those of us who live outside of the cities and away from their cattle-truck transport systems, will manage to get to and from work. Or the impact that this tax on travelling to work and back will have on the woder economy. As usual it is driven by the city dwelling Fiends of the Earth and Greenpeace Ecowarriors who would like to see us all back to living on self-subsisting smallholdings in unheated, unlit mud huts with thatch roofing and animal dung walls and floors. Of course, they omit the fact that we'd need animal skins to clothe ourselves and charcoal (which generates huge amounts of Carbon Monoxide) to heat our mud huts and international travel or even travel to the next collection of mud huts would be a thing of the past.
This government and their supporters and lobbyists see motorists as cash cows, to be milked as often and as viciously as possible. They hate the personal freedom that comes with car ownership because it means we are not under their control and they cannot control our movements or our choices. They hate independent thought and particularly anyone of inniative. What they want is a controlled, immobilised society of good little citizens who will do as we are told, pay everything we earn to them so they can enrich themselves and prevent us from doing what is right for us as individuals and not as the pawns they want us to be.
Naturally none of these morons has worked out that every increase in fuel duty, road tax or tolls translates into higher food prices and inflation. That just doesn't enter Whitehall's ideology driven thinking.
This is a tax we should all resist - if necessary by driving our politicians and their civil service puppeteers into the Thames!
Excuse me, but I thought we were already - £10 billion in Road Tax and probably twice that in Fuel Duty! And not even a fifth of that is actually spent on roads or transport!
So now they want to introduce a sort of Toll system which will have each of us monitored as we drive and somewhere in Whitehall a meter will be running, measuring how much mileage you are doing and how much you must send them for the privilege at the end of each month. What they do not explain, since, as usual, they are looking only at the city and motorway traffic, is how those of us who live outside of the cities and away from their cattle-truck transport systems, will manage to get to and from work. Or the impact that this tax on travelling to work and back will have on the woder economy. As usual it is driven by the city dwelling Fiends of the Earth and Greenpeace Ecowarriors who would like to see us all back to living on self-subsisting smallholdings in unheated, unlit mud huts with thatch roofing and animal dung walls and floors. Of course, they omit the fact that we'd need animal skins to clothe ourselves and charcoal (which generates huge amounts of Carbon Monoxide) to heat our mud huts and international travel or even travel to the next collection of mud huts would be a thing of the past.
This government and their supporters and lobbyists see motorists as cash cows, to be milked as often and as viciously as possible. They hate the personal freedom that comes with car ownership because it means we are not under their control and they cannot control our movements or our choices. They hate independent thought and particularly anyone of inniative. What they want is a controlled, immobilised society of good little citizens who will do as we are told, pay everything we earn to them so they can enrich themselves and prevent us from doing what is right for us as individuals and not as the pawns they want us to be.
Naturally none of these morons has worked out that every increase in fuel duty, road tax or tolls translates into higher food prices and inflation. That just doesn't enter Whitehall's ideology driven thinking.
This is a tax we should all resist - if necessary by driving our politicians and their civil service puppeteers into the Thames!
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