Robert Henderson
One thing about the coming EU referendum is certain: it will be a much fairer fight than that which occurred in 1975 when the stay-in camp had captured most leading politicians including all the party leaders, all the mainstream media and most of big business . In addition, the stay-in side then had funding which utterly dwarfed that of the get-out campaign and, not content with that advantage, used the government machine to produce its own pamphlet on the renegotiations to go alongside those of the stay-in and leave campaigns. Perhaps most damaging was a lack of preparation for the vote by those who wanted to leave the EEC.
Today we have an established mainstream party Ukip unequivocally urging a vote to leave, substantial support within both the Tory and Labour parliamentary parties, including frontbenchers and senior backbenchers. In addition influential business voices such as Lord Bamford of JCB Ltd and business groups such as Business for Britain are raising their voice to both allay fears that the British economy would collapse in a heap if we left the EU and advertise the considerable costs, both economic and political, which membership of the EU entails. There are even signs that the unions may be turning against the EU with the leader of Britain’s largest union Unit, Len McCluskey, suggesting that Britain might have to pull out if the EU’s labour legislation is watered down as a result of Cameron’s renegotiation.
There is a further important difference between 1975 and now. In 1975 Britain had been in what was then the European Economic Community (EEC)for less than three years. There was little for voters to go on to say whether the EEC was going to be a good or bad thing. Nor was the EEC anything like as intrusive as the EU is now. Today the British people know that the EU has not turned out to be the driver of economic growth that was promised in the 1970s, but a supranational entity in which the Europhile political elites are willing to ruthlessly enforce their will to achieve their end of a United States of Europe (is the only honest interpretation of the Treaty of Rome) regardless of the effects this has on ordinary people, something of which the people of Greece are now only too savagely aware.
It is true that David Cameron is doing his best to fix the result. His government has announced that the civil service will not have to cease publicly commenting on the referendum for the last four weeks of campaigning before the referendum and the proposed referendum question –Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union? – is clearly biased because it emphasises membership as the status quo and gifts the YES vote to those who want to remain in the EU.. Perhaps most importantly, the spending rules in the referendum are slanted to favour those parties which will be likely to support a vote to stay in. But none of these disadvantages are set in stone and could be challenged as the European Referendum Bill makes its way through Parliament or by judicial review. Moreover, even if all these pro-stay-in pieces of jigger-pokery remain unchanged they will not be insuperable obstacles to a vote to leave because our circumstances are so very different from those of 1975. . There is also a possibility that Cameron will carry through his threat to insist that all those in his government must support whatever terms he decides to put to the country or resign. However, that would backfire if many did leave the government or Cameron backed down on his threat. Either way he would look weak and strengthen the impression that leading politicians are increasingly wanting to leave the EU.
It is vital not to panic over polls which show that a majority will vote to stay in the EU. Since Britain joined the EEC the polls have regularly swung violently. The determining factor will be political leadership or perhaps more exactly what the British elite – politicians, mediafolk, businessmen, academics – say in public . The vast majority of electors do not make their decisions by careful unemotional analysis of abstruse economic data or ideological belief, but on basic emotional responses such as fear and hope. If there is support for leaving the EU, or even just an acknowledgement that leaving would not be a disaster for Britain, from a broad swathe of those with a public voice, enough of the general public are likely to be persuaded to vote to leave to win the referendum.
At the heart of the OUT campaign must be Britain’s complete inability to control her borders while we remain in the EU. Polls consistently show that immigration is one of the major concerns of the British public and, when the politically correct inspired terror of speaking honestly about race and immigration is taken into account, it is odds on that immigration is the number one issue by a wide margin. A British Future report in 2014 found that 25% of those included in the research wanted not only an end to immigration but the removal of all immigrants already in the UK and a YouGov poll commissioned by Channel 5 in 2014 found that 70% of those questioned wanted an end to mass immigration. If Britain leaves the EU it will not only allow the legal control of EU migrants but also removes from British politicians any excuse for not controlling immigration generally.
Putting immigration at the heart of the OUT campaign would also have the bonus of appealing to the Scots through a subject on which they feel much the same as the rest of the UK, that is they are opposed to mass immigration. That is important because the SNP are trying to establish grounds for Scotland having a veto over the UK leaving the EU if Scotland votes to stay in the EU and either England or England, Wales and Northern Ireland vote to leave. The larger the vote to leave the EU in Scotland is, the less moral leverage they will have for either a veto over Britain leaving the EU or another independence referendum.
The other central plank to for the campaign should be the fact that it does not matter what Cameron obtains by his renegotiation, because whilst we remain within the EU any concessions given now may be reversed at a later date by the EU, most probably in cahoots with a British government consisting of Europhiles. “Legal” guarantees such as Britain’s opt-out for the Social Chapter were rapidly undermined by using EU workplace health and safety rules to impose much of the Social Chapter.
Nigel Farage does not need to be the campaign’s sole leader , but he does need to be a very prominent part of the leadership. If he does not take a lead role the OUT campaign is likely to end up in the hands of people who have bought into the politically correct view of the world. That would mean the immigration card will not be played with the vigour it demands or even played meaningfully at all.
More generally, what this campaign needs is emphatic, unambiguous and above all honest unvarnished explanation of what the EU represents, It needs Farage at the forefront of the OUT campaign to set that tone. No one else will do it.
Robert Henderson
One thing about the coming EU referendum is certain: it will be a much fairer fight than that which occurred in 1975 when the stay-in camp had captured most leading politicians including all the party leaders, all the mainstream media and most of big business . In addition, the stay-in side then had funding which utterly dwarfed that of the get-out campaign and, not content with that advantage, used the government machine to produce its own pamphlet on the renegotiations to go alongside those of the stay-in and leave campaigns. Perhaps most damaging was a lack of preparation for the vote by those who wanted to leave the EEC.
Today we have an established mainstream party Ukip unequivocally urging a vote to leave, substantial support within both the Tory and Labour parliamentary parties, including frontbenchers and senior backbenchers. In addition influential business voices such as Lord Bamford of JCB Ltd and business groups such as Business for Britain are raising their voice to both allay fears that the British economy would collapse in a heap if we left the EU and advertise the considerable costs, both economic and political, which membership of the EU entails. There are even signs that the unions may be turning against the EU with the leader of Britain’s largest union Unit, Len McCluskey, suggesting that Britain might have to pull out if the EU’s labour legislation is watered down as a result of Cameron’s renegotiation.
There is a further important difference between 1975 and now. In 1975 Britain had been in what was then the European Economic Community (EEC)for less than three years. There was little for voters to go on to say whether the EEC was going to be a good or bad thing. Nor was the EEC anything like as intrusive as the EU is now. Today the British people know that the EU has not turned out to be the driver of economic growth that was promised in the 1970s, but a supranational entity in which the Europhile political elites are willing to ruthlessly enforce their will to achieve their end of a United States of Europe (is the only honest interpretation of the Treaty of Rome) regardless of the effects this has on ordinary people, something of which the people of Greece are now only too savagely aware.
It is true that David Cameron is doing his best to fix the result. His government has announced that the civil service will not have to cease publicly commenting on the referendum for the last four weeks of campaigning before the referendum and the proposed referendum question –Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union? – is clearly biased because it emphasises membership as the status quo and gifts the YES vote to those who want to remain in the EU.. Perhaps most importantly, the spending rules in the referendum are slanted to favour those parties which will be likely to support a vote to stay in. But none of these disadvantages are set in stone and could be challenged as the European Referendum Bill makes its way through Parliament or by judicial review. Moreover, even if all these pro-stay-in pieces of jigger-pokery remain unchanged they will not be insuperable obstacles to a vote to leave because our circumstances are so very different from those of 1975. . There is also a possibility that Cameron will carry through his threat to insist that all those in his government must support whatever terms he decides to put to the country or resign. However, that would backfire if many did leave the government or Cameron backed down on his threat. Either way he would look weak and strengthen the impression that leading politicians are increasingly wanting to leave the EU.
It is vital not to panic over polls which show that a majority will vote to stay in the EU. Since Britain joined the EEC the polls have regularly swung violently. The determining factor will be political leadership or perhaps more exactly what the British elite – politicians, mediafolk, businessmen, academics – say in public . The vast majority of electors do not make their decisions by careful unemotional analysis of abstruse economic data or ideological belief, but on basic emotional responses such as fear and hope. If there is support for leaving the EU, or even just an acknowledgement that leaving would not be a disaster for Britain, from a broad swathe of those with a public voice, enough of the general public are likely to be persuaded to vote to leave to win the referendum.
At the heart of the OUT campaign must be Britain’s complete inability to control her borders while we remain in the EU. Polls consistently show that immigration is one of the major concerns of the British public and, when the politically correct inspired terror of speaking honestly about race and immigration is taken into account, it is odds on that immigration is the number one issue by a wide margin. A British Future report in 2014 found that 25% of those included in the research wanted not only an end to immigration but the removal of all immigrants already in the UK and a YouGov poll commissioned by Channel 5 in 2014 found that 70% of those questioned wanted an end to mass immigration. If Britain leaves the EU it will not only allow the legal control of EU migrants but also removes from British politicians any excuse for not controlling immigration generally.
Putting immigration at the heart of the OUT campaign would also have the bonus of appealing to the Scots through a subject on which they feel much the same as the rest of the UK, that is they are opposed to mass immigration. That is important because the SNP are trying to establish grounds for Scotland having a veto over the UK leaving the EU if Scotland votes to stay in the EU and either England or England, Wales and Northern Ireland vote to leave. The larger the vote to leave the EU in Scotland is, the less moral leverage they will have for either a veto over Britain leaving the EU or another independence referendum.
The other central plank to for the campaign should be the fact that it does not matter what Cameron obtains by his renegotiation, because whilst we remain within the EU any concessions given now may be reversed at a later date by the EU, most probably in cahoots with a British government consisting of Europhiles. “Legal” guarantees such as Britain’s opt-out for the Social Chapter were rapidly undermined by using EU workplace health and safety rules to impose much of the Social Chapter.
Nigel Farage does not need to be the campaign’s sole leader , but he does need to be a very prominent part of the leadership. If he does not take a lead role the OUT campaign is likely to end up in the hands of people who have bought into the politically correct view of the world. That would mean the immigration card will not be played with the vigour it demands or even played meaningfully at all.
More generally, what this campaign needs is emphatic, unambiguous and above all honest unvarnished explanation of what the EU represents, It needs Farage at the forefront of the OUT campaign to set that tone. No one else will do it.
Robert Henderson
Seventeen people have been murdered in the two terrorist attacks in Paris (between 7-9th January 2015). Ten were journalists, including some of France’s leading cartoonists, working for the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. To them can be added two policemen, one policewomen and four members of the general public who happened to be unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The attacks were made on the Charlie Hebdo offices and the Jewish supermarket Hyper Cacher. The policewoman was shot in a separate incident.
The terrorist acts were coordinated to produce maximum effect. That on Charlie Hebdo was by the brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi , who were of Algerian ancestry. A third brother Mourad Hamyd aged 18 was at school at the time of the Charlie Hebdo attack and has spoken to but not been detained by the police. The attack on a Jewish supermarket was undertaken by a Mailian Amedy Coulibaly. He also killed a policewoman before his attack on the Jewish supermarket. Coulibaly’s wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, who is of Algerian ancestry, is thought to be another Muslim fanatic with homicidal tendencies. She is believed to have fled to Syria after the shooting of the policewoman.
Those who died at the Charlie Hebdo office were slaughtered by men shouting Allahu Akbar (God is great), “We have avenged the prophet!” [for cartoons of making fun of Mohammed published by Charlie Hebdo) and just to make sure the message got across “Tell the media that this is al-Qaeda in Yemen” . Cherif Koachi also said in a telephone interview with a magazine after the killings that the plot was financed by al Q aeda The Jewish supermarket killer introduced himself to frightened hostages with the words ‘I am Amedy Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State’. All three killers either expressed a wish for martyrdom or behaved in a way in which was guaranteed to get them killed. All three were shot and killed by French security forces.
Unless you are a particularly stupid and self-deluding liberal and have either persuaded yourself that this was a black op and the killers were agents of the wicked old West or have fallen back on that old liberal favourite that the killers are not true Muslims – congratulations to the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley for being so quick off the mark with that piece of shrieking inanity – you will think these are Muslim terrorists. (The next time you encounter someone spinning the “not true Muslims” line ask them whether the Crusaders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were Christians).
Sadly there are many liberals who have not learnt the lesson dealt out by these atrocities. It is true that there has been almost complete condemnation of the killings by the liberal elites around the Western world, but one wonders how unqualified and sincere their regret and anger is. Apart from the liberal apologist mantras “not true Muslims”, “Just a tiny minority of Muslims” and “Islam is the religion of peace” being much in evidence, there has been a disagreeable media eagerness to portray the killers as sophisticated military beasts. Here is a prime example from the Telegraph:
“They wear army-style boots and have a military appearance and manner. One of the men wears a sand-coloured ammunition vest apparently stuffed with spare magazines. Some reports suggest that an attacker was also carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
“The men attacked the magazine’s headquarters with clinical precision, killing their victims and then shooting two police officers in the street outside.
“Amateur footage shows them using classic infantry tactics. They move along the street outside the office working as a pair: one advances while the other gives cover.
“Instead of spraying automatic gunfire, they fire two aimed shots at each target – a pattern known as “double-tap” firing – thereby conserving their ammunition.”
Shades of white liberals in the 1960s drooling over the Black Panthers in the USA .
The truth is that the attackers did not behave like highly trained soldiers, and some of the reporting was simply wrong, for example, after the slaughter the killers, as was widely reported , did not walk calmly back to the stolen car they were using but ran. When they abandoned the car one of the killers left his identity card behind. After the murders at Charlie Hebdo the two killers drove around like headless chickens hijacking cars and holding up petrol stations to obtain food and water. If they had really been cold, calculating beasts they would either have stayed where they were after the Charlie Hebdo killings and died in a firefight with the French police or arranged matters so that they had a hiding place to go to and would carried things like a little food and water with them. The widespread media depiction of them as quasi-military figures glamourized and sanitised what they were.
The British political mainstream response
But it would be wrong to say nothing changed in Britain after the attacks. The Ukip leader Nigel Farage broke new ground for a mainstream British politician in modern Britain by speaking of a fifth column of people who hate us within Britain.
“There is a very strong argument that says that what happened in Paris is a result – and we’ve seen it in London too – is a result I’m afraid of now having a fifth column living within these countries.
“We’ve got people living in these countries, holding our passports, who hate us.
“Luckily their numbers are very, very small but it does make one question the whole really gross attempt at encouraged division within society that we have had in the past few decades in the name of multiculturalism.”
This was predictably condemned by David Cameron, a man who incredibly still believes Turkey within the EU would be of great benefit to all concerned, despite the anger and dismay in Britain about mass immigration generally making the prospect of 70 million Turkish Muslims having a right to move freely within the EU certain to be utterly dismaying to most native Britons. Interestingly, a would-be successor to Cameron as Tory leader, Liam Fox, edged a long way towards reality in an article for the Sunday Telegraph:
“All those who do not share their fundamentalist views are sworn enemies, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, Arab or non-Arab. It is the first lesson that we must understand – they hate us all because of who we are, our views, our values and our history. Western liberal apologists who tell us that the violence being directed at us is all of our own making not only fail to understand reality, but put us at increased risk.
“We must understand that there are fanatics who cannot be reconciled to our values and who will attempt to destroy us by any means possible. They are at war with us. They do not lack the intent to kill us, merely the means to do so, and our first response must be to deny them that capability. Sometimes that will require lethal force.”
The fact that Farage also condemned multiculturalism in no uncertain terms provoked an automated politically correct response from the leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg:
“The Deputy Prime Minister hit out after Mr Farage suggested the attack on the offices of a satirical magazine should lead to questions about the UK’s “gross policy of multiculturalism”.
“I am dismayed that Nigel Farage immediately thinks, on the back of the bloody murders that we saw on the streets of Paris yesterday, his first reflex is to make political points,” Mr Clegg said during his weekly phone-in on LBC radio.
“If this does come down, as it appears to be the case, to two individuals who perverted the cause of Islam to their own bloody ends, let’s remember that the greatest antidote to the perversion of that great world religion are law-abiding British Muslims themselves.
“And to immediately … imply that many, many British Muslims who I know feel fervently British but also are very proud of their Muslim faith are somehow part of the problem rather than part of the solution is firmly grabbing the wrong end of the stick.”
Such condemnations are of little account because Farage has spoken an obvious truth and the general public will understand that. The promotion of multiculturalism has been generally pernicious because it wilfully creates serious divisions within a society, but is unreservedly toxic in the case of Islam because Muslims, violent and non-violent, believe in the supremacy of their religion.
The change of language by public figures particularly politicians is of the first importance because the general public need a lead to be given where a matter is contentious. In these politically correct times it is particularly necessary because the native population of Britain have been thoroughly intimidated by the totalitarian application of political correctness which has resulted in people saying non-pc things losing their jobs, being arrested and, in a growing number of cases , being brought before a criminal court to face charges.
Once things forbidden by political correctness are said by public figures change could be very fast. More and more people will embrace the forbidden words and ideas and, like a dam bursting, the flood of non-pc voices will overwhelm the politically correct restraints on speech and writing.
A tiny proportion of Muslims
The claim is routinely made by the politically correct Western elites and “moderate” Muslims that those committing terrorist atrocities are a tiny proportion of Muslims. That is pedantically true but unimportant, because it is to misunderstand the dynamic of terrorism which rests on a pyramid of commitment and support for the cause. At the top are the leaders. Below them are those willing to carry out terrorist acts. Supporting them will be those who make the bombs, acquire guns and so on. Below them will come those who are willing to raise funds through criminal behaviour such as extortion and drug dealing and administer punishment – anything from death to beatings – to those within the ambit of the group who are deemed to have failed to do what they were told or worse betrayed the group. Next will come those willing to provide safe houses for people and weaponry. Then there are those willing to provide information and come out on the streets to demonstrate at the drop of a hat. At the bottom of conscious supporters will come the “I disagree with their methods but…” people. They say they support the ends of the terrorists but do not support terrorist acts. This presses the terrorist demands forward because the public will remember their support for the ends and forget the means because it is the ends which engage the emotions . Those who are familiar with the Provisional IRA during the troubles in Northern Ireland will recognise this character list with ease. Moreover, even those from a community from which terrorists hail who refuse to offer conscious support will aid the terrorists’ cause by providing in Mao’s words “the ocean in which terrorists swim”.
There are differences in the detail of how terrorist organisations act, for example, PIRA operated in a quasi-military structure with a central command while Muslim terrorism is increasingly subcontracted to individuals who act on their own. But however a terrorist movement is organised the general sociological structure of support described above is the same whenever there is a terrorist group which is ostensibly promoting the interests of a sizeable minority and that minority has, justified or not, a sense of victimhood which can be nourished by the terrorists . Where the terrorists can offer a cause which promises not merely the gaining of advantages by the group but of the completion of some greater plan its potency is greatly enhanced. Marxism had the communist Utopia and the sense of working towards final end of history; the great religions offer, through the attainment of some beatific afterlife, the favour of God’s will for their society and the completion of God’s plan. Islam has those qualities in spades.
All this means that though the active terrorists may be few , the effectiveness of the terrorist machine relies on large numbers who will offer some degree of support. Consequently, the fact that the number of Muslims committing terrorist acts may be a tiny proportion of the total Muslim population is irrelevant. What matters is the pyramid of support which at its broadest will include all Muslims because it is the total population which provides “the ocean in which the terrorist may swim”.
There is also good evidence that large minority of Muslims in Britain support the methods of Islamic terrorists, for example an NOP Poll in 2006 found that around a quarter of British Muslims said the 7/7 bombings in London in July 2005 were justified because of Britain’s involvement in the “War on Terror”. There is also plenty of British Muslim support for the imposition of Sharia Law on Britain and some Muslim children are confused as to whether it is Sharia Law or British Law which is the law of the land. There are also growing numbers of Sharia Courts in Britain which allow disputes between Muslims to be decided outside of the British legal system.
Importantly, it is not a case of just the poor and the ignorant only holding such views. Young educated Muslims are if anything more enthusiastic than the average British Muslim to have Sharia Law with 40% in favour and no less than 32% favouring killing for Islam if the religion is deemed to have been slighted in some way. All of this points to a considerable reservoir of support for the ends of Muslim terrorists if not always the means. Many Muslims in the West would not be prepared to engage in violent acts themselves , but they would quite happily accept privileges for their religion and themselves won by the sword.
How should the West react to Muslim terrorism?
How should the West react? In principle it should be simple. There is no need for gratuitous abuse, no need for laboured reasons why Islam is this or that. All that needs to be recognised is that Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy because in its moral choices it is a belief system which runs directly counter to liberal democracy and has as its end game the subjugation of the entire world.
What effective action can Western governments do to prevent the gradual erosion of the values upon which their societies are built? ? There are three general possibilities. These are:
Will anything like this happen? Most improbable at least in the short term. The West is ruled by elites who worship at the altar of political correctness. Theirs in a fantasy world in which human beings are interchangeable and institutions such as the nation state are seen as outmoded relics as homo sapiens marches steadily towards the sunlit uplands of a world moulded and controlled by the rigid totalitarian dicta of political correctness .
For such people the mindset of anyone willing to die for an idea is simply alien to them. Even more remote to these elites is the belief that there is an afterlife which is much to be preferred to life on Earth. Most damaging of all they cannot conceive of people who have no interest in compromise and consequently will be remorseless in their pursuit of their goal. The liberal mistakenly believes that simply by contact with the West will the values the liberal espouses be transferred to the rest of the world. This incredibly arrogant fantasy can be seen at its most potent in their attitude to China, which is quietly but efficiently creating a world empire by buying influence, and in the Middle East and North Africa where the attempt to transfer liberal values by a mixture of force and material aid has been a shrieking failure which mocks the liberal every second of every day.
Because of such ideas Western elites are only too likely to keep fudging the issue and conceding, not necessarily right away, more and more privileges to Muslins within their societies. They will also probably greatly increase funding for “moderate” Muslims to enter Schools and Mosques to teach Western values. This will drive many young Muslims towards extremism not away from it because however the teaching of British or Western values is conducted it will inevitably be seen as a criticism of Islam. Older Muslims will also be angered at such teaching of their children. Anything the liberal is likely to do will simply be throwing petrol on the fire.
What is required is the replacement of the present elites either by removing them from power or by them changing their tune utterly. The first is improbable in Britain because of the structure of the voting system which hugely protects the status quo and a complicit mainstream media which shares the devotion to political correctness and manipulates access to favour parties and politicians which play the politically correct game.
But the changing of political tune is a real possibility because liberals are starting to get truly frightened as they realise things could get seriously out of control if Muslim terrorism continues to occur. There is also the fact that white liberals recognise in some part of their minds that what they ostensibly espouse – the joy of diversity – is bogus. This can be seen by how they so often arrange their own lives to ensure that they live in very white and in England very English circumstances. The massive white flight away from places such as inner London and Birmingham bears stark witness to this. Being capable of the greatest self-delusion they explain their hypocrisy by telling themselves that this is only because the great project of producing a country, nay a world, fit for the politically correct to love in, has tragically not been fully realised yet because the outmoded non-pc ideas and emotions still exists as people have not yet been educated to see the error of their primitive ways such as believing in the nation state and a homogenous society. But in their heart of hearts they know they would dread to live in the conditions to which they have sanguinely consigned the white working class.
Liberals may also have the beginnings of a terror that their permitting of mass immigration, the promotion of multiculturalism and the suppression of dissent from their own native populations will soon come to be called by its true name, treason. All these fears will act as a motor to drive the liberal elites to become more and more realistic about what needs to be done.
The question every non-Muslim in the West needs to answer is this, do you really believe that if Muslims become the majority in a Western country they will not do what Islam has done everywhere else in the world where they are in the majority and at best place Islam within a greatly privileged position within the state or at worst create a Muslim theocracy? Even Turkey, the liberals’ favourite example of a Muslim majority secular democracy, is rapidly moving towards a position when it cannot meaningfully be called a democracy or secular as Islamic parties gain more and more leverage and the Prime Minister Erdogan becomes ever more autocratic.
If a person’s answer to the question I posed is no, then they need to answer another question, do I want to live in such a society? If their answer is no then they must be willing to fight for their way of life or the “religion of peace” will change their society beyond recognition.
When I hear someone describing Islam as the “religion of peace” I am irresistibly reminded of the aliens in the film Independence Day emerging from their spaceship yelling “We come in peace” before blasting every human in sight. The white liberals who peddle into the “religion of peace” propaganda should be constantly called upon to explain why it is that a “religion of peace” can be so unfailingly successful in attracting people who say they subscribe to it yet are unremittingly cruel and violent.
I have posed the above title for this article as a question, but I think that once the question is asked the article answers the question affirmatively. As the English legal profession would have responded to such a question for centuries with the Latin phrase:- “res ipsa loquitur” – the thing speaks for itself!
What do you think?
Here is the article:-
The OCR exam board unveils plans for a new history GCSE that will include a module on 2,000 years of immigration, from the Romans up to 21st century arrivals from Syria
Teenagers will be able to learn about the impact of immigration on Britain over the last 2,000 years under plans for a new history GCSE, it was announced today.
For the first time, a history module will be introduced covering new arrivals to the UK from the Romans up to modern day migrants such as those from Syria and eastern Europe.
The proposals – drawn up by one of the country’s leading exam boards – will assess the reasons for immigration, the experience of new entrants and the impact on the indigenous population.
The OCR board insisted pupils would find large numbers of parallels to the modern day, saying they would be “surprised to learn” that the black population of London may have numbered up to 15,000 in the 1750s and that at least 10 languages were used across medieval England.
Under plans, “Migration into Britain” will be included as part of an optional extended study theme, which will make up around 20 per cent of a new GCSE course being introduced in 2016.
OCR’s GCSE in history is currently the most popular version in the country, with more than 93,000 teenagers sitting it last year, the exam board said.
It is hoped the move will “reinvigorate interest in GCSE history” following claims from historical experts that rising numbers of schools were barring pupils from taking the subject beyond the age of 14.
The move is made as immigration continues to dominate the political agenda in the run up to the election. Last week, David Cameron promised the introduction of tough new rules on access to welfare benefits for migrants entering Britain from the EU.
But the government has insisted that the number of pupils sitting GCSEs in history had increased in recent years, with almost four-in-10 teenagers taking an exam in the subject in 2014.
Mike Goddard, the exam board’s head of history, said: “Migration is an ideal history topic for GCSE students to study, allowing them to consider fundamental historical concepts such as continuity, change and significance, rooted in the major events of England’s history.
“Doing this through the lens of the movement of diverse groups of people has the added benefit of contemporary relevance and will make for a rigorous, stimulating and enjoyable course.”
He said it would require pupils to explore and understand “the constant shifts in the British population”. This included the impact of invaders such as the Romans and the Vikings, the effect of the Empire on India and the West Indies and people coming to Britain to flee persecution including the Huguenots, Jews and, more recently, the Syrians.
The Government has already set out proposals to overhaul GCSEs will more rigorous subject content and a greater emphasis on exams as opposed to coursework.
Under the changes, new history exams require pupils to study a wider range of historical periods, a greater emphasis on British history and at least one extended project.
OCR is currently developing two new GCSEs in response to the reforms. One will focus on the “modern world” and the second will put more emphasis on a range of historical periods. As part of the courses, pupils will have the option of taking a dissertation-style project in the monarch, war and society or immigration.
The proposed new GCSEs will be submitted to the government next year and will be taught from 2016, subject to approval from Ofqual, the exams regulator.
Mr Goddard said: “Migration has been a constant and, in many important ways, a defining feature of our history. Tracking it thematically over time makes for a complex and fascinating study, will build on recent academic research, and will reveal many new and enlightening aspects of our past.”
Here is the link to the original>>> Pupils to learn about immigration in new history GCSE – Telegraph
Robert Henderson
The think-tank British Future has recently published the report How to talk about immigration based on research conducted by ICM, Ipsos MORI and YouGov. The report purports to provide a blueprint for both the pros and antis in the immigration debate to manage the subject most effectively in public discussion. This is not something which they achieve because they have bought into the internationalist agenda, viz: “Some three or four generations on from Windrush, it is now a settled and irreversible fact that we are a multi-ethnic society. Managing immigration effectively and fairly in the public interest should and does matter to Britons from different ethnic backgrounds. We should be suspicious of approaches that sharply polarise British citizens along racial lines, in whatever direction”.
Nonetheless the research does have much of interest. One finding is truly startling. Faced with the question “The government should insist that all immigrants should return to the countries they came from, whether they’re here legally or illegally” the result was Agree 25%, disagree 52% and neither 23%. (P17 of the report). In addition, many of those who said no to forced repatriation were also firm supporters of strong border controls and restrictive immigration policies.
The fact that 25% of the population have overcome their fear of falling foul of the pc police and say that they do not merely want immigration stopped but sent into reverse is stunning. Moreover, because political correctness has taken such an intimidating place in British society it is reasonable to assume that a substantial number of those who said they disagreed did so simply out of fear of being accused of racism.
The obverse of the immigration coin was shown by the question “In an increasingly borderless world, we should welcome anyone who wants to come to Britain and not deter them with border controls” (P16 of the report). The results were 14% agree, 67% disagree and 19% don’t know.
That only 14% support such a policy compared to the 25% who wished for forced repatriation is striking in itself, but it is even better for the opponents of immigration than it looks for two reasons. First, the 14% of those who agreed with the question will be the honest figure because to say that you want open borders carries with it no penalties from the pc police and will gain the person brownie points amongst the politically correct elite and their axillaries. Second, as already mentioned, the 25% of those wanting forced repatriation of all immigrants will understate the true position because a significant proportion of those questioned with be lying out of fear.
The report also shows that older voters are more likely to be those who are most strongly opposed to immigration (P11 of the report). That is important because older voters are the most likely to vote.
Taking all that into account it is reasonable to assume that a referendum with the question “Do you wish to end mass immigration?” would result in a solid probably overwhelming YES vote.
These facts should persuade politicians that they would risk nothing if they move much further to restrict immigration than they have already done and in so doing would gain considerable extra electoral support.
This may well happen. Public rhetoric about immigration is rapidly hardening There will come a tipping point where the rhetoric has departed so far from the politically correct position that serious action to restrict immigration will occur because the stretch between rhetoric and action will become too great to sustain in a society where governments are elected.
A party political bidding process on the subject of immigration is already taking place and there will come a point where serious action has to follow or there will be a very real chance that either one or more of the mainstream parties will become irrelevant and be superseded, or members of the mainstream parties will wrest control of these parties from their pc indoctrinated leadership and adopt a policy on immigration closer to what the public wants.
The other important effect of greater political honesty in political utterances about immigration is that it makes it much easier for people generally to speak openly about their feelings on the subject and to lobby for radical action. In turn this will feed the desire of politicians to gain electoral credibility by being ever former in their immigration policies. Indeed, the only reason that the present immigration has been allowed to develop is because the subject has been effectively wiped off the public debate agenda since the1970s.
Robert Henderson
The Archers is currently the subject of various story-lines which bid fair to leave the programme a largely Archer-free zone.
The pivotal Archer family – David and Ruth Archer – are in the process of selling Brookfield with the intent of buying a farm hundreds of miles away in the North East of England because planning permission has been given to build a road on Brookfield land.
Jill Archer is planning to move north with David and Ruth.
Pip Archer has been away from the programme for a suspiciously long time working for other farmers or finishing her agricultural studies.
Tony Archer lies critical injured in hospital after being tossed and gored by his prize bull and even if he survives is likely to be paraplegic.
Tom Archer did a runner on his wedding day and is now in Canada and seemingly out of contact with his family.
Helen Archer is living with Rob Titchener, a very obvious psychopath, and is ripe for being slaughtered in a psychotic rage, by either Titchener or his unbalanced estranged wife Jess.
Elizabeth Pargetter, is in the messy aftermath of an affair with Neil Carter , who will almost certainly sue her for wrongful dismissal after she sacked him as her manager of her events company when the affair went wrong. This will in all probability result in massive damages for Carter which will undermine the viability of the country estate (Lower Loxley) on which the events business depends.
Debbie Aldridge has been a long-time exile in Eastern Europe.
Kate Madikane lives in South Africa with her black husband.
Peggy Woolley has just turned ninety and is obviously ripe for shuffling off this mortal coil.
This looks suspiciously like a systematic culling of the Archer family to allow the programme to be moulded to a shape more agreeable to the crazed politically correct minds of those who control the show. They doubtless think it is, as they would put it, “ a scandal in this day and age” to only have a minority of black, Asian and gay characters in the cast and desperately want to bring in far more, but find it very difficult to do so when there are so many white heterosexual characters in the soap opera.
Once the Archers have been reduced to no more than a token presence, what will the programme be like? Imagine Brookfield sold to Mr Singh and the village shop run by Mrs Patel to join the Hindu wife of the vicar who is also the local solicitor and Amy the “dual heritage” daughter of the vicar by his deceased Jamaican first wife, with Amy’s Jamaican grandmother taking the place in the storyline of Jill Archer. The ultimate dream of the programme controllers will probably be to see Ambridge with a minority of white characters to, as they would put it, “ make Ambridge look like modern England” .
The gay quotient will also be inflated. Already there is Charlie Thomas hovering over Adam Macey with the threat of a bust up with Macey’s “husband”, the chef at Grey Gables with the hilarious Ian Paisley voice. The programme makers will surely correct one of their glaring pc omissions to date and introduce a lesbian relationship, although they have been strangely coy to date about girl-on-girl action.
The cull of established characters may well go beyond the Archer family because the older characters generally are not to the taste of the politically correct. Apart from being all too white and heterosexual, they have be allowed to express, within limits, non-pc views with the intention that such views can be portrayed as anachronistic and soon to die out . Useful as that was at one time, the politically correct mind now sees no need for such “black hat” characters because it sees the process of reforming British attitudes as having moved to a point where no one can safely express non-pc views and they feel that characters doing so at best will seem at odds with the reality of England today.
What listeners can be certain of is that the Ambridge of the future will be very difficult to recognise as the classic English farming village it was intended to be.
Migration Watch UK have issued a Comment on CReAM’s revised report ‘The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK’.
CReAM is the acronym of
the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration. It is based at UCL and is part of the classic Leftist trick of creating a network of mostly bogus groups that pop up in an orchestrated or choreographed way to respond issues that are of interest to the Left. Here are some links:-
| NORFACE – New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Co-operation in Europe | NORFACE is a partnership between fourteen research councils to increase co-operation in research and research policy in Europe. Over the five project years, the partners will engage in a range of initiatives designed to deliver new levels of co-operative research policy and practice. |
| CReAM – Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration | CReAM is an independent and interdisciplinary research centre located in the Department of Economics at University College London. CReAM’s research focuses on the causes, patterns and consequences of international population mobility and movements affecting UK, Europe and associated global processes. |
| European Migration Information Network | Based in the Migration Research Unit (MRU) at UCL, it also provides a web-based system to quickly locate useful data related to migration issues. |
| The Economics and Politics of Employment, Migration and Social Justice | Anglo German Foundation Project coordinated by Prof. Christian Dustman, University College London |
| Migration Research Unit | The Migration Research Unit is based in the Department of Geography at University College London. It carries out high quality research on international population migration issues. |
In this case most of the funding (maybe all) came from the EU funded “European Research Council”. So you, dear taxpayer, paid for it!
In assessing the credibility of Cream’s “Experts” you might like to bear this report in mind:- ” ‘Expert’ behind migrant report was man who said just 13,000 would come from Eastern Europe http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2822825/Expert-migrant-report-man-said-just-13-000-come-Eastern-Europe.html#ixzz3IfPrzX8m
Here is Migration Watch’s comment:-
“This report confirms that immigration as a whole has cost up to £150 billion in the last 17 years. As for recent European migrants, even on their own figures – which we dispute – their contribution to the exchequer amounts to less than £1 a week per head of our population.”
Migration Watch UK Press Comment on CReAM’s revised report ‘The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK’
1. CReAM have now published a revised version of their paper first put out in November 2013 on the Fiscal effects of immigration to the UK. The original CReAM paper was given extensive media coverage and flourished as conclusive proof that immigration was a fiscal benefit to the UK, and that migrants contributed more in taxes than they took in public spending. It was claimed that their estimations were robust and certain and made on the most extreme of conservative assumptions.
Migration Watch published an assessment of this original paper highlighting that
The presentation of the paper had failed to highlight its own finding of an overall fiscal cost of some £95bn to the UK from 1995-2011.
Despite its claims of using ‘worst-case’ scenarios, in many cases the paper in fact detailed very much best case scenarios that were likely to have overstated the contribution made by migrants.
In areas where it was claimed that no evidence was available, there was such evidence and that a paper purporting to provide robust and certain results should take these into account.Our assessment suggested that the likely fiscal cost of migration over the period might well be over £140bn.
The authors have now carried out what they call ‘robustness checks’ using different scenarios that do take on some of the points raised by Migration Watch and others. None of these reduce the overall fiscal cost. In fact the overall finding – still absent from their headlines – now appears to be a fiscal cost of £114 billion [para 4.2.1] as a best case, and worse-case scenarios extending this to a cost of up to £159 billion [Table A7 Panel (a) (c)] . Quite different from their previous suggestion that the worst case was a cost of £95bn, and with the MW assessment well within this range.
In their press release the authors continue to avoid highlighting their overall finding of this high fiscal cost of migration of billions of pounds each and every year between 1995 and 2011.
Instead, as before, they cherry-pick particular periods or groups to distract attention from their overall result, which they now concede is an even higher cost than they previously thought.
2. Their original and much publicised headline that – despite the overall cost – EEA migrants since 2000 have contributed 34% more than they have received has been endlessly repeated as a justification for continued high levels of migration particularly from Eastern Europe. They have now revealed that even on their extreme and optimistic assumptions, migrants from Eastern Europe has barely paid its way and on what is now their best-case estimation contributed only just over 10% more than they received.
The authors continue to call this in their press release a ‘substantial contribution’ from the accession countries. Not only is this a much smaller amount than people have been led to believe, but to suggest that this is somehow more than their UK-born peers is simply wrong.
They put this contribution “mainly down to their higher average labour market participation compared with natives and their lower receipt of welfare benefits”. Actually, all this means is that they are more likely to be working-age and not receiving old-age pensions, and much is often made of the fact that these are young workers in the prime of life. But official statistics show that in the UK as a whole, working households without children actually contribute twice as much in tax as they receive in benefits. The assertion we hear so often that migrants in general and Eastern European workers in particular contribute far more than their UK-born counterparts is simply not comparing like with like and certainly not demonstrated in any way by this paper.
3. On specific points raised by Migration Watch:
We said that income should be taken into account in estimating means-tested benefits (including tax credits). This is an obvious and highly significant point that appears still not to have been addressed at all.
We said that attribution of company taxes by simple population share will distort the contribution of recent migrants. The authors have taken account of this in a variant scenario that – in our view correctly – no longer assumes that even the most recent migrants have just the same financial stake in UK plc as lifelong residents.
We said that employee wage data alone from the Labour Force Survey was unlikely to be a sufficient basis for any reliable estimation of personal taxes. The authors have now taken some account of this in varying their estimation of taxes paid by the self-employed.
We said that Business rates should not be attributed to self-employed individuals. The authors have taken account of this in a variant scenario that – in our view more correctly – attributes these in the same way as company taxation and better represents the financial stake that recent migrants have in UK plc.
We said that there are significant characteristics of migrants generally or specific groups that are likely to make a difference to fiscal impact. The authors have taken some account of this in relation to housing benefit, consumption taxes, and family size. On the other hand they do not appear to have taken account of some other issues we raised like inheritance tax or council tax.
The effect of even these partial changes has been to significantly up the authors’ estimate of the fiscal cost of migration and show that Migration Watch was on the right track and correct to draw attention to these issues.
4. These adjustments have a disproportionately large effect on the most recent migrant groups, particularly from Eastern Europe. In fact, the cumulative effect in the authors’ own alternative scenarios is to reduce the contribution made by this group to a mere £66 million over the ten years from 2001-2011 (Table A7 Panel (b) (d)). This is clearly likely to be less than the margin of error in the calculation, and shows that the fiscal contribution of Eastern European migrants – notwithstanding their high rates of employment and their youthful age-profile – may well be nothing at all.
Commenting on the report, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migration Watch UK said:
“This report confirms that immigration as a whole has cost up to £150 billion in the last 17 years. As for recent European migrants, even on their own figures – which we dispute – their contribution to the exchequer amounts to less than £1 a week per head of our population.”
Migration Watch UK have issued a Comment on CReAM’s revised report ‘The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK’.
CReAM is the acronym of
the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration. It is based at UCL and is part of the classic Leftist trick of creating a network of mostly bogus groups that pop up in an orchestrated or choreographed way to respond issues that are of interest to the Left. Here are some links:-
| NORFACE – New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Co-operation in Europe | NORFACE is a partnership between fourteen research councils to increase co-operation in research and research policy in Europe. Over the five project years, the partners will engage in a range of initiatives designed to deliver new levels of co-operative research policy and practice. |
| CReAM – Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration | CReAM is an independent and interdisciplinary research centre located in the Department of Economics at University College London. CReAM’s research focuses on the causes, patterns and consequences of international population mobility and movements affecting UK, Europe and associated global processes. |
| European Migration Information Network | Based in the Migration Research Unit (MRU) at UCL, it also provides a web-based system to quickly locate useful data related to migration issues. |
| The Economics and Politics of Employment, Migration and Social Justice | Anglo German Foundation Project coordinated by Prof. Christian Dustman, University College London |
| Migration Research Unit | The Migration Research Unit is based in the Department of Geography at University College London. It carries out high quality research on international population migration issues. |
In this case most of the funding (maybe all) came from the EU funded “European Research Council”. So you, dear taxpayer, paid for it!
In assessing the credibility of Cream’s “Experts” you might like to bear this report in mind:- ” ‘Expert’ behind migrant report was man who said just 13,000 would come from Eastern Europe http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2822825/Expert-migrant-report-man-said-just-13-000-come-Eastern-Europe.html#ixzz3IfPrzX8m
Here is Migration Watch’s comment:-
“This report confirms that immigration as a whole has cost up to £150 billion in the last 17 years. As for recent European migrants, even on their own figures – which we dispute – their contribution to the exchequer amounts to less than £1 a week per head of our population.”
Migration Watch UK Press Comment on CReAM’s revised report ‘The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK’
1. CReAM have now published a revised version of their paper first put out in November 2013 on the Fiscal effects of immigration to the UK. The original CReAM paper was given extensive media coverage and flourished as conclusive proof that immigration was a fiscal benefit to the UK, and that migrants contributed more in taxes than they took in public spending. It was claimed that their estimations were robust and certain and made on the most extreme of conservative assumptions.
Migration Watch published an assessment of this original paper highlighting that
The presentation of the paper had failed to highlight its own finding of an overall fiscal cost of some £95bn to the UK from 1995-2011.
Despite its claims of using ‘worst-case’ scenarios, in many cases the paper in fact detailed very much best case scenarios that were likely to have overstated the contribution made by migrants.
In areas where it was claimed that no evidence was available, there was such evidence and that a paper purporting to provide robust and certain results should take these into account.Our assessment suggested that the likely fiscal cost of migration over the period might well be over £140bn.
The authors have now carried out what they call ‘robustness checks’ using different scenarios that do take on some of the points raised by Migration Watch and others. None of these reduce the overall fiscal cost. In fact the overall finding – still absent from their headlines – now appears to be a fiscal cost of £114 billion [para 4.2.1] as a best case, and worse-case scenarios extending this to a cost of up to £159 billion [Table A7 Panel (a) (c)] . Quite different from their previous suggestion that the worst case was a cost of £95bn, and with the MW assessment well within this range.
In their press release the authors continue to avoid highlighting their overall finding of this high fiscal cost of migration of billions of pounds each and every year between 1995 and 2011.
Instead, as before, they cherry-pick particular periods or groups to distract attention from their overall result, which they now concede is an even higher cost than they previously thought.
2. Their original and much publicised headline that – despite the overall cost – EEA migrants since 2000 have contributed 34% more than they have received has been endlessly repeated as a justification for continued high levels of migration particularly from Eastern Europe. They have now revealed that even on their extreme and optimistic assumptions, migrants from Eastern Europe has barely paid its way and on what is now their best-case estimation contributed only just over 10% more than they received.
The authors continue to call this in their press release a ‘substantial contribution’ from the accession countries. Not only is this a much smaller amount than people have been led to believe, but to suggest that this is somehow more than their UK-born peers is simply wrong.
They put this contribution “mainly down to their higher average labour market participation compared with natives and their lower receipt of welfare benefits”. Actually, all this means is that they are more likely to be working-age and not receiving old-age pensions, and much is often made of the fact that these are young workers in the prime of life. But official statistics show that in the UK as a whole, working households without children actually contribute twice as much in tax as they receive in benefits. The assertion we hear so often that migrants in general and Eastern European workers in particular contribute far more than their UK-born counterparts is simply not comparing like with like and certainly not demonstrated in any way by this paper.
3. On specific points raised by Migration Watch:
We said that income should be taken into account in estimating means-tested benefits (including tax credits). This is an obvious and highly significant point that appears still not to have been addressed at all.
We said that attribution of company taxes by simple population share will distort the contribution of recent migrants. The authors have taken account of this in a variant scenario that – in our view correctly – no longer assumes that even the most recent migrants have just the same financial stake in UK plc as lifelong residents.
We said that employee wage data alone from the Labour Force Survey was unlikely to be a sufficient basis for any reliable estimation of personal taxes. The authors have now taken some account of this in varying their estimation of taxes paid by the self-employed.
We said that Business rates should not be attributed to self-employed individuals. The authors have taken account of this in a variant scenario that – in our view more correctly – attributes these in the same way as company taxation and better represents the financial stake that recent migrants have in UK plc.
We said that there are significant characteristics of migrants generally or specific groups that are likely to make a difference to fiscal impact. The authors have taken some account of this in relation to housing benefit, consumption taxes, and family size. On the other hand they do not appear to have taken account of some other issues we raised like inheritance tax or council tax.
The effect of even these partial changes has been to significantly up the authors’ estimate of the fiscal cost of migration and show that Migration Watch was on the right track and correct to draw attention to these issues.
4. These adjustments have a disproportionately large effect on the most recent migrant groups, particularly from Eastern Europe. In fact, the cumulative effect in the authors’ own alternative scenarios is to reduce the contribution made by this group to a mere £66 million over the ten years from 2001-2011 (Table A7 Panel (b) (d)). This is clearly likely to be less than the margin of error in the calculation, and shows that the fiscal contribution of Eastern European migrants – notwithstanding their high rates of employment and their youthful age-profile – may well be nothing at all.
Commenting on the report, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migration Watch UK said:
“This report confirms that immigration as a whole has cost up to £150 billion in the last 17 years. As for recent European migrants, even on their own figures – which we dispute – their contribution to the exchequer amounts to less than £1 a week per head of our population.”
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Devolution and an in-out referendum – UKIP Daily
In part 1 I looked at the UK electoral arithmetic which suggested that England might well vote to leave the EU while one or more of Scotland, W…
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