Last night’s Panorama programme (with an estimated viewing of up to 3.5 million) was an apparently dispassionate but utterly damning indictment of the culture of dishonesty and downright thuggery at the heart of Nick Griffin’s BNP. 

Here is the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0161hqc
and here for the BBC website report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15243064

I have no personal knowledge of the truth of these allegations but I have heard much that fully corroborates the details of Panorama’s allegations.

As often happens in fraud investigations, the programme did not focus on showing the big picture but it did offer detailed proof of several very damaging and undoubtedly, if proven in court, criminal allegations.  It is also true that many of the even more serious allegations being discussed on the internet would never be published on a BBC programme for fear of giving Griffin a windfall win of damages for defamation because of lack of detailed proof of their truthfulness.

In any event, by avoiding the usual ranting approach of programmes featuring the BNP, I suspect that Panorama will have caused far more long term damage to the BNP than might be apparent now.  This is because it is not true that all publicity is good publicity. While such a sweeping statement might be true if you are a porn star, for a politician any publicity that suggests that he is dishonest, unprincipled, self-seeking or a joke are all usually fatal to that politician’s credibility.  Some of these allegations were very much along those lines and so the damage to Nick Griffin’s credibility will be serious. 

It seems that the root of the trouble was the simple desire to make money.  In a business man this is normal but for a credible political figure or party this can only properly be for their cause. As Erasmus said early in the 16th century:- (Piscis primum a capite foetet) A fish rots first from the head!

In stark contrast, in the English Democrats we have used every penny that we have raised for our Cause and none at all on the lifestyle, or even on out of pocket expenses, of our leadership.  Indeed I personally, as have quite a few others, have put a substantial amount of money into the Party to help campaign for the future of England, our Nation and for an English Parliament.

I fully intend that we shall continue to do so and that the English Democrats will continue to campaign to make the difference for the people of England without any taint of greed or self interest.

A regular correspondent sent me this and I thought it was worth sharing:-

“My M.P. is OLIVER HEALD, representing the North & East Hertfordshire constituency.

In 2004 (when the Conservative Party was in opposition) his views and promises were exemplified by a speech in Parliament, in which he said

“…..Is it not time that the Government started to listen to, and act on, advice? They are ignoring the voters on the European Constitution; they ignored the Electoral Commission’s advice on all-postal ballots; they ignored their own embassies’ advice on immigration visas. Does the Leader of the House understand why people feel let down by Labour? Can we have a statement—a statement of apology?”.

His views on the EU appeared to coincide with my own, so I voted for him in 2005.   He was elected. 

Immediately after this, his views changed dramatically.   I told him I was a supporter of the newly-formed ‘Better off out” campaign.   His reply was so dismissive and pro-EU that I was astonished.  

At the same time other members of the Tory Party (still in opposition) were giving out strangely different messages – Former London Mayoral candidate Steve Norris, was asked about the EU, and his reply is worth quoting at some length: I strongly support close a constructive dialogue with our European neighbours and I believe there are some issues………where co-operation among European nations is invaluable. But the evidence over many years is that the EU is a corrupted and corrupting organisation that denies democracy and works against the interests of member states in preference to the interests of its bureaucrats. I want to see the powers of the Commission reduced, not enhanced. I strongly support the proposition that it would be intolerable for the UK government to come to any decision on an EU Constitution without a referendum.  He added: “If it were Conservative policy to leave the EU, I should have no problem with that”.

I have long ceased to trust the Tory leaders, who have consistently lied about the EU since Edward Heath in 1975, and have continued to do so through Michael Howard (“we will change the EU.”) to the bleating William Hague – “in Europe but not run by Europe” – what a fool!  

Mr. Heald said, in a letter to me in 2009, that my views on the EU were “ absolute nonsense”.

So in 2010 I did not vote for him, and have not been in contact since.   I keep in touch with what is going on via Conservatives such as Roger Helmer, Daniel Hannan, Bill Cash, and Chris Heaton-Harris who fight a continuous battle against Conservative EUphiles like Ken Clarke (who looks to be aiming for a nice fat job as an EU Commissioner), and Dave, their disrespected Leader.   

Strangely, many in the Labour Party have reverted to Tony Blair’s pre-1997 stance which was decidedly EU-sceptic.

Mr. Heald’s parliamentary voting record in the past year is interesting….

13 October 2010.   Voted against an amendment calling for a reduction in Britain’s contribution to the (draft) EU 2101 Budget.

10 November 2010.  Voted for European Economic Governance.

11 January 2011.    Voted against Sovereignty of the UK Parliament in relation to EU law.

18 March 2011.       Did not vote on UK Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill (second reading).

24 May 2011.          Voted for a hostile amendment to a motion to halt EU bailouts.
 

I am now 77.     When I was 18 I was proud to able to exercise my right to vote for the person who I thought would represent me

– and at least show sympathy for my views.

I have voted in every Parliamentary election since.

I don’t think I will bother any more.

What a shame…………………

I am still interested (but not active) in politics, and shall attend the People’s Pledge Congress on Saturday 22nd October. 

Peter R., Baldock

 
My only comment would be to reply to Peter that he should not despair – The English Democrats are here!

 
P.S. Peter referred to a letter he had received five years ago about Oliver Heald’s letter. It is out of date on some facts but worth reading anyway.  Here it is:-

                                                                               Tuesday, 19 December 2006

Dear Peter,

            Thank you for sending me a copy of Oliver Heald’s letter which he sent in response to your ‘Better off Out’ card. I would like to go through some points regarding Oliver’s letter. He refers to William Hague’s speech and the ‘benefits’ of a single market and later refers to ‘a globalised economy’. A lot of bunk is written and spoken about the Single Market. We were told we were joining a single market in the early 1970s. If it is a single market why does the EU need its own army? Why does it need Europol – the EU police force whose members are above the law? I could go on to demonstrate that primarily it is not a ‘single market’. It is an embryo superstate incorporating an internal trading bloc and a trade barrier to countries outside its membership. This restricts free world trade. Here are just two examples

1) After the Tsunami crisis the Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, told the world that his country did not want financial aid. Above all Thailand wanted the European Union to lift the
punitive tariffs on shrimp exports which in recent years have inflicted more damage on its economy than the tsunami itself.

2) The European Union has imposed a 16.5 per cent anti-dumping tariff on leather shoes imported from China since October 7. This is to protect the Italian shoemaking industry.  So much for a single market which is nothing more than a protection racket.

Globalised Economy is a catch phrase used to make us think that it is a recent phenomenon. Those countries that had empires in the past have been involved in world trade for generations. It is nothing new. We gave all members of the British Empire the opportunity to become self governing, starting with India in August 1947. We then established the Commonwealth which was a successful world trading enterprise until the Conservative Party abandoned it in favour of the EU in 1972. Those who understand history know more about global trading than the current spin doctors.

Oliver refers to ‘the ability to work and travel freely within the EU’s borders’. There is considerable doubt whether on balance this is a benefit. There are many illustrations including:

i) Having open borders has left the country wide open to criminals entering the country. The Chief Inspector of Constabulary raised her concerns in her most recent Annual Report. She explained that after living in this country for three years, citizens from EU states are entitled to join our police forces. She reported that when applying to the applicants’ home countries for references she was not convinced that the responses were satisfactory. In short she fears that foreign criminals will be joining our police forces due to lack of evidence of their criminality.

ii) A great strain has been placed on our education system. There are a good number of schools which have more than 30 different basic languages amongst their pupils. This is bound to affect the education of English speaking students detrimentally and create excessive financial demands on the schools’ budgets.

iii) Immigration is often quoted as a benefit because workers from poorer countries are prepared to do work which British people won’t do. This means that there are a large number of British people living on benefits who are able to work. This is bad for our economy and indicates that many of the immigrants are prepared to work at lower than the minimum wage. A further effect is that many immigrants send money home rather than spend it in this country which is also harmful to our economy.

iv) It is often said that immigrants are contributing to our economy, but the health of the economy is measured by dividing the gross domestic product by the population which gives GDP per capita. Current figures show that GDP per capita is falling.

v) There is also a much more serious aspect relating to our relationships throughout the world. We have now reached the situation where citizens of EU states can enter this country with impunity whilst citizens of our longstanding Commonwealth allies have to apply to enter. These were the people with whom we have been trading for centuries before the buzz phrase of ‘Globalised Economy’ was coined. What Britain needs is tighter controls of our borders. This will become even more apparent after the 1st January when Hungary and Bulgaria join the EU. There is no doubt that there will be another massive influx from there, particularly from the gypsy component.

Oliver talks about the EU needing a change of direction. This shows a grave lack of understanding of our position within the EU. The EU’s impending implementation of its judicial system should encourage our politicians to take a greater interest in the workings of the EU. Before we joined the EU the unelected Commissioners defined Acquis Communautaire. It is a phrase that is rarely interpreted, but the EU Commission described it when it had to come to a decision about the accession of the United Kingdom. The Commission’s definition reads: “the applicant States accept, without reserve, the treaties and their political objectives, the decisions of any nature occurred since the entry into force of the treaties and the options taken in the field of the development and the reinforcement of the communities’. In plain English it states that any country that is admitted to the EU has to accept the total body of EU law.

The Conservative Government acknowledged this when it enacted The European Communities Act 1972. (Traitor Heath was PM at the time)

Paragraph 2 of the European Communities Act 1972 reads:

(1) All such rights, powers, liabilities, obligations and restrictions from time to time created or arising by or under the (EU) Treaties, and all such remedies and procedures from time to time provided for by or under the (EU) Treaties …. are without further enactment to be given legal effect or used in the United Kingdom.’

In other words we are completely subject to EU law which takes precedence over British law. This was tested in the courts when Margaret Thatcher introduced a Merchant Shipping Act in order to regain control of our shipping waters. It failed because it breached EU law. In short when the EU issues a Directive we are treaty bound to obey it. Now that the Conservative Party talks about ‘being in Europe but not run by Europe’ it is attempting to renege on its initial undertaking. It is rather like joining a golf club and then saying that you have no intention of obeying the rules.

Even the present government admits that we suffer from too many regulations and has established a Regulation Task Force. The government is either ill informed or is practising another deception

All regulations and directives affect Britain. The Regulation Task Force has no ability to change them. It can only change the regulations which the Government adds to the overwhelming EU Regulations.

Oliver says that ‘political integration has gone far enough’ but the evidence shows that the majority of member states and a significant number of Conservative MPs and MEPs disagree with him and wish to create a federalist country. Oliver will be aware that the majority of Conservative MEPs are members of the European Peoples Party (EPP) the most federalist of the Parties in the EU parliament. When David Cameron was canvassing to become Leader of the Party he undertook to take his MEPs out of the EPP. He then not only reneged on that undertaking but he threatened to deselect those MEPs who said that they would leave the EPP anyway.

In October 2006 the European Parliament debated a report on the European Central Bank which included these words (paragraph 9, page 6): “Supports the introduction of the Euro by all the member states.” The decision to whip Tory MEPs in favour of the report appears to have been
taken after pressure from the EPP. Five Tory MEPs resisted the whip and rejected the report: Martin Callanan, Daniel Hannan, Roger Helmer, Chris Heaton-Harris and Syed Kamall. The remaining 22 voted for the report signifying their approval of Britain abolishing the pound sterling.

At the recent Conservative Party Conference David Cameron told delegates that they were ‘to stop banging on about Europe’. The EU is the most important factor in British politics today apart from the possible exception of Iraq and Afghanistan. The evidence above shows that the Conservative Party supports further integration within the EU but this must not be revealed to the general public.

Oliver suggests that there are ‘certain benefits’ to our continued membership’. For years those opposed to Britain’s membership of the EU have asked successive governments for a cost benefit analysis. On each occasion the reply has been that there is no need because the benefits are obvious. If that is the case why not undertake the study to confirm that point of view? In fact earlier this year the Swiss government did carry out a cost benefit analysis and the result showed that the benefits of staying out outweighed the benefits of joining.

There are other factors which Oliver hasn’t raised in his letter including the reasons given for our membership of the EU which are totally unconvincing.

We are told that we are too small to survive by ourselves, yet we are the fourth largest economy in the world.

We are told that the EU has prevented war in Europe for the last fifty years. The only European war during that period was the Balkan War which was caused by the EU recognising the independence of Croatia when, in fact, it was a state within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This caused the war which led to the collapse of Yugoslavia.

As one delves into the machinations of the EU it becomes obvious that the purpose of the EU is to create a single European state under the influence of France and Germany. Presumably Oliver is not aware of the Elysée Treaty 1963 between the French and Germans.

A number of polls have been taken of Conservative Party Members. A recent one conducted by The Freedom Association shows that David Cameron leads a party 63 per cent of whose members either support or are sympathetic to its Better Off Out campaign. This doesn’t take into account those past loyal members who have deserted the Party for such organisations as UKIP. Throughout his leadership bid, Mr Cameron emphasised the need for consistency in politics. He was right to do so. In the current climate, voters are not disposed to give their politicians the benefit of the doubt. According to all the polls, the majority of electors want powers back from the EU, yet distrust the Tories on the European issue because they think – not without reason – that the Tories’ Euro-scepticism is simply trotted out at election times. The EPP link justifies that belief. The Tories seem to be saying one thing in Britain, but doing another in Brussels. David Cameron’s integrity, and Oliver’s, is now at stake. Leaving the EPP was the only unequivocal promise David Cameron made during his leadership campaign. Failing to deliver on the one thing he is able to do in opposition has made potential supporters doubt his ability to deliver if the Party was in government. The dogged Europhiles – Ken Clarke, Douglas Hurd, and Geoffrey Howe – need to understand this. So, too, do those Conservative MEPs who are reluctant to give up their well paid, well fed niches within the EPP. David Cameron stated that the Party needs to “change to win”, but he and Oliver, must change by representing the views of the grass root members of the Party and attract back into the fold those electors who have deserted to Parties which more reflect their views.

The EU’s own ‘Eurobarometer’ issued its findings this week which shows that only 39 per cent of Britons think the country has benefited at all from being in the EU. It shows a majority of the electorate having little trust in the European Commission – the EU civil service – the European Parliament but most importantly our Members of Parliament. If only the Conservative Party could grasp this fact and change their attitude it could win the next election hands down.

Best regards

     xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Section 14 says:- “It shall be an Offence for any person in the course of any trade or buiness

a/ to make a statement which he knows to be false; or

b/ recklessly to make a statement which is false;
as to… the nature of any service…”

In his conference speech Cameron claimed “I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.”
Whatever the merits of gay marriage, on whichthere are no doubt many good points to be made on either side, let us focus on what this comment reveals about Cameron’s true politics.

Wikipedia defines Conservatism is:-

“Conservatism (Latin: conservare, “to preserve”) is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism and seek a return to the way things were.”

What could be a more traditional element in our culture than the Christian concept of marriage?

Here is the full text of this part of Cameron’s speech:- “But we’re also doing something else. I once stood before a Conservative conference and said it shouldn’t matter whether commitment was between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and another man. You applauded me for that. Five years on, we’re consulting on legalising gay marriage.

And to anyone who has reservations, I say: Yes, it’s about equality, but it’s also about something else: commitment. Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other.”

A further useful clue as to where Cameron is coming from is in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which says:-
“conservatism, political doctrine that emphasizes the value of traditional institutions and practices.Conservatism is a preference for the historically inherited rather than the abstract and ideal. This preference has traditionally rested on an organic conception of society—that is, on the belief that society is not merely a loose collection of individuals but a living organism comprising closely connected, interdependent members. Conservatives thus favour institutions and practices that have evolved gradually and are manifestations of continuity and stability. Government’s responsibility is to be the servant, not the master, of existing ways of life, and politicians must therefore resist the temptation to transform society and politics.

This suspicion of government activism distinguishes conservatism not only from radical forms of political thought but also from liberalism which is a modernizing, antitraditionalist movement…”

Could this picture really be a true insight into the soul of Cameron?

Is Cameron any more “Conservative” about conserving England’s countryside? In his speech he says:-

“There’s one more thing. Our businesses need the space to grow – literally. That’s one of the reasons we’re reforming our planning system. It’s hard to blame local people for opposing developments when they get none of the benefits. We’re changing that. If a new manufacturing plant is built in your area – your community keeps the business rates. If new homes get built – you keep the council tax. This is a localist plan from a localist party.

Now I know people are worried about what this means for conservation. Let me tell you: I love our countryside and there’s nothing I would do to put it at risk. But let’s get the balance right. The proportion of land in England that is currently built up is 9 per cent. Yes, 9 per cent. There are businesses out there desperate to expand, to hire thousands of people – but they’re stuck in the mud of our planning system. Of course we’re open to constructive ideas about how to get this right.”

So a clear NO there. In the interests of Big Business, Cameron is happy to concrete over England!
Then there was another classic Tory deception.

“Part of our answer is controlling immigration. So we’ve put a cap on the numbers of non-EU immigrants allowed to come into our country to work. We mustn’t lock out talent – I want the best and brightest entrepreneurs, scientists and students from around the world to get the red carpet treatment. But the bogus colleges, the fake marriages, the people arriving for a month and staying for years, the criminals who use the Human Rights Act to try and stay in the country – we are clamping down on all of them.”

Cameron’s “conservatism” has absolutely no real intention of doing anything at all about the main source of immigration, which is the EU.

My rhetorical question was – should he be prosecuted? It will be no surprise that the British Political Class does not apply the same rules to themselves, the masters, as they do to us their subject peoples, so sadly he cannot be tried and convicted in a Court of Law however knowingly or recklessly false the statement he makes.The only court in which he can be tried and convicted is what Harriet Harman called the “Court of Public Opinion”!

Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Running time 127 minutes

Cast

Gary Oldman as George Smiley

Colin Firth as Bill Haydon

Tom Hardy as Ricki Tarr

Mark Strong as Jim Prideaux

Ciarán Hinds as Roy Bland

Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Guillam

David Dencik as Toby Esterhase

Stephen Graham as Jerry Westerby

Simon McBurney as Oliver Lacon

Toby Jones as Percy Alleline

John Hurt as Control

Svetlana Khodchenkova as Irina

Kathy Burke as Connie Sachs

Roger Lloyd-Pack as Mendel

Christian McKay as Mackelvore

Konstantin Khabenskiy as Polyakov

This one of those rare films which should be an hour longer rather than an hour shorter.  Why? Because the  subject matter of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier ….Spy  is so intricate
that without considerable scene setting and back stories, which were absent in the film,  I doubt whether anyone would be able to readily follow the plot let alone  get full value from the film if they were not familiar with the Smiley novels , whether that be from the books, previous films, television adaptations or the recent excellent BBC Radio 4  production of all the eight  books in which Smiley appears either as a central character or on the periphery of the tale.

No one new to the stories would have  understood Smiley’s  relationship with his  adulterous  and glamorous wife Lady Ann or his intense  psychological bond withKarla, the Soviet spymaster . No one new to Smiley would have a clue from the film what position
Peter Guillam held  (in charge of the unit which did the dirty work including assassinations, blackmail and robbery known as scalphunters)  or been aware that Bill Hayden is supposed to be a talented painter who perhaps  secretly wishes he had made painting rather than espionage his life. No one new to Smiley’s world  would understand the moral struggles he has within himself  as the Soviet enemy becomes ever less sharply
focused  and British power and influence ebbs away.

The  confusion caused by the lack of scene setting  and back story telling  is added to by the large ensemble cast and the frequent switches of characters and locations.

The plot is briefly this.  The head of  the Circus (MI6) Control  suspects there is a  Soviet mole in a high position within the Circus (MI6). He sends Jim Prideaux  on an unauthorised mission to Czechoslovakia to meet a Soviet General who claims  he knows the mole’s name.  Prideaux is betrayed and shot, although not killed and returns to England  where he is secretly  put out to grass teaching in a private school.

This highly embarrassing failure results in Control being forced  into retirement along with his right-hand man Smiley.   However, the suspicion about a mole  is re-ignited when a Circus agent Rikki Tarr discovers during  a love affair with a Moscow agent  evidence that there is indeed a highly placed mole in the Circus, but before she tells him who it is, the Soviet agent  is kidnapped and taken back to the Soviet Bloc where she is killed.

Oliver Lacon, the senior civil servant  responsible for the Intelligence Services,  becomes  aware of this new evidence  and  brings Smiley surreptitiously  back into service   to investigate whether  there is a Russian mole  in the upper reaches of the Circus.   Tarr works for Peter Guillam  and he is brought  into the picture as Smiley’s aide.   Control’s successor Alleline and his deputies   Bill Haydon, Roy Bland, and Toby Esterhase are the prime suspects and  have the code names Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Poor man.   They have no knowledge of what Smiley et are up to. The film consists of Smiley, with the help of Guillam and a retired special branch officer Mendel,   tracking down the traitor.

Oldman is a good but not great Smiley. Alec Guinness  (in the TV series) and Simon Russell Beale (in the Radio 4 plays) were better. That is partly due to  the rushed and cramped nature of the film which did not allow the character of Smiley to develop and expand as TV and Radio could and did (the TV version of Tinker was spread over seven episodes; the most recent Radio adaptation over 3 hours) ) , not least because Smiley’s sufferings over  and longings for  his  wife Ann are barely touched upon (she had an affair with Bill Hayden);  partly because  the camera too often focuses overlong  on a poker faced Oldman to convey Smiley’s  generally undemonstrative  and  private nature and partly because Oldman representation of  Smiley  is not quite posh enough. The last is a subtle thing but telling. Oldman’s Smiley seemed to be concentrating  just a little too hard on his RP accent, like a man speaking a foreign language in which he has made himself  so fluent that he almost but not quite passes for a native.  Nonetheless,  Oldman comes into his own as the film progresses and he becomes ever more actively involved with the search for the
mole. Then you see the publicly withdrawn, self –contained personality suddenly swept up in the thrill of the chase and from that energy become incisive and decisive to the point of cruelty.

Firth as Hayden is unreservedly good. The part is made for him with his fading  matinee idol looks, acerbic tongue and vast charm . Unlike Oldman he merely seemed to be playing himself. Toby Jones as the ultra ous but limited Scotsman Percy Alleline fitted the bill  exactly, as did Kathy Burke as Connie Sachs,  the terminally nostalgic, dipsomaniac  ex-Circus researcher with the incredible memory.  John Hurt as Control  simply  plays himself.

David Dencik as the ex-patriot Hungarian Toby Esterhase  is decent enough,  but he did not quite capture the character’s  desperate and never to be satisfied desire to be unreservedly accepted as one of the MI6 club. The recent Radio adaptation gave Esterhase one of those bogus posh English accents which fails from being a little too precise, a little too dated in its vocabulary and phrasing and  with the slightest remnants of a foreign accent.  That admirably conveyed both  Esterhase’s valiant attempt to gain an unqualified acceptance within the Circus and his  failure to achieve that end.  Dencik’s  Esterhase  was simply a nervous uncertain foreigner,  his biggest fear being that he would be sent back to (Communist) Hungary.

Of the other characters Tom Hardy as Ricki Tarr is not quite cockney enough, Jim Prideaux not posh enough; Mendel  has much too little screen time; Roy Bland is utterly peripheral to the story as it unfolds  and  Lacon has just the right superior  and supercilious manner.

In all respects but one,  this is wonderfully  politically incorrect film. Set in 1970s Britain there is not a single black, brown or yellow face to be seen and,  apart from the Scotsman Alleline and the Hungarian Esterhase,   the major characters are  all English, most
of them drawn from the upper-reaches of English society . To add to the horror
for white liberals, women are peripheral and subordinate to the men and everyone
smokes like chimneys.

The only consolation for  the politically correct is the turning  of the heterosexual Peter Guillam into a homosexual. This not  only adds nothing to the plot,  but positively diminishes  the character. Guillam is a heavy, a public school educated heavy, but a heavy nonetheless.  He acts as Smiley’s  minder and dishes out the rough stuff on Smiley’s behalf
when someone needs to be made a little more cooperative.  Being gay and a heavy is not I would suggest an obvious combination in the eyes of the public.  To the mistaken and utterly gratuitous change of sexual inclination,  is added the performance  of Cumberbatch as Guillam  in which he  projects  all the physical menace of  a wet sponge whilst sporting the most ridiculous haircut seen in the cinema since Javier Bardem in No country for old men.

This  is not a bad film; rather, it is a film which could have been much better and most
importantly, vastly  more comprehensible to those unfamiliar with the Smiley novels. It was perhaps an impossible task to fit such a complex novel  which not only has an intricate plot but relies very heavily on character depiction  into two hours.  But for all its flaws it is much superior  production to the vast majority of the traffic which hits film screens.   If you are English  it  also has the inestimable plus of being  England as it used to be. Go and see it even if you cannot fully understand the plot.

Last Monday, I was driving to work and happened to hear a rare treat for English Nationalists, which I have had transcribed verbatim. It will warm the cockes of your heart!

BBC Radio 4 – Andrew Marr’s “Start the Week” – Monday, 26th September 2011-09-30
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0150m8c
[Andrew Marr (AM), Simon Jenkins (SJ), Gillian Clarke (GC) and Peter Conrad (PC)]

“AM Hello nations and national stereo types in music, politics and poetry today… First … Simon Jenkins, who is the Chairman of the National Trust, who is battling the Government over the future of the countryside just now and he has found time to produce what he calls a Short History of England, running from the Saxon Dawn, to his call for a new English Assembly, or we might say a new English Parliament, at the end of the book.
This is an unashamedly narrative history. You felt there was a gap in the market?

SJ Yes, I think like most people, I saw English history as a series of static tableaux on the stage. Henry VIII with the Dissolution of the monasteries, Agincourt and Benjamin Disraeli and so on and I really want to have to chart them all the way through the narrative, the moving together, and I wanted to do so in a grown up way, not a book for children that simply said this is the story of England and it was short. It should not be a great huge tome that you put beside your bed and fall asleep to every night but you can sort of read it at one sitting. So I wanted to write literally a short history of England.

How are the cockles of your heart now???

When even the Brit-fanatic Daily Mail prints that ENGLAND “has been the world’s most astonishingly successful small state” then britishness must really be in trouble!

Here’s today’s article:-

Freedom for England!

From a distinguished liberal writer, a surprising call to arms, By SIMON JENKINS

If I had to buy shares in a nation just now I would buy England. Not the United Kingdom, that is, but England. Each year the union that once bound the British Isles together sees the same constitutional malaise as is infecting Britain’s other union, the European one. Most of Ireland broke away in 1920. Scotland claims ever more autonomy. Visit Edinburgh these days and it feels like Dublin. Even Wales, with no autonomy since Norman times, is detaching itself.

What historians call the first British empire is going the way of the second, larger, one. It is the march of history; nothing is likely to stop it.

England is the Cinderella of British history. The Irish, Scots and Welsh have a distinctive history and culture, and regard England and the English as separate. It is the English who still talk of Britain and the British, insisting that histories of Britain treat the islands as a homogeneous whole.

Proud history: Richard The Lionheart of England, played by Steve Waddington in the BBC television series Robin Hood

This distorts the status of the Celtic countries, and it relegates England to a land of hysterical sports fanatics and tattooed extremists, waving the flag of St George and chanting obscenities at foreigners.

Having just completed a short history of England – written to be enjoyed in three hours – I find this sad. England is a proper country, separate from the half of the British Isles that is not England. The Anglo-Saxons overran the ancient Britons in the Dark Ages but they never fully conquered and certainly never assimilated the Celts beyond Offa’s Dyke, Hadrian’s Wall and the Irish Sea. For most of history they treated these peoples with colonial disdain and were treated rebelliously in return.

British political correctness cannot conceal the fact that the British Isles have never been a harmonious entity. The English like to imagine Britain as one happy family, but that is not how it was seen by followers of Llywelyn, Glyndwr, Wallace, Bruce, Tyrone or Parnell. The Irish never accepted English rule. The Scots are ruled by nationalists and their Tories now feel obliged to seek a separate identity. The political chains binding the Welsh to England, forged by Lloyd George and then the Labour Party, are breaking.

So what of England? Its story is the more remarkable when shorn of ‘Britishness’. It has been the world’s most astonishingly successful small state. Though conquered by Vikings and Normans, the English never surrendered their language and assimilated newcomers with ease. From the 11th Century onwards, few wars were fought on English soil, enabling towns to grow rich and entrenching territorial families, many of whom, like the Percys, the Stanleys and the Howards, remain extant to this day.

England’s story is customarily told as a pageant of personalities and events, such as the Peasants’ Revolt, the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire and Hitler. It is history as a series of scenes without a linking script.
I see it in more old-fashioned terms as a continuous saga, in which England’s leaders struggled with the English people to fashion a coherent nation state. This state went on to rule a stable empire and admit the earliest liberal democracy in the world.

Liberal: Simon Jenkins

As today, the struggle of ‘consent to rule’ concerned money. The English people would finance the ceaseless Plantagenet wars only in return for rights and freedoms, first laid down in Magna Carta in 1215. This gave birth to the early parliaments under Henry III, which by the 17th Century had taken on much of the character they have today.

The Civil War victory over the Stuarts was thanks to Parliament. By the time of the Hanoverians in the 18th Century, the Monarchy was so diminished that England turned easily to parties, prime ministers and cabinets, while rulers elsewhere in Europe were still chopping off each other’s heads.

In 1832, with Europe convulsed by revolutionary wars, Parliament crucially kept control of reform. It introduced a steadily widening franchise and laid the foundations of a welfare state. The British Empire was able to expand and prosper, untroubled by domestic turbulence. English men and women travelled, traded, married, preached and fought round the globe. By the end of the Victorian era this tiny country, refashioned with Scotland and Ireland as a united kingdom, could regard itself as globally supreme.

This United Kingdom – and the Empire – found its greatest moments in the shared experience of two world wars against Germany. But the Empire soon withered into an insipid Commonwealth, Ireland broke free in 1920 and in 1999 partial autonomy was devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Tory politicians, such as Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron, might ‘fight for the Union with every drop of my blood’, but ever more English people wonder why. In a recent poll, fewer than half of English voters would oppose Scottish independence.

I believe it will one day be imperative for England to rediscover its constitutional identity. The notorious ‘West Lothian question’ asked why MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which now run their own local services, should still legislate on England’s schools, hospitals and transport.

The answer to the question is simple. Either allow England’s counties or regions the same autonomy as Scotland and Wales – which is unrealistic – or give England back its parliament.

There is no good reason why, now that both Ireland and Scotland have their parliaments and executive ministers, England should not have the same things. Few of the matters discussed in today’s House of Commons concern the devolved assemblies. With fiscal devolution on the way, there will be fewer still. The House of Commons should sit as an English parliament once more, and England’s prime minister should sit in Downing Street.

There is no likelihood of the United Kingdom breaking up, any more than the Commonwealth. I do not think, as yet, most Scots or Welsh really want total separation. The United Kingdom will retain the Monarch and a separately constituted chamber, perhaps located in the present House of Lords. A joint executive would deal with shared matters of trade, migration and foreign affairs.

But England has a distinctiveness that should, I believe, emerge more positively with self-rule. Romantics might see it reflecting the robust ‘kith and kin’ localism that attracted the Victorians to their Saxon past.

Here is the picture that the Guardian took of me making the speech:

Ladies & Gentlemen

Welcome back and now that we have cleared up our various formal house-keeping issues for the organisation of our Party, I would like to turn our attention to the strategic situation for the English Democrats.

One of the strategic realities that we have always to contend with and therefore to accept is that, in England, we have a media and an officialdom that is deeply hostile to the very idea of England.

I would remind you of Charles Kennedy’s comment, when he was Leader of the Liberal Democrats, he felt it was perfectly legitimate and permissible to say he supported Regionalisation, a policy which had nothing more or less behind it than the intention of breaking up England altogether. He supported it he said and I quote:- “Because Regionalism in England is calling into question the very idea of England itself”. Just imagine if an English politician had said the exact same thing about Scotland! To attack England and the English Nation in that way is seen as perfectly legitimate and acceptable to our rulers. The media in general in many cases are just as much part of the current political class as are the Liberal Democrats and are certainly just as keen to denigrate England and the English Nation.

I personally have been repeatedly faced over the last 10 or more years with questions as to whether I, and we, are far right extremists and/or part of the BNP for simply daring to mention the dreaded ‘E’ words, by which I mean England or English. We are not and never have been and never will be.

But let me tell you Ladies and Gentlemen, we are not going to be discourage and we are not going to give up mentioning the ‘E’ words and in fact we are going to say those ‘E’ words ever louder and more forcefully until we succeed in compelling dramatic change for the better for England and England’s people and our English Nation!

Another strategic fact which we have always had to contend with is that our Party has been in competition with older more established and richer parties which are also competing for the votes of people who care for their country within England. I mean those people who will be thrilled to see a proud English Nation, Free of the trammels of political correctness and of the EU. Those other parties that have pitched for that vote have been the Conservative Party which has done so by the simple expedient of lying about what they are really about.

Also there is the British National Party, who while they were campaigning with a manifesto in many respects apparently not very different from our own, they have too often been exposed as having some members who sympathise with Nazism, Holocaust denial and White Race Nationalism and whose leadership has managed to loose several million pounds of money raised by the members and supporters, but Ladies and Gentlemen please take note that included in their membership were some people who really just wanted to do their honest best as patriots for their country at a time when no other party was offering a sensible credible alternative.

There is also UKIP which is probably the only really true British traditional patriotric Party on the stage of our politics today. They believe strongly in the 1689 Bill of Rights, with Queen in Parliament as sovereign; The God Save the Queen anthem, the red, white and blue and the Last Night of the Proms vision of British patriotism. I can tell you however that even they recognise that the game is up, for that kind of vision. It has no appeal in Scotland or Wales, only sectarian appeal in Northern Ireland and increasingly little appeal in England.

There was recently an opinion poll which by Com Res which the Independent newspaper rightly pointed out showed that there is less support in England for continuing the Union of the United Kingdom amongst the English than there is in Northern Ireland amongst the Catholics! (48% as opposed to 52%).

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, let me remind you of the famous words which Shakespeare puts in the mouth of Brutus:-

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”

I suspect over the coming year we will see a continuing and dramatic steep decline in the effectiveness of the British National Party. They were in my view deeply wounded by Nick Griffin’s simply appalling, ineffective and bizarre performance on Question Time. The disappearance of vast amounts of money has led to a breakdown of trust within the Party and a highly corrosive leadership battle, resulting in Nick Griffin apparently scraping home with a majority of a mere 9 over his challenger Andrew Brons (less than the number of spoilt ballots, which were 11), and with a total support of under 1200 votes for either candidate.

The Conservative Party’s coalition with the Liberal Democrats is tending to position them more openly as Europhile corporate globalists interested only in the interests of big business and big government. As I say even UKIP is recognising that their positioning is wrong and is now desperately trying to reposition itself as being more open to Englishness but look likely to be bogged down in another internal conflict over their response between those who are really English nationalists but haven’t realised it yet and those who are British nationalists.

Looking wider afield there is also the issue of Alex Salmond’s outright and historic victory in Scotland which means that he has a free hand in Scotland to make sure that by the time it comes to vote on his proposed Independence referendum, he is in a position to win it. We are still at that stage of the campaign where many people, particularly in England, are complacent as to the outcome and who think that Britishness will continue unaffected.

I also wonder quietly whether we might not find the Argentines retake the Falklands and I wonder what credibility then the fraud of Cameron will have in trying to pretend that Britishness allows us, in the words of the Establishment “to punch above our weight on the world’s stage”!

There is as I mentioned earlier a change in attitude towards our National Identity as to whether people are British or English in England and more and more people are now saying that they feel English not British or more English than British. In this our people are only catching up with the 70% or 80% that would say the equivalent in either Scotland or Wales.

Searchlight, no friend to any patriot, did a detailed study in which they claimed that 48% of people in England would support a political party that called for an English Parliament, celebration of St George’s Day, and an end to mass immigration and withdrawal from the EU. Ladies and Gentlemen, I seem to recognise those policy commitments!

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, let me tell you that Tony Blair won his last landslide majority with the votes of 21.6% of the electorate. Any party that was able to actually get the votes of 48% of the electorate in a parliamentary democracy would be in government – permanently! That means, even our enemies think that this Party could become a great success and change the very face of politics in our country – but to get there we need to become credible.

Credible in political terms does not mean having the best manifesto, it does not mean having the best logo, it does not mean being nice to everybody, it does not mean pleasing everybody, it certain does not mean being politically correct, what it does mean is nothing more and nothing less than that the voters think that we could win.

I often tell a story of the first time I met Nigel Farrage, in the Bromley by-election where UKIP had spent over £80,000 and drawn in its activists from all over the country and had dropped a dozen or more leaflets in every single household in the constituency and banged on most of the doors. He said to me that he had thought that UKIP was going to do very well until about a week before the election when he spoke to a woman who said to him that she totally supported everything that UKIP stood for and she wanted desperately to get the country out of the EU but she was going to vote for the Liberal Democrat candidate because she thought the Lib Dems had a chance of “getting the Tory out!” Ladies and Gentlemen that is credibility.

That woman was saying that she was not going to vote for the party that she most believed in, she was going to vote for the party whose policies she disagreed with most strongly on the basis that they might be able to win. That is the position that we need to get to and we can only do that by looking dry-eyed and clearly at what opportunities are available for us – and by taking them!

Well one of those opportunities at present is that some of the people who wanted to do their honest best for our country but made the mistake of joining the BNP are now joining us and will help us become that electorally credible party.

We need to be sure that such people are genuine converts to a more civic or cultural nationalism and that they will be an asset to our party but we do not need to be too defensive. We have the best message, we have right on our side and we are England’s best hope. So I say to us here today and to our Party and to the English nation in general, I say, in the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley:- “Rise like Lions after slumber in unvanquishable number, shake your chains to earth like dew, which in sleep had fallen on you – Ye are many – they are few”.

I recently had the following amusing and instructive email exchange with an Ex-UKIPper from the West Midlands, who, while posing as a friend, hoped to be as the proverb says:-

“As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife”.

See how successful he was!

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: robintilbrook
Sent: 07/09/2011 23:20:47 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Its over your Dream

Robin

With the Cuts now Biting and the country on its knees your Dream of an English Parliament is now over people have far more important things that concern them.

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: robintilbrook
Sent: 07/09/2011 23:27:27 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Smaller parties

Robin I have told you so many times that the only show in town as Regards the smaller parties is UKIP the rest havnt a cat in hells chance.The EDP cannot compete with them

With less than 48 hours to go to the start of the UKIP 2011 Annual Conference in Eastbourne, the latest poll from Angus Reid clearly shows that UKIP is the fourth largest party in the country.
The poll, which puts UKIP on 7%, asked participants which party they would be most likely to support if a General Election was held tomorrow.

Labour scored 39%, Conservatives 33% and the Liberal Democrats 11%. The SNP polled 5% whilst the Green Party and the BNP were level at 2%.

In the Midlands and Wales, UKIP is only 1% behind the Liberal Democrats.

UKIP starts its two day conference in Eastbourne on Friday with a number of speakers covering key areas such as housing, energy, crime, long term care, defence, education and overseas aid.
A number of leading names from the Eurosceptic movement from across Europe will also be speaking including Timo Soini, Leader of the True Finns.

UKIP Leader Nigel Farage said: “These figures show that UKIP is leaving the other smaller parties behind as more and more voters conclude that UKIP is the political party that is speaking their language on a number of important issues.

“I also believe that many are fed up of the same old faces and empty promises when it comes to so-called ‘big three’ parties and are looking for a credible alternative.

“Increasingly UKIP is becoming their party of choice.”

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: Thu, 8 Sep 2011 8:56
Subject: Re: Its over your Dream

Thanks but I don’t agree

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: RobinTilbrook
Sent: 08/09/2011 14:02:30 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: Its over your Dream

You are Living in a World of your Own Robin.

——————————————————————————————

In a message dated 08/09/2011 15:55:49 GMT Daylight Time, paulb writes:

Robin

Oh Dear me Robin I have being followiong things over the months from stuff forwarded on to me I see you are being Swamped with Extreme elements of the far rightfrom the BNP.Not a very good Idea that Robin it will all end in tears

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: robintilbrook
Sent: 07/09/2011 23:27:27 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Smaller parties

Robin I have told you so many times that the only show in town as Regards the smaller parties is UKIP the rest havnt a cat in hells chance.The EDP cannot compete with them

With less than 48 hours to go to the start of the UKIP 2011 Annual Conference in Eastbourne, the latest poll from Angus Reid clearly shows that UKIP is the fourth largest party in the country.
The poll, which puts UKIP on 7%, asked participants which party they would be most likely to support if a General Election was held tomorrow.

Labour scored 39%, Conservatives 33% and the Liberal Democrats 11%. The SNP polled 5% whilst the Green Party and the BNP were level at 2%.

In the Midlands and Wales, UKIP is only 1% behind the Liberal Democrats.

UKIP starts its two day conference in Eastbourne on Friday with a number of speakers covering key areas such as housing, energy, crime, long term care, defence, education and overseas aid.
A number of leading names from the Eurosceptic movement from across Europe will also be speaking including Timo Soini, Leader of the True Finns.

UKIP Leader Nigel Farage said: “These figures show that UKIP is leaving the other smaller parties behind as more and more voters conclude that UKIP is the political party that is speaking their language on a number of important issues.

“I also believe that many are fed up of the same old faces and empty promises when it comes to so-called ‘big three’ parties and are looking for a credible alternative.

“Increasingly UKIP is becoming their party of choice.”

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: Thu, 8 Sep 2011 8:56
Subject: Re: Its over your Dream

Thanks but I don’t agree

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: RobinTilbrook
Sent: 08/09/2011 14:02:30 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: Its over your Dream

You are Living in a World of your Own Robin.

——————————————————————————————

In a message dated 08/09/2011 15:55:49 GMT Daylight Time, paulb writes:

Robin

Oh Dear me Robin I have being followiong things over the months from stuff forwarded on to me I see you are being Swamped with Extreme elements of the far rightfrom the BNP.Not a very good Idea that Robin it will all end in tears

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: Thu, 8 Sep 2011 17:10
Subject: Re: Wrong course

Simply not true

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: RobinTilbrook
Sent: 08/09/2011 19:02:42 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: Wrong course

yes it is and it will all end in tears.

——————————————————————————————

In a message dated 08/09/2011 19:17:34 GMT Daylight Time, paulb writes:

Private and Confidential

There is Growing Speculation that John Botting who has being looking for a way out has now got one I am hearing he is about to Resign as so called leader of One England because UKIP could be about to announce tomorrow they are adopting an English Parliament policy so botting will then re join UKIP.

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: Thu, 8 Sep 2011 20:20
Subject: Re: John Botting

Yes I am not surprised by this. They are and I have helped them frame it

Robin

——————————————————————————————

In a message dated 08/09/2011 20:53:48 GMT Daylight Time, paulb writes:

Dont talk Rubbish Robin how have you made them frame it.

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: Thu, 8 Sep 2011 22:03
Subject: Re: John Botting

We have had regular meetings. They approved it today

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: RobinTilbrook
Sent: 09/09/2011 07:35:07 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: John Botting

why dont you merge them makes sense

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: Fri, 9 Sep 2011 10:58
Subject: Re: John Botting

Their policy was approved unanimously by the NEC yesterday is intended to give sufficient to England to preserve the Union by basically following the Cranbourne model of reforms to the HofC and HofL – a big step in the right direction and will apply pressure on the Establishment to shift. Do you like our new website and my blog?

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: RobinTilbrook
Sent: 09/09/2011 15:58:10 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: John Botting

Robin
You didnt answer my question what about merging EDP and UKIP.Your website is superb and your blog is eexcellent I have heard that a few UKIP activists From Stone were about to defect to EDP.But this latest news will stop such defections now.

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: robintilbrook
Sent: 09/09/2011 16:26:13 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: UKIP English Parliament policy a disaster for the union

Robin
As a Unionist UKIPs policy is a Disaster and would lead to the enviable Break up of the United Kingdom I could never ever support such a policy.UKIP are going down the wrong road..

——————————————————————————————

In a message dated 09/09/2011 16:38:23 GMT Daylight Time, paulb writes:

I Urge all UKIP member delegates at the Conference to vote against this policy its a DISASTER for the UNION.

Please Circulate to as many as possible. policy attached in Email this morning

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: Fri, 9 Sep 2011 23:53
Subject: Re: UKIP members must vote against English parliament policy

WILL ANYONE PAY ANY ATTENTION?

——————————————————————————————

In a message dated 10/09/2011 01:36:50 GMT Daylight Time, paulb writes:

There is a great deal of concern about this policy it has rotten English Nationalist finger prints all over it and its a disaster for the Union your policy would lead to the break up of our country.The dangers of English Nationalism head as risen

You Robin and English Nationalists like you are as much a danger to our country as that of the SNP and Plaid it was you that said the EDP was Englands version of the SNP to damn right you are.Your agenda is a ticking time bomb.

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: Sat, 10 Sep 2011 8:04
Subject: Re: UKIP members must vote against English parliament policy

I am surprised at you. I don’t know whether we are more of a threat than the SNP yet but we are determined to fight for England and to win that fight and we are making real progress. I regard “turning” the only real British Patriotic party as a coup!

However it is a coup which will be most useful in applying pressure on the Establishment Unionist parties and that is where the focus now will turn to.

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: RobinTilbrook
Sent: 10/09/2011 16:05:07 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: UKIP members must vote against English parliament policy

you can be surprised at me all you like your reckless agenda will destroy the union.you are only surprised what robin because i dont support you and possibly UKIPs stance.Me Never your agenda is quite simple and it will lead to the break up of my country not this pathetic stuff you spout about a federal uk.The evil face of English Nationalism has reared its Ulgly head and it must be faced down and defeated and I promise you this Robin I and others and Unionists everywhere will Unite to defeat you.

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: 10/09/2011 20:37:49 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: UKIP members must vote against English parliament policy

Excellent – bring it on!

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: robintilbrook
Sent: 10/09/2011 16:57:31 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: UKIP English parliament policy not yet offical party policy

the feed back is robin that this is merely a proposaland it will be rejected and be binned yes it has the backing of the NEC.but theres a new NEC to be voted in soon and lobbying is already starting and there is quite a lot of opposition to this policy proposal.

also see below in last few lines

Mr Farage, who was re-elected leader last year for his second stint, also asked party members to consider proposals for an English parliament.

Following devolution, he said English people “feel used and under-represented” and that the unity of the UK has been weakened by the process.

However, a decision on officially adopting the idea as party policy is not expected for some time.

——————————————————————————————

In a message dated 10/09/2011 18:36:38 GMT Daylight Time, paulb writes:

as far as i am now concerned i am breaking off all contact with you robin and any elements of the EDP/English Nationalism.

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: robintilbrook
Sent: 10/09/2011 18:38:58 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: remove me from your email list


Robin
please remove me from your email listings i want nothing further to do with you.

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: Sat, 10 Sep 2011 20:57
Subject: Re: breaking off contact

I thought that you were out of contact for some time until you thought that you would have some fun and bait me!

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: RobinTilbrook
Sent: 11/09/2011 00:00:57 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: breaking off contact

Remove me from your Email Adress Book I still get round robin emails from you I do not want anything to do with you or any section of English Nationalism you say bait then say bring it on you are a very silly man Robin with that kind of baiting you will be sorry ypu ever said it now remove my email adress from your address book..You will be defeated thats not a threat thats a promise.The EDP will now be exposed from all sections of Unionism

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: 11/09/2011 00:09:16 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: breaking off contact

Great – as the man said “Publish and be damned!”

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:21
Subject: Check out Bloggers4UKIP: UKIP now supports devolution Bloggers4UKIP: UKIP now supports devolution

——————————————————————————————

From: paulb
To: RobinTilbrook
Sent: 12/09/2011 23:01:08 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: Check out Bloggers4UKIP: UKIP now supports devolution

Robin

Why have you sent me this I am not Interested please as Indicated remove me from your email address book as requested.I as I have said will now go out of my way over the coming months Years or how ever long it takes me and others to help destroy the ulgy face of English Nationalism working with others you wanted a war and boasted great bring it on very very foolish man you are robin making an enemy of me.A word of advice Mr Tilbrooke I can be a good friend but by christ i can be a terrible enemy. Robin you will regret the day you tried to be a smart arse in your email with me the way you baited me.you wont have a clue whats happening in your own party as we speak.Over the coming months and years or however long it takes me and others we will see the job through to its conclusion.Happy hunting

——————————————————————————————

From: RobinTilbrook
To: paulb
Sent: 13/09/2011 01:51:22 GMT Daylight Time
Subj: Re: Check out Bloggers4UKIP: UKIP now supports devolution

Bit of a silly thing to write isn’t it Paul. English Nationalism has many enemies throughout the British Establishment. So welcome to their club!

Better to have an open enemy than a secret one.
“When he speaketh fair, believe him not: for there are seven abominations in his heart.”

Also, it now seems, that I gave you more credit for open mindedness and intelligence than you may have deserved. I thought that you might have been interested in an analysis from someone within UKIP who is also hostile to the English Democrats.

In any case I will now leave off making any further contact with you and have deleted you from my circulation list. Kindly do likewise unless you are able to control your spleen better in future.

Robin

Sometimes there is a story which needs almost no comment or explanation because we all instinctively recognize it as embodying all our worst fears about a certain group or person. This is such a story. It tells us that all our worst fears about the greedy, self interested, base commercialist and corporatist entity, laughably called the Conservative Party, are even truer than we feared. They just don’t care a damn about England except as an opportunity for personal gain.

There is a well worn adage that Labour corruption is usually around Contracts and Tory corruption is usually around Planning Permissions. Half of that adage seems proven by this story alone!

Melanie Phillips has excelled herself, as has the Telegraph, and both should be congratulated but we should all be writing blistering letters to our MPs – although there would seem to be no point in my case, as mine is Eric Pickles himself!

How could the Tories – of all people – let developers rip out the lungs of England?

By Melanie Phillips on 12th September 2011

Once upon a time, the Conservative Party actually believed in conserving. At the very core of its being, it possessed a visceral desire to protect and preserve what was valuable — or indeed, invaluable — to our society.

If there was one issue above all others with which the party was closely identified, it was conserving the countryside.

Indeed, even when David Cameron decided that the Tories had to identify themselves with modernisation and change, the symbol he chose for the party was a tree.

That seemed to reflect both traditional conservative values and the fashionable preoccupation with the environment. Yet now it might seem that the party should change its symbol once again — to a tree torn up by its roots.

For the Government is trying to ram through nothing less than the destruction of swathes of the countryside by changing the planning laws to make it easier to build on greenfield sites.

Despite its claim that this will give local people more of a say in planning decisions, the reality is that — given the inbuilt presumption in favour of development — if local communities object to house- building, their opposition will be flattened along with the woods and hedgerows.

Even village greens will be under threat, since with communities being forced to pay up to £1,000 to apply to save green spaces from the developers, it is less likely they will do so.

In short, these plans would change much of England’s green and pleasant land into a continuous urban sprawl — what has been called the greatest threat to the countryside since World War II.

Even worse is the whiff of corruption that is beginning to emanate from these proposals. For over the past few days, the claim has surfaced that the Conservative Party’s palm is being greased by those who stand to gain financially from this change in the planning laws.

According to reports, dozens of property firms have given a total of £3.3 million to the party over the past three years, including large gifts from companies seeking to develop rural land.

In addition, it is claimed, property developers are paying thousands of pounds for access to senior Conservative MPs.

The Property Forum, a Tory donors’ club, is charging ‘key players’ within the industry £2,500 a year for breakfast meetings to ‘discuss current topics’ with top-ranking Conservatives.

The Forum raises around £150,000 a year for the Conservatives and is advertised prominently on the party’s website.

The Government has furiously denied that members of the Property Forum helped shape its proposals. But Michael Slade, the Forum’s chairman and chief executive of the property developer Helical Bar, has boasted that the donors’ club plays a key role in shaping the party’s planning policy. Not so much cash for access as cash for concrete.

Maybe this is an empty boast: but there’s worse still. At the weekend, there were further claims that senior figures in the house-building industry were involved in drafting these planning reforms — including an executive from the house-builder Taylor Wimpey.

Three out of a four-strong panel recruited by Housing Minister Greg Clark to help rewrite the planning regulations reportedly had some kind of personal involvement in the building industry. To add insult to injury, just about every minister involved in these proposals has blocked development proposals in his own back yard.

Chancellor George Osborne and Communities Secretary Eric Pickles opposed the building of waste facilities in their constituencies; Mr Pickles also opposed the building of an old people’s home.

Greg Clark, meanwhile, the minister who is leading these reforms, fiercely opposed the previous Labour government’s plan to build 6,000 new homes in and around his Tunbridge Wells constituency.

He called this proposal a ‘nationally imposed hike in housing numbers [that] will place yet more pressure on our precious green spaces’, and said brownfield sites must be the priority for building.

What a miraculous transformation appears to have taken place in Mr Clark’s brain! For now he is accusing those who are making exactly the same argument against his own proposals of ‘nihilistic selfishness’ on the grounds they are blocking homes for young couples.

As the opposition has mounted, the Government has even claimed it is being subjected to a ‘carefully choreographed smear campaign by Left-wingers’.

Ah yes — those rabid Left-wing revolutionaries of the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Chartered Institution of Water And Environmental Management and the Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds. Just who do ministers think they are kidding with this absurd claim?

Indeed, it’s the Government’s own battle-cry of ‘affordable housing’ which is actually the classic Left-wing position.

There’s no doubt that more houses are, indeed, urgently needed. Much of the reason for this lies with the ruinous policy of mass immigration pursued by the Labour government, as well as the breakdown of the family into multiple households.

If the immigration rate continues to skyrocket, by 2025 the population will have risen by some 11 million over 15 years. To cope, Britain would have to build the equivalent of some 22 cities. Rather than despoil the countryside, wouldn’t it be preferable to restrict immigration to sustainable levels?

Nevertheless, this is not the whole story. Official figures show more than 300,000 homes have been sitting empty for more than six months.

There is also said to be enough ‘brownfield’ or previously developed land for an additional three million homes. One reason this potential has not been turned into homes is that housing developers are reluctant to build when house prices are low as they will make less profit.

In other words, much could be done before having to resort to concreting over the countryside. Yet the Government appears determined instead on a course that offends the English in particular at a profound level.

For one of their special characteristics is their passionate love affair with the countryside. It plays a key part in England’s identity, celebrated as it is in its literature, music and art.

Its importance was specifically recognised in the post-war planning laws, which were designed to protect what was special and precious about the English landscape.

Indeed, it is surely not too fanciful to say the landscape is part of the English national character. It helps give it its solidity, rooting it in that which lies beyond the ephemeral constructs of mankind.

It helps the English to love their country. It elevates them through exposure to a store of natural beauty. It simply makes them feel better to be alive.

Yet much of this is to be destroyed in an act of sustained vandalism by a political party that laughably calls itself conservative, but instead intends to let the market rip out the very lungs of England.

The Chancellor says the existing planning laws act as a brake to economic growth. The refrain that everything in society has to be subordinate to economics sounds remarkably familiar. Wasn’t this supposed to be the ‘nasty party’ philistinism that Mr Cameron was determined to bury?

Didn’t the Cameroons arrive at the blinding realisation that there was more to a civilised society than market forces? Has the Chancellor decided to reverse direction on that particular road to Damascus?

The Government is having an increasingly desperate fight to ram these changes through because it has brilliantly managed to unite the Right and the Left against it.

Conservatives have watched with dismay as the Cameroons have ridden roughshod over one conservative principle after another. However, it is in the meadows and copses of England that Mr Cameron may meet his Waterloo.

Hands Off Our Land

Telegraph.co.uk
Monday 12 September 2011

Planning minister’s in pact with developers over reforms

Greg Clark, the planning minister, privately has urged property developers to lobby David Cameron amid concerns that his planning reforms will be blocked, according to a leaked email seen by The Telegraph.

Greg Clark, the planning minister, is spearheading plans to overhaul England’s planning system Photo: CHRISTOPHER PLEDGER

By Andrew Porter, Christopher Hope and Robert Winnett

Property developers privately admitted that the minister’s objectives “align with ours” and said they had “earned more brownie points than we could ever imagine” by helping him.

Mr Clark is spearheading plans to overhaul England’s planning system, to encourage development by simplifying the rules. This newspaper has launched a campaign opposing the changes.

The minister has publicly insisted that he is introducing carefully balanced proposals taking into account both environmental and economic concerns.

However, the leaked email will add to growing fears that the minister has become too close to the property industry and is working alongside developers to force through reforms, which establish a “presumption in favour of sustainable development”.

The message was sent between senior members of the British Property Federation, a lobbying group for developers, housebuilders and supermarkets, following private discussions with Mr Clark and his officials.
In it, Ghislaine Trehearne, the group’s policy officer, disclosed the minister’s fears that Mr Cameron may back down on the reforms following public opposition.

“Greg Clark and his officials are … deeply concerned at the level of opposition that has been provoked by The National Trust and are worried that Number 10 might be spooked by this mobilisation of middle England and do the sort of U-turn that they did on the forestry sell-off,” she wrote.

“We have been firing off letters to the press, and have sent a letter to No 10 supported by the leading developers in the commercial property industry.”

The email also appears to confirm fears among campaigners that the changes to the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) are being driven by the Treasury, which is looking for ways to stimulate the economy, at the expense of the natural environment.

The email continues: “The upshot of all this is that minister Greg Clark is delighted with the BPF and hugely grateful for our effort. He is of the opinion that the Chancellor will stand firm in the face of opposition from National Trust members in the shires – but he doesn’t believe we can afford to let up and should seize every opportunity to press the case for planning reform.

“We are not, of course, a mouthpiece for CLG [the Communities and Local Government department] ministers but on this occasion their objectives definitely align with ours – so we can afford to be enthusiastic in our support, with the advantage that we have now earned more brownie points than we could ever imagine.” The email appears to have been sent at the end of last month.

Developers who were sent the email include Sue Willcox, head of planning at Sainsbury’s; Niall Tipping from Grosvenor Estates; Nigel Hawkey, head of planning at Quintain Estates, and Emma Cariaga, head of strategic projects at Land Securities.

Disclosure of the message comes after The Telegraph revealed that the Conservatives had accepted millions of pounds from developers – and a special club had been set up that allowed developers to effectively buy places at meetings with ministers and senior Tories.

Yesterday, it emerged that senior members of the housebuilding industry helped draft the wording of the government’s consultation document.

Jack Dromey, Labour’s shadow communities minister, said the Government needed to “come clean” over its links to property developers. A spokesman for The National Trust said: “It saddens us but doesn’t really surprise us that the developers are in the minister’s pocket. All those who are ‘pro’ the NPPF are those who stand to gain.”

The news comes as up to 80 MPs and peers were due to meet today in the first public show of discontent about the policy. Last night, a Government source said: “Number 10 are fully behind our planning reforms and fully behind what we are doing. The Government utterly rejects any suggestion that policy is being driven by property developers.”

Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation, defended the email. She said: “I don’t accept that this amounts to collusion – it’s simply us doing our job to support the interests of our members.”

Property developers pay for access to Conservatives

Property developers are paying thousands of pounds for access to senior Conservative MPs, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Major players within the property industry have paid for access to senior politicians Photo: TROIKA
By Heidi Blake
9:14PM BST 09 Sep 2011

The Property Forum, a Tory donors’ club, is charging “key players” within the industry £2,500 a year for breakfast meetings to “discuss current topics” with top-ranking Conservatives.

The disclosure, which is likely to cause a new “cash for access” row, comes after the Government was accused of granting developers “a state licence to print money” by overhauling planning laws to make it easier to build on greenfield sites.

It will lead to concerns that key Conservative policies could have been influenced by major players within the property industry who paid for access to senior politicians.

The forum raises around £150,000 a year for the Conservatives and is advertised prominently on the party’s website.

Its entry on the donor’s page says the forum is “for key players within the property industry to meet senior Members of Parliament over breakfast, discuss current topics and learn about related issues”.

Grant Shapps, the housing minister, met members three months before the general election to explain the Conservatives’ Green Paper on planning ahead of its publication.

Michael Slade, the forum’s chairman and chief executive of the property developer Helical Bar, was highly critical of the party’s planning policies in opposition.

Writing in the Property Week trade magazine last February, he warned that empowering councils to make planning decisions locally could “paralyse” house-building. But critics of the new policy have warned that the reforms, which include a “presumption in favour of sustainable development”, would effectively sideline councils and amount to a “developers’ charter”.

Mr Slade, who has donated more than £300,000 to the Conservatives individually and through Helical Bar, has claimed that the club plays a key role in shaping the party’s planning policy.

He said in an interview in 2008: “One issue is the Tories seem to be strangely seen as ‘nimby’, and we are looking at how we get over this.

“We are talking about how strategic developments and infrastructure can encourage local boroughs to see the benefits of development.” Mr Slade also claimed to have been in close contact with Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, as he formulated his policy to build 50,000 affordable homes in the capital.

The Conservatives were mired in a “cash for access” row in August last year, three months after coming to power, after it emerged that David Cameron was raising money for his party by offering to attend dinners with businessmen who donate £50,000 a year.

Despite the controversy, The Leader’s Group is still offering its members the chance to “join David Cameron and other senior figures from the Conservative Party at dinners, post-PMQ lunches, drinks receptions, election result events and important campaign launches”. Members of Team 2000, another donors’ club, are given the chance to hear about the party’s policies in government “first-hand” from Mr Cameron and senior MPs at “a lively programme of drinks receptions, dinner and discussion groups”.

The Conservatives last night denied that members of the Property Forum had a hand in shaping government policy.

A spokesman said: “The Conservative Property Forum is a discussion forum for people with an interest in property.

“It in no way influences policy. Any relevant donations made by members of this forum are publicly declared to the Electoral Commission just like all other relevant donations.”

Mr Slade was unavailable for comment last night.