Articles
Hot Air + Flawed Science
Letter for adaptation
Europe is freaking out
Law nor Principle
The EU Plan to Destroy The World's Forests
Third World Britain
What's so great about inward investment?
Discovery of a new chemical element
Why, Oh Why?
Prosecuting the Queen
Subsumed in a Euro superstate.Pah! fantasy
EU or US domination?
Stunningly Stupid
Who knows but everyone SHOULD care!
Government Security Responsibilities

Hot Air + Flawed Science

Here is professor Stott's article.  As long as Europeans believe the
balderdash coming from the IPCC, they are in danger of voting themselves
into slavery to Brussels for no good reason.  This is simply a "problem"
which does not exist in the real world.  If you allow yourselves to be led
into blaming America for your woes, you will simply be distracted from
realizing who your true enemies are until it's too late.  We saved your
bacon from the Kaiser and Hitler; but it's doubtful we can save you from
Brussels and Geneva's velvet gloves.

Ken

Hot Air + Flawed Science 
Dangerous Emissions
Wall Street Journal Commentary
April 2, 2001
By Philip Stott, a professor of biogeography at the University of London and
co-author of "Political Ecology: Science, Myth and Power"
 (Oxford University Press, 2000).

LONDON -- When Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd
Whitman told reporters last week, "No, we have no interest in implementing
[the Kyoto] treaty," she unleashed a hysteria in Europe unmatched even by
the United Kingdom's current troubles with foot-and-mouth disease. It was as
if George W. Bush had pressed the nuclear button. Why?

The reason is simple. In Europe, "global warming" has become a necessary
myth, a new fundamentalist religion, with the Kyoto protocol as its articles
of faith. The adherents of this new faith want Mr. Bush on trial because he
has blasphemed.

Emotional Energy
Nobody will understand this in the U.S. if they fail to grasp that "global
warming" has absorbed more of the emotional energy of European green
pressure groups than virtually any other topic. Even biotechnology fades
into insignificance by comparison. Americans must also understand that the
science of complex climate change has little to do with the myth. In the
U.S., the science is rightly scrutinized; in Europe, not so.

"Global warming" was invented in 1988, when it replaced two earlier myths of
an imminent plunge into another Ice Age and the threat of a nuclear winter.
The new myth was seen to encapsulate a whole range of other myths and
attitudes that had developed in the 1960s and 1970s, including "limits to
growth," sustainability, neo-Malthusian fears of a population time bomb,
pollution, anticorporate anti-Americanism, and an Al Gore-like analysis of
human greed disturbing the ecological harmony and balance of the earth.
Initially, in Europe, the new myth was embraced by both right and left. The
right was concerned with breaking the power of traditional trade unions,
such as the coal miners -- the labor force behind a major source of
carbon-dioxide emissions -- and promoting the development of nuclear power.
Britain's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research was established
at the personal instigation of none other than Margaret Thatcher.

The left, by contrast, was obsessed with population growth,
industrialization, the car, development and globalization. Today, the
narrative of global warming has evolved into an emblematic issue for
authoritarian greens, who employ a form of language that has been
characterized by the physicist P.H. Borcherds as "the hysterical
subjunctive." And it is this grammatical imperative that is now dominating
the European media when they complain about Mr. Bush, the U.S., and their
willful denial of the true faith.

Interestingly, the tension between science and myth characterizes the "Third
Assessment Report" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to
which Europe always turns for legitimation. The whole feel of the report
differs between its political summary (written by a group powerfully driven
by the myth) and the scientific sections. It comes as a shock to read the
following in the conclusions to the science (italics added): "In sum, a
strategy must recognize what is possible. In climate research and modeling,
we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear system,
and therefore that the prediction of a specific future climate is not
possible."

Inevitably, the media in Europe did not mention this vital scientific
caveat, choosing to focus instead on the political summary, which Richard S.
Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, has described scathingly as "very much a children's exercise of
what might possibly happen," prepared by a "peculiar group" with "no
technical competence." This is a damning statement from a scientist with
impeccable credentials.

And here we come to the nub of the difference between Europe and the U.S.
For the past few years, the media in Europe have failed to acknowledge the
science that does not support and legitimize the myth. In Britain, liberal
newspapers like the Guardian and the Independent have consistently ignored
virtually all the evidence pointing to complexity and uncertainty in climate
change, preferring instead to present "global warming" as Armageddon, a
catastrophe produced by corporate American gas-guzzling greed.
Yet, just in the past three months, there has appeared a whole suite of hard
science papers from major scientific institutions in major scientific
journals, including Nature, Climate Research, and the Bulletin of the
American Meteorological Society, all raising serious questions about the
relationship between gas emissions and climate.

The focus has been on the role of water vapor, unquestionably the most
important "greenhouse" gas (not carbon dioxide); the palaeogeological
relationships between carbon dioxide and temperature; the many missing, or
poorly known, variables in climate models; and the need to correct certain
temperature measurements fed into the models, especially those taken over
the oceans. One paper, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
even concludes that "our review of the literature has shown that GCMs
[global climate models] are not sufficiently robust to provide an
understanding of the potential effects of CO2 on climate necessary for
public discussion."

Warming Waffle
The science of "global warming" is thus deeply flawed, but its caution and
rationality are drowned in the warming waffle now emanating so shrilly from
Europe. Yet, because the science is so flawed and uncertain, why should
anyone sign up to a treaty that clearly will not work? To put it simply: The
idea that we can control a chaotic climate governed by a billion factors
through fiddling about with a couple of politically selected gases is carbon
claptrap.

Kyoto, however, is ultimately more dangerous than this. It has taken our
eye, internationally, off the true way by which humans have always had to
cope with change, whatever its cause, direction or speed -- namely,
adaptation. Above all, we need a new international agenda for constant
technological adaptation to environmental change, whether gradual or
catastrophic, remembering always that it is the poor who suffer the most
from change.
The Kyoto protocol is not the answer.


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Letter for adaptation

The following letter has gone to the Chichester Observer.  I am posting
it so that it might be considered for adaptation to other constituencies
with UKIP candidates...

Sir

Chichester's present Tory MP, Andrew Tyrie, has consistently refused to
state his position on the issue of the UK's membership of the EU, and
UKIP is understandably now planning to run against him, whenever the
election is called.

Is he not concerned that eurosceptics of all parties, and Labour voters,

might resort to tactical voting, support UKIP and unseat him?

For over 18 months, Mr Tyrie has refused a public debate on the EU, at
any time and place of his choosing.  He has also refused to answer
letters from me and others asking specific questions about his views.

Mr Tyrie should tell us whether or not he opposes the UK joining the
euro. He should tell us whether he accepts or rejects the EU's claim to
"supremacy" over the law of this country.

And, most importantly, he should declare whether he would vote for
British withdrawal from the European Union if such a vote came up in the

House of Commons.

Some 23,000 civil servants spend all day and every day in Brussels
implementing the Treaties of Rome, Maastricht, Amsterdam, and now Nice,
creating a giant United States of Europe, in which we are becoming
twelve regions of little Englanders.

When will Mr Tyrie cry "enough"?  Where and when will he draw the line
and stand up for his country?

We all know "In Europe but not run by Europe" is a sham.  Fundamental
re-negotiation of the treaties is not an option, as anyone who has read
the treaties knows.  The EU wants a unitary bureaucracy, and it is
almost complete.

Why should the builders of such a totalitarian state negotiate at all?
What is in it for them if a Tory government wants to dilute or destroy
all that?  Why should they bother to negotiate, beyond a ritual charade,

especially when the UK has only one lone voice in 15?

And how seriously would Mr Hague negotiate, anyway?  He's already
thrown away his only effective bargaining weapon by saying we will
"never" leave the EU under his premiership.

The Tories took us into what has become the EU in 1972, deepened our
involvement in 1985, and signed up to Maastricht.

At the forthcoming election, Mr Tyrie has a golden opportunity to say
that the leopard has finally changed its spots.  But somehow I doubt it.

yours truly
Ashley Mote

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Europe is freaking out
By Carl Honoré
Copyright © 2001 National Post Online

Mad cow disease is a real threat and has helped stoke the fear gripping the
continent. But Europeans are now so timorous, they cannot contemplate any
risk without panicking

LONDON - Spend a little time in Europe, and you start to feel nothing is
safe. Over here, cellphones cause brain damage and T-bone steaks are
lethal. Flying economy class gives you blood clots. Even that plastic toy
bobbing in the bathtub is toxic.

At least that is what Europeans are told. These days, hardly a week goes by
without another health scare sweeping the continent. Never mind that many
of the warnings are absurd, or based on flimsy science. Europeans are now
so jittery, so convinced that modern life is a minefield, that the merest
whiff of risk sends them scurrying for cover.

Even as incomes rise and lifespans lengthen, the continent is gripped by a
wave of Euro-fear, a shared continental cringe.

"Europe has lost its nerve," says Frank Furedi, a sociologist at Britain's
University of Kent and an expert on the new malaise. "Every problem today,
however small, is represented as a major disaster."

One health scare is no longer enough for this cowering continent. With the
panic over mad cow disease just starting to ease, Europe has found another
reason to freak out: the outbreak in Britain and France of foot-and-mouth
disease, which does not even affect humans. And that's just for starters.

Every week brings another study suggesting some cherished food, textile,
gadget or hobby may be harmful. The phthalates used to soften plastic toys
are poisonous; a standard measles vaccine causes autism; electrical power
lines trigger leukemia; genetically modified foods are hazardous. Last
week, European mothers were warned that babies breast-fed beyond four
months are prone to heart disease in later life.

The health scares are often sparked by a single study. Some dominate the
headlines for weeks, others disappear after a day. But the net effect is
always the same: more confusion, more boycotts, more fear.

The hysteria is a little puzzling. After all, Europe is the birthplace of
Rationalism and its population is well-educated. The continent has also
weathered some of the most apocalyptic events in human history, from the
bubonic plague to the Holocaust and two World Wars. So why have Europeans
suddenly turned timorous?

The very real threat posed by the human variant of mad cow disease, or
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), has certainly played a part. Yet
commentators blame environmentalists, the media and especially politicians
for fostering a culture of paranoia and panic.

To fill the void left by Soviet communism, European leaders have adopted
health hazards --real or imagined -- as the new bogeyman. "Without the old
battle between right and left, politicians need a new mission," says Thomas
Deichmann, a German writer who specializes in health scares. "Today, the
easiest way for them to connect with the people is to pander to their fears
about health."

Which makes the European Union panderer-in-chief. Driven by the so-called
precautionary principle, which holds that anything that may pose a danger
should be banned or heavily regulated, the EU churns out reams of safety
measures that all add up to a single message: that not even reasonable
precautions and common sense can save us from the health hazards that lurk
round every corner.

Under EU rules, for instance, sports stadiums cannot sell off old plastic
seats as souvenirs if they contain cadmium -- even though a fan would have
to eat a whole seat to be poisoned by the substance. Another EU directive
states that every pair of rubber boots must come with a user's manual in 12
languages. A stringent law on gas emissions threatens to bankrupt scores of
European crematoria.

Nothing escapes the crusade to make life 100% predictable and safe. A few
years ago, the EU famously outlawed bananas with an "abnormal curvature."

The Brussels-based regulators are even trying to reinvent the ladder. Last
September, they passed a directive prescribing a wider gap between rungs.
The aim is to stop people from indulging in the "high-risk practice" of
resting their knees on the next rung up.

The latest rumour from Brussels is that all 50-year-olds will have to
retake their driving tests.

"The European Commission is obsessed with eliminating every last risk from
human life," says Andreas Hansen, a Copenhagen-based pollster and
sociologist. "By treating the public like small children, by nannying them
all the time, they are making Europeans into people who cannot contemplate
risk, however trivial, however theoretical, without panicking."

The culture of fear stems partly from earlier failures by European
officialdom to defend public health. In the 1980s, hundreds died across the
continent after eating French soft cheeses and Belgian pâté tainted with
listeriosis. Around the same time, the French government allowed
HIV-tainted blood to contaminate hundreds of people. More recently, EU
governments shattered public confidence by first playing down the risk from
BSE, then exaggerating it.

"Europeans have lost faith in the institutions designed to protect their
health," says Pascal Linardi, a Paris-based political analyst. "Now, people
always suspect the worst, and are reluctant to listen when experts claim
something is safe."

A few weeks ago, Europe worked itself into a frenzy over unsubstantiated
reports that depleted-uranium munitions had damaged the health of NATO
troops in Yugoslavia. Even as scientists called for calm, governments
scrambled to contain Balkan War Syndrome.

Sometimes a single death is enough to put Europe on red alert. When a young
woman died recently after flying to London from Sydney, experts blamed her
death on "Economy-Class Syndrome," where a blood clot forms after sitting
long hours in a cramped airplane seat. The British press predicted
thousands of deaths, prompting terrified travellers to cancel flights.

To its own surprise, Europe, which launched the Industrial Revolution and
still leads the world in fields ranging from genetics to cellphones, is now
a continent of technophobes. Every scientific breakthrough leaves the
public feeling slightly queasy.

Some see the technophobia as part of the backlash against globalization.
Others tie it to Europe's lingering anti-Americanism, since the United
States is more inclined to accept advances.

"In North America you find a robust acceptance of progress," says Dr.
Furedi. "In Europe people have come to regard progress with tremendous
suspicion."

Even modern European philosophers affect a sulky Luddism. Gunter Grass, the
German novelist, believes melancholy is the natural European response to
the "lusty appeals of progress." Unlike the happy-go-lucky American, he
argues, a European is more at home with "knowledge that engenders disgust."

Nowhere is that ethos more apparent than in the debate over genetically
modified crops. Many studies show new corn, soyabean and other hybrids to
be safe. Canadians and Americans eat them without blinking. But to
Europeans they are "Frankenstein foods." Last spring, when trace quantities
of modified seeds were found in bags of Canadian seed sold to EU farmers,
European consumers went berserk, returning thousands of boxes of cornflakes
to supermarkets. Since then, the EU has made it extremely difficult to
plant new genetic hybrids here.

Technophobia also sours Europe's love affair with cellphones. Even as they
chatter into their handsets, Europeans are haunted by research suggesting
the transmission signals can fry the human brain.

The key word here is "suggesting." Every EU health scare feeds on the lack
of conclusive scientific evidence. Having long ago transferred their faith
from priests to scientists as the ultimate guardians of the truth,
Europeans now find the men and women in white coats don't have all the
answers.

Researchers disagree, for instance, on whether earphones reduce or increase
the risk of radiation from cellphones. By the same token, no one really
knows how BSE jumps from cows to humans, or how long the incubation period is.

Grey areas allow the media to speculate wildly. In Germany, even the stodgy
Frankfurter Allgemeine likened BSE to the 14th-century Black Death: "Once
it broke out, bubonic plague spread like wildfire. BSE is capable of doing
the same." Since 1995, BSE has killed 84 people, far fewer than die on
Europe's roads every day.

Yet the culture of fear may not last forever. Some think Europeans will
eventually regain their nerve.

"Over the long term, people are not satisfied with irrational arguments all
the time," says Mr. Deichmann. "One day, Europeans will grow tired of all
these health scares."

What, one wonders, will they worry about then?


"You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."
Robert A. Heinlein

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Law nor Principle

Originally published on the internet Feb. 12, 1996)
James F. Baxter
Santa Maria, CA 93455

I spent 30 years as a teacher of youngsters - grades 5 and 6 and loved it! They were great years (1957-1986). My teaching career was a direct result of my experiences of death and destruction as a combat Marine in two wars - World War II and Korea. 

I taught my own four children, and hundreds of other peoples children, that legal, law-abiding behavior is desireable. However, in a civilized society, it is minimal behavior. Civilization cannot long endure if our conduct is merely "legal." For civilization to endure and extend personal liberty, human relations must be characterized by respect, courtesy, good manners, ethics, and morality - none of which are required by law. 

"I didn't break any laws" has become the hissing cackle of false humility and elitist vanity displayed by the puff-adder politician in the White House and his "Sit Up!Bark!" emulators in the halls of Congress. He is a walking, talking contradiction of everything worthy I taught children for 30 years. 

"I didn't break any laws" is nothing to brag about. Our ancestors were individuals and families of character as with most of the American people who do not measure their daily choices by what is merely legal. They have lived their moment- by-moment lives by respect for individuals, standards of ethics, and principles of ethical boundary that transcend mere law. They believed this was normal and average civilized conduct. When they come of age, our children and our children's children will agree.

The actor in the White House is, by repeated acts of misconduct, challenging the statistical laws of probability and the Creator's sow-reap Laws of Certainty. Lying and cheating, and getting away with it, appears to be successful. But, like a speeder on the highway, "Success breeds failure." He will get caught or crash - or both! Count on it. 

The day is soon coming when his former supporters will, by hindsight, speak his name as a curse. Many of us would have preferred foresight. But, after all, foresight has a prerequisite. It is called "making choices by principle." 

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The EU Plan to Destroy The World's Forests

The article below shows why the EU does NOT work and it can only get worse
over the next few years, as the collapse of the EU becomes more final.

Currently the EU uses 12 languages for its 15 members giving 110
permutations of translation - to cope with this The commission has 1,900
in-house translators and interpreters - 12.5% of total staff - and uses
outside freelancers at an annual cost of £180m. When all other EU
institutions are included, it rises to £415m.

The EU is scheduled to rise to 25 members - thus 600 different
permutations!! This will by simple arithmetic require 12,000 translators at
an annual cost of £2,490,000,000.

The rule book of the EU already 86,000 pages long, in one language, will run
to 2,150,000 pages which will require a staggering 66,358 feet or just over
12 1/2 Miles of shelving!! That is JUST the rule book now think of the
1,000,000 other items of paper per annum - that is 1/4 mile a year thus
another 12 Miles of shelving to date!!

A German minister - compared the pace of a negotiating session to a
hedgehog - and it was translated as: "This meeting is slow, ponderous and
full of pricks." Thus translations of many speeches about the EU are more
accurate than the original!!

Ian Black's article elucidates the issue in detail!

Friday March 16, 2001

It was just another routine European Union meeting: five men in suits - the
interior ministers of Britain, France, Spain, Germany and Italy - sitting on
a podium, waiting to deliver their message, about Basque terrorism, to the
journalists in the auditorium.
But there was a sudden hitch: the glass interpretation booths were
inexplicably empty - apparently because of scheduling problems the council
of ministers staff had overlooked.

The result: embarrassing, throat-clearing delay and patchy, time-lagged -
and distinctly amateur - interpretation by harassed diplomats, not the
professional, multilingual voiceover that is the norm.

EUROPE CANNOT FUNCTION WITHOUT ITS   INTERPRETERS AND TRANSLATORS,
So, in the Babel that is Brussels, feverish attempts are now under way to prepare for
the biggest enlargement the EU has ever seen - and the dozen new languages
that will come with it.

With 15 members now and 12 official languages already in use (though Irish
is used only for written texts), plans to take in up to 12 new candidate
countries in the coming years are imposing a huge strain.

From Latvian to Bulgarian and Lithuanian to Czech, the search is on for the
linguists who can do this vital job. The only bright spot is that Malta, the
smallest candidate, has agreed to forgo the use of its own tongue - an
obscure mixture of Arabic and Italian - just as Luxembourg did when it
joined back in 1957.

None of this is optional: the European community's first ever regulation
stipulated that all official documents have to be available in all
languages: current output is a staggering one million pages a year or the
equivalent of a 100 metre high tower. Full interpretation has to be
provided.

It is highly sensitive stuff, with issues of cultural diversity, national
pride and democratic legitimacy always coming up against hardheaded
officials worrying about budgets, efficiency and logistics.

And they are on a awesome scale: every candidate country has to have 80,000
pages of the EU's official journal rigorously translated - a basic
requirement of bringing national legislation into line with the body of
community law, and sometimes compared to climbing Mount Everest without
oxygen.

Yet there is no choice. Globalisation and the practice of multinational
companies have created expectations that cannot be ignored: if Microsoft can
publish its manuals even in minority languages like Catalan, Europe's
institutions cannot afford to lag behind.

And there is a powerful democratic incentive too for an EU which worries -
quite rightly - about the distance between Brussels and ordinary Europeans.

"A Spanish farmer doesn't care about the Greek or Danish version of some
commission publication," says one veteran of its translation service. "For
him the EU isn't multilingual at all. It just speaks to him in his
language."

Interpretation is technically more complicated. With 11,000 meetings a year
and 50 to 60 every day, there are already 110 possible combinations when
working with the current 11 languages.

With 25 languages the figure will rise to 600 and the chances of finding
someone who can turn Greek or Portuguese into Slovak or Hungarian are
virtually nil - even though there are some weird and wonderful combinations
of expertise.

Much routine business is done in English and French (spoken by 31% and 10%
respectively of the EU's 375m people) and thus the two official working
languages. But ministers meeting in the council have to have their own
interpreters - thus that awkward silence over the Basque problem.

The solution is the so-called "relay" system, in which a more obscure
language - say Slovene or Romanian - will be rendered into French or
English, and thence into Danish, German and Spanish and so on.

It's not perfect: "Every filter that you go through, you lose something,
however small, from the original," says one expert. And there is always the
possibility of what one minister called "Kafkaesque misunderstandings". But
overall it is a tried and tested method.

Relay interpretation creates practical problems too, not least of finding
the physical space for all those booths. But modern electronics allows for
creative if expensive solutions: for example with delegates in Tahiti and
interpreters in Brussels working via a satellite link.

The commission already has 1,900 in-house translators and interpreters -
12.5% of total staff - and uses outside freelancers at an annual cost of
£180m. When all other EU institutions are included, it rises to £415m.

Even so, it still only costs 2 euros (£1.25) per citizen per year or 0.8% of
the total EU budget. "It enables all European citizens and their governments
to play a part in the building of Europe, in their own mother tongue," the
commission says.

Currently, some 120 commission translators in Brussels and Luxembourg are
doing in-house courses in Hungarian, Polish, Estonian, Slovene and Czech -
roughly reflecting the order in which the candidate countries are likely to
join from about 2005.

Courses in Romanian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Bulgarian and Slovak will be
started later this year.

The European parliament, with 626 MEPs (and 840 translators and
interpreters), is a special case, because democratic fairness mean that
elected representatives cannot be expected to have the linguistic abilities
of diplomats and civil servants.

So, despite the costs, arrangements will have to be made for a
post-enlargement situation where the increase in language combinations
becomes a problem more complex than a Rubik cube.

Interpretation and translation issues include a well stocked bank of jokes
and anecdotes, throwing the drier aspects of EU life into
uncharacteristically humorous relief. There's the one about how "shooting
the rapids" became a disconcerting "shooting the rabbits". Or how "frozen
semen" in an agricultural working group became, in French, "matelot congelé"
(frozen seaman).

Much, inevitably, is lost in translation. Wit, especially irony, historical
or literary allusions, and vivid metaphors, do not often work. Memorable
European speeches are thus few and far between.

Yet even the driest of eurocrats relishes the one about the interpreter, who
struggled with the leaden speech of a German minister - who had compared the
pace of a negotiating session to a hedgehog - and translated it as: "This
meeting is slow, ponderous and full of pricks."

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Third World Britain
 - Postcards from `Elsewhere'
  By RASHMEE Z AHMED

  England is becoming a no-man's land, an elsewhere managed by executives
  who visit the outposts only fleetingly, staying in multi-national hotels on
  the edges of the floodlit wastelands - philosopher Roger Scruton in his new
  book, England: An Elegy.

  LONDON: Old-fashioned Englishmen and women are an endangered species,
  but the few still around would show no surprise that Mr Scruton constantly
  refers to England in the past tense. For many of them England died, in
  the words of their favourite poet aye, long years ago, somewhere between the
  end of World War II and the rise of Beatlemania. That is to say some 50
  years before Britain's post-war treasury began to make swinging efficiency
  cuts in infrastructure and staffing. A full half-century too before Britain's
  creaking railways, crumbling flood-control mechanisms, numbing fuel
  taxes   and corresponding public protests became a national joke, to be filed
  alongside the standard witticisms about the quality of its plumbing and
  its attitude to sex.

  The despair is afflicting much of Britain as the year closes and it
  becomes painfully apparent the country is doomed to navigate the 21st century
  with worn-out equipment from the late 19th. It is worth noting that faced
  with closed or only half-operational mainline railway stations, cancelled
  local trains, laggardly bus services, long queues at petrol pumps, traffic
  chaos and flooded roads, many Britons appear to have lost that distinctively
  English sense of humour.

  Instead, there is a very real anger. The British stiff upper lip has
  perceptibly quivered and there is the unedifying spectacle of propah
  tweedy gents up and down the land shouting at mutinous transport workers to go
  on, just close the country down. London cabbies from Pakistan disparagingly
  compare their adopted country to the homeland, only colder, wetter and
  greyer. A captain of industry calls Britain a banana republic. Newspaper
  journalists returning from Mexico, Mozambique and Belize find parallels
  with Britain except that Mexico City has an efficient, clean and fast ground
  train system. Disaffected politicians ask if Red Cross parcels and
  UNICEF workers can be far behind when just a few nights of severe weather can
  bring London to a halt.

  So much for hyperbole. What of the facts? These are stark. The recent
  floods, the worst in 400 years, will cost the British economy 1.5
  billion pounds. The waters surged across southern England, Scotland and Wales,
  marooning even London's glitterati in the city's swankiest area,
  Knightsbridge. The flooding crippled a railway network already on its
  knees. A train accident just days before the flooding had already forced the
  company in charge of tracks to yield to public calls for emergency
  repairs. These repairs, urgent precisely because they were left undone for years,
  are expected to last six months.

  By the time Britain's rivers burst their banks, bringing down 1,000
  trees,  which blocked tracks and snapped overhead power cables, train companies
  had effectively given up the fight. Trains to and from London were cancelled
  for days. Across the country, the few trains in operation sported carriages
  reminiscent of the packed and heaving ones on the subcontinent with
  passengers using elbows, knees and umbrella ferrules to poke and prod
  their way to standing room. Meanwhile, weary public memory of September's
  paralysing protests against unsustainably high fuel prices added to the
  perception that things were indeed falling apart and the centre cannot
  hold.

  The rising panic and sense of crisis was captured by Britain's deputy
  prime minister, John Prescott, when he described the near-Biblical deluge and
  stalled railway network as a wake-up call. Politic rhetoric apart, it is
  a timely suggestion. Britain is the world's fourth-largest economy, but
  like its transatlantic linguistic cousin currently in election-mode, the US,
  it is in danger of losing the moral high ground when it comes to preaching
  the virtues of good governance, democracy, and public service.

  It makes for a good joke, of course, in the real Third World, but there
  are sobering lessons to be learnt as well. First, privatisation and its
  virtues thereof. Thatchernomics dealt with the canker of trade unionism but
  failed to account for the evils of unregulated monetarism. Rail privatisation,
  completed in the mid-90s, was seen as a test of political machismo and
  it led to the commercial separation of wheel and track.

  Thereafter, train companies had to follow an absurd and expensive system
  of buying track time from the company running the tracks. Both train and
  track maintenance obviously suffered with every hour of track time
  representing bills of thousands of pounds. Passenger safety was, as a consequence,
  deeply compromised.

  Britain's plight illustrates all that is wrong with the throw-away
  culture it so cheerfully embraced when Victorian values of prudence, quality and
  building-to-last were jettisoned alongside the old empire. As every
  Indian who has ever taken a train from Bombay's VT knows, Victorian sewers,
  stations and public buildings are still solidly in daily use more than a
  century after they were built. But Britain's problems go deeper and
  remain strangely tied to the experience of empire. It is a nation in denial,
  rejecting its death-or-glory historical tales out of acute
  embarrassment, but finding nothing to take their place.

  Thatcherism began the process of American-led globalisation and Tony
  Blair's Cool Britannia has merely broken up the union of England, Scotland and
  Wales and accelerated the process of European integration. In the process,
  Britain has forgotten that long years ago, England was more than a geographical
  entity, it was an ideal, a matter of character embracing sexual
  puritanism, stoicism and sterling public service.

  The ideal is not diminished by multi-culturalism, for all the Little
  Englanders raging against deracination. But it has been dealt a new blow
  by the rigid political correctness recently prescribed by British Indian
  Bhikhu Parekh, chairman of the Commission into the Future of Multi-cultural
  Britain, who says that the very terms Britishness and Englishness are
  undesirable racial connotations. It is a Kafkaesque prospect, a nation
  without name, history, ideal or indeed pride in itself, occupying a
  postal and Internet space forlornly marked Elsewhere. For an ailing body
  politic to heal itself, its peoples must first know who they are, what they want to
  be, and at the very least, how to describe themselves. It is not
  inconceivable that dependable public services, built-to-last, will follow.

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What's so great about inward investment?

More and more often we keep hearing about how Britain will suffer from withdrawal of Inward Investment if Britain distances itself from Europe.

We call the cash flow back to this country from overseas investments INVISIBLE EXPORTS, but we don't hear much about INVISIBLE IMPORTS, cash flow out of this country through foreign owned companies. Perhaps the more fashionable "virtual" word should be used, after all we virtually import everything now - food, water, electricity.

No wonder everything is so expensive in this country, our nations wealth comes from tax and mark-up!

At one time there was a phrase that we don't seem to hear much now - "balance of payments" - it seems to have been replaced by the words COMPLETE SURRENDER. Last year (1999) inward investment amounted to 244 Billion Pounds -

Everyone, europhiles and eurosceptics alike, seems pleased with this state of affairs.

There are real benefits for us in terms of jobs and company taxation, but companies that invest 244 billion in something also expect to benefit. They're not doing it for fun, they're not doing it for charity. They expect to profit - they expect a return of 244 billion... and then some.

Inward investment is a loan. We are congratulating ourselves on being the proud recipients of £244 billion debt.

And what of all the jobs this inward investment (debt) brings? Not a month goes by where some company isn't taken over or merged to become one of the "Europe's Largest" along with the accompanying job losses - this is somehow spun into "inward investment creating jobs for Britain" - neat trick eh?

It is inward investment that is driving us into the Euro.

I suppose those from some Commonwealth countries might see it as poetic justice. The British Empire spent the best part of the last couple of hundred years offering "inward investment" to poor nations. Creating highly productive plantation, mining and manufacturing operations - and today these nations are as poor as ever - how puzzling!

We have always had inward investment of some sort in Britain, but of late, we seem to have come to rely on it - somehow it's supposed to make up for the decimation of British industry by the Thatcher Government. A process that has obviously not helped our balance of payments.

The balance of payments for last year recorded a deficit of £11 billion - around 1.2% of GDP. To put this in perspective, balance of payments deficit in 1976 was nearly a third less at 0.8% of GDP.

This was the time of the Harold Wilson government. If you're too young to remember that, here are a few keywords:
Balance of Payments Crisis
International Oil Crisis
Collapse of sterling

And what crisis do we have today with even worse
balance of payments figures? They are of a size that the media dare not mention it as a yearly figure - it has to be monthly or quarterly. The annual TRADE DEFICIT has reached over £30 billion - but, it seems, there is no crisis.

I tell a lie. There is the crisis of the strong pound. At least that's what it say's in the newspapers. With balance of payments in mind, I would have thought that a strong pound was something to be thankful for.

How can we survive this imbalance without either getting poorer or being forced into political union with Europe? For that appears to me to be the game plan of the europhiles. To drive the economy to the point where we must join a Federal Europe to offset the deficit against the surplus of other states - or face ruin.

Inward investment will drive us towards the Euro and towards a Federal Europe, not away from it.

What we need is the political will to invest in ourselves! But both politicians and the "ruling elite" have been reluctant to follow this path - why?

And when Tony Blair speaks of investing in this nation - to what does he refer? It is to European companies taking over British companies, it is to spending taxpayers money on an ever expanding infrastructure - or at least the promise of more police and more nurses and more teachers...

Well, I guess even a local council can promise that. But what we need is a British Prime Minister serving British interests, not an EU Councillor.

- Gemineye Jim

This article is a composite of two articles at my two Eurosceptic websites
http://www.gemineye.free-online.co.uk

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Discovery of a new chemical element

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Why, Oh Why?

Dear the Rt. Hon. Tony Blair MP,

The idea held by many that Britain needs to continue to be a member of the
European Union continually perplexes me.

Britain pays the EU thousands of millions of pounds more in contributions to
the EU than British people receive from the EU in the form of grants,
subsidies, etc.

The EU can pass laws over Britain even if all the British MEPs vote against
them, except in the cases of laws on taxation and social security. These
laws then take precedence over British laws, and have to be made into Acts
of Parliament, usually without discussion. The European Court can also
overrule British laws and court decisions.

Furthermore, Britain does not need to be a member of the EU to have free
trade with the EU members. Britain could alternatively join the European
Free Trade Association, and therefore still remain part of the European
Economic Area, or sign a free trade agreement with the EU or the EEA. We
would then be free to either set up free trade agreements with the
Commonwealth or join NAFTA, or both.

Could you please explain to me why Britain shouldn't leave the EU? What
benefits do we gain from EU membership, which outweigh the disadvantages
listed above, which are only the basics? Why do we need to play "a leading
role in Europe"?

Yours sincerely,

John Bull

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Prosecuting the Queen

The Queen signed the Single European Act and the Nice Treaty, which
effectively ends the 3,115 years of rule of the British Isles by its people
(King Brutus of London 1104 BC - but even he wasn't the first)

Yourdictionary.com defines treason as:

"The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance"

Can we not bring a prosection against the Queen for treason?

I was a supporter of the Royal family up till this point, but when our traiterous government asked the Queen to sign these
 acts her proper reply was:

"As Monarch I cannot abolish this nation without the overwhelming consent of its people. Consequently I will sign this act
only  when you present me with a referendum with 66% of our electorate in favour of the abolition of Britain."

But she didn't. The Queen sided with the traitors and rubber stamped our abolition.

She should be deposed for her traiterous acts and Charles reign in her stead.

Has any one attempted this prosecution yet?

David Noakes. 

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Subsumed in a Euro superstate.Pah! fantasy


Mr John Bowles
Gosport

Dear Mr Riddell,

        If by todays article you were seeking to stir in the sceptics a response, well, from this one at least, you  have succeeded.
Sub headline would be more appropriate and more acceptable to sceptics such as my self, " Blair should trumpet our membership of a federation of NATION states"
Note that I have enboldened the word nation, because as we are subsumed deeper and deepre into the EU quagmire, that is what we are losing, our national identity.
If Europe, and in particular, the European Union does not wish to become a superstate, or even 2The United States of Europe", then why do they need their own national anthem,  parliament,army,legal system,currency,president. Only a fledgling state requires all this.
The European is the most un democratic institute on this planet after China and Cuba. The lives of 350 million people are run by a committee of 20 commissioners. There is one rule in the EU. If it moves or works, then they will either tax it or regulate it.
We joined the EEC to trade, not to become members of a dictatorship; to pool our resources. Yes, we have given them everything that we once had, our fishing grounds, our right to trade with whom we want, extinguished our former friends and allies. The problem with a bully is that once you have given it something, they always come back for more.
Apart from the myth that the EU has kept the peace for the last 50 years in Europe, ( because that is a myth, that was done by NATO ), write in you column, or reply to me, FIVE things that this benefitted this country by being members of the EU.
Now they want our Judicial system because it is fair, they dont like it, and it gets in their way of doing things. They want a level playing field so they can hinder a nations own wealth creation. For level playing field, read 'Germany is in trouble and is now the sick of Europe'.
They want to force upon us their currency so that they may then control us, and take from us what they treasure most; our gold reserves,our oil reserves and our pension funds.
Sir, to think that France and Germany are not in cahoots to control Europe, then either you have been misled or you are a fool.
On the subject of enlargement, who is going to pay for it.
This country already commits more than £5.5 BILLION per year ( not including what it costs this country to implement all the EU diktats £4.5BILLION pa ) which could be better spent on, do you not agree, our health service to bring it up to European standards ( which you seem to think are so wonderful ), our education services, especially for our future doctors and scientists to go through university free of the fear of incurring massive debts, and our overstretched armed forces and police force.
GB plc is doing rather well thank you, and no small measure to the interfering and meddling beaurocrats in Brussels.
Sir, the sooner we leave this unholy, undemocratic union the better.

Yours faithfully

John Bowles

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 EU or US domination?

To all the people who have written letters with a 'EU
will take over and we'll all be slaves' theme - has
nobody considered the US takeover of Britain?  Think
about it - we have 17 screen cinemas with 17 US films,
even the 'British' ones like Harry Potter are really
US ones.  We have 5 main TV channels that often have 5
US programmes/films on them.  The US Menwith Hill
listening base which we stupidly allow to exist in
Yorkshire  sifts all electronic communication within
Britain - e-mail, fax, telephone calls, internet use.
Most British people have never made a non-monitored
telphone call.  Most major products are have US owners
- from Kellogs cerals to Heinz sauces to Mars sweets
Coke/Pepsi/Bud drinks to Ford/Vauxhall/Volvo/Jaguar
cars.  The US soldiers came here 60 years ago and
never left.  Their bases and culture swarm all over
us.  The majority of music here is US.

EU domination?  Try to find a TV programme in another
language.  Try to find a French product other than
one, or a German product at all.

Wake up fellow Brits, resist the dirty USA that is all
over us like the plague!

S Smith.

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Who knows but everyone SHOULD care!

That this information is around should make you stop and think!

Since September the 11th. 2001 who has REALLY benefited and who has REALLY
been the losers?

The greatest losers have been the citizens of these United Kingdoms and the
citizens of America - where the filth they have in political control,
virtually without opposition, have USED the September 11th. incident to
remove rights and freedoms from their own peoples. They have achieved
NOTHING of consequence against their ALLEGED enemies but they have enhanced
the power and control they have at the expense of their own peoples.

I was amused by the absurdity of it all when about 3,000 people were killed
on Sept. 11th. it WAS a major loss of life, even if it did suit Tiny Blur &
George W.(ever heard of hanging chads since?) Bush. Todays Times headlines
'Heavy US casualties as al-Qaeda hits back' as a result of 9 American
MILITARY being killed!!!

What superlatives would they have used when, during the first war against
EUropean Union, 60,000 men were killed on the first day of the Somme.

I do appreciate that America has a very limited amount of experience of
winning things but they are being a bit silly - I know their army was
completely outwitted and defeated by the ragged gang of peasants on bicycles
in Vietnam and they did manage to kill all of the people on their own side
who died when they attacked the great military power in Grenada, were
outwitted by Noriega in Panama because he hid in a bordello! Then they were
out smarted in Somalia and bombed out in Kenya.

Surely America can not have failed to learn that conventional might will
ALWAYS, as history proves, be defeated by a dedicated guerilla force. I can
understand someone as stupid as Tiny Blur, who is little more than a
hollogram with teath, being too stupid to understand the consequences of
their greed and stupidity but I am surprised America is being so tactically
AND strategically stupid.

America and Tiny Blur, you will note NOT America and Britain, have walked
straight into the terrorist trap and have had the totally predictable knee
jerk reaction of the fools they are, they have done what the enemy wanted!!

The losers have been the peoples of America, Britain and much of the rest of
the world with dishonest and draconian new controls of law abiding peoples
which will have NO effect on terrorists of any consequence but will advance
the aims of the New World Order in destroying individuality, freedom and
rights.

Think again America and realise the greatest allie of the American peoples
are the peoples of Britain and vica versa and the greatest enemies of both
are the duplicitous bastards who for their own gain and greed seek to rule
us by destroying our freedoms in the pursuit of the evils of the Globalists
of the New World Order.

who knows but everyone SHOULD care!

That this information is around should make you stop and think!

Read on:

Regards,
Greg

http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm

There can be no question now -- our govenment and leading institution ruling
elite are mass-murdering criminals, slaughtering thousands, raping a
country, deceiving their own countrymen, for opium profits, for global
energy monopoly, to become masters unaccountalbe neither to man nor
morality.

Time for the administration to resign.

Time for the CFR media monopoly to be broken up.

Time to remove the globalists from all boardrooms.

Time to confiscate their stolen treasure. (The first reparations
must go to the New York and Afgan families of their victims.)

Time to cancel all of their ill-gotten debt-instrument asset holdings.

Not with guns -- but with numbers -- 6 billion of us -- and Mohatma Gandhi
resolve.

Its all over.  They are coming down.

Yakima, Washington

Every man is responsible to every other man.
 

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Government Security Responsibilities
 

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