Godfrey Bloom

Politicians cannot be trusted with money. To win and hold power, they must bribe the people with unfunded promises or their own money. Their policies thus evolve to spend more than can be raised in current taxes. The well-known result is ever-rising deficits. In an attempt to prevent budgets spiralling completely out of control, treasuries and central banks were created. As their curbs became an annoying encumbrance to staying in power, politicians appointed like-minded ‘professionals’ (often placemen and usually ‘economists’) to these high offices. The evidence of the obsequious willingness of these appointees never to confront their masters is that none commented on, and possibly never foresaw, the financial sector melt-down or subsequent sovereign default, even though their training showed these to be inevitable. Despite recent proof that unsustainable debt must cause the financial system to collapse, the universally agreed solution has been to maintain interest rates at zero - thus subsidising the cost of credit such as mortgages (another bribe) - and further to increase government debt. Current hand wringing about ‘austerity’ is a misnomer; basic policy is unchanged. Just as these policy makers did not anticipate the consequences of large deficits, so they will fail to foresee the certain but unintended consequences of money printing on a heroic scale.

One of these consequences has been the creation of the first global boom in the price of farm land. The usual advice to investors with such bubbles is to run for the hills. Yet for this agricultural land boom (although an area outside our immediate expertise), the wisest advice must be to pile in. This also has positive implications for the prices of many listed companies.

The Grand Mufti of the Syrian Arab Republic and His Beatitude Ignatius IV Patriarch of Antioch and all the East recently met with Kofi Annan. Annan has spoken to the Security Council, and with high-ranking political individuals in the UN and elsewhere urging them to let Syria solve its own problems. It is unique as an Arab nation in having full religious freedom for all, so the financing of mercenaries by the West is not helpful. In spite of Annan’s wise words, the recent so-called Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul has just promoted the provision of weapons to insurgents. The UK Foreign Minister William Haugue has swallowed the Obama line hook line and sinker to the detriment of the survival of Syria as a multinational multi-faith society.

A few years ago the Grand Mufti visited York St John University, and there he and Fr. Æthelwine, the Orthodox Chaplain, surprised some of those present by greeting each other like long lost brothers. That was a reminder of normal life in Syria. They had not seen each other for about three years, keeping in touch through friends. Now, amid the Qatari, Saudi, Libyan, and US inspired confusion we need to hear the latest words of the Syrian religious leaders in their joint statement.

The Grand Mufti calls upon those who carry weapons to return to dialogue instead. He adds that those who have taken up weapons to sabotage their homeland in the service of foreign agendas are not Syrian because Syria has always been a country of co-existence, where there is no difference between a Christian and a Moslem.

The Patriarch points out that the lies and fabrications propagated about the situation of Christians in Syria are untrue, and mere illusions in the minds of some Europeans. “In Syria, we, Muslims and Christians, live as brothers and share everything.” He wished Kofi Annan success, and promised to support his peace mission in every possible way.

For those interested I post a chapter from my late father’s book, ‘Once there was an Empire’. I am fed up with the usual nonsense about the Falklands. It is not Argentina's, nor was it ever!

THE FALKLAND ISLANDS AND SOUTH GEORGIA

These islands lie in the South Atlantic, three hundred miles east of the southern part of South America now called Argentina. The colony is administered by a Governor, with executive and legislative councils. There are two main islands, East Falkland and West Falkland, plus some small off shore islands.

Captain John Davis (Davys) who was an English navigator discovered the islands in 1593. Davis was born at Dartmouth in 1550 and four years before finding the Falkland Islands he had fought for England against the Spanish Armada. Later he was killed by Japanese pirates in the Straits of Malacca.

The Falkland Islands were of no value to any country and in 1764 the French took them but three years later ceded them to Spain. In 1771 Spain yielded them to Britain and they were made a crown colony in 1883. These dates are important because of subsequent events involved claims by Argentina, and invasion of the islands in 1982. It is useful to know the history such as it is of Argentina.

South America was inhabited by American natives until invasion and occupancy in 1516 by Spain. During the course of the following two hundred years, Buenos Aires was set up by the Spaniards as capital of a vast region which was divided into several states. By the nineteenth century Spanish colonists had exterminated most of the native Indians then rebelled against Spain, not unlike the North American English colonists who rebelled against Britain. In 1816 the 'United Provinces of the River Plate', consisting of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, under the leadership of General Jose de San Martin, threw out their Spanish masters and declared themselves independent. A long struggle with Spain followed, leading to independence of other South American states such as Chile and Peru. Late in the nineteenth century there was large scale immigration from European Roman Catholic countries, particularly Italy. The population of Argentina is now twenty five million mainly of Spanish and Italian descent, but only twenty thousand descendants of the original Amerindians still survive. A constitution for the country of Argentina was drawn up in 1853, twenty years after Britain had colonized the Falkland Islands, and nearly three hundred years after their discovery by English navigator John Davis.

There have been many attempts by the Argentines to claim what they call Islas Malvinas, but the islanders wish to remain British. In particular they loathe the idea of belonging to Argentina, with its record not only of slaughtering thousands of Amerindians, but with a present government which has mysteriously 'lost' fifteen thousand Argentine political opponents. In 1982 Argentina had the temerity to invade and occupy this British owned territory. For the first time for half a century, the 'British Lion' not only showed its teeth but used them. Under a brave and determined Prime Minister, from slender resources, a combined British force was mustered and in a brilliant example of logistical skill, travelled thousands of miles across the world, and although heavily outnumbered, defeated and threw out the invaders by courage and professional skill. The world watched astounded, and perhaps remembered some history. Britains at last could hold up their heads with pride.

Argentina is now almost bankrupt and on the verge of revolution, but in order to preserve the safety of the two thousand British colonists on the Falklands, Britain is obliged to maintain a large military garrison on the Islands. At the moment the only industry keeping the islanders is the raising of sheep so this crown colony is an expensive embarrassment to Britain.

Imagine how much good could be done in a hospital for half a million quid. Instead, this same amount of money is going up in smoke. Rather than spending the money on making people bettter, Primary Care Trusts have been wasting money on propaganda campaigns, as Simon Clark of Forest has discovered:

Freedom of information requests have revealed that Smokefree South West (SFSW) has budgeted over £450,000 for its Plain Packs Protect campaign. This includes £100,398 for billboard advertisements (above), £127,685 for digital advertising, almost £100,000 for “community events”, and £141,000 for other social marketing initiatives. Smokefree South West is funded by all 14 local Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) which are funded by central government via the NHS. At least eight of the 20 organisations supporting Plain Packs Protect receive (or have received) public money. They include ASH, ASH Scotland, ASH Wales, Fresh (Smokefree North East), Smokefree Lincs, Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre and Tobacco Free Futures (Smokefree North West).

This is, says Dick Puddlecote, 'Government Lobbying Government'

Plain packaging will not stop anyone smoking. It's not the wrapper that makes children like sweets and chocolate. It's not the label that makes us enjoy beer, wine, or whisky. This campaign has been invented by people who do not enjoy life, and do not understand people who do enjoy life. 

The well known ancient Chinese curse sounds mild to the unsuspecting: "May you live in interesting times". It was a subtle hint of all the forms of war, plague, famine, vengeance, death and bad luck that may lie in wait for anyone, any time. Life is hard enough without bringing more upon yourself.

We too live in interesting times, and they are about to become even more interesting in the six years from 2014-2020, as this is the next EU budgetary period. They intend to make villainous manmade CO2 the centre piece of the policy, 'carbon mainstreaming' will be integrated into all conceivable areas, as if it is not already.

But the manmade CO2 global warming story - and even climate change story - is stale, and the high-up EU panjandrums and muckety-mucks know it. We had the Climategate biased-scientist-for-hire scandal a few years ago, with leaked emails admitting that the data is dodgy and that they really need the EU funding to stay in a job. Mutters of "populist scepticism" about CO2 scare stories have even been heard in the late-night prognostications of the Environment committee which met some months ago in the week of the Strasbourg parliament plenary session at 10pm. What a joy it was to hear them admit it out loud, even if I did have to take my supper in with me.

But now the really interesting news is that the one trillion euro EU budget for 2014-2020 is worse than anything we have seen in the recent granny-bashing UK budget. An amazing €200 billion is earmarked for 'climate action' and decarbonisation of our EU economy. In real money this is £27.5 billion per year, and about 12 times what the UK government raised from anti-carbon Air Passenger Duty taxation in 2011 (figures from online Deloitte analysis of the UK budget, and EU European Energy Review article by Sonja van Renssen, 23 Feb 2012). Can you feel the taxman's hand in your pocket right now? Well if you can, soon EU Climate Change commissioner Connie Hedegaard will have her hand in the other. Interesting.

The EU and UK governments of course have zero intention of admitting the lack of statistically significant global warming in the last 15 years. They have no intention of admitting that the last 150 years of warming of about 0.7 degrees Celsius is probably normal natural variation since the last ice age, as none of their partial computer models predict it, and they ignore the fact that atmospheric water vapour causes over 80% of the earth's greenhouse gas effect, which is a good thing, or planet earth would be a ball of ice. So, 'garbage in, garbage out', as I used to say when I worked in the software industry. After all, in geological time the ice ages come and go - cooler, warmer, cooler, warmer, etc. There is a cartoon film about the last one, complete with woolly mammoths, cunningly entitled 'Ice Age', and no one has ever dared suggest that the Stone Age cavemen lit smoky fires and thus made the ice go away 20,000 years ago. An extremely formidable array of senior scientists across the world now sceptically mock the manmade CO2 scare agenda. I can provide more information and references than most require if anyone cares to email me, but Google on Prof. Richard Lindzen for a good technical summary recently presented in the House of Commons, or ask me for it.

The EU budget is not yet set in stone, there is some horse-trading to come yet, as the climate action increase represents 15% rise over the last climate change funding. But whatever the funding, we want to know what will they spend this vast sum on.

• 'Building renovations' for one. But obviously, if it is in anyone's cost-benefit interest to insulate or add solar panels, they should stump up themselves, not the taxpayer.
• So how about 'clean energy R&D'? More windmills anyone? Well, if industry can see a profit margin in it, they can do it. After all, investment is a major component of GDP. More GDP is good. But so is government spending a large component of GDP, and they never ever calculate profit and loss. They don't care, they are spending a budget, not earning a crust.
• So how about 'cross-border interconnectors' - making the ever more stressed electricity grid cope with on-off windmill and solar PV electricity? Worried yet? Well you should be.
• My final fine gem is 'greener transport'. That means biofuel whether it makes economic sense or not. It means forcing cars off the road with more expensive petrol. Presumably the busses will still run. And it means electric cars that can go short distances, are expensive, unpopular, and easy to turn into 'bricks on wheels' if the batteries are not quite lovingly tended - not a cost-benefit analysis that works for me.

Last, but not least, I will introduce the newly appointed EU chief scientist, Anne Glover. The EU needs more trappings of state. She is a molecular biologist, reporting direct to EU Commission President Mr Barroso, and she warns that, "if we had unabated man-made climate change, we could go through an absolutely horrible period of conflict and migration, until the world's population started diminishing very rapidly." (www.euractiv.com, 20mar2012). I want her pay, I am sure it is more than I get now. I can state the blindingly obvious that well, if not better. I know that she is only reading a script, but she is a molecular biologist, not an atmospheric physicist or climatologist. And she is bound to know what I learned in 'O' level biology: that CO2 is vital for plant life, and that more is better as they grow faster in response, thus soaking it up in the growing season, which accounts for the annual atmospheric CO2 concentration cycle of rise and fall. Better tomatoes and all that. But I would not really want to be a bought-and-paid for scientist. I see myself as just a parasite, swimming around in the belly of the beast that is Brussels. Still, it's a living.