Category Archives: Politics

Petitions – a double edged sword…

11 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Politics, Rail Investment, YorkshireStopHs2

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I’ve blogged about this before but I thought I’d revisit the subject after seeing that some folk who live on the Phase 1 route of Hs2 are still asking people to sign a petition to ‘review’ Hs2 – even though phase 1 has Royal Assent and construction work has started!

The e-petition in question was started by one of the two men who’ve been flogging (as in flogging a dead horse) their own ‘alternative’ to Hs2 called ‘High Speed UK’ (HSUK). They’ve never got anywhere, apart from up many people’s noses (see previous blogs like this). But, their petition IS useful – for all the wrong reasons! What I find interesting about the ones on the Governments petitioning website is the level of detail they contain on who signs them. For example, signatories are grouped together by constituency, which is very useful for MPs wanting to know the strength or weakness of feeling on a particular issue in their area. This is the double-edged sword for campaigners, because it often highlights weakness, not strength.

Let’s take a look at the HSUK petition. You can find it here.

First, the bare facts. It’s had 5,887 signatures since the 11th November 2016. It has 62 days left to run and find over 94,100 signatures. It doesn’t stand a chance of hitting the 10,000 that would get a response from Govt never mind the 100,000 to trigger a debate in the Commons. It’s just another example of how weak the stophs2 campaign is. For HSUK it’s a huge embarrassment because it reveals that most of the folk who’ve signed have done so because they live on the route of Hs2 – not because they support HSUK! Talk about an own goal…

Let’s have a look at the areas where the most signs have come from. Here’s the top 12 constituencies. Between them they account for 3107 signatures, or 52.77% of the total.

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As you can see, the clear winners are the Chiltern Nimbys in Cheryl Gillan’s constituency of Chesham and Amersham! In fact, phase 1 accounts for 5 of the top 6. Despite this not a single constituency managed to get 1% of the electorate to sign – even in the supposed StopHs2 Phase 1 ‘strongholds’!

What’s just as interesting is the way the figures reveal the weakness of the anti Hs2 campaign on other phases. Only one constituency on Phase 2a (Stone) features and there’s not a single one from the extension of Phase 2a to Manchester – which makes a mockery of the supposed strength of groups like ‘Mid-Cheshire against Hs2’!

The news isn’t much better for the Leicestershire antis or the Yorkshire area, which makes a lot of noise but clearly doesn’t have the influence it claims. Mind you, when you see the half-empty websites of groups like ‘Erewash against Hs2’ it’s not surprising. There’s a lot of bluster from Yorkshire but it’s not backed up by political clout or support.

I’m looking forward to seeing the results of the consultations on the phase 2 routes which closed on March 9th. I have a sneaky suspicion they’ll throw up even more problems for some of the new anti Hs2 groups like the one around Measham (Leics) or in Yorks. They’ve been set up to oppose route changes. But what happens if the majority of people support the changes? Watch this space…

Rail renationalisation will transcend the laws of physics (apparently)…

10 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by in Foot in mouth, John McDonnell MP, Politics, Railways

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Politicians have a habit of saying stupid things about railways – Labour politicians doubly so because of their belief that renationalising the railways will cure all known ills, heralding some sort of socialist nirvana and golden age where all the trains will run on time and nothing will ever break. How else can we explain yesterdays superbly stupid tweet from Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.

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The delay was caused by the overhead wires on the East Coast main line near Retford failing, which brought many services to a halt.

How renationalising the railways will stop such incidents happening is a mystery, as to all intents and purposes Network Rail (who maintains the ECML) is already under public ownership and supervision! Perhaps McDonnells answer will be to do what the last Labour Government did and string up less wires? After all, in all their years in office between 1997 and 2010, Labour only managed to electrify a paltry 20 miles of line between Crewe and Kidsgrove. Or perhaps those nasty capitalist trains whose pantographs have a habit of bringing down the wires will have their carbons replaced with copies of ‘Das Kapital’? Unfortunately, inanimate objects still obey the laws of physics and remain stubbornly immune to political rhetoric from right, or left.

Sadly, quite a few Labour MPs have form for this sort of grandstanding. In the past I’ve blogged about both Michael Dugher and Andy Burnham making fools of themselves in this fashion. Mind you, it’s not just Labour who come out with crackpot stuff like this. The ‘Vulcan’ – John Redwood, the Tory MP for Wokingham once suggested trains have their steel wheels replaced by rubber ones – which provoked this riposte from Michael Roberts of ATOC.

Perhaps McDonnell should put down his copy of dialectical materialism for Marxists and pick up a history book. Then he might learn about the fate of the last politician famous for making the trains run on time. Benito Mussolini…

Yorkshire picks a fight with itself (again), this time over Hs2.

09 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in Hs2, Politics, Transport, Yorkshire, YorkshireStopHs2

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When I moved to from London Yorkshire in 2010 one of the first things I noticed was how much time the county spent in internecine political battles and rivalries. Sheffield, Bradford, Leeds, Doncaster and Wakefield seemed like a bunch of warring states, all fighting against each other over something (or nothing). It sometimes feels like Yorkshire takes itself rather too seriously. I mean – name another English county that has its own political party (Yorkshire First)!

Now tykes really have got something to fight over. Hs2.

Today’s been a cracking example of this. The latest consultation over Hs2 Phase 2 closes today and the ‘war’ between Doncaster and Sheffield over  the new route through South Yorkshire is hotting up. The Mayor of Doncaster, Ros Jones, has taken to Twitter to launch Doncaster’s response to the consultation and made the most curious claim whilst doing it…

Jones Hs2

The “route nobody asked for”? I’m not sure Sheffield or the city’s local newspaper, the  Sheffield Star will see it that way. After all, it was the Star that ran a (successful) campaign to get the route changed in the first place! As the paper said at the time,

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Personally, I can see the pro’s and con’s of both routes so it will be interesting to see who prevails in the end. If anything, my money is on the new route. That’s because things have changed since the original one was announced. The concept of the Northern Powerhouse has become something far more real. We now have Transport for the North and Northern Powerhouse Rail (nee Hs3). TfN is driving the regions transport strategy and Hs2 and NPR (linked together) are very much part of it and I suspect the new Hs2 route fits in with that strategy more than the old one.

That said, as someone who originated from the other side of the Pennines, I can imagine my fellow Lancastrians cracking a wry smile at the antics of their ever-warring neighbours. Which is more attractive to business. An area that’s managed to put most of its differences aside (look at Manchester and its neighbours). Or the contestant battles and jockeying for position that they observe this side of the chain?

My final observation – whatever happens, it’s very bad news for anti Hs2 campaigners in Yorkshire, because one thing’s clear, the vast majority of the counties politicians and business leader are fighting for Hs2 – not to stop it. This is about who reaps the benefits. Remember, only two of the counties 51 MPs voted against Hs2 Phase 1. To argue over the benefits you first have to agree to build it and there’s little doubt that’s exactly what MPs will agree to do. This means that Yorkshire Hs2 anti’s tactics have fallen at the first hurdle. They’re making the same mistake as the phase 1 antis did by trying to challenge at a local level the business case for a national infrastructure project. As soon as MPs vote through the Phase 2b Hybrid Bill at 2nd reading their arguments are moot. When it comes to hearing petitions a person or organisation will only have locus standi (the right to be heard) if a petitioner’s property or interests are directly and specially affected by the Bill. As we’ve seen from the phase 1 hearings, the Ctte’s take a dim view of a petitioner trying to argue that Hs2 is the ‘wrong’ project or there’s no economic justification for it as Parliament has already decided there is. As most of the antis time seems to be wasted in exactly the wrong sort of arguments, it’s easy to see why they’ll fail.

The Brexit rhetoric gets darker

09 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in Brexit, Politics, UK, Uncategorized

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Remember when the victorious Leave campaign and it’s leaders assured us that Brexit would be the start of a new golden age in trade with Europe? Then, we were told tha the EU was bound to give us a great deal as ‘they need us more than we need them’. Cast aside for a moment the two very obvious flaws in this logic (the UK is a far smaller market then the EU and why in the name of God would they give a better deal to a country that’s just left?) and remember the idiotic and false claims. Like the one the buffoon Boris made about sales of prosecco? Or when he swore that despite Brexit, we’d still have access to the single market?

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How hollow all those claims sound now.

Or how about David Davis, when he put the cat amongst the pigeons by saying that it was ‘very improbable’ that we’d stay in the single market and got slapped down by the PM, Teresa May?

The truth was, there never was a plan for Brexit and those who campaigned for it routinely lied about the advantages of leaving. There were none. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. The fanciful claims about the super deals we’d get from the EU have been dropped in favour of a much darker rhetoric. Now, it’s “no deal is better than a bad one”

We’ve gone from soft Brexit to hard Brexit in a few short months. Now, we stand to lose all those thing Boris Johnson said we’d always have – access to the single market. The right to live, work and study in the EU, freedom of movement – everything. Not only that, but come the day we actually leave – there would be no trade deals in place. Of course, brexiters love to brush such concerns aside, pretending there’d be no serious consequences if that happened. Really? How about British airlines being unable to fly? Here’s what Ryanair’s Michael O’ Leary and some EU leaders pointed out

Hard Brexit will be bad, very bad. Don’t be under any illusions over that. But that’s exactly the path Teresa May’s government – aided and abetted by Jeremy Corbyn and Co, are leading us down.

We’ve been conned. There is no upside to Brexit for ordinary people. There never was.

The UKs political shambles (pt 2)

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Brexit, Politics

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One of the things about travelling is that it gives you chance to observe other countries political systems and problems. As a Briton, I come from a long established Parliamentary democracy that appeared both mature, and stable. I could look at countries like Thailand – with its long history of takeovers by the military, or Sri Lanka – increasingly run as a family business – and be grateful my country couldn’t be taken over like that.

How wrong I was.

Brexit, and the takeover of the Labour party by the hard left, has changed everything. The country is set on a course to crash out of the EU in the most damaging way possible – both politically and economically – and her majesty’s opposition are actually colluding in it!

Let’s be clear. The biggest losers from Brexit won’t be the multi-millionaires who funded the leave campaign. They’ve already gained from the weakness in Sterling and they’ll gain even more from the Govts plans to turn the UK into a low-tax refuge. The people who will be hurt most will be their poor foot-soldiers. The turkeys who voted for Christmas through a breath-taking series of lies, like the infamous £350m written on the side of a bus and years of disinformation about immigration and the EU. The less well-off (both in terms of finance and education) are going to bear the brunt of the cuts, the economic slowdown and the rises in prices that we’re already seeing. Yet, many of them still support Brexit, because they still believe in the lies and can’t see what’s coming as the newspapers they read are feeding them more lies and diverting their attention from the real problems.

Meanwhile, we have the Labour party, the very party set up to protect these people, colluding in their downfall. Why?

Because the Labour party is dominated by the hard Left whose rigid dogma sees those people as collateral damage in the age old struggle against capitalism. They’ve held on to the old dictum that the people won’t rise up and throw off their chains until they’ve been sufficiently oppressed! Those on the Left are supporting Brexit because they believe the coming disaster will ruin the Tories and an outraged populous will then sweep Labour to power. Politically, it’s a scorched-earth policy from dogmatists who’ve always seen people as a political concept – a theory, not actual human beings. It’s bat-shit crazy of course, but that’s dogmatists for you. Ignore the fact that Corbyn’s about as popular as a fart in a spacesuit with most voters and that the Labour party no longer seems fit for purpose. It’ll all come good in the end when the working classes have reached tipping point and the scales drop from their eyes…

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of good people in the Labour party, but they’re not the ones in charge. The hard-left lunatics have taken over the asylum.

Meanwhile, even pragmatic Tories are concerned at this turn of events. I’ve never subscribed to the dogmatists view that Labour=Good and Tories=Bad. Their are decent folk on both sides. The biggest difference nowadays is that it seems the Tories are more likely to vote with their conscience than on party lines. It’s Labour MPs who’ve lost their backbones. It’s a sad state of affairs when it’s the politicians of a previous generation – the Thatcher era (Blair, Major, Heseltine and Clarke) who’re the eloquent and logical voices.

Brexit has shown that in the 21st Century it’s frighteningly easy to subvert a long-established democracy if you have the money and metrics to do it – and the opposition is weak, dogmatic and stuck in another time. It speaks volumes that in 2017 it’s the unelected 2nd chamber of the House of Lords that’s the backbone of our democracy, not the elected MPs in the Commons! We have an awful situation where May’s government is so entrenched she sacks Heseltine for dissent, Labour’s left calls for MPs who don’t back Corbyn to be de-selected and the Brexit mob call anyone who doesn’t slavishly follow their hard line ‘traitors’ (so, that’s most of us then).

It’s shocking, and frightening. Many can see what’s about to happen, many more don’t seem to either care, or understand. What’ll happen when the turkeys finally realise it’s Christmas Eve? I’m not sure I want to stick around and find out…

The road to hell…

25 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by in Musings, Politics

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I had lots of good intentions when I started this trip. Not least was to blog more! Now I’ve got pages and pages of notes from my various journeys but no time to write them up in a coherent blog – or even an incoherent one for that matter! Some will make it eventually. My rail travels across Java, around Singapore and up through Malaysia back to Bangkok will, I hope, still make interesting reading. For some other stuff, the moment has passed. In the meantime, I’ve still got hundreds of pictures to edit and they’ll have to take precedence.

In all honesty, I’m really not looking forward to my return to the UK. Not just because of the weather but because in the months since the Brexit vote last June, it no longer feels like the country I knew – or home. Now the ‘sceptered isle’ seems smaller, more introverted and a lot less welcoming. And if I feel that, think how non-UK born folk feel. The incredibly positive vibe generated by the 2012 Olympics is long gone. That felt like the UK was a beacon for the world. It celebrated our diversity and our internationalism. Now, it feels like many parts of the country have turned their backs to the outside world. To make matters worse, UK politics is in crisis. Just when we need a strong, credible opposition we have a hopelessly weak Labour party led by Jeremy ‘the fight starts now’ Corbyn. To make matters worse, the economic delusions around Brexit still persist. Many people have no idea what’s coming – and that worries me – deeply. What will happen when the harsh financial realities dawn I wonder? I’m not looking forward to finding out. Nor having to bite my tongue when I hear the right-wing pub pontificators as I’ve always had trouble doing that!

I’ve had an illuminating and enjoyable trip these past two months. I’ve met some great people. As a foreigner I’ve been treated with warmth, kindness and patience. What hurts is knowing that if the positions were reversed I’m not sure many Britons would do the same.

Anyway, enough of such musings. It’s time to enjoy a night in Bangkok.

The fall of Singapore, 75 years on. Lessons from the past for the future.

17 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by in Brexit, Politics, Singapore, Travel

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By chance, my arrival in Singapore yesterday was on the day the city-state remembered the 75th anniversary of the fall of the island to the Japanese in World War Two.

One of the books I’ve been reading on my travels is a study of the events leading up to the invasion and subsequent surrender (The battle for Singapore, by Peter Thompson). It’s a sorry tale of British arrogance and incompetence, of casual racism and an inability to face facts. The book exposes the myth the the islands mighty naval guns could only fire out to sea. In fact, some of them could and would be turned landward to shell the Japanese troops by the Johore Strait, but as the only ammunition they had was armour piercing shells, they were of limited use. The book also reveals that, whilst Gen Arthur Percival ‘took the rap’ for the fall, he wasn’t solely to blame. The whole military/civilian structure was, including the Governer. Despite warnings that the island was wide open to invasion through Malayia, less senior officers reccomendations that defences should be built along the Johore Strait, were turned down as “defences are bad for morale” (seriously)!

The fall should have come as no surprise. The island was woefully under-prepared and the re-enforcements it asked for were turned down. It had no tanks, few aircraft and many of the soldiers sent from India and Australia to defend the island were raw recruits with no training. Many hadn’t even been taught how to fire a rifle. The Chinese militia that were formed (far too late) to bolster the army were equally poorly prepared.

The siege was brutal, with thousands of civilians being killed by bomber aircraft which attacked the island with impunity. Worse was to come when the island fell as the Japanese were brutal masters. They slaughtered tens of thousands of Chinese for supporting the motherland in its war against the Japanese invader.

75 years on, Singaporeans are well rid of their former colonial masters. The city-state is a prosperous, modern, multi-racial country where standards of education (and civility) are streets ahead of little England. It’s not paradise (where is?) but it looks positively to the future whilst remembering the past without it being baggage.

How different to England…

The old qoute that ‘those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them’ couldn’t be more appropriate for Britain. 75 years on from the fall of Singapore and the attitudes that led to it can be seen again in our political leaders, sections of the media, and (sadly) some ordinary Britons: Arrogance, racism and a refusal to face facts are the ‘new black’. We call ourselves a mature democracy, yet we’ve let the leaders of the Brexit campaign buy many of us with their money, lies and fearmongering about foreigners (call them what you will, immigrants, refugees, economic migrants, it matters not). Folk talk of the ‘will of the people’ but it wasn’t the people who are pressing for us to crash out of the European Union and single market. Many people didn’t really understand what it was they were voting for, but that’s hardly surprising when they’ve been drip fed made-up stories about ‘bent bananas banned by the EU’ or stories about immigrants ‘flooding in’ to the UK.

The tragedy of the UK at the moment is the political paralysis at the top. Few seem willing to bite the bullet and say “look, this is madness. Brexit will ruin our country for nothing”. So, our leaders lead us over the edge of a cliff, whilst many privately admit that no good will come of it – others exhibit the same levels of ignorance, denial and incompetence as a previous generation of British politicians and generals (educated at the self-same public schools that many of the present generation were) who led Singapore (and Malaya) to disaster.

Singapore has a bright future. It’s recovered from the wounds others inflicted on it 75 years ago. Will the UK ever recover from the wounds it’s about to inflict on itself?

An unholy alliance (and unholy mess)

09 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Politics, StopHs2

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I’ve not bothered blogging about the anti Hs2 campaign much recently, mainly because there’s nothing worth blogging about. Having hit a metaphorical iceberg in the shape of the successful Hs2 Hybrid bill, their campaign’s been sinking slowly ever since. Most groups have already taken to the lifeboats, leaving StopHs2 and a few dozen bonkers (and mostly anonymous) tweeters frantically clinging to the stern as the icy water gets even closer.

Even so, I couldn’t resist mentioning this. On the day that the Lords gave the Hybrid Bill its 3rd reading (passing it by a stonking majority of 360 on a 386-26 vote), an unholy alliance of environmental groups (who should know better), right-wing lobbyists (the antithesis of the green movement) and vested interest groups placed full page adverts in the national media, calling on people to stop Hs2 by writing to their MPs. ‘Friends’ of the Earth even started a petition on their website (here)

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By today, that petition has had a ‘whopping’ 1062 votes!

What’s so laughable about all this is that the whole thing has been a spectacular waste of time and money! Why? Because MPs don’t have another chance to vote on the principle of Hs2! There’s no stopping it now.

It’s true that as the Lords amended the Hs2 Hybrid Bill it will go back to the Commons – but this is only so that the amendments can be considered. MPs decided that Hs2 should be built at 2nd reading of the bill back in 2014. They don’t get a 2nd bite of the cherry, so people writing to their MPs is a complete waste of time. One can only wonder who advised the ‘unholy alliance’ on their tactics and decided that this was a cunning plan as – in reality – it’s both too late and entirely the wrong target.

As the Hs2 Hybrid Bill is due to receive Royal Assent later this month, it looks like the anti Hs2 campaign decided to throw away the last of their money on yet another useless gesture.

The UKs suicide politics

09 Thursday Feb 2017

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Despite being thousands of miles away from the UK I’ve been keeping up with the latest Brexit madness back at home. And truly, madness it is. It seems like the majority of MPs have metamorphosed into a strange cross between lemmings and invertebrates as they  spinelessly vote for a course off action (Hard Brexit) that will see our country jump off an economic cliff. “But we’re respecting the will of the people” they cry.

Really?

Funny that, because one of the architects of the Leave campaign, Dominic Cummings, has admitted that they only reason leave won was because they lied to people. Remember that “£350m a week for the NHS” lie?. This piece from the London Economic makes fascinating reading.

So, when MPs say ‘respect the will of the people’, what they’re actually saying is “respect a non-binding referendum vote that was narrowly won by blatantly lying”. That is not democracy. Not by a long chalk. That’s the sort of ‘democracy’ that politicians acquiesced to in the 1930s – and we all know where that got us…

So why do so few MPs have the backbone to stand up and admit the truth? Nowadays, I have far more respect for Tory rebels like Anna Soubry than I do for many Labour MPs (including my own) who’ve rolled over, seemingly out of fear of losing their own seats. It won’t help them. The Labour bloodbath is inevitable – it’s just a question of which direction it comes from. I would have hoped I’d have seen a principled fight, going down with honour in the hope of coming back with it too. Instead, we’ve got ’50 shades of UKIP’.

To add further insult, we have Jeremy Corbyn, the serial rebel who’s defied the Labour whip more than any other Labour MP, insisting that ‘his’ MPs vote FOR article 50. Afterwards he had the gall to tweet this;

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No Jeremy. The ‘real’ fight started as soon as the referendum was called, but you bottled that one. Most of us suspect you bottled it because we know that you never wanted us to stay in the EU anyway as it doesn’t fit with your dogmatic socialist view of the world. Despite the fact the vast majority of Labour MPs & members were pro EU, you ignored the majority view you claim to espouse in favour of your own beliefs. If you hadn’t ,we wouldn’t be in this mess now. So, please, stick your hypocrisy where the sun doesn’t shine. You blew the chance to stick up for all the things you mention in that tweet, so don’t try it on now.

‘Take back control’ they said. Never has a slogan seemed more empty – especially in what are supposedly the corridors of power.

A rainy day in Krabi…

20 Friday Jan 2017

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The run of unseasonal wet weather continues here in Southern Thailand. Torrential rain arrived in the early hours of the morning and, although its strength abated several hours ago, it’s still raining now at 1.50pm. I’ve never known anything like it in all the years I’ve been coming to this part of the world. I’ve cut my cloth accordingly and spent the day catching up on the news – which frankly, is as depressing as the weather here.

What the hell is going on with politics in the UK? Both Labour and the Tories seem to have taken leave of their senses. Firstly, there was Teresa May’s blustering speech on Brexit in which she called for the country to unite behind her in her economically suicidal pursuit of ‘hard’ Brexit. Has the woman lost her mind? I only have one answer for her. Like hell I will!

As if that wasn’t patronising enough, she showed how little she actually understands about negotiating by threatening the EU. ‘Give us a good deal or I’ll turn the UK into a low tax Singapore on your doorstep’ she claimed. Meanwhile, good old Boris insulted French President Hollande by accusing his country of wanting to inflict “WW2 style punishment beatings” on the UK (see video here). This man is meant to be a diplomat for God’s sake! No wonder the UK’s Civil Service is in despair as the FCO is led by a blundering clown. The UK political scene is rapidly descending into low farce. It’s ‘Carry on Brexit’.

Needless to say, our European neighbours response was far more mature. They ignored the threats and promptly burst May’s bubble by pointing out a few practical political and economic realities (see here).

Meanwhile, what’s the reaction of Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Labour party and allegedly the main ‘opposition’ party? Remember that the overwhelming majority of Labour voters and MPs supported remaining in the UK. So, Corbyn obviously supports that position and the democratic mandate it gives him to represent his party’s wishes, no? Like hell! Corbyn is going to impose a three line whip on his MPs to make sure they don’t oppose triggering Article 50!

We now have the bizarre situation that the majority of the UKs political establishment is rushing headlong into imposing Brexit on the country, despite only 37% of the electorate having voted for it. Not only that, but even many Leave campaign luminaries were swearing blind that a vote for Brexit didn’t mean that we’d be leaving the single market. Like all their other claims, that was a lie too – and here’s the evidence.

No wonder Britain has become the laughing stock of Europe. Our politics have descended into a farce and the majority of the electorate are being shafted by a vociferous, kamikaze minority who don’t seem to have the mental wherewithal to see what’s coming their way. It’s akin to steerage passengers on the Titanic urging the Captain to go faster & damn the icebergs. What’s equally baffling are the ones who do have the critical faculties to appreciate the situation that’s facing us, but prefer not to and sing ‘always look on the bright side of life’ instead.

Meanwhile,  I’m observing the UK circus from Thailand and wondering whether my long-term future lies outside that particular tent…