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Saturday, May 05, 2012

The Way Forward to Parties Committed to Growth

  I have posted this on Danial Hannan's blog. He is as progressive as one gets while keeping the Tory whip. He said
John Redwood points out, again, that UKIP is unlikely to form a government and take us out of the EU. This is obviously true. At the same time, the Coalition is just as unlikely to take us out of the EU, or even secure any repatriation of powers. The defection of Eurosceptic activists from the Conservative Party to UKIP has weakened the anti-Brussels tendency within the ranks of the governing party without strengthening an alternative party of government...  I'll say it one more time: the way forward is through a Canada-style Unite the Right accord. Both sides would stand to gain. UKIP would get its In/Out referendum; the Conservatives would be far more likely to be in power. Much more important, the United Kingdom would be wealthier, freer and more democratic.
    When most Tories talk about uniting they mean UKIP getting the promise of a referendum ("cast iron and this time you can trust us" I assume) and thus all signing up as loyal Tories.

   The first problem with this is that it isn't going to happen. UKIP are no longer merely an anti-EU lobby. We have a wide range of policies completely at variance with the Conservatives - seriously cutting government and the deficit; new nuclear; a right to referendums; a transport policy not based on subsidising rail; not starting foreign wars; scepticism about alleged catastrophic warming; proportional representation etc.

   This divergence can only increase since Lord Monckton is committed to ensuring we have the best policies of any party.

   To whom in that position would giving the Tories a blank cheque, even under a new leader, be an attractive option?

   The 2nd and even bigger problem is that it wouldn't work.
According to John Curtice (on the BBC but he is a respected academic), where UKIP gets above ten per cent, the Conservative vote falls by five per cent.
    That means that UKIP are picking up a fair number of non-Tory voters. If I've got my arithmetic right that implies we picj up one vote from Labour, the party the Tories % is measured against, for every 3 Tories. If UKIP were to fold they would go back to Labour. The Tories need a lot more than 50% of the UKIP vote to beat Labour now.

    Worse than that is what the abysmal 28% turnout implies. Labour's vote has not increased, if anything it is falling. What has happened is that the LibDem/Tory vote is visibly collapsing. Their supporters are staying home not voting Labour. Only a minority, so far, are moving to UKIP, though that could well change as, with gathering momentum, we look ever more capable of winning. If UKIP folded it would not persuade a single one of these stay at homes to vote - in fact it might well increase the cynicism.

So is there a way out?

I think so. Taking a lesson from British politics at the last big realignment. The Liberal/SDP Alliance. Toy Jenkins had originally suggested he join the Liberals but David Steel persuaded him that an Alliance between the Liberals and SDP would attract much more attention. Despite the fact that it ended in tears when David Owen took his ball home it worked very well for several years. The Alliance consistently polled as the most popular group, moreso than the Tories or Labour and on occasion more than both combined.

   It failed because in the end it had nothing new to offer and Labour, after 15 years, came out of their pseudo-Marxist sulk. In the end there is no substitute for competence and standing for what people want.

   However if the Tories want to win the next election they will have to choose a full hearted electoral Alliance with UKIP. More than that it will have to be committed to sensible policies, not the destruction of 80% of our electric capacity and the lies about catastrophic warming the currrent Conservatives are.

    There are steps in the right direction.
Senior right-wingers David Davis and John Redwood will issue an "alternative Queen's Speech" reflecting traditional Conservative values, calling for an end to "wind-turbine Toryism".

    On the one hand this is a responsible act - 2 former leadership candidates saying exactly what the alternative is. Not merely carping but offering a reasoned alternative. I very much doubt if Ed Miliband, the official Leader of the Opposition is capable of constucting a similarly coherent programme - he certainly hasn't so far. On the other hand it is a direct challenge to the current leadership. If they produce a good programme and knowing Redwood I think they will, and Cameron doesn't then he is deservedly toast.

   But if, once the Tories have got rid of Cameron they think they can just go back to business as usual and the electorate will wear it they will fail at the ballot box.

   Indeed even if a UKIP/Conservative Alliance were formed it would have to unflinchingly commit to not only get out of recession but also into at least world average growth or, even combined, they might well fail.

   And succeed or come close it they wanted to stay.

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Friday, May 04, 2012

Council Elections

  As I start this the Scottish elections, counted under a transferable vote system are still some way off. However the bulk of the English results are in.

   UKIP, as a fairly new party without any history in local government did not put up candidates across the board. Something the Tories in particular should be glad of since otherwise their abysmal showing would have been worse. The LibDem vote collapsed further - the only good news for them being that the Tory vote which had previously held up was now down as far as their's. 
The Eurosceptic party averaged about 14 per cent of the vote where its candidates were standing, mainly at the expense of the Conservatives.
The result is likely to be seen as an ultimatum to the Prime Minister that his party is alienating right wing voters and will increase calls for the Coalition to hold an EU referendum....
UKIP’s result is five points higher than a year ago

  Obviously we mainly stood in our better areas so that 14% will not represent our national vote, or we would be half way to matching the Tories, but it is, by any standard, a spectacular result and confirms the polls showing us to be the 3rd party, ahead of the LibDems.

   Obviously the legally "balanced" government broadcaster slanted everything as usual. They had the LabConDems swopping quips all night whereas the best UKIP got was, at 1.07 (an hour and a half in) 30 seconds from Paul Nuttall, handily not in the studio but linked in another, followed by 6 minutes of the approved parties discussing UKIP's threat, then another 40 seconds from Nuttall and back to the approved.

   The BBC also allowed, without even hostile questioning, an extraordinary outburst from Baroness Warzi the Tory Party chair who suggested that the decline in BNPists standing was linked with the increase in UKIPers doing so.

   I can speak from experience here because in the ward I stood in (Hillhead), where UKIP had not stood previously, there was no BNP candidate - but there was a former BNP member standing as Britannic. What is happening is that the BNP is splitting.

   If Baroness Warzi does not know enough about British electoral politics to understand this she is clearly not competent to chair the Tories. If she does it is a deliberate, wholly corrupt, smear. Either way she owes a public apology. If she doesn't give one then the very least Cameron must do if he is not also wholly corrupt, is dissociate herself from her smear. I doubt we will see that because I think he will, once again, prove himself wholly corrupt.

    Yesterday evening I spent some time outside the polling station telling all and sundry "UKIP the only party that wants to cut electricity bills, all the others intend to double them". None of the other parties actually denied it but Sandra White (pseudo-socialist SNP MSP) got a bit annoyed when I told her that I was against 1 million Scots households being in fuel poverty. She insisted she was too which, if true, is a remarkable turnaround and must, by definition, involve her publicly disagreeing with her party's policy of closing down 80% of our generating capacity and keeping the most expensive windmill bit.

     It is simply impossible to honestly claim to be against high prices when you favour making costs as high as possible.

    We had earlier crossed on the subject of nuclear when she said that the reason she didn't want nuclear was because it was impossible to bury waste - well ok it is possible but it stays radioactive forever. At this point a young student working for Labour proved he was nonetheless intelligent by pointing out that such waste has a short half life.

   I will look forward to seeing if Sandra White does show the promised concern for ending fuel poverty, something which any "leftist" whose persona of caring about the poor is true, must certainly do. Every MSP certainly knows that the only sustainable (in the correct use of the term) way of cutting energy costs is producing it cheaper and that this can be done with nuclear, whereas windmills articifially inflate the cost.. There are even a few MSPs honest enough to say so.

      Well, I didn't get elected, which doesn't exactly come as a surprise. I don't yet know what the votes were. Neither did the LibDem, who had previously been, so that makes us even.

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Thursday, May 03, 2012

Scotland - The Saudi Arabia of Government Parasitism

   Thinking of this with respect to Scotland
A rentier state is a term in political science and international relations theory used to classify those states which derive all or a substantial portion of their national revenues from the rent of indigenous resources to external clients.


  Bearing in mind the Economist article that Alex Salmond erupted over, which said that 18% of our GNP comes from offshore oil.
The effects of such a state there is a challenge to developing civil society and democratization. Hence, theorists such as Beblawi conclude that the nature of rentier states provides a particular explanation for the presence of authoritarian regimes in such resource rich states.
Beblawi identifies several other characteristics particularly associated with rentier oil states. For example, where the government is the largest and ultimate employer, the bureaucracy is frequently bloated and inefficient – and indeed comes to resemble a rentier class in society.
  In Scotland the government is easily the largest employer, even moreso if we include those on benefit. It spends nearly 60% of the money in the economy.

  Thus it may not be that we Scots are more "socialist" than that we are in an economic trap, through the oil money which, unofficially, is returned by us from Westminster in the form of extra money for state spending.

    I did make a related suggestion on John Redwood's when he said that the regions (ie not London) get extra government money. By transfer payments I mean payment by central government, to the extent that it is larger than the average such payment, whether to home ruled areas like Scotland, or areas of deprivation like Liverpool.
If transfer payments are necessary I suggest that they should go directly into cutting business costs. Cutting business rates in below average areas would be easy; cutting employer’s national insurance in such areas almost equally so; regional corporation tax rates would require more finessing but are not impossible. These would work.
Transfer payments which go to paying for more overgovernment than the area can really afford does not work. The net effect of government on the economy is negative, because regulation is so destructive. thus the net effect of transfer payments made to government is likely to be negative. In the short term it may help buy off “socialist” councils but in the long term, as with paying any Danegeld, it merely encourages such a dependency culture.
While you are being pleased at the success of London may I point out that virtually every country in the world has a capital city wealthier than its hinterland. We can possibly exclude Berlin, because it relatively recently became capital/;Rome may be poorer than Italy as a whole because it is in the south but is certainly richer than its nearby hinterland/ the same applies to Being which is not on the wealthy coast like Shanghai, but these partial exceptions merely prove the general trend. This merely suggests that having the top bureaucrats there tends to draw spending there and certainly draws the HQs of large companies, who find a close relationship with government profitable. That London fits the trend does not make them more entrepreneurial than the trend.

  If the several billion Scotland gets went into cutting business rates, corporation tax and 3p off income tax, which would total about £5 bn even Salmond's windmillery would not be able to prevent our economy growing. Of course it would mean significantly less for "the most vulnerable in society" by which the politicos mean themselves, the quangoists, government funded activists, windmill owners and the most useless of the civil servants.

   They would be missed - not.

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Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Examples of British Mainstream Media Censorship

  In 2004 I put up these 12 issues in response to a BBC radio request for public input on what they should discuss. 

    1) THE BILDERBERG GROUP: During IDS's election to Tory leader I phoned in & you asked me which candidate I would prefer. I said that I would prefer IDS on the grounds that to have both the PM & Ken Clarke as opposition leader members of the same political secret society would be bad for democracy. You said how unfortunate it was that interesting points so often came up at the end of the show & while you had never heard of them, that you would like to do a future programme about them. Conspiracy theorists would assume you were subsequently informed that the Bilderbergers are something on which the BBC does not report but if I am wrong I look forward to your feature.

2) THE MILOSEVIC TRIAL:
3) THE KOSOVO GENOCIDE:
4) WHY IRELAND"S ECONOMY WORKS:
5) SPACE INDUSTRY:
6) AN AUTOMATED MONORAIL LINK FROM GLASGOW AIRPORT TO PAISLEY: 7) HIGHLAND AIR: we could reduce costs to where low-cost airlines would be interested & you could fly to Tiree for a tenner.
8) THE ONGOING LEGAL INVESTIGATION BY THE HAGUE COURT INTO YUGOSLAVIA"S "URGENT REQUEST FOR A DECISION ON WHETHER THE CURRENT NATO BOMBING IS LEGAL" (they eventually decided it was none of their business)
9) HUNG PARLIMENT:
10) KOYOTO: costs
11) PRO-ACTIVE SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL WARMING:
12) IS THERE A LIMIT TO GROWTH

     Some years and a couple of reminders later Lesley Riddoch did indeed do a programme on #4 Ireland's growth. That was about it till Ireland crashed, not because their economy failed but because they had guaranteed to international creditors of their banks (mainly European). At that point Ireland's economy became reportable but with it now picking up again is becoming un-news again.

    A lot of time has gone past since then so I think it is worth making an updated list of those things that cannot be reported, or only once with a small audience, by our own "lamestream media".

13 The sceptical case against catastrophic global warming - the BBC even hired somebody to say why they should censor more
14 Dissection of 1800 Serbs in Kosovo by NATO authorised "police"
15 The Hormesis theory that low level radiation is beneficial, for which there is real evidence, unlike the official approved no lower threshold one for which there is none.
16 The real and undisputed genocide of 3,850 Serbs at Srebrenica or indeed any mention of the impossibility of the official story being true.
17 UKIP censored to 97.2% less coveragea, per vote, as the Greens and a slightly less blatant censorship, per vote, though far greater in total. .
18 Climategate to any serious extent
19 The IPCC fraud about the Himalayan glaciers melting
20 The IPCC's Amazon dying fraud.
21 Recent evidence that the Himalayan glaciers are actually growing
22 Any other of the regular pieces of evidence that CAGW is false.
23 The 21,000 who died in the Japanese tsunami without any reference to radiation
24 The 31 people who died because of the German organic farm e coli outbreak
25 The 50 people who have died on British windmills
26 Absolutely any accident or deaths getting even a fraction as much coverage as the zero deaths, zero injuries at Fukushima.
27 The Dragodan Massacre of 210 unarmed civilians by NATO police outside the gates of the British military command in the UK ruled section of Kosovo.
28 The murder, by poison, of Slobodan Milosevic, before the end of his "trial"
29 IQ tests consistently showing subsaharan African IQs averaging around 70
30 The holes & impossibilities in the story about the killing of what is alleged to be bin Laden
31 The "paradox"* that the economy of humanity outwith the US & Europe (HOUSE) is able to grow at 7% while we, allegedly, cannot get out of recession.
32 The EU acknowledgement that at least 5.5% of the regions GNPP is destroyed by pointless regulations.
33 That we could easily get out of recession in days if our politicians wanted to
34 That by the OECD standards that said the Russian election wasn't fully democratic because their media didn't give enough coverage to the opposition, Britain doesn't even approach democracy.
35 Free debate, in the traditional formal sense of the word, on any subject whatsoever.
36 That the politicians were responsible for running the country into the present mess and the bankers had no part of it.
37 Evidence that the stress and unhappiness imposed by nanny state government is, by the standards used to justify banning passive smoking and other things, a substantially greater risk factor.
38 80 million deaths as a direct result of banning DDT.
39 Deaths or risks from any cause whatsoever getting as much as 100th as much coverage per, as false or evidentially unsupported claims about risks from a moderately new technology.
40 That the Health and Safety regulators kill 2,300 people for every one they save.
41 That, by the definition at Nuremburg, almost all of our political leaders are certainly war criminals.
42 The antecedents of our al Quaeda terrorist allies in Syria.
43 The antecedents of the al Quaeda terrorist "democrats" we put in power in Libya and what they are doing.
44 The antecedents of the drug lords, gangsters, sex slavers, organleggers, ex-Nazis and al Quaedists making up the NATO organised, openly genocidal KLA terrorists/police.
45 The genocide & ethnic cleansing the NATO armed and supported Georgian army was committed to in Ossetia.
46 The genocide and ethnic cleansing of 250,000 people from Krajina by the Croatian Nazis, organised by US & UK officers.
47 The Croatian Nazi murder of the UN peacekeepers in the invasion of Krajina - even when the media ignore deaths of locals they never, with this single exception, ignore the killing of westerners.
48 Children being wrongfully taken from parents by empire building "social workers".
49 The treatment repeatedly shown to being suffered by children in "care" in children's homes, including but not limited to sexual abuse by "carers" & politicians.
50 Any mention of the admitted fact that the previous government had a deliberate, but secret, policy of encouraging massive immigration for "social reasons".
51 Why the new Forth crossing is costing 8 times, after accounting for inflation, what the previous one did and that this 7/8ths below the waterline disappearance seems general across government construction projects.
52 Any questioning of the Dalgety Bay "radium" fraud.
53 Fakecharities - organisations registered as charities but wholly or extensively funded by government -which inevitably produce reports/press releases/lobbying of government for more government control of whatever the subject is. Almost all reports headlined by the BBC or most other media outlets which don't admit to being straight government or quango press releases but from "independent" charities or groups turn out to be from such fakecharities.
54 The continuing career of Sir Andrew Muir Russell who told the Holyrood Parliament Building that he had deliberatley hidden the cost increases (£413 million when originally promised at £40 million). Si happy have the politicians been about being thus allegedly lied to by the fraudster that they have heaped lucrative public jobs on him, including the Climategate enquiry, where, presumably, they expected him to show the same honesty.
55 The failure of a single one of the hundreds of catastrophe stories the "environmentalists" have based their power on, to come true. Combined with their failure to apologise, merely moving on to the next fraud 7 of course the failure of the media to mention that such hundreds of apologies are due.
56 Though Scotland is spending ever more money on educatio, taking full account of the advice of "education experts" & teaching unions, our results are falling behind England.
57 The BBC commissioned a "re[port on science reporting" from one of their own. On fact, of ciyrse, it was just to give them cover over lying about CAGW but it purpoirted to be about how the BBC should censor ALL doubts about any science where the majority of scinetists agree. This means that if the BBC are being honest they have, ever since, censored any doubts about nuclear power or adverse reporting of Fukushima because virtually the totality of nuclear scientists agree it is safe; have censored any adverse reporting on GM for the same reason; and obviously any scare stories put around by activists about shale gas & so on and on. If they were only slightly honest they would at least mention that the way they are reporting such scare stories breaches their scince reporting standards If every single employee of the BBC were wholly and completely corrupt they would censor any mention whatsoever of how they are breaching their own rules. And they do..

58 That any censorship of all the above actually takes place and hence that the Beeboids etc. doing the censoring are, by definition, corrupt liars in the service of totalitarian fascism rather than representatives of anything approaching a free press.

----------------------------------------------
These are the ones I can think of immediately. If you know others and I agree I will add

I don't think it can be factually denied that almost every one of these news items is, or was at the time it was first censored, considerably more important than the most of these nothing actually jappening stories that are the top BBC news as I write this. - MI6 spy death 'probably unlawful, Cardinal Brady 'will not resign', Chinese dissident leaves the US embassy in Beijing, Ofcom will not be "rushed into a knee-jerk reaction", Eleven killed at Cairo protest, McCanns 'no doubt' case to reopen, Eurozone jobless rate hits record, Parties gear up for polling day, Typhoons arrive for Olympic role. Hundreds mourn marathon runner., Motorola wins Xbox ban in Germany, April average coldest in 23 years - and probably the same applies now.

* 31 - "paradox" is used to describe the completely inexplicable phenomenon of reality failing to match the promises of the politically correct eg the paradoxical flooding only days after the BBC implied the English "drought" was being caused by CAGW or the parardoxical fact that though Scotlnad is spending ever more money on educatio, taking full account of the advice of "education experts" & teaching unions, our results are falling behind England.

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Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Management of the News

   On Friday morning the BBC news lead with reports about the upcoming shareholder's meeting of Barclays where an attempt was going tom be made to stop the top boss's bonus. On Friday evening it also lead the BBC news and by coincidence the first 8 minutes of the BBC's state funded Channel 4 "competitor". All soundbites/vox pops/pictures of giant blue chickens (demonstrators dressed up as Barclay's logo) were carried out with those pushing for the cut, . In fact
27 percent of shareholders voted against Chief Executive Officer Robert Diamond’s 12 million-pound ($19.5 million) compensation package.
Those opposed failed to block the bank’s remuneration plans as more than 73 percent of investors who voted supported it

  So very much a "man doesn't bite dog, nothing to see here, don't move along" sort of story. Despite all the effort that was being brought by the media and government bureaucracy to try and push this vote the vast majority , sensibly, did not give in to political pressure. 
Not exactly a mass demonstration is it. Despite what the beeboids repeatedly describe as massive public anger at bankers only a few rent-a-not-anything-close-to-a-mobbers turned up. From the pantomime it is clear that they had been invited by the media to come and pose for them. There goes spontaneous public anger.
 
  The subtext of this is that the state media are pushing the lie that the current recession is the fault of the bankers with all the enthusiasm that German generals pushed the lie that losing WW1 was all the fault of the Jews and socialists. When you think about this it is obviously a total lie and the politicos and "journalists" pushing it no closer to honesty than their predecessors. The politicians, not the bankers, were in charge of the country just as the generals, not the Jews, were in charge of the German army.
 
   Sometimes they also try to blame the "world recession". There is and was no world recession. The world economy has been growing at about 5% all along.
 
  Quite obviously both claims are lies and could never be told by any politician or "journalist" who was not personally a wholly corrupt creature. The recession was caused by the politicians. It was their thieving parasitism and their Luddite totalitarianism, alone, that caused the recession.
 
   A far stronger, indeed virtually cast iron, case can be made that if the politicians had not prevented our own country matching the world growth rate and tried to hide the fact by printing new money/credit the banks would never have had any problems. That Fred the Shred was far less guilty of his bank's failure than Gordon Brown was.
 
   But the state media need the bankers as whipping boys to divert attention, just as if they were Jews. So the prime news story on an ordinary Friday becomes a media staged one with a "public" demonstration they controlled.
 
     A similar controlled use of photography was used by the BBC when reporting Donald Trump's arrival at the Scottish Parliament to give evidence on how windmills are destroying the Scottish tourist industry. The BBC reporting of it, did go so far as to mention that there had been anti-windmill demonstrators in support of Trump as well as "environmentalist" ones (an interesting juxtaposition meaning that those who support windmills are "environmentalists" and those who want to preserve the environment aren't). However their film almost entirely showed Trump's opponents, including a puppet, which, like the chickens, was purely for media purposes & means they also had been set up in advance by the BBC.
 
     However ITV (actually Border TV a very small local company supplying them) were more honest.
A huge march by anti wind turbine campaigners from across Scotland took place at Holyrood today. They are supporting US tycoon Donald Trump's is taking his fight against them. he was in the Scottish Parliament giving evidence to Holyrood's Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee on Wednesday morning. Protestors from Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders spoke to our reporter Kathryn Samson:
There was a small delegation of pro windfarm campaigners at the parliament. They were held back by police as they played drums and blew whistles in protest. The Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland was among those who support the turbines, he was present as Mr Trump gave evidence and said Mr Trump is no expert.



   But for the BBC, with their legal commitment to "balance" the large demonstration barely happened and only the ecofascists were to be seen. I strongly suspect that if the 2 demos had not coincided the BBC would have been able to airbrush out any mention of the anti-windfarm demo. Even though, as can be seen, there were many times more people at the anti-windmillery demo than the arranged one at the one that led the national news on at least 2 channels.

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Monday, April 30, 2012

Follow Up To Saturday's Scotsman Letter

  Those who follow this blog regularly may know that I have regularly written pieces for Brian Montieth's ThinkScotland site so he may not be an entirely unbiased  reporter but today's article in his regular Monday column for the Scotsman refers heavily to my Saturday letter.
But there is a huge flaw in the Treasury’s briefing and it was astutely drawn to the attention of Scotsman readers last Saturday by Neil Craig in one of his regular and incisive contributions to the letters page. The eurozone, Mr Craig pointed out, accounts for only 40 per cent of UK exports. The rest of the world accounts for the remaining 60 per cent and in that larger fraction economic growth has been averaging a staggering 6 per cent per annum. Singling out the failure of eurozone countries to buy enough of our goods and services just does not paper over the cracks now appearing in the coalition’s previously impregnable defences.
Two lessons are obvious from Neil Craig’s observation: the first, that the Treasury explanation is insufficient to explain why British economic growth has halted; and the second that if we want economic growth of even just 3 per cent, we must create the economic circumstances closer to those countries outside the eurozone than those in it.
  And not just that we must but that we can do so.
The dilemma for the Europhile British establishment is that the failure of the government to liberalise the British economy and create enough financial incentives for us to attract greater investment goes hand-in-hand with our close association with the eurozone and the smothering directives of the EU.

    I don't think I have seen the enormous value of UKIP's policy of quitting the EU better delineated. Brian then goes on to say that the impending triumph of the "left" in France, committed to ever more spending as way of faking economic growth will either, if there is an early election, risk convincing the British people we need the same and to vote Labour back in, or, when it leads to a French collapse, discredit such an option.
Such possible conflicts will give Cameron an opportunity to hold out for a gradually looser relationship with the EU. If he looks at the figures Neil Craig has reminded us about, he will see the sense of reducing the UK’s fixation with European trade. Whether he will be given that opportunity now lies, ironically, in the hands of the French public casting Sarkozy into the wilderness rather than anything he or the British public can do.

    I would emphasise that it is not merely trading with the non-EU part of the world we should encourage but adopting the economic policies of those countries which are most successful. So often the BBC etc choose to look at what Germany and Scandinavia are doing and say we should follow that, while the more radical look at the USA. But even the USA is well below the world average. If we analyse what the most successful countries have in common it is a low and reducing level of state parasitism, both in taxation and regulation.Not zero state intervention - but encouragement of transport and technological improvement, including commercial space, rather than our own promotion of Luddism.

    History shows that the richest countries have historically tended to grow faster than the poorer, at least for the last 250 years. This is what we would expect if technology is still on a rising curve. In which case, Britain could not only get into fast growth in days but at the top of the growth list if our government wished it. Which brings me back to my programme for growth.

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