The Big Reset
The Tories are planning to reset the economy when we get the Coronavirus under control. We don't know how much damage has been done to our infrastructure, or how long it will take to get back to normal, but we have borrowed an extra £350 billion, on top of our £2 trillion National Debt. The exact figures don't really matter because nobody understands sums greater than £1 million; the price of a flat in central London. The last time that we were in this much debt was in 1945, after six years of war. Fortunately, we were saved by American and Canadian loans that we finally paid back 61 years later in 2006.
Every penny that we borrow to fight the current pandemic will have to be paid back. So-called Quantitative Easing only works with a dynamic economy like the United States, otherwise it's simply money printing which always leads to runaway inflation.
An individual facing bankruptcy is offered a payment plan that helps him to pay back what he can afford. We, as a nation, need the same consideration. Chancellor Rishi Sunak knows that austerity is not the answer. We tried that after the financial crisis of 2008 but it took us ten years to recover. He also recognises that he can't tax workers who are already underpaid.
Our recovery will be a gradual rebuilding of the economy. The first thing we have to do is to face reality. We are a post-imperial European country with an economy comparable to France and Germany. We are not a great world power with a fleet that rules the waves. We once boasted: "We don't want to fight but by jingo if we do, we've got the ships, we've got the men, and we've got the money too." Those days are long gone but jingoism persists in the right wing of the Tory Party.
Boris Johnson is sending troops to Iraq to fight a resurgent ISIS, promising to build more atomic warheads, and dreaming of building a £ 20 billion fixed link from Scotland to Northern Ireland. His previous construction projects, an island airport in the Thames Estuary and a Garden Bridge in London, never materialised.
The Big Reset should be psychological rather than economic. We must stop pretending to be a superpower like America. We can take pride in our National Health Service, our universities, and our scientific achievements, but we must forget about threatening China or sending troops to the Middle East.
The Tories talk about 'levelling up' but any movement they make will be downward not upward. They have started by offering NHS workers an insulting 1% rise. With inflation at 1.5% this amounts to a pay cut.
Those working class constituents in the North and the Midlands who voted Tory for the first time at the last general election can congratulate themselves. They have returned a government that calls out China for human rights abuses but defends Israel for doing the same things, that promises to get rid of red tape but tears up health and safety legislation and workers' rights instead, that allows mass migration from Africa and Asia, and enforces 'emergency measures' to ban free speech and assembly. All of this is supported by the right wing press and ignored by an ineffectual Labour Party opposition.
The asset strippers, loan sharks, crooks, and speculators are free to plunder at the moment but greedy children always go too far and so do greedy capitalists. When they have robbed our country of its last penny they will move on to pastures new. Then we can build a fair society where hard work is rewarded. That may sound far-fetched but with empty high streets, closed factories, and rising debts, that day may not be far away.
Space Exploration
When I was a lad I read the Eagle comic and marvelled at the exploits of Colonel Dan Dare, the Pilot of the Future. I was sure that Britain would conquer space. In fact, our rocket, Blue Streak, was built in 1957 but scrapped in 1960 because it was just too expensive. It was a military project designed to deliver nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union but it was also a potential space rocket. In 1962 Harold MacMillan's government bought the American Polaris system.
The first man in space was the Soviet cosmonaut Colonel Yuri Gagarin who orbited the earth once in Vostok 1 in April 1961. This upset the Americans who rushed to get their astronaut, Alan Shepard, into space a month later.
The first Briton in space was Helen Sharman a 27 year-old scientist who travelled to the Soviet Mir space station aboard Soyuz TM 12 in 1991. At this time the Cold War was still going strong, with the Soviet Union fighting in Afghanistan against Muslim rebels supported by the West. As a result, Helen Sharman's achievement was largely boycotted by the UK media and she never got the recognition that she deserved.
The next Briton in space was NASA astronaut Michael Foale aboard STS-45 in 1992. He was the only astronaut to visit both Mir and the International Space Station.
And the third Briton in space was Major Tim Peake who travelled to the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-19 on behalf of the European Space Agency in 2015.
We have left the European Union but we still belong to the ESA, although some of the anti-European fanatics in Boris Johnson's camp would like us to pull out. They have already forced our withdrawal from Galileo, the ESA satellite navigation system, after investing £1.2 billion in the project.
When the Coronavirus pandemic is over and the economies of Britain and the EU are back to normal, we can return to space exploration. It's mankind's destiny to reach for the stars, but the cost is too much for the UK on her own. That's why we must co-operate with our fellow Europeans. Space exploration is not a luxury that we can do without. It's a vital part of scientific research that we must be involved in. The space industry was worth £14 billion to the UK economy before the current crisis. Britain has always been in the forefront of science and this is no time to stop.
Trump and Johnson - Eric Galati of the Friends of Willis Carto
(This is part of an e-mail from Eric Galati commenting on my suggestion that Trump and Johnson are alike)..
I haven't any knowledge of Americans giving their support to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. There must be some, but he's just in my eyes a blowhard prat of a slob. He hasn't anything similar to President Donald John Trump. The difference is that Prime Minister Johnson is well ensconced in a Deep State Secret Government existence. President Trump wasn't but one man alone cannot do it all. Far too many looked at his election as if it was Italy 1922 and Germany 1933. These unfortunate are not culturally well-grounded and have a limited intellect, hence their anti-historical vision. The coup d'etat against President Trump began from the very beginning with Republicans and its first overt source was the Congress respectively led by Speaker of the House Representative Paul Ryan and United States Senate Majority Whip Federal Senator Mitch McConnell. You might very well know that it was on the Republican side that a contract was made with Fusion Global Positioning Service to find scandalous dirt on Mister Donald John Trump during the primaries. Unlike Mister Boris Johnson, he was by default a catylist for an awakening of a political conscious in persons of all levels of life, who never cared at all about giving any serious thought about the political, and of bringing out of whatever ambient they came from militants of both the Left and the Right. The former I have designated Neo-Bolsheviks, a term now used by a number of persons thanks to my making it clear that to call this satanic scum Fascist Left is philosophically mistaken. Another difference between Trump and Prime Minister Johnson, is the active antagonism, hatred which I have never known in my life time against an elected politician , and without a doubt active espionage against him. Unlike Johnson he was anti-Global Existentialism.
Allow me to give you two more examples of the activity against Trump on two levels, military and Conservative mainstream media: at a Freedom Seminar hosted by Doctor Ron Paul, one of the speakers was United States Army Colonel Douglas Abbot MacGregor. He revealed that when a few years ago four aircraft carriers with one hundred thousand troops were sent to the Persian Gulf. Nevertheless it was not reported that Trump knew nothing of this and immediately called them back. He was very pro-Israel yet the mainstream media never showed a speech he gave in I believe 2019 about the Plight of the Palestinians. The Conservative radio and television host, Mister Chis Salcedo played it while commentating his dislike of it and alluding to it causing Jew hatred. Mister Baillie, the presidential elections were stolen and this is a fact. Second, I am deeply angry that he did not go to his death accepting the chalice, and pardon Messrs Julian Assange and Edward Joseph Snowden. Unforgiveable even though I know the warning Federal Senator Chuck Schumer gave him upon his being elected that if Trump thinks he's going to go against the Intelligence Agencies he better realise that they have seven ways to Sunday to handle someone. No he was very different to Johnson.
The West and the world are in very bad dire straights. And it's going I believe to get worse. I know there is a Technology of Evil from the top running this whole diabolical show. My belief coincides, finds its comliment, with these words by Mister Pier Paolo Pasolini.
"I know the names of those responsible for the slaughter. I know the names of the powerful group. I know the names of those who, between one mass and the next, made provision and guaranteed political protection. I know the names of the important and serious figures who are behind the ridiculous figures. I know the names of the important and serious people who are behind the tragic kids. I know the names and all the acts (the slaughter, the attacks on instructions) they have been guilty of. I know: But I don't have the proof. I don't even have clues."
Changing Times
The Coronavirus pandemic has revived calls for identity cards to record vaccinations. And, as expected, the 'libertarians' are up in arms at the prospect. Never mind that they carry credit cards, debit cards, driving licenses, oyster cards for travel, security passes for work, and passports to travel abroad. The last time that ID cards were discussed they cried "Big Brother" and claimed that there was something un-British about them. But if we want to control immigration, and help the police and the health authorities we must have ID cards.
Cards recording your Coronavirus vaccination are already issued by the National Health Service.
People do not like changes to their daily routine but modern technology is unstoppable. Most people now use debit cards for their shopping which is making coins and notes redundant. My mother used to use the post office to pay her bills. She would join the queue at the post office counter with her utility bills and a purse full of money. Nothing was bought online. You would visit a shop, make your purchase and, if it was too heavy to carry, you would pay extra to have it delivered. How much easier it is today with your bills paid by direct debit and your shopping bought in a supermarket or ordered online to be delivered the next day.
The other great reform that's long overdue is proportional representation. Our first-past-the-post system doesn't allocate seats in parliament fairly. Under a PR system the Greens and the Liberal Democrats would have far more seats and the Tories would not have an absurd 80 seat majority.
The only hope for minority parties is PR, but when we had a referendum on the subject the so-called far-right parties campaigned to keep first-past-the-post. They are also against identity cards and far from embracing electronic payment, they want to bring back pounds, shillings and pence, as part of "our ancient weights and measures,"
Now that we have left the European Union some of the Brexiteers are trying to bring back the avoirdupois system but nearly all of the countries that they hope to trade with are completely metric. China, India, Australia, New Zealand and Canada don't understand pounds, ounces, pints or miles. Only the United States uses the old system but they are supposed to be changing and their armed forces and scientific community already use the metric system. We use a confusing mixture of old and new. We buy our fuel in litres but record our distances in miles. And we measure temperatures in degrees Celsius, except for the Daily Mail which clings to the Farenheit scale.
There are many traditions that are worth defending, such as Habeus Corpus, free speech, and universal health care, but outdated systems have no place in modern Britain. Let's complete the process that started in 1849 with the first coining of the Florin, which was one tenth of a pound, and while we are at it, let's dump the first-past-the-post electoral system, and introduce proper identity cards. We live in changing times.
There are many people on the far-right who blame change on the Frankfurt School, a group of left-wing academics who influenced politics. There is no doubt that they existed or that they set out to make changes in society, but most of the changes that they are held responsible for would have happened anyway, and very few students nowadays have even heard of them. Once slavery was abolished it was inevitable that the black people would seek education and advancement. Modern methods of production enabled people of all races to escape from poverty. It was not Karl Marx but Henry Ford who changed the world.
"We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share our ideas with
