Toby on Tuesday
‘Charity/Fatuity’
I though that this week I’d offer a modest proposal to our
Chancellor, George Osborne, as our public borrowing is now the second
highest of all OECD members at 5% of GNP, way ahead of the numbers for
Italy, Spain, Portugal, Mexico and even Greece, and still running at
close to £100 billion a year. Now above all else we really want to
live well with our neighbours, but the two ways to ensure that we fall
out with them are first to have an open door policy, with completely
uncontrolled coming and going, and second to share a joint bank account,
from which they can help themselves at will. That is why the whole
Euro project, which was designed to create goodwill between the nations
of Europe, has led only to mutual recrimination and mistrust.
Of course the same problem goes well beyond the shores of the
so-called “European Union”. At a time of pressing social need within
Britain, our net contributions to the EU budget and to the Overseas Aid
budget are both running at very similar levels of around £13 billion a
year and, as our economy grows, these figures are forecast to increase
to some £16-17 billion a year each by 2020. And both of budgets are
riddled with fraud and corruption. The EU budget has not been properly
audited for 19 years now and infiltration by the Mafia and criminal
gangs is endemic. As for Overseas Aid, much of this is simply stolen
or spent on schemes that are beyond parody.
Now we all know that David Cameron has declared that, other than
same-sex marriage, his proudest achievement is spending 0.7% of GNP on
Overseas Aid. So a sensible step at this time of immense pressure on
our public finances would be to include our net contribution to the EU
budget in our calculation of Overseas Aid. Together they currently
amount to some 1.4% of GNP at £26-27 billion a year. By reducing the
combined total to the internationally approved 0.7% of GNP figure, we
would meet this supposed obligation as a Permanent Member of the United
Nations Security Council while rebalancing our out-of-control public
spending. In economics there is something called the multiplier effect
by which public expenditure spent at home generates additional value
for the economy. Money disappearing abroad has a corresponding
negative effect.
So let’s spend more of our limited resources on our
own people and their needs, deny European crime syndicates and Third
World despots their funding and bring a degree of integrity back to our
public spending. And I offer this modest proposal to our Chancellor as
evidence that UKIP, now fully recovered from gaining only one seat in
May’s General Election despite winning nearly 4 million votes, is now
needed more than ever!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
“Out of the EU Into the World.”
This week I thought that I’d take a rest from Greece’s endless
trauma and write instead about something far more positive – old
friendships and especially UKIP friendships. Now on life’s journey we
are never blessed with more than a handful of close friends, but that
makes us value them still more. And I have been very lucky for a large
part of my life in having a completely trusted old friend, during good
times and bad, in William Dartmouth, MEP for the South-West and
Gibraltar, UKIP’s Trade Spokesman and Coordinator for the Europe of
Freedom and Direct Democracy Group on the European Parliament’s
International Trade Committee.
Our friendship started in the 1960’s at university, with all its
political and other dramas. A close family friendship followed and we
then both stood for Parliament as Conservatives. What really cemented
our friendship in the 1980’s was a shared perception that the
Euro-project was taking Britain in a direction that could ultimately
destroy it and since then, in our own ways, we have sought to prevent
this. During William Hague’s leadership of the Conservative Party, I
as his Constituency Chairman in Richmond and William as an active
Conservative peer in the pre-reform House of Lords, were both part of
the successful campaign to keep Britain out of the deeply flawed single
currency project. And we spotted David Cameron a mile off when he
became Conservative leader, both joining UKIP in late 2006/early 2007.
In 2009, William was elected as MEP for his home region in the
South-West.
Now in his second term, William has always concentrated on his trade
portfolio, which is his great interest. He has wisely sought to live
on excellent terms with everyone in the Party on the old premise that,
if you can’t find something good to say about someone, don’t say
anything. And his energy has been directed first at serving his
constituents, particularly over the European Arrest Warrant and the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and second on
campaigning for a Britain once more open to the world. Last year he
published his 90-page report, “Out of the EU Into the World.” His case
that “the UK does not need to be in a political union in order to trade
and other inconvenient truths” was set out with absolute clarity and
consistency, providing an invaluable resource in the run-up to May’s
General Election.
And William has just completed his “The Truth About Trade Beyond the
EU”. This spells out “the reasons why we would not be leaving any
markets when we leave the EU.” An abridged version of this will soon
be circulated throughout UKIP’s branches as part of our campaign for a
“No” vote in the EU referendum when it finally comes. Again, it will
be an invaluable piece of research and contains vital arguments in
support of our cause. It also underscores the fact that the most
valuable members of our party are often those who are the least
demonstrative, but instead work away patiently and quietly for UKIP.
Their role is to expose the great truths for which we are fighting in
the face of the mendacity and ruthlessness of those in the three old
parties who wish at all costs to promote themselves by destroying our
country. But with the support of UKIP members across the regions our
friends at the forefront of our party like William will prevail, as
indeed we all will!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
‘Three truths…’
I joined UKIP in 2006, when it became clear that David Cameron
intended to be a Conservative leader in the mould of Ted Heath. But
until then I had been active in the Conservative Party during good times
and bad. And from 1996 to 1999, while living in Richmond, I was
William Hague’s Constituency Chairman, giving unfailing support when he
became Party Leader in 1997 and for the two years afterwards. And the
understanding with his supporters on which the campaign for his
leadership was based was to rule out Britain’s entry into the euro for
the duration of a Parliament, the most that he could have reasonably
offered at the time.
Now, it is very easy to forget just how close William’s victory over
Ken Clarke in 1997 was. In the first and second rounds of the ballot
of MP’s, Ken Clarke had in fact been the winner. It was only in the
final round that William came through to take the prize. Had Ken
Clarke won, he would almost certainly have colluded with Tony Blair to
bounce Britain into joining the euro and we would now be just one more
bankrupt member of the failed Eurozone. On the rare occasions when I
saw William after joining UKIP in 2006, he was always his affable self,
no doubt looking at my defection as self-indulgence but never allowing
it to affect his dry humour. So it was with great personal interest
that I read his Daily Telegraph article last week on the Euro-crisis.
What he wrote was, “I remember being regarded as eccentric for
doubting the euro project. Now it has proved to be a monumental error
of judgment, analysis and leadership…In May 1998… I said that Joining
the euro would exacerbate recession in some countries, and that some
would find themselves trapped in a burning building with no exits – a
phrase that brought me a fair amount of controversy and abuse…I was
regarded around the EU as a rather eccentric figure, almost pitiable in
being unable to see where the great sweep of history and prosperity was
heading….There are three important truths for Eurozone leaders to
recognize today…The first is that this crisis is not the fault of the
Greek people…It is no good now expecting the Greeks to sit quietly in a
burnt out room of the burning building I described seventeen years ago.
This brings us to the second truth: that this is not a short term
crisis, but a permanent one, in which any temporary accommodation will
soon be overtaken by events… The third and final truth will be the
hardest one of all for those responsible for the euro to accept: that
this is not just about one country…the same tensions will ultimately
surface in other nations facing a less immediate crisis but a similar
prognosis…In future decades…I believe students will sit down to study
the folly of extending a single currency too far. Sad though it will
be to see it, their textbook is likely to say that the Greek debacle of
2015 was not the end of the euro crisis, but its real beginning.”
Released from the cares of office, William is now free to share his
insights as never before. I well remember the open contempt in which
he was held by the Clarkes, Heseltines, Howes, Blairs, Kinnocks and
Ashdowns of this world, who should now all be hanging their heads in
shame, just as I remember the dismissal of UKIP members as “fruitcakes
and loonies”. But we can all be confident that events have wholly
vindicated us. My hope now is that William will join that other former
Conservative statesman, the great reforming Chancellor Nigel Lawson,
and add his name to those campaigning for an “Out” vote in our
Euro-referendum. To pay some £20 billion a year gross and £13 billion
net, to open our borders to all comers and to hand our country over to
the architects of the Eurozone – now that really is eccentric. Which
is one thing that William, with his native Yorkshire shrewdness, never
is, whatever the Eurofanatics might once have thought!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
‘Vaulting Ambition…’
In ancient Greek drama “hubris” meant pride, the spirit of
arrogance and violence. And it led inevitably to “nemesis”, the gods’
punishment for “hubris”, as in “pride comes before the fall.” So it is
that the Eurozone’s overweening pride is now leading to its inevitable
fall. Last week I wrote about Channel 5’s “Conspiracy” series
(www.channel5.com/show/conspiracy) and my old friend Rodney Atkinson’s
account of the origins of the EU in Episode 1, “The Death of Hitler.”
You can find out more about Rodney on his website www.freenations.net.
For many years, he has developed his narrative in books, articles and
lectures, and he has taken his theme forward in his latest e-book, “And
Into the Fire: Fascist Elements in Post War Europe and the Development
of the EU.” It is available through Kindle for $3.13 and hopefully
before long will also be in hard copy form.
Now where Rodney differs from those who might in the past have been
described as Conspiracy Theorists is that he in fact has a deep
understanding of Germany from his time as a lecturer at the University
of Mainz. And in this respect, he differs little from his friend
Arthur Noble. Professor Noble, who is from Northern Ireland, is
Professor Emeritus of German at the Universities of Metz and Nancy. He
is therefore uniquely well placed to judge Rodney’s writing and of his
new book he has recently said, “Rodney Atkinson’s book is a brilliant
analysis of the Nazi background to the European Union and the Nazi ideas
and ideals which are at the heart of the EU today and are driving its
development. All freedom-loving people and democratic nations must
read this book as a matter of urgency. Current developments in Ukraine
with its Nazi-dominated putsch administration, together with the
contrived pro-fascist propaganda of the mainstream Western media, are
clear proof of the complete accuracy of Atkinson’s analyses and
predictions. Please read this book. The West has forgotten the facts
of history. You will regret it if you do not know what is really
behind the EU and what it is planning.”
Now, like most people I have always tried to be fair-minded and to
see both sides of any question. For this reason, I have until now
viewed Rodney’s insights as the outcome of a brilliantly logical mind
taking his ideas to their extreme conclusion. But having been
mesmerised by events in Greece in recent months, I wonder, I just wonder
whether Rodney might just have been right all along. What I do know
is that the EU’s “hubris” is leading rapidly to its “nemesis” and that
Greece will prove to be the catalyst – yet another word from the Greek
meaning “undo” or annul”!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
