The antidote to ideologies

REFERENDUM COUNTDOWN: How marginalising the Centre created a majority for Brexit

DON’T LOSE SIGHT OF THE BIG PICTURE THIS THURSDAY

The Remaindeers would have us believe that the referendum due to take place 48 hours from now is a simple In/Out decision in relation to the EU. It isn’t: ClubMed politicians, NATO strategists, central bankers and the unelected Hobgoblins issuing their diktats variously from the EC, eurogroupe and ECB….all the control freaks in all the sizes and all the colours will either be smug by Friday lunchtime, or the owners of disjointed noses. We will be voting against the fancy of ideologies, in favour of the facts of Life. It will either mark the beginning of liberal democracy’s fightback, or the end of the Citizen’s rights.

Trying to appear reasonable and balanced – while talking or writing completely unsupported ideological tosh – is a skill at which both Left and Right ideologists have excelled during this referendum. It isn’t long, of course, before their “activists” (aka zealots) give the game away by revealing exactly what kind of bilious, process-compulsive rentagobs are attracted to the Catechism of conformity they put forward as either The Natural Order of Things (Conservatives) or Progressive Thought (Labour).

I have a close chum and source of information (although mainly laughter) staying with me at present, and he has a healthy attachment to the phrase ‘Low emotional intelligence’. His point is that the systemic parrots of Left and Right – or indeed any controversial subject – have no idea how to engage and attract: they know only how to transmit, insist, and demand….and if that doesn’t work, they resort to personal abuse, threats, and all the other things that mafiosa and religious priests have fallen back on since Mayan times and – via the Spanish Inquisition and Witchfinders General through to Nuremburg Laws and Jihadist Islamism – well into the present day.

Their last resort is torture, and I’m bound to observe that reading some of the undigested projectile vomit put out by Cameron, Osborne, Benn, Harman, Corbyn, Johnson, Obama, Juncker, Duncan-Smith and various business pundits as ‘statistically verified fact’ has represented at times an excruciation more painful to the objective empiricist than anything The Rack could offer.

But torture is where such quasi-religious ideology ends. In the US most lately it was waterboarding, under Mao and Stalin it was sleep deprivation and testicular electric shocks respectively, and in the Third Reich they took it to the ultimate end: exterminating all the ‘vermin’ or ‘bacilli’ who retained an opposing view of Man’s destiny.

Thus, a favourite Left word is ‘scum’, while the term favoured by many Essex Toryboys is ‘numptie’.

These are merely contemporary words for ‘infidel’, ‘savage’, and Üntermenschen.

Yesterday afternoon, a cosmopolitan Athenian pointed me at one particular blogpost. It was a classic example of belief posing as certainty, of ‘we know best’ posing as ‘Isn’t it sad?’…but above all, of bigotry posing as balance.

You can find it here. And decide for yourselves whether my deconstruction of it is fair or not.

The blogsite’s author Matt Carr opens his cv by recording that ‘As a journalist, I’ve written for various print publications including The Observer, The Guardian, The New York Times…’.

Say no more: the quintessential Troika of Tribal Tosh worn as a badge of honour.

Matt began yesterday’s output with yet another Remain blogpost trying to pin the blame for Jo Cox’s slaughter on Brexit in general and UKIP in particular. The clue to his rigid Weltanschauung was in the title ‘Murder in Farageland’.

Here comes the “I’m jolly fair really” intro:

‘The brutal murder of Jo Cox has added a seemingly random note of tragedy and horror to this appalling, dispiriting and utterly venal Referendum campaign. And the brave and dignified words of Cox’s husband and sister have only shown us how low we have allowed ourselves to sink during this wretched process.’

Well said that man. And now for the bias:

‘Anti-intellectualism; complete disregard for evidence; hyperbolic denunciations of the EU coupled with an almost nihilistic indifference to the consequences of leaving; lies, prejudice; whining ‘ We want our country back narratives’ of national victimhood; the most rancid xenophobia, fear and racism – all these tendencies that were once considered un-British have become part of the poisonous and bitter debate that our feckless politicians have foisted upon us.’

Hmm. Let’s start with ‘complete disregard for evidence’ and then apply this to ‘hyperbolic denunciations of the EU’.

Which of these empirical observations about the EU, I wonder, represent hyperbole and/or disregard for evidence:

The EC, the eurogroupe, the EU and EC Presidents, and the negotiation committee for TTIP are completely unelected

Not one of the 28 EU member States or their senior political Executives or the European Parliaments will be consulted or asked to vote upon any of the TTIP proposals

The eurogroupe has inflicted upon the ClubMed States an austerity policy that would be rejected by the British Left as ignorant nonsense were it to be applied in the UK

Greece has been subjected to higher and higher levels of ‘bailout’ debt as a means to solve its already unrepayable debt problems. Meanwhile, Europarliament MEPs with huge conflicts of interest are personally involved in rewards for selling off Greek assets

The ECB has used its fiscal power with bondholders (twice) and Cyprus and Greece (once each) to deliberately subordinate creditors and pauperise functioning member States respectively

Mario Draghi two years ago delivered a lecture to member State Finmins on the importance of repressing the wages of EU workers

Brussels has a long and persistent track record of ignoring democratic referendums about policy

But Matt blunders on to “an almost nihilistic indifference about the consequences of leaving” among the Brexiteers. This enables him to ignore the bleedin’ obvious consequences of staying:

A flatlining eurozone utilising an inflexible currency unable to cope with the Nord/Sud European cultural mismatch

A burgeoning problem of migrants from beyond the EU that has thus far been handled with astonishing incompetence by both Brussels and Berlin

The still hopelessly indebted banking system of a Spain collapsing under political stasis and regional nationalism

The cloud of corruption and massive debt hanging over Italy

The unwillingness of the French syndicats and Right to move any further towards fiscal discipline and federal control of it from Brussels.

And finally, this outstanding piece of ex-cathedra assertion:

‘So the killing of Jo Cox was an act of political murder, and responsibility for it – as far as we know – belongs entirely to Mair, but that doesn’t mean that his crime took place in a vacuum. It took place during the extraordinarily febrile atmosphere of the referendum, when the nation is positively seething with fear and hatred towards the EU, towards foreigners, and towards refugees.’

Fear and hatred? Foreigners? Refugees who might be jihadists? Seething? This is agitprop nonsense unrecognisable to the overwwhelming majority of Brits….as is ‘narratives of national victimhood; the most rancid xenophobia, fear and racism….’

‘Rancid xenophobia’ aka justified fear of Islamic intolerance. ‘National victimhood’ aka fed up of paying £120bn per annum for the privilege of having a trade deficit. ‘Fear and racism’ aka rejection of childish scare stories and the ‘need’ for more immigration, when we are already the most overcrowded of the Top 4 EU economies.

The rest of it – if you can bear to continue – is a stream of paranoid conclusion-jumping and mind-reading designed to depict the British as a nation of Nazis:

‘We have allowed the likes of Farage to turn us into a morally shrunken nation from which the kind of courage and decency that Jo Cox demonstrated in her short career is becoming increasingly absent from our public life.’

I’m sorry, but Ms Cox expressed opinions that were standard mainstream Left-leaning dislike of all things Israeli coupled with adoring and undiscerning admiration for all things Palestinian and EU federalist. The last thing she deserves to be is dead as a result of holding those views. But courageous? That’s another consideration entirely.

The thing lacking among all British Left and Right commentators is the ability to critique their own tribe and its beliefs. There exists little or no questioning of neoliberal claptrap within the Conservative Party, and as little deconstruction of dialectical socialist Utopianism in the Labour Party.

Yet both are hopelessly out of step with their electorates: Tory MPs are 3-1 in favour of Remain, but the Party grassroots are 4-1 against; Labour MPs are 4-1 in favour of the EU, but their voters are leaking away to UKIP in vast numbers.

All of this is dreadfully unhealthy in a democracy. The method of dealing with the yawning mismatch, however, is to marginalise the majority. The Conservatives call naysayers Non Violent Extremists – an Orwellian term if ever there was one. Labour calls its lost generation (variously) fascists, racists and bigots.

Only the FPTP electoral system preserves their power….that and the donors who demand their loyalty to globalist superstate concepts. But those Labour radicals so insistent on forced equality are strangely silent when it comes to proportional representation.

Above all, none of them question the straight-line banal future of Big Power blocs so easily perceived and embraced by their leaderships. All of them turn a blind eye to bullying, serial illegality, and the inner contradictions of one currency for 17 entirely different users of it. Very few of them have bothered to venture beyond pernicious American and German invention on the subjects of austerity in general, and Greek dismemberment in particular.

I do not recognise Mattcarrland, or indeed its history. The vast majority of Brits have no idea what sanctimonious MetroLabour victims are on about: what they do know is that David Cameron and his Black Knights lied before the 2010 Election, lied about getting reform from the EU, and are now lying about the ‘consequences’ of Brexit. Equally important, they also know that the Upper class spivs and Highgate socialists are trying to persuade them of exactly the same thing: that a SuperState run by corrupt drunks, Goldman Sachs bankers, muddled politicians and idealistic fantasists is precisely what Britain needs.

This is the real dilemma the British Left refuses to face. Labour lost in 2015 not because of Tory electoral fraud (although that must be punished) but because first, they spat in the faces of everyone who tried to engage with them to create a united front against carpetbaggers; and because second, they peddled a warped ideology of little or no relevance to those now genuinely struggling to survive under the monetarist madness of Camerlot.

The Labour and Conservative élites have – in different ways but thanks to the same contempt for ordinary electors – set out to force their knackered ideological ‘solutions’ into a small box called Reality. To do this, it was inevitable that they would marginalise the Centre. Those in that central mainstream of open minds, disenfranchised utilitarianism, pauperised pensioners, swindled investors, overworked child-rearers and harrassed taxpayers have decided over the last three weeks, “Enough is enough”.

If the Tories must see us all as NVEs – and Labour dismiss us as whining Little Englanders – so be it: but with every such falsehood, more and more people are preparing to Vote Leave, with increasing levels of determination. Yes, we want our country back; we’d also like our honest representatives back, all the money removed from politics, and the Citizens returned to their sovereignty.

And we are not the only ones. A vote to secede from the EU in two days time will boost the Freedom Contagion that is already gathering steam. Europeans in Holland, Spain, Italy, France and Greece already have powerful secessionist movements. The fat controllers with their megalomanic dreams of Empire are on the retreat, and NATO strategists are eyeing this outburst of electoral truculence with narowed, hate-filled eyes.

I fear that a tectonically destabilising earthquake is almost upon us. But the fault line is moving not because sensible people want to move as far away from it as possible; it is moving because the Establishment Parties of the West have ignored its rumblings for the best part of forty years.

A broader perspective than the ideologically blinkered donkeys can manage is required in order to see the connections involved. Hungarian rejection of global colonialism, British rejection of a federal Europe, Sanders’ rejection of viciously financialised capitalism, the radicalism of British ‘Waspi’ pensioners, the violent resistance to US energy policies and growing distrust of NATO, the break-up of the United Kingdom, Spanish regional aspirations, the rise of Donald Trump….all of these are connected.

They all reflect that those ignored by élites have had enough of it. A sizeable movement is taking shape in the West: a group of largely law-abiding realists who refuse any longer to look up to those who look down on them. They will not be marginalised. And they will make that clear when Britain goes to the polls the day after tomorrow.

I do not doubt for a second that neither fanciful Labour superiority freaks nor Camerlot feudalists will be prepared to accept our decision. Well, that will be their funeral.

Cauliman
You seem to know what lies in store for us if we remain.
With due respect you are in for one hell of a shock and you will never have felt so deceived in all your life.
Good luck with the mortgage. You’ll need it.

My own belief is that the EU is dedicated to preserving old money and banking privilige, it is a covering front for the neo liberals. Hence you’ll find them battering the upstarts such as Google and Apple, Bill Gates is off message so Microsoft is hounded whilst bankers are merely sent to the naughty step. The EU is big on worker protections yet dedicated to reducing wages. This ensures only those deemed worthy of work will get it whilst the excluded will be pilloried for being workshy and poor.

There’s a book to be written about what the EU agenda actually is, as revealed by it’s actions, and until it’s written I don’t know how to vote. I suspect remain will win but the establishment will have a plan for any outcome. That’s how they remain the establishment.

Humanity needed to evolve past where we are economically but it has been held in place to keep it as it is. Any bright future or brave new world are all now blocked, you can have your trinkets of technology but the same banker setup will remain. Then as the work gets less and less, still they will persist with the concept of workshy etc. because they have no other place to put it although if if was wealth that is for the banks.

The one other point besides the lack of EU democracy is the nature of Cameron because the issues he has come out with over the last few weeks of scaremongering but what is the character of the man and how sound is his jusdgement.

Makes no difference deutchebank is in stuck and where all ECB efforts will be made to backstop euro 55 trillion in derivatives, 10 years of EZ GDP. So you walk headfirst into that with the message “all spare or created funds to TBTF deutschebank first”

Best out but next time build it with democracy and it could work but not this time round and if all else fails WW3 it will be.

‘I fear that a tectonically destabilising earthquake is almost upon us’
God, I hope so.
Although I wonder what the US would do in the event of ever increasing freedom contagion, it’s not what they have in mind, and they don’t settle for any less than 100% of their demands. The build up of weapons that have nuclear capability, (they only have to be re-programmed apparently, can be done without anyone noticing.) on the Russian border is truly worrying. One slip is all it will take for nuclear armageddon.
Again, the stakes have risen, they will top out before too long.

No negativity.
From my end my family, work colleagues the hairdresser etc are for the best part solidly behind leave.
Whatever happens the British people have woke up!
Things will never be the same again.
I know John is a pacifist but if in the end it may come to pitchforks and lanterns, and to my eternal shame I only properly woke up about 8 years ago. I want this to happen in my lifetime, I don’t want my Grandchildren to have too fought the good fight. Enough.

Excellent article JW, but once again marred by your own pro-Israeli predudice. “I’m sorry, but Ms Cox expressed opinions that were standard mainstream Left-leaning dislike of all things Israeli…” Cox may have had her faults, and her attack on Corbyn in the Guardian was indefensible, but you continue to push this ‘Labour hates Israel’ canard. She may have taken the easy path in supporting continued membership of the EU, but Cox certainly showed courage for expressing opposition to the criminal actions of Israel. One may merely examine the approbrium heaped upon Paul Flynn for highlighting the inappropriate decision to appoint a professed Zionist to the post of Ambassador to Israel, the hounding of Corbyn and the trumped-up allegations of ‘Labour Anti-semetism’ to confirm this. The recent dearth of Labour Party funding would certainly suggest that Cox’s stance was one of principle not expediency.

If the headline is right and the grassroots of the political parties are for EXIT, what then are we to make of the “too close to call” pools?
It raises the question as to the integrity and objective of the pooling companies. Monitor and manage public perception, hide the majority opinion against the establishment position.

Well, I’ve just learned that my registered proxy vote given to my brother to vote by postal vote, (he lives in another part of the country to my old constituency) cannot be cast. The postal proxy was never sent to him, (as claimed by the Electoral Registration Office in my call to them today). But I take comfort that my disenfranchisement is unlikely to be a singular event.

However “knife edge” the result, the press seem to be suggesting that Remain are roaring ahead, as I write. Whatever the outcome, most people have no idea what will come next, but I think it wont be pretty.

Gosh, it’s ever so difficult trying to be grown up in situations like this, isn’t it? I keep finding myself thinking: if someone handed me a snapshot of the EU as it is now (and I’m old enough to remember a world that was far from perfect but infinitely more liberated in a personal sense) would I find it in any way aspirational, or even likely to succeed? The rear-view mirror of history in my own lifetime tells me that, far from spreading prosperity and brotherly love, it is a project which has become both unaffordable and unworkable; any sense of doubt evaporates, and my conscience – because I really do have one – tells me that more of the same is not the answer. The EU is sinister and – if you’ll forgive the pun – it’s time we left.

@Hiero
The EU should not be the point of our frustration but our own Parliament which has conceded it’s sovereignty to Brussels. The whole point of this Referendum should not be only to withdraw from EU to re-assert those rights but to change our national constitution such that TPTB can never put us in this position again. Very much we v establishment. ‘We the people…….’

‘The thing lacking among all British Left and Right commentators is the ability to critique their own tribe and its beliefs. ‘

I’m not sure it’s the ability that is lacking. It is the ability to remain in one’s job. I was banned from ConservativeHome and the Daily Telegraph for taking to task some of the more vitriolic of the tribal rentagob bashing going on there. I believe I stimulated much constructive thought around Tory HQ about certain things. They can’t say it was due to bad language – the language they allowed through was far worse.

I was banned from the Guardian website for doing similar to left-wing rentagobs too. Most notably discombobulating the dissembling about climate change, which is a hanging offence at Chateau Rusbridger. I contributed rather constructively to the Citizens Manifesto for London co-ordinated by the Guardian Journo Dave Hill before being sent like Napoleon to internet Elba……the language of left-wing rentagobs makes it pretty impossible to ban anyone for imitating them…..

I don’t think professional journalists would continue drawing their £100k a year or whatever it is they get paid for being a rentagob if they decided to go ‘off message’……

I’m sorry ‘John’, you are definitely sounding more and more hysterical about all of this today and I can no longer see any balance in your arguments (especially as you leave out from your assessment of the EU all the negatives of the long history of ‘great’ British global misery, corruption and destruction that was wreaked in its name). When you start calling Cox a Jew hater and a Palestinian lover, you are especially reaching, if not going beyond, the pale in your unwarranted and now unconcealed biases.

My erstwhile deceased Spanish father-in-law, a man of immense equanimity and insight, an independent Senator in the first democratic government after Franco, who never trusted either the loony left or the fascist right that still haunt Spain to this very day, would be sad and disheartened at your wayward comments. Here in level-headed Scotland, I look on and wonder what you are talking about in your image of GB: as a tyke from Yorkshire for which no UK government ever gave a sh*te, I look over the border after 36 years to Little England and its lost empire, its empty remains tottering on the virtual reality of the corrupt London political/media/security elites, shackled by their ‘me-me’ banking Casino sitting on a debt larger than any in the EU, and realise that you definitely don’t observe the same country as I do from your distant Microsoft-blighted rural Shangri-la in France.

Like me, my father-in-law would have recognised the Franco-like country that England has become, kettle-wielding police militias repressing free speech, hi-fi-wifi surveillance and invasion of privacy everywhere, illegal-aid for the rich, demagoguery from the Aussie/US media, reign of fear, etc., etc., etc. Like the BBC World Service in his time, we now have the internet to search for the truth: sadly you are way out of line with all the other ‘alternative’ news media that I survey every day; the fact that you have been so “behind the flow” on the ‘mere Mair facts’ lately is very disturbing … but hey-ho.

Roll on Brexit and Scoxit and re-EUentrancement, and give me the EU mess any day rather than this xenophobic LittleEngland-centred “U”K where all the Leave F[a]ra[n]ge[co] clones would chuck out my charming ‘foreign’ wife, my ‘foreign’ EU granddaughter, my hard-working, poverty-wage Syrian son-in-law, and my destitute Somali refugee friend without hesitation as soon as Friday dawned in their favour (nae chance, wee men)!

On Thursday we decide once and for all the destiny of this Isle or do we!
Taking a remain vote first,i just don’t think that the actions of the EU will resonate with the peoples of the EU and has we see all across Europe discontent is growing,i don’t see the referendum a definitive vote for any action that are taken by the EU as a mandate!
I see Change! Anyway but since it’s unlikely to happen through the ballot box and therefore with a mandate from the people i see it being a very rocky road! With much of what i think will happen under britext happening anyway because as John points out people can’t be so easily conned any-more!

I believe this is why Labour have gone with the remain,i) they can unite alongside the disgruntled people of the EU! Creating a European wide response Ii In their eyes it statesman like to appear united not revolutionary iii Which may also buy a little media protection if not good will
So a remain vote is far from the end of the EU problems being solved in fact it may well make the disgruntled more focused and active!

Britext vote i see the conservatives voting in a ultra right wing government and i think people will soon realise that the problems we face are those of our own economic making and the Conservatives/bankers/powerful will have nowhere to hide!
We will have marshal law and the economy will collapse, it will become so unstable that money will fly out(the whole of Europe in the remain case)! As we fall into the market correcting itself,it just a shame those who could do such correction out of humanity always refuse to do it from a position of goodwill and good governance rather than forcing reactions because of poor governance and indifference

Hopefully We will end up with better economics better governance that is free from monied interest a parliament that is more representative and one that sits and debates far more than it does now!(But it could be so different) Where they come in not to debate but to pass lobbied policies and then back out to earn commissions and retainers for those they really work for!one that works for humanity! But i doubt it! Has Hieronmusb says it hard being grown up!
Acting like babies selfishly and tantrums is obviously much easier and safer????????? for humanity!!!

Cauliman we understand you perfectly,we acted the same for the same reasons ourselves,when we could have with foresight have stopped it in it’s tracks(but without the hindsight we now have). so the experience as taught me and i think others on here is that ,if we don’t act others will have too! do you want to pass the buck to your children for that is what we did!

Four kids and a mortgage? Good luvk with that inside a soon to be bankrupt EU with robotisation taking 30 percent jobs by 2020. You ll be scavenging with the Club Meds and ” Ossies” for peppercorn wage casual work.

Your only hope is the ” bennie boiler club” — if they re still paying them out by then.

I fit that description, but I’m voting leave and have already taken precautions against unknown knowns. Fixing my mortgage for 10 years for example. I’m voting leave so future generatiions retain the voice we have, its a diminishing voice that will either be extinguished totally post remain, or have a shot at revival post brexit.

Then again vote remain and confiscate the voice of future generations, just like we confiscated a decent education, free university, a shot at owning your own home, the list goes on. What risible ancestors we will be.

For better or worse it’s starting to look like a decisive Remain. Even Jeremy Clarkson is on board. If this is the case, there are going to have to be a lot of questions asked about the Leave strategy. Empirically, I know several people who were undecided a few weeks ago and are now firmly Remain.
It was always going to be tough to overturn the status quo but the Leave campaign seems actually to have alienated people who might have been sympathetic.

I wasted a little time on Facebook( hang head in shame) reading the comments to a post from Richard Branson saying remain. The overwhelming feeling was ‘clear off you rich git’; I really feel it is boiling up to an ‘Us versus Them’ moment, which the posh Becks add to…..
Here is one post that sounds more informed than the general melee, if I may copy and paste

” Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011 with EU grant.
Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013 with EU grant.
Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers pension funds.
Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia with EU grant.
British Army’s new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.
Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.
Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU grant, once employed 1,200.
M&S manufacturing gone to far east with EU loan.
Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along with the patents all with with EU grants.
Gillette gone to eastern Europe with EU grant.
Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with EU grant.
Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with EU grant.
Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.
Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.
ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs
Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.
JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU ‘regeneration’ grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK tax-payer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.
UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.
Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.
Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.
The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online.
Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it’s Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.
39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU
The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.

Anyone who thinks the EU is good for British industry or any other business simply hasn’t paid attention to what has been systematically asset-stripped from the UK. Name me one major technology company still running in the UK,., and now we don’t even teach electronic technology for technicians any more, due to EU regulations.

I haven’t detailed our non-existent fishing industry the EU paid to destroy, nor the farmers being paid NOT to produce food they could sell for more than they get paid to do nothing, don’t even go there.
I haven’t mentioned what it costs us to be asset-stripped like this, nor have I mentioned immigration, nor the risk to our security if control of our armed forces is passed to Brussels or Germany.

Find something that’s gone the other way, I’ve looked and I just can’t. If you think the EU is a good idea,
1/ You haven’t read the party manifesto of The European Peoples’ Party.
2/ You haven’t had to deal with EU petty bureaucracy tearing your business down.
3/ You don’t think it matters.”

If you think that the people here don’t see your comments as the sophistry which they plainly are, you are much mistaken. Even Herr Schaeuble is now talking about the need for major changes to the EU; whichever way the vote goes on Thursday, they know the ice is getting awfully thin. The UK is just the canary, large numbers of European citizens are making no secret of the fact that they feel the same way: Europe isn’t working.

EU policies have done real damage to our security of electricity supply:
To date, the EU’s various power station directives have forced the UK to close a staggering 16,000 MW of capacity. Fifty-year-old coal plants being paid tens of millions of pounds to stay on because replacements aren’t being built. Electricity prices more than double those in the US. Panic measures to buy in more and more foreign electricity. These acute failures in British energy policy go to the heart of the EU referendum debate. How can a country once heralded for its energy market liberalisation, its balanced electricity generating grid and comparatively low prices face such a crisis?

While the navel gazing in UK goes on (quite rightly, in my opinion) the Swiss Upper House has confirmed the parliamentary decision to withdraw the Swiss application to formally join the EU. Quite happy with the status quo. Do they know something that we do not?

JW could you please point out to me where in your article you stated that Jo Cox was a jew hater? Am I reading the same article that @Mike Harland was commenting on? In any case it is clear that @Mike Harland does not think the issue of sovereignty is worth a toss to him.

From Annie Dieu-Le-Veut’s
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE LATE JO COX MP AND HER HUSBAND, BRENDAN.

I’ve always believed that one should not speak ill of the dead – and especially someone so brutally murdered as was Jo Cox MP on Thursday. But when that dead person is being deified out of all proportion– rather as Princess Diana was after her death – by a mainstream media hand-in-glove with a prime minister who is desperate to create false hysteria in order to sway the most important decision of our generation – our vote in the EU referendum – then something has to be said, and it is this:

We’re being told what a truly, extraordinarily wonderful person Jo Cox was, because her life was devoted to helping refugees. I’m sure she was a very sweet person – her face shows that. But how wise and truly aware was she? Today, with her body barely cold, her husband Brendan Cox is tweeting out a Go Fund Me link to his wife’s ‘favourite causes’ and one of those is the White Helmets.

The White Helmets is not a charity, and neither are they ‘the good guys’ despite their white helmets. The White Helmets is the military propaganda arm of the Allies attempt at regime change by destabilising Syria – and this is exactly what is causing the refugee component of Europe’s migrant crisis in the first place.

The White Helmets also does not need our hard-earned cash. It is well-funded by George Soros’s organisations, the UK, the US and the Syrian Opposition Party in its work, which is mainly with the rebel group Jabat al-Nusra, the infamous al-Qaeda affiliate.

The White Helmets are represented PR-wise by Purpose whose co-founder Jeremy Heimans also helped to create Avaaz. Avaaz is a global “pro-democracy” group which has been accused of furthering the US/EU agenda in the Middle East and elsewhere. It is also Avaaz that it encouraging, on social media, a sort of hands-around-the-world show of sympathy for Jo Cox today.

The unvarnished truth is that what we had in Jo Cox, at the very least and to put it charitably, is someone who was so busy paving the road with good intentions that she didn’t look up to see that they were leading to Hell.

The Hell was only 11 miles from her own constituency, where white children were falling victim to a large Muslim paedophile ring – their presence in Halifax no doubt largely due to liberal and unrealistic sentiments like Jo’s, and others associated with NGOs like the White Helmets.

Added to that, tens of thousands of children have gone missing in Europe because of woolly-minded liberal NGOs encouraging mass migration and open borders, according to UNICEF. And then there is the phenomenon of Taharrush, public mass gang raping of European women by Muslim men.

According to Frances Carr Begby of the Occidental Observer, it looks as if Jo suffered from what is known as ‘selective compassion’.

“Jo Cox wanted to make the world a better place and it was a cause for which she was willing to travel halfway across the globe. Whether consoling rape victims in Darfur or bombed out villagers in Afghanistan, it seemed the jet-setting international aid worker was rarely far from the action.

“Lately it had been the struggle of Syrian war refugees to get to the West that touched her heart, and their plight was a subject she returned to again and again after becoming a Member of Parliament. It seemed there was no victims anywhere she could not empathise with.”

In her maiden speech to Parliament, Jo Cox said:

“Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration, be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”

On Thursday evening, the day that Jo Cox was murdered, reporting restrictions were lifted on the fact that a 13-man strong Muslim paedophile ring in Halifax was being sentenced to a total of more than 150 years at Leeds Crown Court. It was a good day for burying bad news.

The day before that, Jo and her husband Brendan and their two children were part of multi-millionaire Bob Geldof’s floating gin palace-led flotilla, on the Thames, from which, on behalf of Stronger In Europe, Geldof led a load of drunken oiks in haranguing and verbally abusing our out-of-work fishermen.

Brendan Cox had to resign from the charity Save the Children fund in November 2015 over allegations of behaving inappropriately with female members of staff. He denied the allegations, but left anyway.

In the same year, Save the Children USA presented Tony Blair with a ‘global legacy award’.

Now there are calls from a few over-sentimental types in Parliament for Brendan Cox to be ‘shoed-in’ to his wife’s safe Labour Batley seat. This would be totally undemocratic – according to the laws of this land. There has to be a by-election – but these people who benefit from the EU NGO gravy train have no respect for the democratic process or for what the rank and file, working class Brits think. They are tearing to shreds all our rights – and then they wonder why we don’t like them, and want to vote them out on Thursday.

As Morgoth’s Review brilliantly put it in The Jo Cox Murder and the Liberal Elite:

“The liberal classes, media and political, have an agenda which is objectively false and they will vilify and attack anyone who disagrees and attempts to push a counter narrative.

“The liberal classes are truly detested by a massive number of British people and they, the liberals, are unable to understand why …

“…The problem we face is that the liberal establishment are not just seen to be living in merely an ivory tower or bubble, but in a dark and sinister castle. The decrees and morality which they foist down onto the general population are not ‘humanitarian’ or in any sense morally justifiable; it is ill conceived lunacy at best, genocidal at worst.”

The Halifax Muslim child rape gang was just one of many now operating across the Labour heartlands of northern England that are, largely, being ignored or covered up by social services workers, police and politicians. At the Leeds trial, only 13 of the men were convicted, despite more than one hundred being arrested.

Bleeding hearts like Jo often don’t realise that it is their do-gooding actions which create far worse problems if the consequences are not properly thought through.

Was Jo silent on the children being abused because of the number of Muslims in her constituency? Or was her cognitive dissonance somehow connected to the political aims of one of her ‘favourite causes’, the White Helmets?

Whatever the reason, we need to prise off the white knuckled grasp of this unelected, EU-funded, do-gooding, unrealistic liberal elite from the helm of the ship of state, before they steer us into a whirlpool from which we will never escape. There’s only one way – we must vote Leave on Thursday.

Who counts the Votes for the EU Referendum? Surely not a Tory Remain Grandee!

Rosstradamus says “Never give predictions…. especially about the future!” …. but upon the eve of momentous forces abroad, especially evil forces abroad, in UK and from elsewhere ….. I venture a notion that whatever the Vote, it is bad moon rising for a while yet.

Leading expert of finance and economics Professor Werner writes on his blog:

The revelation that the EU is the result of a major US secret service operation – effectively just yet another secret creature of deception launched by the CIA (taking seat of honour in the hall of infamy that includes false flag operations, invasions, coup-detats, and the establishment of organisations such as Al Qaida and ISIS) solves the third mystery, namely how on earth the allegedly democratic European nations could design such an undemocratic, virtually dictatorial design. With the EU/United States of Europe the US not only achieves its geo-strategic goals in Europe, but it has also eliminated the role of pesky national parliaments that could on occasion get in the way of US or CIA foreign policy. And another puzzle is solved, namely why the EU had so readily agreed to a US request a few years back that US spy agencies get access to all European emails and telephone calls….

A vote to stay in the EU thus is a vote to abolish the United Kingdom as a sovereign state and merge it into the undemocratic United States of Europe which the European elites are building under US tutelage. That the European public – and, it seems, even European politicians – have little or no input in key European decisions can be seen from the increasingly aggressive NATO stance against Russia (Brussels-based NATO being the military arm of the EU, which is overtly under direct US control), and the one-sided sanctions against Russia that the US could simply order the Europeans to implement (causing significant losses in incomes and jobs in Europe, while boosting US business interests). Immigration policies are another case in point. If the US had in the past considered the largely homogeneous European populations a source of potential European resistance against its plans for Europe, then the policy to replace them with balkanised failed ‚melting pots‘ also makes sense.

@Cauliman…… if you think there is any assured KNOWN about remaining in the EU, you are going to be in for a nasty shock. Have you not heard what they have coming down the line for us? And its likely to be far worse than even that……

Canexpat
If you can only disagree with someone by telling them they’re prejudiced, I suggest you join the Labour Party.
Go to NW Israel and watch Hamas lobbing scuds in. My simple view is this: they’re as bad as each other. I don’t call ‘a plague on both their houses’ prejudice: I call it part of my loving, pacifist and even-handed nature.

Mike Harland.
I took the trouble to go back through all your comments since 2012 last night. You have made just one (1) halfway positive comment in that time….from thirteen different IP addresses.
In this thread alone there are three misattributions, two invented facts and five personal insults.
Either you’re an obsessed amateur, or a paid troll. I’ve no idea which, and frankly I don’t care.
All I CAN say is that you need help, and so I’m your man….here’s your ten bob demob suit, close the door on your way out.

Somebody out there in Slogland has to come up with the answer as to which company or entity is really contracted to count our EU Referendum Votes…… Just thinking, it was that well known and venerable creator of Military Stuff, Lockheed USA, that our lickspittle UK Government contracted to manage the last UK Census, despite Lockheim ( Clue? ) never having done such a task before!!! Most Sad? The t is irrelevant? Agreed, a very heavthanded bash to ask Sloggers to investigate? Something has to break asap.

I suggest that you read what I wrote more carefully. I did not counter your arguments by saying that you are prejudiced, I cited evidence that your contention that Cox lacked courage in her support of Palestine was questionable at best. I do maintain, however, that you seem to have the unfortunate habit of writing a superb article on an unconnected subject but manage to slip in some pro-Israel/pro-Zionist comment that is often unsubstantiated by the facts. Whether this is your blanket assertion that the ‘Left’ is somehow ‘anti-semetic’ by nature, that the Gaza flotilla was carrying arms to the Palestinian resistance, or that AIPAC is so insignificant in the U.S. political system that they do not merit a mention. I have been a reader and supporter of the Slog for several years now, but like most who read this blog, I do like to have evidence to back up assertions. Where we differ I suspect, is that I do not think that both sides in the I/P conflict are equally to blame for the suffering of the ordinary people of the Levant – I do believe the European immigrants to Palestine have acted abominably towards the native population and yet the pro-Israel lobby is so well entrenched and powerful in almost every aspect of public life in the West that the pro-Palestinian narrative is routinely suppressed. I’m afraid I do object when someone who writes so powerfully, is so well versed in geopolitics and whose ethics I admire, reinforces this information imbalance.

Does a lot of what appears here be applicable to France and if so should it be translated? Then should it be hosted out of Europe and under some other name?
Alternatively, are there French sites which are active in examination of the EU condition which would make any such action unnecessary anyway?

It does appear that many in France are unhappy and it does not take too much to express themselves

Just like to say that as per usual this blog post was very good. But some of the comments and links were exceptional. Thanks to all who posted. And another hallelujah for the Harlon demise… wasted my time a few times now reading his piffle.

The Scottish Mail on Sunday reports that Scotland will have to leave the EU along with everyone else in the UK, and can only reapply as an independent state. There would be conditions such as having to adopt the Euro and establishing border controls with England.