VIVAT REGINA ELIZABETHA!

Age shall not wither her, nor stain her infinite variety.  

  

Queen Elizabeth celebrates the
sixtieth anniversary of her coronation
on 6th June. Her matchless performance 
of selfless dedication to the nation are
indeed a reminder of the value of the
hereditary principle.

In these troubled times, the Queen
symbolises the value of continuity
provided by a constitutional monarchy,
untainted by the rough trade of politics.

Since the time of Magna Carta, the
paradox of our royal dynasty co-existing
with the progressive, democratic rights
of man has always defied rationality.

However, what is clear to everyone,
except the republicans, is that the
monarchy is a unifying influence,
promoting harmony in our complex,
multi-cultural communities, which
reflect the global reach of Britain's
imperial past.

We gain immeasurably from an
unpoliticised head of state.Those who
say otherwise should be careful of
what they wish for.

Queen Elizabeth: age shall not
wither her, nor stain her infinite
variety.

A COALITION OF COMPROMISE



Policies are not necessarily formed in the cerebral cortex.

The Chancellor's travails over how to
squeeze more from less in the public

sector reminds us that when sorrows

come they come not as single spies

but in battalions.

Each Tory compromise to appease 

Nick Clegg increases the muddle and 

likelihood that Ed Miliband and those

all too familiar names that spell disaster

will form the next government.

This they will hope to do with the

possible support of the potentially

politically promiscuous rump that is

the Liberal Democrats.

Polling just 11% in opinion polls, it's

a case of the tail wagging the dog, of 

George Osborne attempting to achieve

the impossible with one hand tied

behind his back.   

The daily confusion that is damaging

the Conservatives and the country

comes from inconsistencies that can

arise in a political marriage of

convenience.

It is a coalition that is beginning to

resemble a pantomime horse, with

policy and strategy formed not in

the cerebral cortex, but more at the

rear end.

ECONOMY - ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Liam Byrne - "There's no more money..."

George Osborne's task of balancing
the Government's books by seeking

a further 10% reduction in

departmental budgets is made even

more difficult by those within, who

are hostile to the concept of a

right-of-centre government and the

free market economy. 

As one former Labour minister

revealed, there was collusion

between Labour ministers and civil

servants to get as many contracts

as possible signed off before the

last general election. Its success

in achieving this can be summed

up by a note left by former Labour

minister, Liam Burn, to his Coalition

successor; 'There's no money left,

it's all gone'. It certainly had - an

annual surplus in public finances

when Labourtook office in 1997

becoming an annual deficit of

over £170bn by the time of the

election in 2010.  

Vince Cable also remarked " I

fear that a lot of bad news has

been hidden and stored up for the

new government." The £38.8bn of

waste identified could have been

just one example of the many fiscal

elephant traps set by union-financed

Labour to ruin the Coalition's

economic policy in the lead up to

the 2015 election.

It is, of course, quite possible that

such a mindset is part of a wider

pattern with regard to the leaders

of other groups, whose unrealistic

pay demands are manifestly not in

the national interest, but part of a

political strategy.

There are those on the Left who call
for legal accountability for the
directors of publicly-quoted
companies. This clearly already
exists under the Companies' Act
and the penalties are severe,
unlike in the public sector, where
there are no such sanctions.

APPOINT ON MERIT, NOT QUOTAS

Feminists who periodically raise the of
female quotas in senior appointments might
well ask what Margaret Thtcher's viewa
would have would have been on positive
discrimination, gender quotas, all-female
shortlists.The answer to the feminist lobby
from the greengrocer's daughter from
Grantham would, of course, have been
entirely unequivocal. She was the
ultimate role model of what can be
achieved by anyone, man or woman,
from any background, through applied
intelligence, determination and clarity of
vision.

Those who think otherwise often point to the

so-called glass ceiling, which can be an

expression of a desire for preferment on the

grounds of gender, rather than merit. Such a

notion does not bear scrutiny in these

challenging economic times when talent,

wherever it exists, is the most critical

determinant for restoring the country's

fortunes.

As Mrs Thatcher remarked "Remember,
everything is achievable if you work hard
at it." - a sentiment with which the record
number of women who are being appointed
to Britain's boadrooms would doubtless agree.

POWER CORRUPTS......

Nothing succeeds like success, nor                   

apparently does failure, if the obscene

pay-off with a £1.9m pension to Sir
David Nicholson, the failed head of the
NHS and former communist is anything
to go by. And while failure has always been
part of the human condition, failure in this
case is of a wholly exceptional kind.

The future for the 500 patients whose
lives were cruelly cut short by neglect and
incompetence is no more, their grieving
relatives unable to comprehend the deaths
of their loved ones at Stafford Hospital.

However, not so that for the one on whose
watch this nightmare was allowed to
happen. Undaunted by shame, Sir David
will collect a substantial lump sum and an
index-linked pension of a reported
£100,000 a year, having decided a time
of his own choosing to stand down.
Then, in common with colleagues who
have also left the hospital under a cloud,
he will doubtless be open to highly-paid
job offers and lucrative consultancy work.

At the same time, his wife, Sara-Jane
Marshall, a 34 year-old, former intern in
his office, will continue in her post as
chief executive officer at Birmingham
Children's Hospital on a salary of
£155,000 a year. It as been reported that
she was recommended for the position by
Sir David.

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, defends
the indefensible by saying that Sir David
Nicholson has been worth every penny, given
that his job has been incredibly complex and
difficult. Yet he has always had a reputation
for staying calm and maintaining a relentless
focus on what makes a difference.

As the Francis Report showed, at Stafford
Hospital it was a story of appalling
suffering. It happened within a culture
of secrecy, defensivenness and
performance targets. This was not
compassionate healthcare. It was a regime
devoid of humanity for which the head of the
NHS knows no shame. It was an intimidating
atmosphere of gagging orders and threats,
which hid the awful catalogue of events at an
institution that was rotten to the core.

The events at Stafford Hospital are thought
to be just the tip of the iceberg of what is
happening in the NHS. In Britain's
increasingly secular society, the NHS,
which employs more people than the
Red Army, is the nearest thing we have to
religion. It is based on the myth that infinite
demand can be funded from finite resources.

However, the NHS is not the only part of
the public sector where there is a serious
lack of accountability and a political elite
ignores the concerns of ordinary citizens.
It happened, for example, when a million
people marched on Westminister over
Tony Blair's decision to invade Iraq on
the strength of a fraudulent dossier.

It was a similar story when the Labour
Government conspired to flood the country
with immigrants, in order to make Britain
an increasingly multi-cultural society
and improve its electoral chances.

A 2012 independent panel report on the
Hillsborough football disaster in 1989
when 96 people lost their lives and 766
were injured, revealed incompetence and
a total lack of accountability.There were
multiple failures by medical, emergency
services and public bodies, details of
which were kept from grieving relatives
and the public.

The BBC is a series of apparently self-
governing fiefdoms. It extracts some £3.5bn
a year from viewers under threat of
imprisonment if they do not pay the £148
annual licence fee. It has admitted that it
is politically biased and, as recent events
have shown, is a corrupt organisation,
broadcasting repeats and increasingly
inferior programmes.

Millions are squandered in the true,
unreformed, nationalised industry
tradition. Mediocre senior executives
receive outrageous golden goodbyes
and the public is powerless to change
an institution that is manifestly
unaccountable, protected by Royal
Charter.

It has just been reported that the BBC
has now discontinued a digital archiving
project, which would not have been fit
for purpose. They have said sorry for the
£100m write-off.

For over three hundred years, since the
abolition of the Star Chamber, the Fourth
Estate, has held governments to account
on behalf of the citizen. But this could be
about to come to an end, if the draconian
recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry
are implemented. This would be an end
of free-speech as we have known it, with
newspapers facing bankruptcy for
publishing that which the public has a
right to know.

THE EYES HAVE IT

The description 'swivel-eyed loons',

by an unamed source close to the

Prime Minster, directed at grass-root            

Conservatives, should not be

considered an insult. It was merely a

patriachal term of tolerance,

endearment almost, used by those who

are actually running the asylum at

Number 10. It refers, of course, to the

diminishing number of activists who

knock on doors in all weathers and

raise money to support the Party, but

apparently lack the intellect to

understand why David Cameron has

broken so many promises.They seem
increasingly to think that the Party he leads
has ceased being the Conservative Party,
becoming instead a kind of political theatre
of the absurd. The irony would certainly
not have been lost on another Feldman,
the late Marty Feldman, the great comedian.

MASCULINITY IN CRISIS

The somewhat perplexing narrative of        

the feminist Diane AbbottMP's lecture

this week in London at Demos about the

crisis of masculinity calls for a multi-
faceted re-definition of what makes a
man.

Feminism has and continues to re-define
the identities of young, mainly working-
class men, to whom Ms Abbott refers. In                 
doing so, middle-class followers of the
feminist movement have successfully 
skewed society to reflect their own,
continuing, Marxist, anti-male agenda.

Endemic since the 1980s, it is a process
that has been given added impetus by
accelerating economic and social change.
It has happened at a time when Britain has
been transformed from an industrial to
a mainly service economy, where
different, 'soft' skills are in increasing
demand.

The result has been the greater
empowerment of women in the
workplace over the past fifty years.
They have benefited from improved
educational opportunities and the
ability to control their fertility. It has
meant growing financial independence
from men, not only for those in work,
but also for young, single mothers who
have been prioritised for housing and
receive attractive state benefits.

Along with this has been the changing
perception of what is meant by a
nuclear family. It is a complex and
fluid picture. Marriage continues
to decline with 42% of marriages
ending in divorce. Serial monogamy
and cohabitation between single-sex
couples are common.

Gone is much of the stability and
certainty of family life in the 1950s.
In its place are more fragmented
environments, often devoid of the
influence of paternal role models,
which are so important in the
development of the male identity.

Feminist opinion-formers in
politics, education, and especially
in the media are not seeking a
comapact between the sexes, but
female preferment, in the form
of positive discrimination. The 
impact of the corrosive influence 
that the feminist lobby has had on
female attitudes to men has been
profound. 

In education, where only 12% of
primary school teachers are male,
the predominantly female culture 
cannot, nor in many cases would
it seek to, encourage the
development of the male identity
as such. Female characteristics are
seen as good, male as bad. Many
male graduates are put off teaching
by the threat of being falsely
accused of improper behaviour, the
consequences of which are often 
devastating.

Gender bias continues into
secondary education. Some ten
years' ago, Jenny Murray, presenter
of the BBC Woman's Hour, asked
a guest why boys outperformed girls
in GCSEs. She was told that boys 
responded better to the pressure of
an examination, whereas girls
preferred coursework. 

Murray's reply was that if that was
the system, then change it. It was
and the result of less rigour has
undermined the credibility of the
examination system in schools and
further up the learning process in
higher education.

This creates the backgound for the
the root causes of many of the chronic
social problems relating to young
men that Diane Abbott highlights. 
They leave school with inferior
qualifications, poorer job prospects
and face unemployment. Dismissed 
as potential husbands, fathers and
providers by young women who are
supported by the state, they feel
unwanted and express growing anger. 

Greater tolerance in society for
generalised 'men are useless'
statements, jokes, advertisements
and so on, than would be used to refer
to any other group, reflects a situation
for which there is an increasing
human and economic cost.

A significant cause of the problem
that society has with its young men
is, as Ms Abbott states, their bleak
environment. However, setting aside 
the various red herrings she throws
into the mix, in order to justify her 
thesis, a key factor is overlooked: the
role of feminism in creating that
environment. 

The Labour MP and misandrist
should be calling to re-establish a
more 'multi-faceted' notion of what
makes a feminist, one that seeks
equality and harmony in humankind,
not conflict between the sexes 



John Barker, MA, accepts commissions
to research and write articles on business,
economics and politics, together with
market research reports. Contact:Email:
executiveprofiles@btconnect.com