BRITAIN'S NEW ROLE

Dean Acheson in a speech that he gave at
West Point in 1962, famously stated that
Great Britain having lost an empire had
not yet found a role. It followed Britain's
last fling of the imperial dice in 1956 with
the aborted anglo-French invasion of the    
Suez Canal.

Half a century later, a new role for
Britain has been in the making. It
reflects the cultural osmosis that
has occurred between Britain and the
fifty-three sovereign states of its
Commonwealth. But forget the
English language, rule of law and
parliamentary democracy
bequeathed by British Empire to
countries around the world. These
are mainly of historical, rather than
contemporary significance.

Not so the more unfortunate legacy
of empire: that of guilt in the minds
of those who run Britain, guilt which
has an undue influence in defining the
UK's role in the world today. It is far
removed from empire, almost
apologising for its past, to one of
mass immigration, squandered
foreign aid and subjugation to a
corrupt, unaccountable and largely
bankrupt EU.

The guilt of empire has characterised the
mission of successive governments. It has
been to pursue lofty, domestic global,
social aspirations, supported by mounting
national debt, sluggish growth and
quantitative easing. Money produced
out of thin air for which there will be
a heavy price to pay in inflation.

The UK fiscal deficit is currently
£120bn, accelerating partly as
a result of 2.5m unemployed. The
Government is currently advertising
800,000 positions at EU job-centres.
Applicants are entitled to taxpayer-
funded expenses for attending
interviews in the Britain and employers
given £1,000 for each person taken on.
Annual national debt interest is now
roughly equal to the amount spent on
defence.

A world of economic fantasy has been
created, in order to pay for the things
that we simply cannot afford, both
for the inhabitants of Britain and,
seemingly, the world. For example, the
NHS - described as the global health
service - with a ring-fenced budget of
£130bn, is on the verge of collapse.

The annual health budget is increasing
at the rate of over 4% while NHS
inflation is running at 7%. Annual
savings of £50bn will have tobe made
by 2020, which points to armageddon.
This is against the background of
increasing longevity, an explosion of
obesity, incompetent political and
operational management, together
with the cost of new advances in
healthcare

Labour's clandestine policy of
allowing 4m foreign nationals to
settle in Britain - Europe's most
densely populated country - has put
intolerable pressure on the social
infrastructure. It is a case of infinite
demand and finite resources, right
across the piece.

In addition to escalating demand for
healthcare, by 2014 there will be a
250,000 shortfall in primary school
places. Many will be for children for
whom English is not their first
language.

There will be a shortfall of 1m in
affordable housing by 2021. The
ongoing consequence of rising
homelessness is the appearance of
immigrant shanty encampments
spreading from inner cities to rural
areas, changing the countryside
and creating a serious health risk.

Thomas Paine, a leading architect
of the US Constitution, wrote of The
Age of Reason. Future historians will
surely view the present as the age of
madness. It is one from which we shall
only emerge when reality imposes its
discipline on a continually expanding
State, which cannot for much longer
defy the economic laws of gravity.






John Barker, MA, accepts commissions
to research and write articles on business,
economics and politics, together with
market research reports.

executiveprofiles@btconnect.com

LOTTERY TICKETS

Briefly, on a lighter note before my
ten-day break: a couple of my
acquaintance will not buy lottery
tickets because they cannot agree
on what to do with a big win.

One solution that I have suggested
would be to commission an
architect to create in the heart of 
the metropolis a Babylonian,
hanging garden of great beauty
and tranquility, where we could go
to reflect on our continuing good
fortune in remaining alive, while
being increasingly taxed to death. 
 

LABOUR - HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER......

Labour leader, Ed Miliband, clearly
should have have used a longer spoon
when supping with the devil. He who
pays the piper invariably calls the tune.
Len McCluskey, General Secretary of
UNITE - which provides 80% of Labour
Party funding -  swung the power of his
union behind Miliband's bid to become
leader of Her Majesty's Loyal
Opposition and now it's payback time.

MccCuskey, the £125,000 a-year,
former docker and left-wing throw-back
from the 1970s, is in the process of 
taking over the Labour Party,
allegedly through electoral fraud and
corruption.

News of Unite's growing infiltration
emerged this week in Falkirk, where it  
is claimed that the the union is
attempting to rig the contest to select
the party's candidate for the
forthcoming by-election. Members
of Unite are being signed up to
Labour, some without their
knowledge, in order to manipulate
the result, in favour of the union
candidate.   

The police have been called in to
investigate suspected wrongdoing
and there are reports of malpractice
in some forty-six other constituencies,
where McCluskey's malign influence
is being felt. He has  countered
allegations that Labour membership
details have been passed to Unite
illegally, in breach of the Data
Protection Act, by accusing Labour
headquarters of a smear campaign.

This is the most serious threat to Ed
Miliband since becoming leader of his
party three years ago. It leaves him
impotent to challenge Unite - Labour's 
main means of financial support - in its
intention to take the party to the
extreme Left, rendering it unelectable.
Setting aside these travails, this may
already be the case. In terms of weak 
leadership, Ed Miliband is not
dissimilar to Michael Foot, the
1980s' Labour Leader.

Taunted by David Cameron for being
in the pocket of the unions, he will find 
difficulty in his ongoing battle with
Mccluskey in being seen as capable of
running his party, let alone the country.          

Apart from calling in the police,
Ed Miliband's only response so far has
been to accept the resignation of
Shadow cabinet member, Tom Watson.
He was Labour's 2015 election supremo
and is a former flatmate of Len
Mccluski. 

Unite's preferred Falkirk candidate,
Karie Murphy, latterly Tom Watson's
office manager, and the constituency
party chairman have both been
suspended.



 


 

EU - THE ALTERNATIVE TO A FEDERAL STATE

Any critical analysis of the

eurozone crisis does not have                         

an obvious solution beyond that

of greater fiscal and political

integration. While this may indeed

come to pass, it would not address

the disparity in productivity

between the countries of northern

and southern Europe.

 

In the absence of a cultural change

in the work ethic, which is hard to

imagine, the inevitable consequence

would be Germany keeping the

southern states on extended  

financial life-support.

 

It will continue to fund
accelerating social cost, until such
time as the German economy ran
out of money. The strategy will
merely prolong, perhaps for a
generation, the misery to which
millions will continue to be
subjected.

The only practicable way
forward is for insolvent
eurozone members to rebalance
their economies through the
re-introduction of their former
currencies.

This would, of course, be
extremely painful in the medium
term. However, exhange rates 
reflecting competitive performance
rather than a single currency, would
enable tourism and other activities
to flourish and economies to grow. 

Such an outcome would not satisfy

the federalist deciples of Ardanauer,

Monet and Schuman, the founding

fathers of the EU. It would, however,

bring hope to those countries that
would prefer economic and political 
self-determination with all its initial
pain, to a slow but remorseless
descent into even more dystopian
misery. 

David Cameron's speech at Davos
articulated the need for change. The
EU has 7% of the world's population,
generates 25% of global GDP, but
spends 50% of GDP on welfare, which
is unsustainable. The question is does
the EU have the political and economic
will to change, or will reality impose
change upon it?   

 

 

 

GORE VIDAL - POLEMICIST AND LITERARY TITAN

This month marks the first                                 

anniversary of Vidal Gore's death.

He was of our age but, in a way,

not part of it. In his passing we

witnessed the departure of a

literary titan, whose like we

shall not see again.

 He was a thinker and political

polemicist whose natural milieu

would have been the Age of

Revolutions. Then and as more

recently, he would have used his

gifts of scholarship, penetrating

mind and wit to articulate

fundamental truths about how

society should function by

deconstructing the established

order of things for the betterment

of man.

Vidal's views on morality and the

political process were not

accepting of pragmatism, but

more a reflection of the broad

sweep of history.

These tended to set him apart

from the ephemera of

contemporary society and the

fragility of its mores and beliefs,

where political and moral vision

have been displaced by a

growing democratic deficit

between government and the

governed.

A true torchbearer for democracy,

Gore Vidal is quoted as saying

"The genius of the ruling class is

that it has kept the majority of the

people from ever questioning the

inequity of a system where most

of the people drudge along paying

heavy taxes for which they get

nothing in return." His views on

events in the EU do not appear to

have been recorded.

MISCONDUCT IN PUBLIC OFFICE

If misconduct in public office, why      

not recklessness in public office of the
now rarely seen former chancellor and            
prime minister?
 

He opened the floodgates of easy credit,

based on illusory growth, unlimited
immigration and unsustainable welfare
spending, in order to expand the client
state.This was reckless and premeditated
action for which he will remain personally
unaccountable.

Gordon Brown continues to draw his
MP's salary and a reported £100,000 for
each after-dinner speech. Not so with this
generation and probably the next, as we
continue pay the price of austerity for
his profligacy with taxpayers' and
borrowed money, which has made the
country a very different place.

THE LAW - ANCIENT TRADITIONS, MODERN REALITIES

The young lawyer arrives at the gates               

of Heaven and says to St Peter "I cannot

be dead, I'm only thirty-two." He heard                 
the reply "According to my records the
number of fee hours you've charged to
your clients makes you 395."

And, wasn't it always so? High fees for
what Dickens described as doing what
lawyers do best - making work for
themselves. Remember Jardine v.
Jardine in Bleak House, where a family
feud over an inheritance supported three
generations of lawyers, until the money
ran out?

That, of course, was then and this is
now. What Big Bang did for the
consumers of financial services is
about to transform a legal system that
is not fit for purpose. It is one that we
can no longer afford in an
over-lawyered country with an
escalating debt problem.

The legal profession is the last of the                     "Half of criminal law firms could disappear from
great British vested interests and the                      the High Street, as result of legal-aid reforms"
Government is right to bring it into
the twenty-first century. Fixed fees                                                           Solicitors' Journal
with more transparency for block
contracts awarded to major new
players in the market will replace
what the legal-aid budget will stand.

Supermarkets Tesco and Sainburys,
together with the Co-op and logistics
company, Eddy Stobart, will bring a
chill wind of competition and
economies of scale to the legal
services market.

Whether they can offer the same
professional and personal service,
within a computerised environment,
remains to be seen. The focus of a
re-cast legal profession working
within a changed business model
will be delivering advice to clients
in the most cost-effective manner. 

Have lawyers in the past acted in
the public interest over fees?
Adam Smith may well have had
the legal profession in mind when
he observed that when people of the
same trade meet, the conversation
ends in a conspiracy against the
public and connivance to raise
prices.

For public, read taxpayer, who has,
up until now, paid £2.1bn annually
in legal aid. This has grown
exponentially, partly the result of
EU-imposed human rights -
£865,000 paid to Abu Quatada to
fight extradition to Jordan - personal
injury and medical negligence.

The Lord Chancellor's refrain in
Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe is
"The law is without fault or flaw
and I, my lords, embody the law."
Not anymore, it seems, as the cry
from the taxpayer is caveat emptor,
where paying for legal services is
concerned.