Vince Cable - Lazy-Minded MP, Repeats Old Claptrap About The Poll Tax...

Vince Cable - Liberal Democrat MP

It always galls us to stand up for Margaret Thatcher on this blog. But when lazy-minded politicians like Vince Cable roll out old and hate-fuelling untruths, word for word, well, we really have to say something!

Momentum built up in the Eighties, especially when Mrs Thatcher made Scots the guinea pigs for the Poll Tax

Poll Tax "Guinea pigs"? Not again?! Thatcher didn't make Scots "guinea pigs" for the Tax. We couldn't stick Mrs T, but it was George Younger, Scottish Secretary of State, who asked for the Tax a year early in Scotland because he didn't think the Scots should have to wait for the English!

Read more here.

Several of us involved with this blog were actually members of English "STOP THE POLL TAX" campaigns from 1988 onwards - and costly preparations were already well underway for the planned introduction of the Tax in England and Wales.

Now, surely, if the Scots were to be used as "guinea pigs" for the Poll Tax, the preparations in England and Wales would have been put on hold, and surely it would take rather more than one year to prove the Tax's worth or otherwise? Wouldn't there be various wrinkles to be ironed out? Wouldn't introducing the Tax in Scotland in 1989 and holding off on any decision regarding England and Wales until around 1992 have been more logical if the "guinea pig" scenario was true?

AND the Poll Tax was the brainchild of a Scotsman - Douglas Mason.

Vince Cable's Daily Mail article is a very shoddy piece of writing. Simply recycling old 'victimhood' claptrap is a bore.

The Scots are always so innocent, aren't they?

And England comes nowhere in Mr Cable's deliberations, as usual.

Indeed, at the end of the article, there is a list of relevant people and places:

People:
Alex Salmond,
Gordon Brown,
Vince Cable,
David Cameron,
Fred Goodwin
Places:
Edinburgh,
London,
Glasgow,
Wales,
Canada,
Germany,
Libya,
Scotland,
Northern Ireland,
United Kingdom
Organisations:
Scottish Parliament

But no sign of England.

Of course.

Adrian Sanders (Lib Dems) and Ken Purchase (Labour), Glib, Smart-Mouthed Hatred Of England

Marsha Singh has tabled an Early Day Motion to make St George's Day a public holiday.

Ken Purchase, Wolverhampton, Labour, and Adrian Sanders, (Torbay) Lib Dems, then leapt in with two daft amendments, which make plain their smug hatred of England.

These MPs are rotten to the pips. Health apartheid? Who gives a damn? The West Lothian Question? Ditto. The Barnett Formula? You guessed it. What the hell are their constituents doing electing these people who wilfully work against their best interests and pour scorn on their country?

Adrian Sanders is probably the most pathetic of the two (it's very close run) as he comes up with an alternative bank holiday to "benefit the UK tourist industry" - obviously unaware that Scotland and Wales are far better provided for, having retained their own tourist boards and representation through the "British" site whilst England, once again, is the poor relation.

When it comes to sneering, smug and out of touch people, not fulfilling the roles expected of them, Adrian Sanders and Ken Purchase are difficult to beat. But then I suspect that they are very typical indeed.

Toque has the whole story here - and remains far calmer and more eloquent than myself!

The Labour Party, The Conservative Party, The Liberal Democrats, The British National Party - Racists All

We all remember the referendum in the North East of England which voted 78% against regionalisation. Sadly, the rest of us weren't given a say and New Labour continued the break-up of England regardless. Gordon Brown's last act as Chancellor was to swipe £2bn from the English NHS:

From the Financial Times:

However, Mr Brown avoided equivalent cuts to the Scottish and Welsh NHS budgets even though the funding formula for the UK nations suggests they should have shared the pain. That decision leaves him open to criticism that he favoured patients in his home country

Gordon Brown's first act as Prime Minister without a mandate was to create regional ministers in England, and now regional select committees. But those given a say in the North East said a resounding NO to regionalisation. That doesn't matter. The people of England are not allowed to live in a democracy.

Now, the Lib Dumbs are screeching over Labour "unfairness" in the composition of the new Regional Select Committees. Note, NOT over the fact that the people of England don't WANT regions. The Lib Dumbs go even further, stating that their article here "refers to UK" - which it doesn't. Scotland and Wales have their own national governing bodies. The article refers to ENGLAND.

So, lower public spending in England - via the Barnett Formula, health apartheid, the West Lothian Question... and MPs of all parties remain quite unconcerned about the people of England. Keep 'em quite. Put in more CCTV. Keep the DNA Database. Tell 'em it's to combat terrorism. Fool the people. Crush the people.

As charges of racism can brought on grounds of nationality/country of origin, it seems that the major UK political parties - New Labour, the Tories, the Lib Dumbs, and the BNP are ALL guilty of racism.

Now, isn't that a spooky factoid?

Nick Clegg - Undemocratic And Deceitful

Doesn't it make you sick when politicians begin speeches like this:

My grandmother was a Russian exile.

She fled the Russian revolution as a child, escaping through Europe and finally settling here in Britain.

My mother spent part of her childhood in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Indonesia.

My mother and my grandmother – their lives torn and reshaped by the great wars and upheavals of the twentieth century.

And they found a home in Britain because ours is a nation of tolerance, of freedom, and of compassion.

And what my mother and grandmother endured taught me the extraordinary, precious value of those beliefs.

They understood that beliefs matter. They make all the difference between war and peace. Beliefs shape our world, for better and for worse.

That was Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg. He then went on to make a speech which was designed to ignore glaring inequalities like asymmetric devolution, health apartheid, the West Lothian Question. It was, in fact, a blatant attempt to muddy the waters and delude the English into believing devolution hasn't happened, or at least has had no great impact.

Mr Clegg's party website then ground the down-trodden people of England further into the mud by demoting the country to "some sections of the UK" in a footnote.

Nick Clegg - you clearly have not learned anything from your forebears. We cannot believe that they were as undemocratic and deceitful as you are.

Big hat-tip to Britology Watch.

Nick Clegg Lets Down England

CEP Press Release: Thursday, 24 Jan 2008

Nick Clegg, the new Lib Dem leader, has hardly been in office when he has already done a U-turn on his promise to make free personal care for all the elderly in England part of the Party’s policy programme. He came into the party leadership saying he supported Scottish-style free care for all elderly citizens regardless of income. Now he’s dropped it. Outlining plans for what he is calling ‘a people’s health service’ in preparation for the Lib Dem Spring Conference in March in Liverpool, he is now proposing that the elderly match government input pound for pound, unlike in Scotland where the Scottish Parliament pays the lot.

‘The injustice inflicted upon the people of England by devolution for Scotland and Wales,’ says Michael Knowles member of the National Council of the Campaign for an English Parliament, ‘has reached incredible proportions. Elderly people in Scotland get free personal health care, not one single elderly person in England. Everyone in Wales gets free prescriptions. People in England have to pay £6:85 per prescription item. Scotland and Wales have home rule. England not only does not have home rule but it is the people of England who are paying for all the benefits Scotland and Wales are getting out of having their own Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Each English taxpayer pays an extra £281 each year in income tax to subsidise the extra benefits Scotland is getting within the Union.’

Nick Clegg: Abolish England Into Regions, Don't Give The People Any Say In The Matter...

Heavens, can't politicians waffle? Here's Nick Clegg during a BBC question and answer session:

Q: Do you support the establishment of an English Parliament, or at least sessions of the English Parliament to sit at Westminster without MPs from the other British nations. If not - please explain what you mean by federalism. Doug , Edinburgh

A: There is a real anomaly in the way Scottish MPs vote on English matters - but it is only one of countless anomalies in our electoral system, and they all need to be addressed together as part of a new constitutional settlement. Focusing on the West Lothian issue alone just plays into the hands of people who want to break up the United Kingdom.

The real English Question is in a sense the same as the Scottish Question or the Welsh Question - it’s about breaking down an overbearing, over-controlling central state and returning power to local communities and to individuals. I don’t think that English people primarily see this as a question of exact symmetry - the question is one of democratic control. The answer isn’t to try and divide MPs into sheep and goats and risk creating problems whereby one party is in government, but doesn’t have a majority for English affairs. We need to move beyond this sterile debate and look to devolve power within England, and continue the push for a whole new constitutional settlement. Remember - every decision not taken in Whitehall is a decision where the West Lothian Question doesn’t apply.

Mr Clegg basically wants England broken up into regions and abolished. He is not interested in noting the results of recent polls, including one on the BBC itself, which indicate that around 61 to 67 per cent of the English want a national parliament. He is happy to put words into the mouths of the English electorate and ride roughshod over them.

That's a slightly rough but absolutely accurate translation of Mr Clegg's reams of waffle.

Scottish Liberal Democrats, Welsh Liberal Democrats and NOW Chinese Liberal Democrats. But No English Liberal Democrats.

It seems more than slightly multicultural to have a Chinese Liberal Democrats. And is the multi-culti thing now on or off? It is deemed good or bad? I've lost track.

The Chinese Liberal Democrats apparently exist to "create a bridge between the UK Chinese community and the Liberal Democrats" and also, puzzlingly, to "establish closer links with China". Why?!!

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And its patrons are Lord Paddy Ashdown and Sir Menzies Campbell. Sounds like a pathetic bit of posturing to me.

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Of course, the Lib Dems have made no effort to establish closer links with England or the English. Like the other mainstream parties, the Liberal Democrats treat both with complete and utter contempt.