The Aged P

Jake Wallis Simons (novelist, BBC broadcaster) is the latest hired gun to join the “Let’s derail UKIP” offensive but in terms of broadsides a peashooter would have been more effective.

After a public row about same-sex marriage, Ukip have gone from smug to scared

What actually happened was that a spotty student type who was leader of a UKIP youth group had been interviewed on BBC radio and burbled as only callow youths can. He appears to be, from his utterances, a rather immature type of libertarian, blathering on about gay marriage, bestiality, incest etc. The UKIP leadership ditched him fairly quickly, not because of his views but because, as a party official he would be expected to publicly support party policy

Jake Wallis Simons (novelist, BBC broadcaster) thinks that UKIP has blown a gasket here and will immediately lose support.

I am not so sure about that.

Gay marriage is a massive issue amongst the media class but outside the North London dinner party circuit it remains a very damp squib – and this is exactly why people are taking a closer look at UKIP. Farage and company are very much not part of the political/media/academic elite, an elite which over the past fifty years has ridiculed and despised the views of ordinary people on issues like crime, immigration and political correctness. So using gay marriage as a stick with which to bear UKIP is a surefire loser.

As for the squashing of a pimply 21 year old narcissist….most of us are sick and tired of having to treat the immature views of youthful politicos as if they are of great import. They have little sense of responsibility, many of them catapult straight from university into some form of media/political internship with little, if any, long term experience of the real world of work – then, like Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Milliband they then have the audacity to lecture us on how we should behave.

Sorry Mr Jake Wallis Simons (novelist, BBC broadcaster), far from putting off potential support, giving a pompous and opinionated young whippersnapper a swift kick in the backside – and out of the door – will have most ordinary folk giving UKIP a standing ovation…..

Cameron is now bigging up childcare costs

Working mothers will be given thousands of pounds-worth of support for child care to help them to return to work, under plans being considered by David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Stay at home mums will be given an additional tax allowance to help pay someone else to look after their kids to get them back to work. But if they decide to remain at home to look after their kids themselves they will get zilch – even though they are creating the most stable, family friendly environment for those key formative years.

In effect Cameron is saying to those mums who want to stay at home that they are of less significance than those mothers who get back into the workforce as soon as possible. He is essentially devaluing motherhood and the concept of the traditional family – a strange move for the leader of a so called “conservative” party.

Time was that parents of young children accepted the fact that they had to downsize their own expenditure because there was now just a single earner….usually dad. So you made do with the same car for a few more years, you had the odd family day out rather than an expensive foreign holiday, restaurants and pubs became a fond memory, you kept the old black & white TV when everyone else had colour.

School hours and term dates were geared for education not for child minding. You were expected to keep your children with you rather than dump them in a crèche. Nobody complained because that was just the way things were.

But many of today’s parents don’t seem willing to make those sacrifices. They want to maintain their childless lifestyle. So both of them need to be earning as soon as possible – then they can pay someone else to look after their kids.

Now Cameron is saying that dumping your young children so that you can have the plasma TV, the expensive foreign holiday and the new car(s) is not only OK but you’ll pay less tax to make it even easier – so the rest of us will have to pay more to make up for it.

And he thinks it’s UKIP members who are odd?

WTF…..

News that all 800 members of SO6, the armed police unit guarding the UK’s political elite, are to be questioned over suggestions that – shock horror – some of them were a little economical with the truth over the Andrew Mitchell “Plebgate” affair has caused a bit of a ripple in the media.

The Met helpfully added that this investigation will cost about £64.000 and occupy 3,000 hours of police time.

Naturally Labour Party mouthpiece Daily Mirror found a rentaquote MP to sound off about wasting resources at a time of “cuts” and “police sources” (AKA the Police Federation) muttered about “witch hunts”……Labour politicians and Police Federation agitprop activists, of course, had previously milked the whole incident until the arrest of the SO6 officer when they then became strangely silent.

Some might suggest that the details of this police investigation and the accompanying press release have been deliberately designed to stir the pot again and paint the current government (which coincidentally is attempting to reform the police service) in an unfavourable light.

But that cannot be the case for we all know that every police officer is absolutely “wonderful”………

That notorious latin windbag and fiery drama queen Cristina Kirchner, President of Argentina, is back in the headlines with yet another “demanding the return of the Falklands” tantrum in a feeble attempt to distract the rest of the world from her administration’s rather dodgy accounting.

The British government’s response has been succinctly robust (even US website Hot Air is impressed) and if any Foreign Office mandarins, after quiet chats with the US State Department have been smoothing out the wrinkles of UN supervised “joint sovereignty” agreements, just to please Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and all the other “usual suspects” in Washington, not a whiff of it has seeped into the UK media.

Good job, too. British blood was spilt driving the Argentinian invasion force off the islands in 1982 and there would be deep public disquiet for any backroom deal that would mean their sacrifice was in vain.

Recently published papers show that the invasion took Margaret Thatcher and her ministers completely by surprise. Initially there was a degree of confusion about what should be done.

‘There was great concern about what could be done about it. Our forces in the area were very scant confined to a small troop of marines and the HMS Endurance.
‘If there was going to be an invasion there was little we could do to stop it. People were sitting round wondering what on Earth one could do about it. Sir Henry Leach came in and listened to what people were saying – then he said he could have a task force on the water by Monday. That transformed the situation

Margaret Thatcher was always impressed by people who offered solutions rather than dwelling on problems.

“She was undoubtedly seeking positive factual data on which to make her own mind up. Could we do it, against all the risks we’d discussed? I said, yes we could and, in my judgment, we should – which was not my business. That was a political matter.
“She was on to that in a flash. ‘Why do you say that?’ I said if we don’t, or if we do it half-heartedly and are not completely successful, we should be living in a different country which counts for very much less [in the world].” It was the turning point, not only of the meeting but of the entire Falklands crisis. As Nott admitted in the same programme, Leach’s intervention “helped our self-confidence in a very difficult situation”, even if it had been typical “Nelsonian gung-ho”.

From that moment she resolved that force would be met with force and her determination never faltered. As The Heritage Foundation suggests Britain’s reaction astonished the world.

Once Argentina invaded, Britain had to respond. What was remarkable was that it responded with force. No one—certainly not the Argentines—believed that Thatcher’s Britain would fight back or that it could do so effectively. They were proven wrong on both counts

What also shocked the world was the fact that Thatcher had public opinion behind her. Media pundits were convinced that casualties and body bags would weaken resolve – that a post WW2 generation would be dismissive of military action…..far from it. It showed once again the value of decisive political action and the power of political will.

Sorry, President Kirchner – you need to perform your tango on someone else’s dance floor…

As the FT has recently suggested UKIP and it’s leader Nigel Farage are riding an anti-politics wave. The latest poll puts the party’s support at 15%, almost double the numbers for Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats (8%)

Perhaps more people are beginning to agree with Nigel Farage when he says this…..I know I do……

“We just think it’s about time we started to put the interests of Britain and British people first.

“We’re run by a bunch of college kids, who have never had a proper job in their life.”

Trevor Bishop – he’s THE MAN……as he said last April

Head of water resources at the Environment Agency Trevor Bishop said: “A longer-term drought, lasting until Christmas and perhaps beyond, now looks more likely.

….or maybe not….

Hundreds of alerts have been issued by the Environment Agency this month, as several days’ worth of rain has fallen in just a few hours at its worst, contributing to a year of bad weather which has left the UK on the brink of its wettest since records began in 1910.

Those climate experts…..don’t you just love them……

One of the most beautiful and loved of English carols, “The Holly and the Ivy” is said by some to spring from a centuries old tradition in England’s villages where groups of men and women would compete against each other in a midwinter singing contest.

Three plants remained green throughout the winter of an English village – holly, ivy and mistletoe – and so they would be used to garland the church at Christmas time. In the singing contest men would sing the praises of the holly, women would laud the ivy and the good natured rivalry would then be resolved under the mistletoe.

The fact that the carol speaks mainly of holly would suggest it is descended from the song of the men!!!

A timeless, haunting melody that intertwines the symbolism of the nativity with the eternal rhythms of English rural life and the bond of love between woman and man…..

1. The holly and the ivy,
Now both are full well grown.
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown.

Chorus
Oh, the rising of the sun,
The running of the deer.
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the quire.

2. The holly bears a blossom
As white as lily flower;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To be our sweet Savior.

Chorus

3. The holly bears a berry
As red as any blood;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To do poor sinners good.

Chorus

4. The holly bears a prickle
As sharp as any thorn;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas day in the morn.

Chorus

5. The holly bears a bark
As bitter as any gall;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
For to redeem us all.

Chorus

6. The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown,4
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown.

Chorus

[7. The rising of the sun
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.

Chorus

Hey, folks – President Obama and his team do not like all this stuff happening in Britain about the rise of UKIP and growing support for the UK getting the hell out of the EU.

They don’t like the Eurosceptic signals being given out by a David Cameron who is very worried that many conservative voters outside the Notting Hill metro elite bubble are abandoning his party and shifting to UKIP.

“It is important to state very clearly that a strong UK in a strong Europe is in America’s national interest,” said a senior US administration official. “We recognise national states but see the EU as a force multiplier.”

Well, Mr President, surprisingly enough we feel that serving America’s interests is not the primary function of any UK government. We would dearly love to have a government whose lodestar was always putting the interests of the British people at the top of it’s agenda

Funny isn’t it that an American administration which has consistently failed to pay due regard to our shared political and cultural traditions should be putting pressure on us to stay in the EU for the sake of the USA.

The EU is a bloated bureaucratic monstrosity, inefficient and corrupt

Maybe that’s why Obama loves it so much….after all he did cut his political teeth in Chicago….

Such a jolly, boisterous carol – and sung here as, perhaps, it might have been originally intended. We don’t know when it was composed or who wrote it but it first appeared in print in the 17th century and maybe came from the county of Derbyshire in England. Some say it is a variant of “Greensleeves” but others more doubtful. The reference to three ships sailing into Bethlehem is odd but remember that in older times most people portrayed the stories of the Bible against their own local background…..

I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning.

And what was in those ships all three,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day?
And what was in those ships all three,
On Christmas Day in the morning?

The Virgin Mary and Christ were there,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
The Virgin Mary and Christ were there,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

Pray, wither sailed those ships all three,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
Pray, wither sailed those ships all three,
On Christmas Day in the morning?

O they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
O they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

And all the Angels in Heaven shall sing,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And all the Angels in Heaven shall sing,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

Then let us all rejoice again,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
Then let us all rejoice again,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

UKIP is the only political party gaining support in the latest round of opinion polls – shooting up to 14% and pushing the Lib Dems into fourth place.

Cue for a chorus of sneers from assorted politicians and pundits..

“False dawn”
“It’ll never happen”
“Protest vote”
Etc, etc etc

Dont be too sure. Although Cameron’s Tory toffs are down to 28% there is no really significant yearning for Labour’s Milliband and Balls….39% is hardly a massive endorsement, even with the full weight of the BBC behind them. A lot of Labour voters want stricter immigration controls and less taxpayer’s hard earned cash going to the feckless and indigent – and they don’t believe Labour economic policies will work.

Voters in general are extremely mistrustful of the political elite and their puppet masters in the media/cultural elite who love to speak on behalf of “the people”….who claim to know what we need better than we do ourselves..
A lot of us have hesitated to throw our lot in with UKIP because it did seem such a forlorn hope. Now even the broadsheets are having to take it seriously – the next few months could see a surge in membership and some serious money going UKIP’s way.

The times they could be changin’…..