So much for smashing the gangs. New records are being achieved this year for illegals coming across the Channel. The government that promised to close the migrant hotels is paying top prices to secure more of them. Meanwhile  they are trying to speed up giving many if the illegals the right to stay, acting as a further lure to many more to come.

We seem to get very little for all the money given to France to police this. Why don’t they puncture the boats before they can leave when they see the shire preparations to sail.? Why do they give  them free passage to mid point in the Channel, helping them we are told  with life belts and accompanying them  with a back up vessel? It would  be cheaper and safer to turn them back in the shallows by the shore.

When Border Force or a Lifeboat picks them up in mid Channel  to give them free and safer passage  to the UK who do they not arrange to arrest and question the boat organiser/ captain on arrival in England? Why are they not interrogated  to find out the rest of  the gang organising this dangerous business?

Why cant the UK authorities pose as mystery shoppers seeking seats on a small boat from France to help locate and arrest the organisers? We should expect more vigour and imagination in rounding up these boat exploiters. Catching them would be a good deterrent.

April 23 is an important date in any  Englishman’s diary. It marks both the birthday and the  date of death of our greatest dramatist and poet, William Shakespeare. It is the day we commemorate our country through our patron Saint, St George.

 

Shakespeare is one of those great achievers that made our history and contribution to mankind special. From Ebenezer’s Garden cities to Brunel in engineering, from Josiah Wedgwood’s  pioneering factory and ceramics  to Whittle and the jet, from Wren in architecture to Turner in painting England has offered much to the world.

Shakespeare’s genius was in capturing timeless human characteristics and emotions. Jealousy in Othello, violent ambition in Macbeth, the  inability to see and understand  in Lear’s  old age, the difficulty to avenge a crime in Hamlet ,the folly and fun of young love in Midsummer Night’s Dream are all spell binding accounts of modern feelings and events springing from their roots in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

Shakespeare turned the Globe stage into many exotic scenes, from Venice to Denmark, from  a French to an English battlefield, from court to country, from palace to a hovel. Most of the transitions were conjured in audience imagination by the power of words. Bon mots, jests, epigrams, perfect soundbites poured from his quill and enrich our modern language.

What fools these mortals be said Puck. To be or not to be agonised Hamlet. The Fool said to Lear  you should not have been old til though hadst been wise. John of Gaunt spoke for England ,  in words we should all remember. Our land is indeed a sceptred isle, a blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this england.

 

Any new oil and gas investment is banned. The aim is to close down our industry quickly.

Any factory making petrol and diesel cars needs to be closed by 2030.

No new coal mines allowed. Industry largely dead.

Virgin steel manufacture. Only 2 blast furnaces left. How long will the government pay to keep those going. Industry undermined by high energy prices  and taxes.

Aluminium  All but one  smelter closed by high energy costs

Coal fired power stations. All closed, many blown up to prevent future use

Oil refining being wound down. Grangemouth now shut.

Petro chemicals and chemicals being wound down

Most ceramics production sent abroad

Self employment reduced by hostile tax regime

Fishing industry decimated by Common Fishing Policy and so called Transition

Dairy  farming was limited  by EU shortage of milk quotas for UK

UK orchards were grubbed up with EU grants

Current farming policy gives grants to stop food growing

 

 

 

 

 

UK foreign policy is based on two false assumptions. We can have best friend relationships with the EU , China and the US at the same time. Giving in to the demands of foreign governments buys us friends. These policies instead  makes us weak , subject to more  unacceptable demands.

Recognising public anger  about this the government doubles up on this stupidity  whilst  changing the words to say this is representing the national interest.

How is it in the national interest to give the Chagos  away along with billions? Whose support and favour will that buy?

How is it good to give in to the EU over  fish, free movement of young people and accepting their laws? They  will just ask for more.What do we get back?

How is it sensible to import  more and more energy and food from the EU when we could produce our own?

How is it wise to depend on China for steel, for solar panels, for wind turbines and electric cars?

Why do we say we need to do more damage to our industry to pursue net zero to lead the world when the world does not follow?

 

As the government mugs pensioners and sets out to take money away from the disabled, it finds plenty of foreign governments to give it to.

There is the large sum for Mauritius to go alongside the shameful  gifting of the Chagos islands.

There is the promise of an expensive intervention in Ukraine and new money and weapons for them

There are the large sums paid to France to stop the gangs, only to see the French escort more across the Channel

There are the huge sums on hotels for illegals after promises to close down all those  contracts.

There is money for Sudan.

Many voters have had enough of foreign governments first.

 

As soon as President Trump proposes and imposes some reciprocal  tariffs the UK and EU establishment explodes with rage. They are right that tariffs are taxes on consumers in the country that imposes the tax, with some  of the burden shifted to the exporters  where consumers cut back or succeed in getting some producer offset to the price hike. So knowing this why do they impose some high tariffs themselves?

They have also failed to confess that they impose plenty of non tariff barriers on trade making imports too dear or banning some of them altogether. The single  market is  a Customs Union, not a free trade area. It aims to stop foreign competitors by rules and tariffs.

Take beef. The UK still imposes a 12% tariff and £1.47 per kg on beef from outside Europe, but  we allow free access for Irish beef. No wonder they clean up on imports, avoiding US competition thanks to tariffs and EU/UK bans on some US production. In many cases our tariffs and regulations are a bigger barrier to imports than US restrictions on our exports to them.

Hitching ourselves to the EU more will be back to our EU experience. It meant dearer food and more imports from the EU. They took most of our fish, banned our beef for a long tine, kept us short of milk quota  and gave grants to rip out our orchards.

The UK is by history a Christian country. We have an established Christian Church. We also have a long embedded tradition of religious toleration and open access to opportunities for people of all faiths and none.

For this to work well all citizens need to practise that tolerance and fairness. All have to accept that there are national events which will be performed in Christian cathedrals that provide many of our great public buildings. The ceremonies will often be led by the government assisted by the Established Church.

In its turn the Established Church needs to have wise and sensitive leaders. The Church of England has done itself harm by its failure  to root out child abuse. It has made itself a left wing intruder into the  UK political debate, seeing higher taxes and more public spending as the answer to every problem and equating socialism with moral superiority. It has lost so many followers, with dwindling congregations. It is easier to sustain the case for an established church if it can show good levels of voluntary support.

The Church of England still has considerable inherited wealth. It demands charity tax exemption whilst urging that others with wealth should pay higher taxes. It urges the UK to accept more migrants and provide them  with subsidised homes, yet most clergy do not offer their spare rooms to ease the shortage.

This Easter Sunday it would be good to hear  the stand in Archbishop break out of the politics of Church decline, and put  the sins and hypocrisy of the past behind it. Easter is the Christian Church’s opportunity to put forward its own message as it has no national event to host. Many of us are listening, so what new does the Church have to say?

Let me wish  you all a Happy Easter. May you have a great day with family and friends, enjoying the eggs, Easter lunch and the stories of spring.

I read in the press that the  government may be planning a sell out to get a “ reset” to our  relationship with the EU.

The government must not  give our fish away at the end of transition next year.We need to take back full control of our waters, cut back the permitted catch to repair stocks, and mainly grant quota to UK vessels and to some foreign vessels willing to land ,process and sell the fish in the UK.

The government must not open our borders to any younger person  wishing to come here and call it a Youth Opportunities policy. It would be more mass migration of the kind a majority of voters oppose.

The government must not align our emissions trading with the EU scheme, meaning higher energy taxes we do not control. It should scrap the carbon taxes and end the idea of a big tariff hike called the carbon border mechanism.

The government must not align us more with EU rules and regulations . It should not out our farms back under CAP type rules  which undermined home market  share of temperate foods when we were in the EU.

 

The current government out VAT on school fees. It is a bad idea which I disagree with. It is also a rare example  of the government using a Brexit freedom to something it believes in. That’s how democracy should work, with Opposition parties needing to win an election to reverse a bad policy.

The current government also needed the exemption from EU rules on state aids to go rapidly to the support of the steel industry. Being dragged into the lengthy negotiations  when speed was essential could have been a disaster.

The Uk can get an early and better trade deal with the US than the EU if only Ministers would be bolder and more positive.

Our tinely exit from the Eu means we are not jointly liable for the massive Euro 800 bn of new debt the EU is borrowing. That would have been rash and unaffordable given our large national debt already incurred.