250 years ago a group of English gentlemen living in the coastal colony on the eastern seaboard of America put words on their rebellion. The most famous part of their statement asserts that all men are equal and hold inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I share the joy at such sentiments. I know from history that governments and public attitudes have often prevented this from being true.
The men writing the declaration were careful to use the word men when asserting these rights. Many now read this with its broader meaning of humankind, but of course they did not think women were equal or deserved equal rights. That took longer to achieve on both sides of the Atlantic. Nor did these men propose the abolition of slavery, which took later battles on US soils and the worldwide intervention of the British navy to greatly reduce what was a common practice.Nor did they envisage the servant classes of their day having the same participation in government as they as a landed and educated elite shared.
We see the importance of the US revolution to the development of democracy and equality before the law. We should not underplay the important English and British contribution to this as well . We tamed monarchs, broadened the franchise and asserted the powers of the House of Commons to tax and legislate. Our journey like the US required a civil war, and too many external wars against the forces and faces of tyranny. The US declaration was mainly a long list of the alleged transgressions of King George, personalising the policies of the UK Parliament to an alleged tyrant King who had usurped the liberties of English colonial gentlemen.
In a long list of complaints they included the great rallying cry of No taxation without representation.If our new PM thinks at all about these matters he should see that many in the UK today feel oppressed by ill judged taxation. This leads to rebellion in the ballot box or to people moving to a freer lower tax country.
Most UK governments ignore our right to the pursuit of happiness.I know the current government wants me to be poorer, more controlled and less happy as I hear its endless lectures backed up by new laws and taxes seeking to tell me how I should live. This government oppresses the many enterprising and hard working people in our country , disdaining our views and threatening removal of our liberties if we fall out of line. Thomas Jefferson would not be impressed.
July 5, 2026
Very interesting thoughts my Lord.
Of course we had those rights here in England however, we see our rights being eroded.
We see males being pushed to the back of the queue.
We see foreign people’s rights trumping those of the indigenous people.
Of course now even wondering such things makes us far right or racist.
The Left and the Gangster State have now over played their use of ists isms and phobes to shut people up and silence debate. We don’t care now, call us what you want, it no longer has any effect.
July 5, 2026
@Cliff.. Wokingham. – they, the UK’s Socialist rulers, even salmi sliced the Magna Carta way, so it is now just something in the History Books. The UK Parliament its MPs have consistently replaced one tyrant, with another, themselves in their own personal image, they keep fighting against, not for democracy, they keep fighting against and not for freedoms. They want the return of the Norman Lords & Barons way of rule in their personal and not for the majority, them and us ‘two tier’ society.
Footnote: The Magna Carta and its meaning, as the UK Parliament and its Parliament its MPs hate the declaration and its meaning – In 1965, Queen Elizabeth II gifted one-acre of Runnymede to the USA. So Runnymede is US Soil and its meaning in History can only now be found there and in the USA
July 5, 2026
Ian B
Indeed recently took some American visitors to view the one acre site (overlooking Runny-mead) and on which the Kennedy memorial sits.
They were unaware of the tribute.
July 6, 2026
The table upon which the Barons brought their wicked John to sign away his unilateral powers is in a private house on an island at Runnymede.
The Freedom Association used to hire a boat and luncheon on it, and go to Runnymede on Magna Carta Day. Enoch Powell and his wife came one year.
We need to know and celebrate the history and achievements of our glorious ancestors. The constitution we inherited took 800 years of winning arguments and battles to construct.
We failed to cherish it.
July 5, 2026
The conditions which brought about the Declaration of Independence are very similar today in Britain. No taxation without representation is a point in question. We are being taxed to death for the money to be squandered on gimmigrants and foreign countries.
We are being endlessly taxed to pay for ideological programmes like Millibrains net stupid and carbon capture whilst ignoring the basic duties of defence.
I think probably another civil war is required to restore the balance.
July 5, 2026
@Ian Wragg – The UK Parliament, its MPs stand for government by decree, not government by the people for the people. The UK Parliament has more in common with Putin, Xi, Pezeshkian, the worlds despots than it does with the free sovereign democracies. Two Tier Kier and now Burnham hate’s the notion of sovereignty, freedoms and democracy. They would and have not sort validation of direction and fight against it, they want one thing only rule in their personal image.
July 5, 2026
In the coming civil war, the wrong people will die and the regime that becomes the replacement will be more corrupt than the last.
July 7, 2026
Brexit was a more important Declaration of Independence to the UK but Labour continues trying to deny it.
July 5, 2026
What follows is the last of three pieces that I recently wrote for a climate crisis/science website. I am grateful that JR has posted the first two; he does not entirely agree with my pro-net zero views, but I believe that they make a positive contribution to the debate here
July 5, 2026
Indeed few of us would argue about using renewables, which would make sense if it was cost effective and reliable, but at the moment it is neither.
Looking at the cost and implications of installing a battery power wall (many £ thousands) without using solar panels.
The only way this is viable is simply due to the manipulated low cost of electricity supply in the early hours of the morning, simply to charge up the batteries, to use during the high cost periods), compared to the manipulated high cost of electricity you need to pay to use during the day.
What a nonsense that such manipulation of the rates means we have to mine for rare minerals at huge cost and destruction, in order to get better rates than the Government manipulated price that we are forced to pay. .
July 5, 2026
The powerful UK fossil fuel lobby maintains it’s influence not just by promoting the use of oil and gas, but by systematically obstructing the clean energy transition. Through £multi-million party funding, institutional access, and sophisticated public relations campaigns, fossil fuel interests have engineered a highly effective strategy of structural delay. They achieved this by diverting public funds, fabricating grid-failure narratives, promoting false technological solutions and legally blocking local renewable energy infrastructure.
Firstly, the lobby actively hinders renewables by siphoning state capital away from grid upgrades. Intense corporate pressure successfully secured a £22 billion UK government commitment for carbon capture. This technology is a complete scam; it needs twice the energy to capture, compress, transport and dispose of CO2 than not burning the carbon in the first place. This massive public subsidy effectively acts as a financial black hole, starving the National Grid of the urgent capital required to expand transmission capacity and connect ready-to-go solar and wind farms. As a result, green projects have been trapped in decades-long queue bottlenecks – which locks the UK into extended and ever more expensive, fossil-fuel dependency.
Second, fossil fuel interests fight energy storage and transmission solutions by spreading strategic disinformation. Oil-linked right-wing think tanks coordinate media campaigns warning that a renewable-heavy grid will cause systemic blackouts. They have falsely claimed that a clean transition could cost £9 trillion. Simultaneously, the industry heavily lobbies for “natural” gas-derived “blue hydrogen” as a false alternative for seasonal energy storage and home heating. This tactical misdirection delays utility-scale battery deployments (which remove the need for gas-fired backup) and actively safeguards the commercial market share of gas-fired power plants.
Finally, the political beneficiaries of fossil-fuel lobby funding directly paralyzes clean infrastructure development. Reform UK, (words left out re alleged fossil fuel funding of both parties)and the Conservative Party,consistently parrot these lobbyist talking points. Backed by fossil fuel wealth, political actors weaponize local planning regulations to block regional solar farms, onshore wind, and high-voltage transmission lines. These deep-pocketed interventions turn routine planning permissions into protracted legal battles, successfully freezing private green investment.
In conclusion, the fossil fuel lobby’s influence stretches far beyond traditional political donations. By capturing public policy, stalling grid upgrades and choking off storage solutions, big oil and gas continues to sabotage the UK’s energy transition to protect it’s own survival.
Reply You overlook the more important facts that most of the public choose gas central heating, petrol cars etc over the dearer green alternatives, and object to wind farms, solar farms and pylons in the countryside.
July 6, 2026
Firstly renewables are not “clean” (meaning CO2 emission free). They have such a low ERoEI that they can only be supplied by China who use their cheap coal power, slave labour and ignore all the environmental damages of mining and toxic manufacturing tailing lakes. Secondly the history of CO2 and temperature shows there to be no correlation apart from when both are very low, as they have been for the last 450,000 years, when the Antarctic Vostok ice core data is showing CO2 following temperature not vice versa. Lastly both increased temperature and hence increased atmospheric CO2 (97% of CO2 emissions are natural) make the planet greener enabling more food to be grown.
July 6, 2026
How.many years oil have Scotland left ?
July 5, 2026
Happy birthday America! Had King George listened to William Pitt and Edmund Burke we could be celebrating 250 years of the United Kingdom of the Atlantic. We could have avoided half a century of stagnation under the EU, to say nothing of the Napoleonic wars and two world wars, and be earning £70,000 each not £40,000. The slave trade could have been aboIished 40 years earlier. American could have avoided the War of Independence, the Civil War and a nearly a century more of slavery.
What a lesson in the power of foolish governments to do harm.
July 5, 2026
@Nick – and they still haven’t learnt. Ego always gets the better of egotists and they cant see it – it is their way or the highway. We have had 30years of ego interfering with the UK progressing and it still repeats itself with the same result
July 5, 2026
Well perhaps but even worse the £40k is more like £28k after tax, ni, travel costs then we have to pay energy costs 4 times as much, Higher housing costs, insurance taxes 12% vat 20%, airport taxes, council tax… then if you have any left they take 40% of that of you on death over just 325k more like 8m threshold in usa.
July 5, 2026
£60,000 at current exchange rate, not £70,000, but still more than £40,000.
July 5, 2026
The constant removal of personal freedoms and the removal of personal liberties even our right to express an opinion defines the modern political landscape. It is particularly evident within socialist/communist led governments but is equally evident in theocratic administered nations examples in the middle East and North Africa providing obvious examples.
The common objective is to enable state power to be administered with the absolute minimum scrutiny or criticism.
Our own current direction of travel where our government want to hand total authority over to an unelected committee sitting in Brussels being just another example of political convenience overtaking the duty of office.
Our democracy is based on the people making their wishes known and being allowed to vote for representatives who are willing to advance those desires of the people.
Our political class imagine those openly expressed views of the people are misplaced and must be changed.
The attitude of the establishment post the Leave Referendum being a classic recent example.
From that position of arrogance the traditional political class are effectively alienating themselves from the demos.
I suspect there will be an ultimate show down of who actually holds the power of the nation. If the political class continue to ignore the electorate their future may not be in their own hands. The progressives and their high profile luvvie supporters might imagine they know best, but history has plenty of examples of what happens when the ruling elite ignore the needs of the people.
July 5, 2026
@Rod Evans – 100% with you on that.
July 5, 2026
The ruling elite are changing and growing in numbers.,They don’t work overtly but rather grasp key positions again and again,then influence the flow of information,data and reaction to it.
The governments position on events merely mimics days and reaction.
July 5, 2026
Is anyone sensible impressed by Burnham. We need U turns in all the Starmer Reeves policies not just a new face with an insane plan for a number 10 up north and more money and power to local politicians like Kahn, Drakeford and Sturgeom. True he does at least say “grass” correctly with a short “a” and is more human that two Tier Kier but who isn’t.
I see that the appalling disaster of Two Tier claims his two years of open borders, a war on free speech, net zero, over tax and regulate to death lunacy has improved the country, the UK economy and his party – so is he a liars or is he just totally deranged?
July 5, 2026
So a number 10 in Manchester, with all the extra cost of secure premises, secure communications, people working between two offices and having to travel to either/both probably some way from home, then the next Prime Minister may want to move it to Plymouth, Clacton or some other remote region.
How bloody silly, how arrogant, how inefficient, and a complete waste of £ millions.
No doubt many excuses will follow when important papers are lost or left behind.
July 6, 2026
+1
July 5, 2026
Isn’t it ironic to see the plans of a climate denier PotUS disrupted first by the extreme heat leading to the cancellation of the traditional parade on Saturday morning, then the festivities on the National Mall postponed from 1pm to 5pm, and finally by an extra two hours PotUS’s speech because of the rain.
If there is a God she might have been a ‘communist’ and played a series of big jokes yesterday.
July 5, 2026
What on earth is a “climate denier” or even a “climate change denier”? Just using those terms is surely disingenuous or rather evil. The “Climate” has always changed and always will do until the sun consumes the earth I suppose. Trump just rightly points out that the vastly exaggerated, man made “climate fiery hell on earth emergency” caused by CO2 tree, plant and crop is a political hoax – as it very clearly is.
July 5, 2026
No-one disputes the planet is warming (0.16C/decade since 1979 according to UAH satellite measurements). The dispute is over its cause. Those who believe that it must be caused by human CO2 emissions (3% of total CO2 emissions BTW) should examine the history of CO2 and temperature. The Antarctic Vostok ice core data clearly shows, when both temperature and CO2 are at historically low levels, as they have been for the last 450,000 years, that CO2 follows temperature not vice versa. They also need to explain how “human induced” planetary warming took place to bring us out of the most recent ice age just 11,000 years ago and why today’s receding glaciers are revealing 7000 year old tree stumps and human artifacts clearly from recent warmer times despite lower levels of CO2 than exist today:
https://www.livescience.com/4702-melting-glacier-reveals-ancient-tree-stumps.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p0gl9tq4/watch
PS:
A very interesting lecture given by Jasper Kirkby who worked on a cloud experiment at CERN:
Cosmic rays and climate.
https://youtu.be/6ygk98kEQfk
July 5, 2026
The very same Jasper Kirkby who wrote in the conclusions of his paper ‘Cosmic rays seem to enhance the production of nanometer-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten’ but also ‘The particles in question are far too small to serve as cloud condensation nuclei’ (‘Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation’, J.Kirkby et al., 2011, Nature, 476 (7361), 429-433.)
July 5, 2026
Yet again hefner you attempt to conflate climate with weather.
I’m sure you, more than most, know the difference.
So why do do you continue this line of argument?
July 5, 2026
To make you comment 😉.
July 5, 2026
hefner.
Come on you know one week is weather.
July 6, 2026
You don’t comprehend the difference between ‘weather’ and ‘climate’.
Of course English with its 800,000 words is very precise, but Continentals are accustomed to buying shampoo for ‘fat hair’, having no word for grease.
July 5, 2026
“many in the UK today feel oppressed by ill-judged taxation” Just taxation? We have UK Leaders political that have become demigods fighting that great tenant of freedom – democracy.
The UK, Great Britain and now its evolved separate class of politicos, have turned democracy on it head. In fact, they cancel everything about it and use its name to ‘rule’ in their ‘personal image’ of how they want the people to comply to ‘their’ ideals of personal needs, – enforced dotage – that is not democracy.
They use the get-out of things such as supporting ‘diversity, inclusion and equalities’ to suggest they are for the people, yet everywhere at the behest of them our rulers this so-called doctrine starts with major discrimination, the them and us, a modern slavery.
The UK Parliament, its MPs, fight the very notion that any one has the right or should be allowed to question them. The UK Parliament’s rule is by decree, not the will of the people that is denied and/or fought against. They refuse the basics as seen in all the great free democracies of seeking validation of direction, the questioning of their personal rule by choosing to rule by decree.
The two-tier laws, the blatant lies and now we get the concept that it is Parliament, its government that will now define what ‘news’ and whose views should we be allowed with Parliaments suggested ‘trusted news’ rules.
250 years of history and they the UK Parliament its MPs keep wanting to repeat their mistakes, they hate the idea of government by the people for the people. It is their law in their image for themselves.
Happy Birthday the USA! You have done well by distancing yourselves from this Socialist Cabal
July 5, 2026
Yes, funnily enough I was watching the Netflix “American experiment” series yesterday evening also.
The constitution struggled both with the balance between giving absolute power to one elected person (else monarch) who might declare a life interest in ruling, and diluting it across the population. It almost failed because of the differences between the wishes of southern states for slavery versus northern states for abolition and vice versa for trade.
The most poignant factor here was George Washington, a man who wore power lightly and was respected for that. It struck me that Starmer could have been like that, but his psyche dictated the complete opposite. Burnham is already highly unlikely to be a Washington-too partisan to The North and too much ego. We need to find a Washington here. Mature enough not to be over-ambitious. Somebody that all sides will look up to and coalesce around, whether or not they agree with him 100%.
July 5, 2026
@Sir Joe Soap – My pet dislike of how the UK and others are run Vis-à-vis the USA is that it (The UK, its People) have no safety net in the way that the USA Citizen does. The US House of Representatives have to have election every 2 years. Although POTUS has 4-year terms. That effectively means that even POTUS can be nipped in the bud so-to-speak if they drift off in the wrong direction – the HoR would block their action.
The UK has rule by decree, seemingly because Parliament doesn’t like having to justify themselves, to anyone let alone the electorate. Therefore, as now it is reasonable to suggest the UK Parliament and their Government have not carried the people with them, they can wreck the country at will, cancel elections (and they have) before they get to be held account or have to validate the direction they are taking us. That is not most we see as democratic.
The USA by the time of the next, if it happens, UK Election would have already had by then 3 General Elections.
There is something immensely wrong in calling yourself a democracy if you do all you can to thwart having to answer for your actions.
July 5, 2026
Exactly right – they lead us to a tyrannical future where they hold all the power.
It’s not meant to be that way, and I despair at the frightened minds that cannot stand the idea that man has a spiritual nature, but treated like a Pavlov dog he will be less able and will strike out. Man has free will. With ethics and sanity that is a force for good.
Without the frightened minds, the ones who fear freedom for others to act and be themselves, life on planet Earth would be so much nicer.
We don’t just have to calm these many frightened minds, we have to wash away their aberrations, so that they can think with clarity and within present time, and be productive individuals.
July 5, 2026
They were not all English there were eight Irish and more Scottish there was a sprinkling of Welsh and then the Netherlands plus Sweden and France all born or of native heritage a total of fifty three in number.
July 5, 2026
Yes, in these days and ages, it is incredible to think that people do not run a plain or even an AI search before writing anything.
As you say the Patriots were English, Scottish, Irish, German, Dutch, African and Native American descent.
Crispus Attucks, the first person to be killed in the Boston Massacre (5 March 1770, aka in England ‘the incident on King Street’) was an African/Native American among the five unarmed colonists throwing snowballs and oyster shells then shot at by the British soldiers.
July 6, 2026
Actually the men in Red coats were the soldiers of German George.
Who died first is irrelevant, what is important is that the rabble ethnically British Army once again beat the Germans.
July 6, 2026
PS, you do understand that all AI apart from Grok is programmed to lie? You do understand that the ‘official record’ is the States case, not necessarily an accurate account of what happened?
That’s why we challenge your moronic research so often.
July 5, 2026
Good morning.
No taxes without votes in Parliament. What about no votes without paying taxes. Those who do not contribute should not decide how the money should be spent.
July 5, 2026
Spot on Mark
At almost 81, my pension is being taxed to pay for idle Brits and illegal gimmigrants. No representation without taxation has a good ring to it.
July 5, 2026
Made that suggestion many times before, it makes a lot of sense to have some skin (money at risk) in the game.
July 5, 2026
when I lived in Chicago I was invited to garden parties on the 4th July. they had all forgotten I was a Brit, and vaguely thought I was from somewhere remote in the US. it was hilarious being the only one not drinking a toast to some of the stuff they said, like congratulating themselves on all the English soldiers they killed. but generally a great happy day of national celebration and solidarity. I should have stayed there, a far better place than the dump the UK has become.
July 5, 2026
Who would have thought that in the last 30 years a handful of politicians could achieve what an invading army has never managed in the history of our country. Which is to replace the indigenous population. The latest government report shows that now ethnic minorities comprise 40% of school children. As the white older generation dies off we are fast becoming a minority in our homeland. The traitors within have succeeded in their UN quest to destroy us and there’s nothing that can be done now. Shame on all of them. Burnham is being put in place to finish the job.
July 5, 2026
“… poorer, more controlled and less happy as I hear its endless lectures backed up by new laws and taxes seeking to tell me how I should live.”
JRM in his early days as a robustly independent backbencher once observed “politics should not be about making people’s lives difficult”. Any party hoping to oust The Usurper of the North before he had gone too far down that very path would do well to adopt JRM’s comment as a slogan for its programme of legislative repeals.
July 5, 2026
Updated version of “No taxation without representation” would be “including Borrowing or future contingent liabilities related thereto”.
The very fact that Brexit is still not fully honoured after 10 years in spirit, word and deed speaks volumes about the disconnect and puppets now masquerading as representing us, especially Starmer and Burnham & Miliband etc.
July 5, 2026
What a mess the UK is in because of our MPs’ arrogance and vanity. The refusal to accept the 2016 referendum on membership of the EU is the most blatant example. But overtaxing, borrowing, and spending is fast becoming just as bad. The new PM says nothing about cutting spending and learning to live within our means; he is all about finding new ways to tax us even more.
We now need a British declaration of independence from overbearing and overtaxing governments.
July 5, 2026
Another part of the American founding statement is that ‘government should be by the people for the people’. Unfortunately it is now far too much by civil servants and certain elites and certainly not ‘for the people’. Politicians, governments and civil servants may talk about the wealth of others but they are completely oblivious to most human liberty and how free, or rather unfree people are to spend more of their limited most valuable time as they themselves wish. They don’t even consider such freedom. They seem to consider bureaucracy is good as long as it helps government irrespective of the amount of human time it costs or wastes. The truth is not so much that the present government (like previous governments) wants John Redwood and others to be ‘poorer, more controlled and less happy’ but they don’t care so long as government as an institution can impose its will more thoroughly. They don’t want to understand that what seems good for government as an institution is usually bad for the governed.
Politics should change to be not primarily about economic wealth but also about enhancing people’s freedom and free time. Politics should not be concentrating on national ‘inequalities’ but on personal freedoms.
July 6, 2026
The British Declaration of Independence was the converse of the Treasonous Acts that our Constitution said the signatories of the Maastricht Treaty committed.
It is more sophisticated than the American Declaration of Independence, the Fabian’s claiming that they implement the sentiment ‘that all men are equal and hold inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ by treating all the worlds people as equal to British citizens and taxpayers in Britain.
I’m sure the Founding Fathers would be shocked to see the mess that has resulted in, both in the USA and in Britain and her Dominions.