Like some others reading this, I received an e-mail yesterday, from the Conservative Party. They wanted me to take part in a quick survey seeking my views about what was important to me and my family and what was important to the country on a range of subjects.
I responded in what I think is a conservative way and am not shy to share them with others.
The issues facing me and my family - the level of taxes, government deficit and debt and opportunities for the next generation. I could only choose three!
Those issues (don't you just hate that word - issues? Sounds so Tony Benn and 1960/70s socialism ) that are most important to the country tax levels, deficit and debt and the EU.
Who would I prefer as Prime Minister? The choice is Ed Miliband or David Cameron - so no real choice, then.
Then, I submitted the survey and received a thank you and an appeal for a donation.
The latter made me think of why I don't donate to the Conservative Party and then to wonder why I was asked these questions.
Firstly, the poll results are rarely published - and I think that there is a reason for that. I believe that those people that bother to respond - the 'saddos' like myself - will do so along the lines I have answered. That is, following and supporting 'traditional' Conservative values.
One of the choices offered was 'the environment and climate change.' Do I care about these? Of course I do but do I put these above the needs of my family or my country? No! Do I agree that the British people should be impoverished on some less than half-baked policy that says Canute-like, that Britain can single-handedly reduce so called green-house gas emissions in any meaningful way? No! Especially when we seek to do so while importing ever higher levels of mass produced Chinese goods that are made in an increasingly carbon-energy based environment!
PS Note how it is now called 'climate change' and no longer 'man-made global warming'! Initially I thought that this was a good sign - that science was returning to a fact-based approach to climate and, recognizing that there has been no appreciable actual warming, in recent years and that they had been hood-winked by a bunch of watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside - read James Delingpole's book of the same name - highly entertaining and informative!) but no, the charlatans that eschew scientific practice and doctor test results and data to fit a pre-conceived premise still hold sway. 'They' have just realized that even 'they' can't get away with fooling all of the people, all of the time. So don't change the fundamental lie, just change some of the words!
Anyway, green rage rant over.
So, I suspect that the actual purpose of the survey was to rekindle my conservative views and then seek to get me to make a donation to the Conservative Party, on the basis that this party supports the views that I have just endorsed.
That might work, if, for one minute, I actually believed that the Conservative Party did support and share my views on low taxes or deficit and debt reduction. But they don't. As evidence, I offer the last 4 years. Neither taxes nor the deficit are appreciably reduced from the levels left by the outgoing Labour party, in 2010. Directionally, Britain is still left-leaning.
The leftist approach to politics is to push the socialist agenda, ever leftwards. They do this by taking a great stride in that direction. If there is concerted opposition to the extent of the leftward thrust, then they move back a little but the net position is that the policy/country has moved to the left - they step a yard to the left and retreat six inches, if you like.
The UK Conservatives, since before the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, have been afraid to do likewise in a right-ward direction. Since they are effectively 'professional' politicians, and the same applies, maybe even more so, to the other parties, there whole raison d'etre is about getting elected and re-elected. So the question isn't that personal taxes are too high, the argument rages around the top rate, which actually doesn't affect too many people (and of, course doesn't raise that much income!). The whole premise of the discussion is not about the iniquity of taxes (or theft/confiscation by the state, to give it its right name) and how they should be minimized but rather about a small and inconsequential sub-sub-part of taxation. One, incidentally on which you might see some Conservatives wavering, on the grounds that someone earning £1M a year can better afford to suffer higher taxes for the common good!
The Conservatives need to offer a radical platform based on traditional Conservative values. This would require stepping a yard or two to the right - moving the ground on which the arguments are held, to the right.
Consider Britain in 1979. The country was very close to collapse and to the anarchy that would have followed a left-wing victory in the election. However, Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives were elected and set about re-taking power from the union-bosses that had brought the country to the brink. These Conservatives didn't do so in some kind of cosy and conciliatory way. They large-stepped to the right and said this is they way the problem with unions will be addressed. How effective was this? Well along with the failed Miner's strike of 1984/5 the whole landscape changed. Unions in Britain are now largely confined to the remaining state bastions - the civil service, local government and the NHS and barely present in private industry. It is also interesting to note that having loosened the grip of the leftist unions, there has since been no mandate to undo the reforms that the first Thatcher government brought in, nor the enhancements that they enacted, subsequently.
So in this field, at least, the leftward direction of the union agenda was halted and then moved to the right and has remained there.
The same needs to happen in other areas but I don't get the sense that the current crop of Conservatives are the ones to do it. It is almost that we need to experience some of the economic convulsions that have affected Greece and Italy before we can expect to see a mainstream party offering Conservative solutions.
It is quite depressing that we might need to see riots on the streets and very high unemployment and real and deep austerity being imposed (from outside!), before we can get a Conservative view put forward - one that says, we are going to take not one but two or more steps to the right and restore the UK. We will take back sovereignty from the EU, we will scrap green taxes that are asinine and dis-proportionately punish poorer people, we will create a wealth-generating economy that allows the individual to keep a far higher portion of what they earn and so on. You can read more here http://bit.ly/1lFufJL and here http://bit.ly/MCuYMt
Donate to the Conservative Party? I think not. To them I am just a 'swivel-eyed loony'. They will get my vote but only because the alternatives are even more ghastly but they won't get my money!
By the way. Read the bit about Margaret Thatcher and what the Conservatives did, again.
I responded in what I think is a conservative way and am not shy to share them with others.
The issues facing me and my family - the level of taxes, government deficit and debt and opportunities for the next generation. I could only choose three!
Those issues (don't you just hate that word - issues? Sounds so Tony Benn and 1960/70s socialism ) that are most important to the country tax levels, deficit and debt and the EU.
Who would I prefer as Prime Minister? The choice is Ed Miliband or David Cameron - so no real choice, then.
Then, I submitted the survey and received a thank you and an appeal for a donation.
The latter made me think of why I don't donate to the Conservative Party and then to wonder why I was asked these questions.
Firstly, the poll results are rarely published - and I think that there is a reason for that. I believe that those people that bother to respond - the 'saddos' like myself - will do so along the lines I have answered. That is, following and supporting 'traditional' Conservative values.
One of the choices offered was 'the environment and climate change.' Do I care about these? Of course I do but do I put these above the needs of my family or my country? No! Do I agree that the British people should be impoverished on some less than half-baked policy that says Canute-like, that Britain can single-handedly reduce so called green-house gas emissions in any meaningful way? No! Especially when we seek to do so while importing ever higher levels of mass produced Chinese goods that are made in an increasingly carbon-energy based environment!
PS Note how it is now called 'climate change' and no longer 'man-made global warming'! Initially I thought that this was a good sign - that science was returning to a fact-based approach to climate and, recognizing that there has been no appreciable actual warming, in recent years and that they had been hood-winked by a bunch of watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside - read James Delingpole's book of the same name - highly entertaining and informative!) but no, the charlatans that eschew scientific practice and doctor test results and data to fit a pre-conceived premise still hold sway. 'They' have just realized that even 'they' can't get away with fooling all of the people, all of the time. So don't change the fundamental lie, just change some of the words!
Anyway, green rage rant over.
So, I suspect that the actual purpose of the survey was to rekindle my conservative views and then seek to get me to make a donation to the Conservative Party, on the basis that this party supports the views that I have just endorsed.
That might work, if, for one minute, I actually believed that the Conservative Party did support and share my views on low taxes or deficit and debt reduction. But they don't. As evidence, I offer the last 4 years. Neither taxes nor the deficit are appreciably reduced from the levels left by the outgoing Labour party, in 2010. Directionally, Britain is still left-leaning.
The leftist approach to politics is to push the socialist agenda, ever leftwards. They do this by taking a great stride in that direction. If there is concerted opposition to the extent of the leftward thrust, then they move back a little but the net position is that the policy/country has moved to the left - they step a yard to the left and retreat six inches, if you like.
The UK Conservatives, since before the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, have been afraid to do likewise in a right-ward direction. Since they are effectively 'professional' politicians, and the same applies, maybe even more so, to the other parties, there whole raison d'etre is about getting elected and re-elected. So the question isn't that personal taxes are too high, the argument rages around the top rate, which actually doesn't affect too many people (and of, course doesn't raise that much income!). The whole premise of the discussion is not about the iniquity of taxes (or theft/confiscation by the state, to give it its right name) and how they should be minimized but rather about a small and inconsequential sub-sub-part of taxation. One, incidentally on which you might see some Conservatives wavering, on the grounds that someone earning £1M a year can better afford to suffer higher taxes for the common good!
The Conservatives need to offer a radical platform based on traditional Conservative values. This would require stepping a yard or two to the right - moving the ground on which the arguments are held, to the right.
Consider Britain in 1979. The country was very close to collapse and to the anarchy that would have followed a left-wing victory in the election. However, Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives were elected and set about re-taking power from the union-bosses that had brought the country to the brink. These Conservatives didn't do so in some kind of cosy and conciliatory way. They large-stepped to the right and said this is they way the problem with unions will be addressed. How effective was this? Well along with the failed Miner's strike of 1984/5 the whole landscape changed. Unions in Britain are now largely confined to the remaining state bastions - the civil service, local government and the NHS and barely present in private industry. It is also interesting to note that having loosened the grip of the leftist unions, there has since been no mandate to undo the reforms that the first Thatcher government brought in, nor the enhancements that they enacted, subsequently.
So in this field, at least, the leftward direction of the union agenda was halted and then moved to the right and has remained there.
The same needs to happen in other areas but I don't get the sense that the current crop of Conservatives are the ones to do it. It is almost that we need to experience some of the economic convulsions that have affected Greece and Italy before we can expect to see a mainstream party offering Conservative solutions.
It is quite depressing that we might need to see riots on the streets and very high unemployment and real and deep austerity being imposed (from outside!), before we can get a Conservative view put forward - one that says, we are going to take not one but two or more steps to the right and restore the UK. We will take back sovereignty from the EU, we will scrap green taxes that are asinine and dis-proportionately punish poorer people, we will create a wealth-generating economy that allows the individual to keep a far higher portion of what they earn and so on. You can read more here http://bit.ly/1lFufJL and here http://bit.ly/MCuYMt
Donate to the Conservative Party? I think not. To them I am just a 'swivel-eyed loony'. They will get my vote but only because the alternatives are even more ghastly but they won't get my money!
By the way. Read the bit about Margaret Thatcher and what the Conservatives did, again.
These Conservatives didn't do so in some kind of cosy and conciliatory way. They large-stepped to the right and said this is they way the problem with unions will be addressed.See how much better it is when an 'issue' is honestly called what it is?
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