Time to Let the Police Fight Back

It is difficult to know where to start with Saturday’s “March for the Alternative.”  Do I comment on how, despite the name, no alternative except for “spend more, tax more and deny the deficit at all costs” was put forward?  Do I challenge the protesters’ claim to represent the majority of Britons, when considering the turnout was around 400,000 they cannot even claim to represent the majority of public sector union members (approximately 4 million) even if one ignores the fact that the majority of the crowd were students and rent-a-mob?

My initial thought was to point out that the Suffragettes, the American Civil Rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement that Ed Miliband unironically tried to compare the protest to, were all fighting for freedom from state tyranny, not trying to impose such tyranny on others as the radical marchers wish to do.


Yet as I thought of the above, all made me chuckle and shake my head.  The thing that made me really angry about the whole march was the left’s treatment and disregard of the police, and I do not just mean the violent minority.
As much as the left in both Britain and America try and stoke up fear about the rise of the “violent right”, such groups have absolutely nothing on the organisation, aggression, and sheer violence of the violent left.  Every time there is a G8 protest, a tuition fees protest, or an anti-cuts protest, you can guarantee that London is getting smashed up, and police officers will be injured.

We knew this for weeks, and yet organisers and marchers seemed not to care either before or after.  The organisers were too busy worrying about whether the police response would be a bit too rough for their liking, and the so-called non-violent protesters on the day were cheering the violent ones on, not calling for them to stop.  The most telling of pictures is the one that accompanies this article – one violent protester attacking a police officer, while three grinning lefties film the officer with glee in the hope that he retaliates so that they can send their images off to the BBC as evidence of “police brutality.”


After the march, there have been the typically vague statements of “regret” by organisers of the violence, yet such statements seek only to assure us that they were “a minority” instead of showing genuine remorse for the violence, destruction of private and public property, and injured Bobbies that they left in their wake.


Since then we have had articles in the Guardian informing us that actually the violence is all exaggerated by the media.  The Guardian’s Michael White informs us about how wonderful and “carnival-like” the march was, describing the trespassing UK Uncut (who broke into private stores and defaced and smashed them up) as “wholesome”, and condemning TV for covering the hooligans and not the “real” story.


Well, the real story was that 31 police officers were injured, 11 of which were taken to hospital.  Protesters used smoke bombs, petrol bombs, and light bulbs filled with ammonia – all three of which can kill a police officer.  But instead, the left are more concerned that the camera didn’t pick up on their “witty” signs.


We have seen no videos of police getting injured, we know of none of the names of the officers, nor have there been any interviews with the officers in question to see if they are okay.  We do not even know what the injuries are that they received.  Yet all the “non-violent” protesters were lurking with their phones and cameras, waiting for that moment of police “brutality” that they can run off with to the BBC, howling like a child with a bruised knee at the injustice of it all.
Whenever a protester is injured, we are told about it at length and in detail, along with interviews with the “victim” about how scarred and traumatised they are by the whole thing.  We are lectured constantly about the sheer, unadulterated horror of kettling – the “controversial” (so says the Guardian) tactic by which our poor, persecuted student revolutionaries have to suffer the indignity of standing around for a bit.  Yet, cave a police officer’s head in with a piece of wood, and no-one seems to care -just as long as no-one hurts one of our precious Che wannabes.

What is so abhorrent about this whole process is that 31 officers didn’t need to be injured on Saturday.  Yet, the Met have bowed to the pressure of the professional left who howl about how shocked and appalled they are whenever an officer dares to swing a baton in the direction of a protester.  It has resulted in a softly softly approach that only served to put police officers in danger of serious injury or worse.


It is time to stop kowtowing to the professional left and to start protecting our officers by allowing them to fight back against these cowards posing as revolutionaries.  If these latte drinking Bolsheviks want a fight, then fine.  They can bring their ammonia filled light bulbs, and our boys in blue will bring tear gas and a good baton swing – let’s see who goes home crying to Mummy.

The Fall of Nick Clegg and Cleggmania.

As regular readers of this blog might be able to tell, I am not much of a fan of Nick Clegg.  For me he has represented everything that is wrong with British politics.  Pragmatic without principle, a leftist presenting himself as a centrist, and with a whole bunch of screaming lefty cronies supporting him with mindless slogans and useless superlatives.

I was therefore horrified when Cameron's Conservatives united with Clegg's Liberal Democrats in order to form the present coalition government back in 2010.  As I have seen Clegg's popularity fall after that coalition, it has buoyed me somewhat that I was right after all, and that people have seen through the media image to view the festering pragmatist that lurks underneath.  It is this subject that I cover in my latest article for the Grapevine.

"It seems like such a long time since Cleggmania. Just think, it was less than a year ago that vast swarms of students and other trendy political types were jumping around, shouting about how they “agree with Nick”, that he was the future of politics, and how he represented a bold new middle ground between those satanic Tories, and outdated Labour.

Yet less than a year later and Cleggmania has not only faded away, it has plummeted like a lead balloon. The Liberal Democrats, once a party with over 30% support, now has its popularity in single digits according to some polls, and last week’s by-election in Barnsley was an unmitigated disaster that indicates that things are only set to get worse, not better for the once innocuous third party.

Things are not going much better for their “charismatic” leader either. Polling in Clegg’s constituency shows that there is a very real chance that he could be ousted at the next election. Should such a thrashing occur, it would be a Portillo moment of the kind that those of us on the right would relish in the same way we relished the ousting of Jacqui Smith in 2010.

Yet it is possible that the rejection of Cleggles is not just the public getting bored with a public figure, it is also the rejection of the “pragmatic” approach to politics that Clegg and many other politicians represent.

For Cleggmania did not fade out with the public getting bored of him; instead it died when he turned his back on the principles that he claimed to hold. His agenda in the election was firmly left wing, and by uniting with the Conservative Party, he showed that he would happily chuck that agenda if it suited his quest for power, and would drop key manifesto promises if it got him closer to Downing Street.

However, those of us on the right should not get too smug about the fall of Cleggmania. David Cameron is the same sort of politician, who has also sacrificed a great deal in order to gain power and push through an agenda that has tried to please everyone but has satisfied no-one. In the name of “pragmatism” and with vague superlatives about “common ground” and “the good of the nation”, we now have a coalition government based on few principles if any.

The fall of Clegg should not be seen just as the destruction of the Liberal Democrats – a party that has for too long tried to avoid solid principle in favour of jumping on whatever bandwagon comes along. Instead, it should be seen as the public’s rejection of the politician who abandons his principled convictions for some misguided pragmatism...."

The rest of the article can be read here.

Cuts? What Cuts?

My latest article in "The Grapevine" went up the other day, and therefore I am linking it to the blog.  This week's article focuses on the myth that Britain is entering an era of "savage" cuts and an "era of austerity".  Actually, spending is set to go up for the next few years, so the damage of these cuts is massively exaggerated.

However, what the reaction to these "cuts" also shows is that there is a deliberate political trick on the part of left wing special interests to make these cuts hurt more than they usually would, as well as showing the need that the public sector has to continually eat into an economy in order for it to remain workable.  If we are going to get our economy back in order, there needs to be a stop to these games and tricks - it is time to admit that public sector spending at such a large rate simply does not work!

"Apparently we are now in the era of austerity, the era of savage cuts! We are about to see the libraries closing, entire bands of nurses being thrown onto the unemployment line, schools being shut down and of course that old left-wing media catchphrase – “the poorest and most vulnerable being hit hardest.” Or are we?

The so-called cuts are being spun by the left as much as possible in order to create mass displeasure at “savage Tory cuts.” The lesson that the public is supposed to draw is that the cuts are harsh, cruel and are going to lead to a new Dickensian nightmare. Throw in a few snarky remarks about Eton and you have almost every Guardian editorial on economics for the last 9 months.

The problem with all this is that it isn’t really true. Despite the rhetoric there are no net spending cuts. Public spending is actually going to increase over the next few years, but will not increase as much as it otherwise would. Only then will it begin to shrink in real terms, and will eventually return to 2008-9 levels by 2016. Considering 2008-9 was not exactly a fiscally responsible period, it is tough to see what the fuss is all about.

So, why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth then? For it cannot be in doubt that there are serious predictions that services will take a hit, that there will be job losses, and that budgets will be cut due to the fact that the public sector counts on continued expansion. There are two explanations for this, neither of which makes the left look particularly good.

The first explanation is that there is a mix of opportunism and exaggeration involved here. Left-wing politicians, union officials and special interests see that there is a re-interpretation of the role of the state at play here, and they want it stopped. Therefore it is in their interests to make these “cuts” as painful as possible, and to exaggerate how difficult they will be...."

The rest of the article can be found here.

Abolish the Corporation Tax!!

I'm a little late putting this one on the blog, but here is my latest article in "The Grapevine" - this time it is on the corporation tax, and how it shouldn't be kept as it is, or reduced, but abolished entirely!

I get annoyed with the corporation tax for a number of reasons - in part because it is a tax that reeks of that annoying student mentality that thinks itself urban and trendy because it buys crap coffee from the local FairTrade stall as opposed to one of those evil Starbucks things with their good coffee and nice places to sit!  However, this article attempts to present the argument against the corporation tax on the basis of honesty and who it actually taxes.  It also takes on the idea that tax avoidance (as opposed to tax evasion) is a bad thing.

"Last week’s protests by UK Uncut at Barclays brought up the old chestnut of corporations and their supposed “duty” to jump various hurdles and pay certain taxes designed especially for them.

Groups such as UK Uncut believe that tax avoidance, practiced by corporations such as Barclays, is immoral. Accompanying that view is usually the opinion that the rate of corporation tax is too low. Both views are incorrect.

First, there is nothing immoral about avoiding tax. Tax evasion – that is the deliberate non-payment of tax legally owed – is of course illegal, and no-one is defending illegality even if one may criticise the law. Tax avoidance however, is not only legal, it also a natural and even a wise practice for any person or business to engage in. Tax avoidance is merely an attempt to limit the amount of tax that one needs to pay.

This may sound controversial but in reality it is not. Did the UKUncut crowd judge those shoppers who packed out stores in late December in order to avoid the VAT hike? Are they planning to blockade the coach and trucking companies that fill their tanks up abroad in order to pay less for petrol? If I am in America and choose to purchase a product in Texas instead of England due to the fact that there is no sales tax in Texas, should I be then subjected to a dishevelled crowd of students with poorly constructed signs blocking the entrance to my home?..."

The rest of the piece can be found here.

Do Tories Really Hate Books and Trees?

My latest column for "The Grapevine" is up, and focuses on the current debates in the UK about libraries and forests, and the relative defunding of each.  The article seeks to respond to the horror that the idea of privatisation has triggered in the minds of so many of the British public.  It argues that privatisation is not a terrible thing that destroys those goods and services that we love, but improves them and makes them better.

Of course, the fact that such an argument needs to be made, and is seen as rocking the boat, indicates just how far left British society has moved in the last ten years or so.

"One of the more worrying aspects of the political atmosphere in the so-called “austerity era” is that it is becoming clear just how much the public at large has bought into the left-wing concept that supporting something means throwing government money at it, and therefore taking money away from it means that someone must be against the project or scheme in question.

We have seen this in the last week with both libraries and forests. The prospect of cuts and sell-offs in both these areas has been met by howls of anguish by the political left and special interests who have concluded that this means that Tories hate libraries, books, trees and fluffy bunnies. From recent polls, it seems that the public has been swayed by this argument.

The logic is clear: if you like forests and libraries, then you must unquestioningly pump billions into nationalised libraries and subsidised forests, and if you so much as squeak in objection then you will be condemned as someone who hates greenery and poor people being able to access books.

Of course, this is complete nonsense when stated out loud, and yet it is an assumption that so many make. Yet there are many ways of supporting and preserving something through the private sector..."

The rest of the article can be found here.

Cameron's Conservatives Must Fight or Die

From this week I will be writing a weekly column for "The Grapevine".  It is a website that brings together many authors from all over the political spectrum, and I will (of course) be offering a conservative/libertarian perspective to proceedings.

My first column is now up, entitled "Cameron's Conservatives Must Fight or Die".

David Cameron’s announcement last week that there will be no tax cuts in the near future will dismay those of us on the conservative right who are becoming increasingly dismayed at the betrayal of conservative principles, and the lack of conservative arguments coming from the Tory party.

Any conservative who advocates small government, low tax, Friedman economics will tell you that slashing taxes across the board will stimulate the private sector, create employment, attract prosperity from abroad, and will therefore increase the tax revenue. Therefore, for Mr Cameron to state that we “cannot afford” tax cuts is worrying, and indicates that he has bought into the left-wing narrative being spun by big government socialists such as Miliband, Balls and Cable that a tax cut is a gift given to the richest at the expense of the country at large. It also means that if there are no positive effects in decreasing taxes, then there are no negative effects increasing them either, and our left-wing friends are correct to want to keep income taxes high.

Additionally, any actual conservative policies that the Coalition have pushed have not been supported by the typical conservative arguments. The Tories have allowed the meagre 3% spending cuts to be presented by the left as “harsh” and “painful” instead of being welcomed as the necessary beginning to the dismantling of the freedom guzzling state apparatus set up by the previous Labour government....

The rest of the column can be found here.