Autonomous Mind

Autonomous Mind

74p

18 comments posted · 0 followers · following 0

9 years ago @ Conservative Home - Sunder Katwala: The Uk... · 2 replies · +1 points

The public as a whole may prefer renegotiation to exit, but that doesn't mean one is possible.

Why do so many Conservatives and talking heads maintain the pretence that renegotiation is an option? Treaty change is required for the substantive elements Cameron claims to want, but the UK cannot open a treaty renegotiation and the EU has already said the other member states are not interested in one.

Cameron would be entering a referendum without having delivered anything of substance since his pledge to hold one. All he can offer are promises with no prospect of achieving them. So please, let's get real.

10 years ago @ Conservative Home - Merkel's visit has exp... · 2 replies · +4 points

The fact is we can choose to be 'in' or we can choose to be 'out'. But there is no halfway house.

The EU is not going to abandon its decades old plan of bringing about a single 'Europe' with an all powerful Parliament. There will be no concessions to the four freedoms. Nothing of any substance will be changed. The EU will allow member states to repatriate a few trifling items that don't change the direction of travel, but that's all.

Cameron either knows this and is treating the electorate with thinly disguised contempt. Or he doesn't know this and is deliberately ignorant of the mountain of evidence that exists, from which he should have informed himself of the way things are and will be in the EU.

To force a treaty renegotiation 15 member states need to back it. Germany alone cannot deliver anything, which seems to be news to the media. There will be no interest in such a renegotiation because there will soon be a new treaty concerning finance underway. So not only will Cameron have no 'reform' discussion, he will be unable to keep what is by definition - and has been since he announced it - a ludicrous pledge on a 2017 referendum.

Matters will most likely be left to rest there, just as they were after Lisbon.

10 years ago @ Conservative Home - Stephen Greenhalgh: Th... · 0 replies · +4 points

It's called the party machine.

10 years ago @ Platform [OLD] - Joe Armitage: The chea... · 0 replies · +7 points

I will make a slightly different point that I've not seen anyone else make on here. UKIP's flat rate tax and higher income tax personal threshold are only pie in the sky if you are wedded to continuing the ludicrous discretionary spending this government is guilty of.

Not one of the main parties is willing to grasp the nettle and tell voters this country has to live within its means. That requires dramatically higher taxation or a reduction in public spending. The parties are irresponsible and self serving because they use public spending as a bribe to voters. As a result Cameron is presiding over a debt explosion that will wreck this country's economy.

Government is too big and involved in too many areas where it has no business. If it focused essential services and welfare for vulnerable people there would not be the need to borrow hundreds of billions more each year.

But no, governments past and present fritter money away on wheezes, scams, fake charities and aid to people overseas while people in this country go without. They drive up taxation, then spend a fortune administering the doling out of subsidies such as tax credits to working people to counteract the effects of the taxation. It's insane.

Smaller, less intrusive government is cheaper and less wasteful government. We could easily benefit from that which UKIP is offering if only the politicians would stop bribing people with borrowed money we can't hope to pay back.

11 years ago @ The Tory Diary - The shrinking Cameron · 0 replies · +8 points

Anyone who could see the signs and dared to question Cameron was more than derided. We were despised and treated with contempt.

Resigning the Council seat I won and leaving the Party are actions that have been vindicated time and again by Cameron and his cohort in the Cabinet. They are Conservative by virtue of membership, but they are conservative in name only. Cameron and co. are thoroughly unprincipled lightweights on the common ground only with the rest of the political class. They have no regard for the electorate until election time.

When people look at Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems and say 'they are all the same' they are absolutely right. The faces differ, the colour of the rosettes may differ, but the direction in which they all take this country - following the anti democratic and damaging wishes of various global bodies and the EU - is the same. Their interests are not the same as our interests.

The UK needs democracy and doesn't have it. Cameron and his ilk are not the solution, they merely exacerbate the situation. A plague on all their houses.

11 years ago @ The Tory Diary - Where are the DUP and ... · 4 replies · +4 points

Possibly one of the most stupid comments I've seen. First off the Republic of Ireland could not afford to absorb Northern Ireland. The bulk of the Northern Irish economy is reliant on British public spending. Secondly who would be 'going back' to Scotland? Presumably you mean the families who have been there generations? Would you say the same of Asians living in Britain who might not be happy with the politics in this country? I'm sure if we look back a few generations we might find what country we can relocate you to as well.

11 years ago @ The Tory Diary - Where are the DUP and ... · 0 replies · +11 points

The Tories will not make any in-roads in Northern Ireland. Villiers has shown herself to be devoid of any guts or leadership as far as the unionists are concerned.

As much as they are fed up with the DUP and UUP and feel under attack as nationalist terrorists continue to wage conflict and nationalist politicians chip away at all symbols of the union in an effort to eradicate any British cultural influence, they see the Tories aren't interested in representing a unionist view.

The Tories are seen as being no different to Labour, pandering to every whim of the nationalists while treating those who wish to preserve the union as an oddity that can be ignored without consequence. So if you harbour any hope of hoovering up discontented support you may as well forget it.

Consensus politics in Northern Ireland is actually stoking discontent. Peace walls are getting higher, segregation is hardening not fading and there is growing polarisation among voters who are not being represented and whose issues are being ignored.

11 years ago @ Platform [OLD] - Michael Burnett: · 0 replies · -7 points

That's true. But Farage has shown himself up for the fool he is. Not only because he gives the impression of courting a party with an agenda completely opposite to his, but because he thinks UKIP will win any seats in Parliament. Farage is slowly strangling UKIP. I can't help but think he is a Tory agent...

11 years ago @ Platform [OLD] - Michael Burnett: · 1 reply · +5 points

What are you talking about, Peter? Open Europe ludicrously describe themselves as eurosceptic, just like Cameron. They are in no way eurosceptic, just like your leader.

OE want to remain in the EU at all costs and they perpetuate the tired myth of reform renegotiation that sees *some* powers come back to Westminster but the EU remain in overall control of the UK. Unless UKIP are presenting themselves as eurosceptic while campaigning to remain in the EU, there is no comparison.

As for Farage, he is the eurosceptics' worst enemy. He doesn't understand the mechanisms for leaving the EU, or present a credible plan for leaving the EU while preserving the UK's access to the single market. Most UKIP members have the right intentions and views, but they are led by a man who can only deal in soundbites and shies away from substance.

Thankfully there is a long way to go and a campaign without Farage - or TaxPayers Alliance for that matter - at its head has a good chance of winning the argument.

11 years ago @ Video - Should George Osborne ... · 0 replies · +5 points

A fascinating re-write of history there, Clare. People turned away from the Conservative Party in 2010 because David Cameron was busy undoing the pledges he had made which gave the party a poll lead sufficient for a clear majority.

People were already backing away when they saw Cameron in his true light, thanks to his reversal over major policy planks such as the Lisbon Treaty and the Human Rights Act. It confirmed what many had been saying, that he was a con trick. True believers on here still think as they did back then, that he will tear off his clothes to reveal a Eurosceptic underneath.

Cameron believes in nothing except power. That now seems to be infecting Tim Montgomerie, who devoted his time to talking about 'strategy' and how the party should be looking to attain power for itself - supposedly by removing one minister who gives the impression of achieving something in his brief and putting him in charge of campaigning.

This insular, self serving navel gazing has replaced talk of a vision for the country. Party before all else is the mantra. Cameron has led the way and little Timmy, the tribal loyalist is merely falling in to line. Nothing matters apart from the illusion of power. 'My guy is in No 10' is all they are bothered about.

Meanwhile this country is being strangled by the financial insanity of the climate change act, suffers as the government vainly hurls money overseas at the expense of Britons who impoverished and need help here, drifts as more and more power is exported to Brussels every week despite the 'referendum lock' that is supposed to stop that, and sees the interests of the British people relegated to the bottom of the piles as foreign criminals - benefitting from legal aid and welfare denied to citizens - are remain in this country from which they are barred from being deported.

Let's see little Timmy stand up and debate those. Or are substantive issues too much for you these days?