Pictured above are (from l to r), former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Herman Van Rompuy (President of the EU Council) and Jose Manuel Barroso (President of the EU Commission) at a China/EU summit held a few months ago.

What does each of them have in common? They represent the leadership of two powerful global economic blocs that wield power over millions of people.

What else? They reached their positions of power, not through election by millions of their fellow citizens but via a secretive cabal of a select few – the higher echelon of the Communist Party in Wen’s case and  the Heads of State in the EU for the other two.

In other words none of them were mandated by their people via the ballot box. They were essentially selected by their own fellow oligarchs who regard themselves as the elite who deserve to rule rather than submit themselves to whims of the great unwashed.

Indeed Barroso (a Maoist revolutionary in his Portuguese student days) has been quoted as fully supportive of that elite notion.

Governments are not always right. If governments were always right we would not have the situation that we have today. Decisions taken by the most democratic institutions in the world are very often wrong.

Ah, the government of the experts or, as Thomas Sowell called them, The Anointed, so much cleverer than the voting masses who do not have the brains to understand the complexities of thw world’s problems…

Really?

Voters, being human, can make mistakes. But it doesn’t follow that a class of experts would have made a better decision. Just think about some of the positions that “the experts” have taken down the ages. In the 1920s, they were for returning to gold at the pre-war rate. In the 1930s, they were for appeasement. In the 1940s, they were for nationalisation. In the 1950s they were for state planning. In the 1960s, they were for mixed-ability, child-centred teaching. In the 1970s, they were for price controls. In the 1980s, they were for the ERM. In the 1990s they were for the euro. In our own decade, they were for the bail-outs and stimulus packages.

Or, as William Buckley once put it

“I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.”

Well, Mr Buckley – China and the EU would certainly not agree with you on that point..

China and the EU – “Making the world a safer place for bureaucracy”

Why is it that Franz Kafka is never around when you need him…

Yet another pratfall for former PR man David Cameron as the massively hyped roadblock to immigration turns out to be a two inch high barrier of tissue paper.

A major crackdown by David Cameron on immigration was unravelling rapidly today after it emerged that it would only affect a small minority of foreigners in Britain.

Is anyone surprised? Scared stiff by the spectre of the rising popularity of UKIP his team of whizz kid advisers take a break from their school homework and x boxing and tell him to go ukip lite. The UKIP supporters are as thick as planks, they tell him, so just mention a couple of keywords (immigration and, before that, referendum) and they’ll all come flocking back.

So he puts on his serious “watching like a hawk” face and expects us to buy into his rhetoric.

Hot air

“A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,signifying nothing”

He knows and we know that any serious attempt to block EU immigration would be broken immediately by our E£CHR loving judges in partnership with hand wringing sob stories from the BBC/Guardianistas spearheaded by St Joan Bakewell. Cameron and his inner clique are from the Notting Hill end of the media/political elite. They despise ordinary people as mindless drones swayed only by Paul Dacre and the Murdoch press. Keep them quiet with a few buzzwords then get them back to their TV screens..

It won’t work this time, Mr C. You use the EU and the Lib Dems and Hacked Off as fall guys for your own core belief and that’s the same driving force that got you your achievement-free stint as a second rate PR man for Carlton TV.

Your core belief is simply the advance of David Cameron – and nothing else.

Times are changing, Mr C. We’ve woken up to your con game.

We just don’t believe anything you say any more..

1. Shifty on issue of in/out EU referendum
2. Surrendered to Hacked Off’s demand to shackle the press
3. Disparages mothers who decide to stay at home and bring up their kids
4. Sneers at those who oppose the idea of gay marriage
5. Thinks even more taxpayers money should be sent to corrupt third world regimes
6. Tempted to “intervene” in Syria while sacking service personnel in their thousands
7. Happy to spend untold billions on a high speed railway that nobody wants
8. Insults the many thousands of ordinary decent people who join/support UKIP
9. Refuses to secure our borders effectively and efficiently

Our new ruling class?

Please pass me that metal bucket – I just need to put it over my head and bang it with a hammer for eight hours…

Good analysis of Osborne’s 2013 Budget by Benedict Brogan and Jeremy Warner of the Telegraph. No histrionics, none of the “look at me, I’m the real star of the show” BBC Newsnight gotcha dramatics from the guy chairing the discussion.

Political TV for grown ups…..

A free and open world increasingly depends on a free and open internet. The internet empowers everyone — anyone can blog, create, learn, and share. It is controlled by no one — no single organisation, individual, or government. It connects the world. Today, more than two billion people are online — about a third of the planet

Guido Fawkes is convinced that  a sinister cartel of shady politicians, third rate academics and sleazy celebrities is not just out to handcuff  the press but is also  on a mission to emasculate the wild untamed blogosphere and bring the “free and open world” of the internet under the control of the new “Ministry of Truth” so he has launched a call to arms to fight against this threat.

Tell them to BLOG OFF by signing your support here

Oh how we are laughing at those crazy Cypriots….debt and bank assets as a percentage of GDP equals a humungous 700%. No wonder they are caught between Merkel and Putin…

If you have a banking sector that size you’re asking for trouble – for how can a state guarantee for depositors be credible? If the banks go under the state wouldn’t be able to rescue the savers

How much better off we are in the UK with our own rock solid banking structure – we are just a mere 450% …..

WTF? 450%?

Worse than those basket cases in Spain and Italy?

No problem….you can always trust a British banker….lol

So the Cypriots have given Angela Merkel and the EU the finger – instead they have turned to Putin’s Russia

Cyprus turned to Russia for help on Tuesday night after the country’s parliament overwhelmingly rejected a tax on the deposits of bank savers.

Despite warnings from the EU not to touch the Russians with a barge pole Cyprus is looking for help from the KGB men who now rule Russia and have been using Cyprus as a “helpful” venue for laundering investing their hard earned “profits”

It could be seen as a smart negotiating ploy – calling the EU bluff. I would imagine there might even be a bit of panic in Brussels because if just one Eurozone member decides to go it alone politicians in Athens, Rome and Madrid will start having second thoughts and the whole Euro farce might start to unravel.

Prepare to add another notch for UKIP…

It’s camp. it’s loud and it’s got the greatest rock riff EVAH!!!!!

I get up, and nothing gets me down.
You got it tough. I’ve seen the toughest around.
And I know, baby, just how you feel.
You’ve got to roll with the punches to get to what’s real
Oh, can’t you see me standing here?
I’ve got my back against the record machine
I ain’t the worst that you’ve seen.
Oh, can’t you see what I mean?

Yes, that Sarah Wollaston…Cathy Newman jolted my memory about how she became Tory candidate for Totnes. She leapfrogged over the usual suspects of stodgy councillors and party suits by winning an open primary.

Yes, in those heady days of opposition that was going to be the way forward – by sending a bolt of electric energy into the well spread bottoms of the Tory faithful. No more plump merchant bankers, teenage political “consultants” or well heeled Eton/Oxbridge toffs with a few years work experience as a PR man for Carlton Television

At the public hustings before the vote, she was asked if her political inexperience would stop her throwing a punch in Parliament, and she retorted that this wasn’t what politics was about. She got a spontaneous round of applause.

She’s ruffling Cameron’s feathers by sticking to her principles – and I like the cut of her jib…

1. Anti EU
2. She turned down a low level government job because she didn’t want to be handcuffed
3. She wants NHS supremo Nicholson sacked for his handling of the Mid Staffs tragedy
4. She criticises Cameron for his retreat over minimum alcohol pricing
5. Cameron and his team, she says, are out of touch with ordinary people

(Now personally I never agreed with minimum pricing but I admire her for sticking to her guns)

Above all she has substantial life and work experience outside politics/media – 24 years in fact which is more than you can say for those spotty sixth formers Cameron, Milliband and Clegg combined….and she also annoys quite a few of the grumpy old saloon bar farts who roam the celars of the Telegraph (just read some of the comments at the end of Newman’s piece…lol..

I live in South Devon with my husband Adrian and we have 3 children, all at university.
I was previously a GP, but also spent time as a police forensic examiner for Devon and Cornwall Police helping victims of sexual violence. I was also involved with teaching and training junior doctors and medical students as well as examining for the Royal College of GPs. I was spurred into Politics after David Cameron’s invitation to those with backgrounds outside politics to bring their practical experience to Westminster

Read her blog and her tweets. The lady has more cojones than two hundred Tory suits sweating in a Turkish bath.

Sarah Wollaston for next Tory leader? You know – I quite like the sound of that though I doubt David Cameron would agree..