Throwing Down the Gauntlet

The Euro is fast turning into a bigger joke than Eurovision. However the result is exactly the same! Britain are always the bloody losers!

At least Eurovision is popular right across the continent with the largest viewing figures ever for this smaltzfest and celebration of all that is wrong in modern PAP music.

Mind you Eurovision neatly microcosms the whole failed EU experiment with smaller countries being tied to the major pop houses of Europe but unlike this singing contest with the Euro it appears that it is always us in the UK picking up the tab despite being the losers.

Ireland have often won Eurovision but they effectively won the Euro Lottery when we ended up committing £7 Billion to bail out their wrecked economy. 7 Billion being exactly the amount that George Osborne said that he had to cut out of our welfare bill. 

If we can’t afford to spend that huge amount in the UK how the hell can we afford to send it to the Irish?

And you thought it was only Jedward taking the proverbial! 

Now to add insult to injury and completely out of tune with the wishes of the British public George Osborne is giving £ 4.3 Billion of our cash to bail out Portugal! Despite the fact that if my drink addled memory serves me right they didn’t even give our boys in Blue many votes on Saturday!

Talking of boys in blue, of course they are on a collision course with the Government over the twenty percent cuts that are going to be imposed on them which their leaders in ACPO say will lead to the loss of 12,000 frontline experienced officers.

Now call me old fashioned and regardless of your political persuasion you have got to admit it’s a pretty dumb idea to cut Police numbers as we enter a major economic recession and an inevitable surge in crime.

Mrs Thatcher clearly recognised this as she gave coppers a huge pay hike before destroying Arthur Scargill and the last bastion of real union power, the NUM.

Undoubtedly the Police like the rest of the public service desperately needs cutting back to size and clearly it has grown largely unchecked during the thirteen years of Labour rule but I do worry that these cuts are too deep and too fast and are being driven by political ideology rather than just from a need to tackle the huge deficit the last lot left behind and the banking crisis.

I think people are braced for these cuts but what is also becoming apparent is that the man in the street cannot and will not tolerate such draconian measures if money is still being diverted in to the pig economies of the EU or in foreign aid.

Of course most people would agree with the NHS funding being ring fenced. Although that fence seems to have as many holes in it as our border controls as Andrew Lansley's words of reassurance look increasingly hollow. 

However why the hell was foreign aid not only been ring fenced but increased?

People were still reeling from the news that Cameron has committed £350 million a year to India, a nation with a space programme, aircraft carriers and a real air force whilst at the same time scrapping Nimrods, Harriers and the Ark Royal when he suddenly announced £650 million in aid to Pakistan to build schools to combat terrorism whilst at the same time cutting our school rebuilding programme!

As for combating terrorism he still hasn’t convinced me how the money will help when the Pakistanis appear to have let Osama Bin Laden live right next door to their own version of Sandhurst!

I am a firm believer that charity begins at home and never more so than when we are facing such massive cuts in public services and thousands risk losing their jobs and homes. But so far these Euro bailouts have cost every family in Britain at least £500. How the hell and why the hell can we or should we afford that?

To add insult to injury we are still paying £48 million a day into the EU and despite a referendum on AV that cost the best part of £12 Million Cameron still refuses the British public the right to have a vote on whether we stay in this expensive undemocratic club or not. 

You have got to ask the question why and the only answer is that those in power know what the result will be. 

But who could blame us for wanting to get out when its absolutely clear both from the press and the secret meetings that Greece are going to default at worse or renegotiate the terms of their loans just as Ireland are bound to. 

The simple bottom line is that Greece and Ireland would be better off out of the EU and the Euro and then they could devalue the Drachma or the Punt and attempt to rescue their economies over time. Its my confident prediction that this will happen within months anyway as it is clear that Spain is another basket case that is heading towards the rock and once the inevitable collapse happens then the Euro will break.

But why is Cameron dithering? Why not act now and give the British people a straight in or out referendum? After all its what his buddies in the Lib Dems wanted at the last election and now sizable numbers of his own MPs are calling for it as well as many in the grassroots of the Tory party. 

Now is not the time to dither Dave, now is the time to put the sovereignty of our country first. If you don’t at the next election you could well end up with “Nul Points”!

Now that David Cameron has done exactly what the Editor of the Sun instructed him to do and ordered the Met to effectively reopen the Madeline McCann case I trust that every single penny that is raised through the new book sale and the serialisation rights will be going directly to the treasury.

No more money should be spent on PR men and useless Private Dicks from Madrid who promise to find Maddie by Christmas and achieve sweet FA.

Please don’t get me wrong I have enormous sympathy for the McCann’s and their loss but like many parents in Britain I still find it odd and wrong that they thought it was okay to leave three toddlers home alone whilst they went out eating and drinking.

Of course they didn’t deserve to be punished for their neglect by having their child abducted and the only criminal is the person who took Maddie but frankly too much of the serialisation and all the other coverage has been about their plight, including the sickening revelation about how it affected their sex life, and not enough about the horror the child must be or did go through.

Also the unpalatable truth as many on the Police Authority and in the Lords are now saying is that the money being spent is probably a complete waste of cash, as most experts in the field believe that Maddie would have been killed within 48 hours of her abduction.

Cameron, the former TV spin man, is playing a dangerous PR game here in acting up to the tabloid press and the Murdoch empire in particular and one has to ask will he now be ordering the Met to reopen the case into missing Ben Needham and thousands of other children who have gone missing? 

I am extremely uncomfortable with this whole story are you?

As you can tell from this from column I am a passionate believer in free speech but I also believe in privacy so the super injunction furore is fascinating me.

The Internet and Twitter in particular has made the law an ass or a twit as it has proved that these gagging orders in the Internet age are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

I know, and you probably know every single name of these rich men who have used these orders so what it is the point of the injunctions?

One has to ask would it not have been cheaper and fairer to all the women involved if these fellows instead of whipping out their cheque books at their “Briefs” had instead kept something in their briefs?!

© Jon Gaunt 

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