Romney stresses family but is he a 21st Century Don Draper?

The Daily Telegraph has one report on Mitt Romney's convention speech last evening, with a typo in his name under the unattractive picture at its head giving his name as "Rmoney", whether deliberate or not I couldn't guess! Link here.

My fear, and has been since he became the likely Republican front runner, is that the perception he might be a Don Draper of Mad Men type, will make him unelectable in the present desperate economic environment. I express no position on whether or not the character of such a fictional character as Draper would become a brilliant, adequate or terrible US President.

Draper however was not a family man which makes me suspicious of yesterday's claims.

Paul Ryan's Tampa Convention Speech

Columns and reports are still arriving from Google so it remains too early this morning in Europe to yet offer a verdict on Paul Ryan's speech last evening in Florida.

It is possible to read the transcript, here, and I offer some quotes that struck my eye:

On Obama's first term: - "Now all that's left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at the moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday's wind."

On Obama and debt: - "In this generation, a defining responsibility of government
is to steer our nation clear of a debt crisis while there is still time. Back in 2008, candidate Obama called a $10 trillion national debt unpatriotic.  Serious talk from what looked like a  serious reformer. By his own decisions, President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him.    And more than all the troubled governments of Europe  combined. One  president, one term, $5 trillion in new debt.    He created a new bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report.  He thanks them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing."

On a programme for a Romney/Ryan Presidential term: -  "In a clean break -- in a clean break from the Obama years, and frankly from the years before this president, we will keep federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, or less.  Because that is enough."

Now in a speech like this that really is a strong pledge, one that confirms my view that victory has already been written off as unlikely and therefore a pledge not to be called upon in Ryan's own mind.

Ryan may be a factor in 2016 but unseating the incumbent with Romney upfront seems an impossibility, but we will see what the candidate himself has to say tonight.

Knavish Knights re-visited and ministerial dope-heads

MPs in a Committee led by Bernard Jenkin MP, have issued a report highly critical of the present UK honours system that perpetuates  many of the worst aspects of Britain's social system, read one report from the Huffington Post linked here, and some of what this blog has written in the past on that topic, from here.

No hope of Britain pulling itself free from the economic destruction that is inevitable unless root and branch reform of the whole structure of governance is urgently undertaken will be possible while emphasis on such tinkering grabs the medias' headlines.

Given the report from yesterday that cannabis use in adolescent permanently reduces IQ in adulthood, surely emphasis would now be better placed on removing from office those like the Prime Minister who have as good as admitted such past practises or are known to have so indulged. An incoming fully mentally functioning Prime Ministerial replacement could then set about clearing up the mess left by the corrupt honours system and other similar malpractices.

Two links on old age, for a wee blogging break

"Grey power is growing..." by Neil O'Brien in the Daily Telegraph.

The closing lines of a favourite poem from my childhood, The Bull by Ralph Hodgson, daily now more apt, in full from here:

The Bull

...

Pity him, this dupe of dream,
Leader of the herd again
Only in his daft old brain,
Once again the bull supreme
And bull enough to bear the part
Only in his tameless heart.
Pity him that he must wake;
Even now the swarm of flies
Blackening his bloodshot eyes
Bursts and blusters round the lake,
Scattered from the feast half-fed,
By great shadows overhead.
And the dreamer turns away
From his visionary herds
And his splendid yesterday,
Turns to meet the loathly birds
Flocking round him from the skies,
Waiting for the flesh that dies.

Ralph Hodgson

My question for John Redwood this morning - Mass debt foregiveness.

Martin Cole

Posted August 25, 2012 at 6:31 am | Permalink

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

I am interested in this sentence of your posting “The government is not rushing to cancel this debt. No doubt it is worried how such a course of action would be perceived by the markets and media.”

I am wondering if you believe that such is the only fear preventing such a course and if so what you consider the consequences of a mass worldwide cancellation of Western debt, which would tend to neutralise market and media adverse reactions, and whether that is not perhaps where the present direction of travel is leading at least the Euro, Dollar Pound and Yen?

My reply to John Redwood this morning - GCSEs

The so-called "Comment sections" of the Mail yesterday and the Telegraph this morning, on the Winter Fuel Allowance, are instructive as to the purposes behind state education in the UK in 2012. The primary aim seems in the recent past to have been to keep the majority as Ill-informed and ignorant as possible on the realities of the modern world, particularly regarding the deliberate EU destruction of the nation states of Europe.

Their countries have gone yet they do not see it, while the likes of IDS peddle temperature fiddling fantasies, worse even than deliberately confusing Italian language teaching universities, implying that winter cold commences only at Dover or possibly the Watford Gap!

EU Rail desecration and waste, latest image

The carving apart of ancient hillsides,  leaving a vicious wound where productive vineyards for centuries delivered their precious cognac, continues apace in the Charente.

By night, arc lights block out the stars, in some of the last few remaining European skies previously untouched even by streetlight pollution!

The pointless and vastly expensive EU ordained act of LGV vandalsm, gobbling billions of euros in an economy hell bent towards bankruptcy, (as will be confirmed this weekend at the Socialist Perty conference headed by President François Hollande in nearby historic La Rochelle,) throws up columns of dust, as the diesel thirsty mammoth machines rape the countryside, while economically priced jet planes speed overhead, in any direction they choose, at fractions of the existing, never mind future, rail fare costs!

The Bullet Point that requires Hague and his FCO Civil Service Chief be sacked!

I doubt whether Britain's Foreign Policy will ever full recover from this blunder with Ecuador over Assange:

You should be aware that there is a basis in law in the UK (the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987) that would permit us to take steps to arrest Mr Assange within the current premises of the embassy.

Even with a new Foreign Secretary it is doubtful if the UK will be taken seriously in diplomatic circles ever again; even were capable diplomats still to be found to represent a nation that could have issued such a grossly ignorant threat, which according to tweets from Ecuador has as of yesterday yet to be officially withdrawn.

The link to the diplomatic threats issued from the FCO appears in an article linked here, by Charles Crawford in Telegraph Blogs, which I have also re-tweeted.

Readying for Grexit - Ayn Rand's prophetic words!

 "Look around you: what you have done to society, you have done it first within your soul; one is the image of the other. This dismal wreckage, which is now your world, is the physical form of the treason you committed to your values, to your friends, to your defenders, to your future, to your country, to yourself."

PM Cameron held conversations last evening, according to The Sun, here, with Presidents Hollande and Obama on the crisis now about to finalise for Greece.

What a trio!

My reply to John Redwood today - Coalition, 4G and HS2

Martin Cole

Posted August 22, 2012 at 8:08 am | Permalink

Your comment is awaiting moderation. I am afraid the headline to this posting gives a clue to the very real dilemma into which you have now been placed. To see that more clearly may I suggest you turn the question around and direct it towards yourself.
Your honest answer must surely terminate at a point reflecting the facts that everything in which you once believed and towards which you strived, has been compromised by your support for your present party’s leadership and its alliance with the actual Liberal Democrats now within the Government.
A Coalition Government, which your votes retain in power, merely to implement the ever-growing totalitarianism of the EU, as I believe is reflected in yesterday’s 4G announcement, HS2 and the borrowing figures. Blog Post Link

4G - Perhaps blogs can sometimes have an effect!

About a month ago my wife and I got annoyed in conversation about the absurd LGV Tours to Bordeaux railway upgrade that at the cost of billions will shave mere minutes off the present travel time between those cities at the EU's behest in a country in grave economic difficulties. Our chat brought out the absurdity of the work progressing though our local area, lacking modern internet and mobile communication capabilities in an area with a mass of unused but inhabitable housing capacity. I therefore made a brief video posted on this blog via YouTube:



I followed this up with a couple more blog posts, linked here and here, with pictures of the desecration in progress and various tweets on twitter, often pointing out the similarities to the HS2 project planned by the EU's ministerial minnions in the UK.

Yesterday the Government in England announced that 4G would suddenly be allowed to proceed, Everything Everywhere, (the communications company that combines former French and German mobile telcom interests within the UK,) being given a year's jump on its competitors, showing every sign of a rushed decision at the EU's possible cost and instigation.

Perhaps a small victory for bloggers and tweeters, possibly also evidenced by the recent evidence of attempts to change the archived records of my blog as recorded here earlier this week.

Perhaps it is mere co-incidence, I hope not, for if some small change to policy has been effected by these postings, who knows, one day our national governments might actually listen to this blog's main message on the obscene, oppressive, wealth destroying monster that the EU has become.

Can Holland really meet their share of EFSF/ESM liabilities?

That will be the question to be considered by Dutch voters as they head to the polls in a General Election next month.

One in four Dutch mortgage holders will owe more than their homes are worth by next year, read a Reuters report from here,described as in the USA as underwater, more fitting in the land of dykes and fingers!

Holland, under their already ratified commitments under the ESM will shortly be in for 5.7% of the debts of Spain and Italy on top of those under the EFSF and more yet to come from the original PIGS. France with its new socialist governments outrageous spending plans and inability to adjust wildly optimistic growth forecasts, as confirmed yesterday by its Finance Minister, is waiting in the wings - bezgging bowl in hand. (See Annex II final page 62 of this)

What an awful EU mess, still worsening with each passing day!

Unauthorised editing of past Ironies Too postings

It appears that archived posts on this blog are being altered, the latest evidence taking place in the early hours of this morning.

I am informing Google of the details and very much regret that I can no longer fully assert that everything I have posted to this blog is now necessarily as it now might appear.

Martin Cole.

Julian Assange shows Bullingdon Britain as Miners' Murderers and Justice Assassins!

Well it did not take the attitudes of our lightweight and arrogant Prime Minister and his Coalition Cabinet colleagues to dispel any goodwill Britain might have gained amongst informed worldwide public opinion through its staging of the Olympics did it?

The demand this morning that colleagues of the miners shot in South Africa disregard their mourning families and return to work today, or face the sack from their London based and British owned employers, must fill those watching across the world with horror.

More knowledgeable and well-informed followers of international relations and diplomatic niceties will already have been filled with utter revulsion at the Foreign Secretary, William Hague's readiness to send police into the embassy of a foreign state in London, threatening to enforce the totalitarian and widely loathed instrument of mass oppression by the secret powers of the EU - the European Arrest Warrant, upon which this blog has frequently reported.

Britain's Government shames England!

My reply to John Redwood today - Playing fields

Martin Cole

Posted August 19, 2012 at 5:54 am | Permalink

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Use Google Earth, check out the shortage of space all across the country, particularly in already congested urban areas.
It is decades long, nearly criminal, immigration policies of recent governments and surely criminal existing unrestricted EU immigration that makes nearly all government policies and politicians’ shibboleths, such as the present furore over playing fields, appear absolutely absurd to the long suffering electorate.

(Update 0810/ the Sunday Telegraph, fittingly has an article on Governement's latest anticipated planning attacks on the Green Belt from here).

So what are our hugely overpaid and useless legislators going to do NOW?

Read the Parliamentary report on Bob Diamond, Barclays etc., from this link.

Well, NOW WHAT?

35 years since the death of Elvis

The LA Times carries a picture, linked here. A track from 1957 that captures the special timbre of his voice:




"Young and Beautiful" as I tweeted on posting this link, just as my very special 60 year old, still is, to this very day!

The Railway Friends of Fascism and HS2

The above is the map from the website of the Department of Transport for the EU ordered HS2 rail developments in the UK. Who will provide and pour the concrete? Who will blast the steel? Who will build the trains? Who other than EU fonctionaires and their lackeys travelling at the public's expense will be able to use these expensive and useless environment destroying follies.

Investments in G4 communication would allow most office work from home regardless of that home's location. Rail travel at whatever speed is passé. There must be other factors at work, a clue comes from the change in rail operators for the West Coast  route announced by Theresa Villiers, Transport Minister, ex-MEP, blatant second home expenses fiddler while an MP, read here who reports to a Secretary of State, Justine Greening, yet another supposed Rt Hon!

I have no sympathy for Virgin Trains? Richard Branson, to be heard complaining  by telephone from Necker island last night, lost his particular backers in the change of government, no doubt that pop funded, mega-millionaire, will have his turn to play with trains return when his particular bunch of EU puppet fascists are inevitably returned to power!

What I wonder is why the British electorate put up with this foreign controlled fascism? I will be returning to the questions raised in the opening paragraph of this posting in due course, meantime for a clue to the first of these, who will provide and pour the concrete, see this pdf file on the results of Lafarge, the French concrete company. (Note from page 7 the €51 million lower proceeds from the EU scam of carbon credits, for just half the year.) What cannot be quantified in such a report is the huge extra revenue from an EU project such as the LGV, another EU rail scam, passing right by its La Couronne concrete plant, no wonder normal British commercial concerns such as Portland's Blue Circle were unable to survive against such continental competition and its once profitable plants today lie idle, such as this in Weardale

Britain's expense fiddling fascists are under the control of others of a foreign variety from the Continent, while that remains the case, as is the policy of all three of Britain's main political parties, Britons cannot prosper, for we are enslaved, and among other things will pay through the nose to pointlessly travel by rail to no purpose whatsoever other than to stuff the pockets of our politicians and whatever franchise operators they choose to reward according to their own transitory and corrupt desires. Such is the EU system.

India's premier at least understands the necessity for growth! Briton's shame!

The EU yesterday issued GDP figures for the 27 former sovereign nations that now comprise the monstrous and undemocratic EU which were an absolute disgrace and stark testimony to the corruption, incompetence and utter arrogance of both political leaders and all the many appointees involved in the deranged EU project.

It is well past time it and they were called to account.

In the world's largest democracy of India, fittingly but certainly not co-incidentally, the democratically elected Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, recognises the disaster that lack of GDP growth represents, read a Reuters report from here:

"If we do not increase the pace of the country's economic growth...it most certainly affects our national security," he said in a speech to mark 65 years of India independence from Britain.

Is the security of the once sovereign nations of Europe seriously threatened? Cast your minds back to Lonon in August one year ago, Amiens this week and of course Athens and Madrid frequently in between.

Our EU leaders are not merely incompetent and incapable but in continuing to pursue their doomed project of pan-European totalitarianism they are playng with fire plus the security of hundreds of millions of people, all striving to live in peace at ease and in trade with their neighbours, all of that which is now clearly being put at risk!

It is 65 years since Britain gave democratic independence to India, Pakistan and what is now Bangladesh. Democracy and independence are precious assets that the political leaders of all three main poltical parties in Britain have sold out for their own selfish greed and apparent obscene lust for unaccountable power.

What deadful shame is attached to those who still offer their support through the ballot boxes to these unprincipled creatures.

NHS to become centre of US battle of Collectivism vs. Individualism?

Just as I suggested last Saturday, Paul Ryan's nomination as running mate for the Republican Party, in the coming Presidential Elections, is likely to propel Obama into the White House for a second term thus creating complete economic collapse in the USA under the massive extra debt that will inevitably arise. Voters in the USA seem unlikely to voluntarily opt for reality.

President Obama yesterday, as reported in the Daily Telegraph this morning, could mishandle this scenario by focusing the public's attention on the true awfulness of socialised medecine by offering the Republicans the opportunity to use the example of the widely known failings of the NHS in their campaign. Note this passage from the linked report:

Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2009, Mr Ryan said that universal healthcare made citizens "dependent" on the state and unwilling to back necessary cuts to government spending.

"We need only look to Great Britain and elsewhere to see the effects of socialized health care on the broader economy. Once a large number of citizens get their health care from the state, it dramatically alters their attachment to government," he said.

As the further evidence of the state of Britain's socialism inspired failings develop over the coming months, the rail fare rise this morning being but one example, it is possible that this could be a sufficiently stark warning for US voters that the Republican Presidential team could win through, particulalrly if that same socialism finally brings the euro to break-up before polling day, as now seems evermore likely!

The Looters and Moochers (as defined by Ayn Rand,) are rampant and run everything in Britain, further evidence of which was adequately provided in the State Controlled Displays in the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, what a terrifying prospect for any typical free-thinking US elector!

The Slog report on a possible halt to building work on the new ECB HQ in Frankfurt, giving one further straw in that wind this morning.

Paul Ryan already brings Obama to address the issues.

Last weekend will be remembered for events in America, far from the Olympic stadia in London, with the appointment of Congressman Paul Ryan as Republican Vice Presidential candidate.

Fittingly it will be the obscene waste of most government spending in the West that must now come to be seen as the major issue of our age. Already incumbent President Obama has been brought up sharp to address that reality, read here.

The longer lesson of the London Olympics, fittingly illustrated by the garish and sometimes almost satanic nature of the closing ceremony, will perhaps come to reflect that such a display, is no way for the custodians of public funds, in a bankrupt state, to distribute taxpayers sequestered former wealth.

A turning point for the West - Paul Ryan's selection as VP on Romney's ticket!

I have been re-tweeting quotes from Ayn Rand Bot for some months and generally trying through this blog and other tweets to bring the lessons of the novel Atlas Shrugged to a wider audience, particularly in the UK where it is practically unknown or shunned.

Frankly I saw that task as pretty hopeless within my lifetime.

I could never have imagined that an American Presidential candidate from one of the two main parties would have the courage to select a running mate who had openly warned of the real dangers contained in Ayn Rand's writings. One article on Paul Ryan is linked here. Representative Ryan has embraced and promoted Rand's writings and anti-collectivist philosophy, see my tweets of yesterday.

The crisis in the Romney campaign, and in the US economy as a whole, must be even graver than I was thinking, which means it must be very, very grave indeed.

The writings of Rand lead to shattering conclusions touching almost all aspects of everyone's daily lives and presumptions - I therefore expect that Obama will now certainly be re-elected.

The West will then face the centennial anniversaries of all the grisly battle dates and events of World War One whilst experiencing financial collapse. It makes the dilemmas set out in John Redwood's posting of this morning requiring ever more urgent attention and correction!

EU Rail Projects - LGV One Year On.

   A year ago today I blogged about the €7.33 Billion being wasted in my small corner of France, for a reduction of only about a quarter of an hour in the jouney time from Bordeaux to Brussels, which none in their right minds or employees of the EU (generally the same thing) would ever choose to make. That posting with pictures of unspoilt countryside is linked here.

   One year on and the machines are hard at work, although a new puppet government of the EU is now in place in France, and the gigantic scope of the economic crisis facing the country is daily ever more stark and evident.

   The following photographs show the extent of the pointless damage being wrought:

On the horizon is the scar in the hillside at Porcheresse featured in last year's images, having then just been deforested.

The work between the villages of Becheresse and Champagne Vigny.

Cameron's hypocrisy on World hunger as economy halts

Quite clearly Britain's Prime Minister sees world hunger as a further "fantastic" opportunity for promoting himself, in fact it must now be obvious to the world at large that he cares for nothing else. Note this comment from the paper that supports his obnoxious political party the most amongst all UK media - the Daily Telegraph, on 26th July, here:

The former England footballer (David Beckham)met the Prime Minister at No 10 as Mr Cameron said world leaders would meet on August 12 – the last day of the Olympics – to thrash out plans designed to help starving people across the globe.
 Mr Cameron said: "Britain has a "fantastic" role to play in this." 

The blog editor's own emphasis was added to the extraordinary use of the word "fantastic" to stress its more than strange context!

Over and beyond the well-known self-obsession and over-powering conceit of Britain's Prime Minister, such a meeting takes with an even more macabre element that being all the newer financial concerns that have arisen for Britain during the course of the Olympic Games. The events by which the nation's leader has become clearly further dazzled and distracted from reality, so he possibly has yet to notice.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, close friend and political fixer for the similar slime-ball who lives next door has now quite obviouqsly entirely lossed control of the economy. One of the few backbenchers in his party with a grasp for economics, John Redwood MP, pointed out on his own blog the shortfall in growth expectations revealed even by the BoE, without detailing the obvious consequences.

Among such results will of course be hunger in many of Britain's cities. Warning signs have already been published in The Guardian in April and June, of this year, both of course completely ignored by the Bullingdon Bullies in Downing Street and almost all other members of the Coalition Government elsewhere.

It is perhaps fortunate that our PM sees hunger as such a fantastic thing, it appears he and his next door neighbour are busy creating the ideal circumstances for much more of it, right in his own backyard.

Why run-up £40,000 of debts to destroy one's powers of reasoning?

The BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, discussed the 'A' Level examination results due out shortly for England and sought to dissemble, obfuscate and avoid the obvious evidence that a huge increase in university fees has led to a drop in admissions. Later in the same programme one of its auotmatom BBC presenters made sarcastic reference to a newspaper's phrase "walk the walk and talk the talk" which at least carries a clear message, unlike about 66% of their programming output.

The headline to this posting provides ample reason for any young person to think twice before entering university, (the costs being based on an estimate given by the BBC,) as opposed to career orientated education.

The huge waste of money incurred in obtaining a university degree not only cannot guarantee a later job, it also quite clearly often also poisons the mind.

The revealing interviews with sensible Olympic medal winning Britons over the last couple of weeks provides further proof of thisd long obvious truth. Many of the young athletes seem to have retained the ability of clear communication rather than the twisting of language to impart zero or neutral meaning and inability to take decisions that is so evident amongst nearly all university graduates, with the more prestigious the university and the degree the less able or normally accomplished the product appears. Cameron, Clegg, Hunt,  and Osborne are prime examples from the government side, while across the aisle the complaint is almost universal on the Labour benches.

As part of  the extra cost cutting now required in the absence of any prospect for UK economic growth, university education for anything other than a tiny minority of school leavers is a luxury the country can ill afford, at least not until the system is cleared of the majority of its present incumbents. Now Patten is quitting the BBC, ridding Oxford of his presence seems a worthwhile first step in the right direction.

Will Spain destroy the EU or the EU Spain?

Things we may not see for much longer!

 

Fox News reports on the Spanish unions meeting with their King to make their case that their country is in the process of being destroyed and devestated by the  EU.

Bloomberg yesterday published a startling comparison of the Spanish situation and that during the same week in the 1930s linked here.