The Scottish Libertarian Party a pro-Brexit and pro-Independence for Scotland, has recently reached an important political milestone. Back in April we interviewed Tam Laird the party leader. Now we are delighted to interview Aberdeenshire Councillor Sandy Wallace a first elected politician for the Scottish Libertarian Party.
I was the Councillor for Lower Deeside, where I live, from 1999-2007 under old one member FPTP rules. I was not re-elected when it went to multi-member STV wards at a time when the Conservatives went through a Hague/IDS/Howard period of being unelectable. I was talked into standing again by a close friend, Alex Johnstone MSP, who sadly has since died. The Conservatives won a mini landslide in 2017, which English readers will recall from Alex Salmond losing his seat in the GE a month after the Council elections. The ward is 20% Lower Deeside, rural farmland but in reality an upmarket dormitory for Aberdeen, then 80% Stonehaven, a gorgeous seaside harbour town. In England it would be rock solid Tory but we have tartan Tories to fight it out with
“I sit on the Communities Committee, which is Policing, council housing and social work. That is my opportunity to ask the police how their pointless war on drugs is going”
You sit on the Aberdeen Community Planning Board, The Regulation of Private Renting Sub – Committee and the Sustainability Committee, among others. What are you able to achieve in these roles, and what are the main challenges facing Aberdeenshire Council?
I have achieved the square root of bugger all which is why I flounced out of the Conservative Party. They have no interest in smaller government. Sustainability is enjoyable, mostly I draw attention to BS, and point out that the fluffy policies the council has merrily adopted actually have consequences. Planning has been fairly heart-breaking and was the camel back-breaking straw for me the council is run by anti-business NIMBYs. Gypsy Traveller Committee is good fun, the Chair likes having me there because I can give a pro-business and liberty perspective on the idea that perhaps we should stop trying to give gypsies services they don’t want but maybe just leave them alone to live on land they themselves own. I sit on the Communities Committee, which is Policing, council housing and social work. That is my opportunity to ask the police how their pointless war on drugs is going. Have they managed to bully anyone into choosing to give up drugs by threatening to take their kids into care or have them evicted? Yes, sadly, I have been reduced to that level of behaviour. The main challenges are that we have no money left and can’t get our head around doing less.
You had been a Conservative Councillor prior to moving to the Scottish Libertarian Party. What made you leave the Conservatives and what first attracted you to the Scottish Libertarians?
I did not join the Conservatives because I agreed with them, I joined because they seemed to be the party with the most chance of coming my way., They had dropped their stupid support for Clause 2a ( Clause 28 in England), dropped the poll tax and opposition to devolution. I had hoped they could continue the journey. They didn’t, but nobody else did either, so I have not been proved wrong. I am a very wet libertarian, I would say a Whig, a fanboy for Dan Hannan and Doug Carswell. Joining the Libertarians is my public expression of anger at the lockdown.
We speak at the time of Covid. How have you personally found the lockdown and what do you think of the Scottish Governments handling of the crisis?
Personally? I am one of the many people living the dream. Detached home, garden, financially secure, 80% salary on furlough, granted a pass for university work based on earlier marks. Who cares about the kids in the gig economy whose future is being squandered. Of course in reality, I am livid. Johnson looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights, but while Sturgeon is following identical policies, her motivation is totally different. This is what she dreamed of, an authoritarian regime that destroys people’s lives then calls them selfish for grumbling about it.
“The idea of letting somebody have a birthday party for a ten-year-old now seems like anarchy. We need to have birthday parties for ten year olds. With a magician. And a whole buffet of finger food that all the parents just sort of graze at”
As we move into 2021 what would you like to see done to help the economy and society recover?
It is a huge task because even if you lifted all restrictions tomorrow, 25% of people would still choose to follow some of them and every time you don’t buy a coffee, that is somebodies job at risk, and with it, perhaps her ability to stay in college. It honestly needs changes that are tantamount to revolution. The idea of letting somebody have a birthday party for a ten-year-old now seems like anarchy. We need to have birthday parties for ten year olds. With a magician. And a whole buffet of finger food that all the parents just sort of graze at. And car sharing. We have put society back 25 years, the only solution is to put government back 25 years.
My thoughts are barely printable. This is Humza Yousaf’s pitch for leadership when Sturgeon goes, his vision is a soft-focus form of fascism like Singapore or Malaysia.
If you we’re able to get more Libertarians on to Aberdeenshire Council what would you like to see done differently, how would you change the council?
Well if you mean Councillors of a libertarian frame of mind, most of what we do is defined by the Scottish government, so a tax and services cutting budget is not actually feasible. I would like us to run the planning system with a presumption in favour of development, whether it meets policy or not, unless there are actually constraints such as sewage. A neighbour with a bad attitude is not a constraint. a planner thinking the building is ugly is not a constraint. I would like us to seek to delist half our listed buildings so that people could afford to maintain them, including all the bridges the council actually owns. I would like us to regard the equalities agenda with the contempt it deserves, given that it is the bastard child of people who belong to parties that are actually institutionally racist
“I would like to see Scotland governed very lightly, more of it by local authorities than the Scottish government, with local authorities raising nearly all of their own revenue so answerable to the voter for value for money”
The party is both a pro-Brexit and pro-Independence for Scotland. What would be your vision for the future of Scotland. How would you like to see it governed in say 5-10 years?
I voted for the winning side in both referendums. I hope to see that the democratic mandate honoured. I would like to see Scotland governed very lightly, more of it by local authorities than the Scottish government, with local authorities raising nearly all of their own revenue so answerable to the voter for value for money. The UK government can carry on worrying about defence and foreign affairs, ideally not being involved in any foreign wars. More important than that, however, I would like to see us being a tolerant nation, one that welcomes economic migrants and treats asylum seekers with compassion but a bit of suspicion. I would like anyone who claims to be offended to be asked ” so what?”
Are there any thoughts you would like to leave our readers with?
I think George Foreman was a better fighter than Muhammed Ali, new Taylor Swift is as good as old Taylor Swift and John Stuart Mill should be core reading in states schools especially the bit where denounces the very concept of state schools
We are joined by Dick Delingpole as we discuss the US Elections Results, Lockdown 2, some “Despite Brexit” news and the fact that Croydon Council is now officially bankrupt. We then chat with Dick about his new found stardom and we play the Yes/No game with him.
On 11 November, Boris Johnson’s ally, Director of Communications Lee Cain, announced that he would leave his post, just 24 hours after reports suggested that he was in talks to become the prime minister’s chief of staff. Sputnik Radio spoke with Mike Swadling.
“This is a Government in turmoil. It has been this way since the start of the pandemic. It’s not clear they have control of what’s happening. They have a strategy for Brexit, but that seems to be dragging on and on and on”
“fundamentally, if you have a leader, it doesn’t matter what the lieutenants think of you. Know what the general thinks. No one ever thought with Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, Harold Wilson – no one thought that the lieutenants were making the rules. They knew there was a general in charge of them”
“you’re chief of staff, and you have to force through a policy, then a professional footballer makes you change it a few days later. Then they do that again, after another few days. Then it feels like you’re following the policy of the Welsh Government or the Scottish Government. Then you say, ‘No’ we won’t have another lockdown, then you have another lockdown, and so on, and so on and so on. You know, you’ll come out of that role with no credibility. Why would you go into it in the first place?”
“There’s nothing you can say about this Prime Minister or this Government that makes you think, ‘Oh, he’s the reason for their being, he is their raison d’etre’. Therefore, until they have a purpose, they’re going to be in constant turmoil”
“Every deadline they’ve given so far has been pushed back. A deadline has to be a deadline. A sensible negotiator would have said, ‘Business needs six months to roll in the new rules, whatever they might be, so let’s set a deadline in the middle of June this year”
What We Can Learn From Sweden, South Korea and Japan For Fighting Covid In 2021
Opinion Piece by Josh L. Ascough
It is now roughly 9 months into the Coronavirus pandemic, and the United Kingdom has been placed into another national lockdown.
It seems to be the case that Einstein was right with his definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results”; by that definition, it’s not just the UK to which insanity has overtaken; Italy, Spain, Germany, Australia and many other nations have taken the approach of trying to focus on cases, when this is a fool errand.
Due to the nature and the way in which Covid-19 spreads, everyone is going to get this virus at some point; just like how at some point, everyone is going to get the flu, a cold, chest infection, or any other form of virus that spreads person to person; but this does not mean everyone is at risk of dying from the virus, nor does it mean death from the virus is inevitable.
It is very similar to the boom/bust cycle and how the Keynesians wrongly view the bust as the problem, but ignore the boom; when it in fact is the artificial boom that should concern people, the bust is merely the inevitable effect; we’ve been trying to prevent the inevitable cases, to try and stop the preventable deaths; the way we should have been handling this virus, is to accept the inevitability of cases but have measures in place to prevent as many deaths as possible.
This does not mean people should actively seek to get the virus; unless they are not vulnerable and are looking to donate plasma, so further testing on anti-bodies can be done; but to not panic if cases rise or if you get this virus. Remember, we should be looking to reduce the preventable (deaths) not the inevitable (cases).
I want to address three countries in particular that have taken different approaches to fighting this virus compared to most “lockdown enthusiast” countries; namely Sweden (I can already hear the lockdown lovers screeching at that name), South Korea, and Japan. Before I get into that however, let us briefly go over what it is we, the United Kingdom did wrong.
“The NHS did neglect its patients; it neglected to allow cancer patients to choose whether they wanted to go through with their treatment, taking into consideration the risk of Covid; the choice was made for them, that Covid was more dangerous and more deadly than their cancer”
Covid – What We Did Wrong.
On the 23rd of March 2020, the United Kingdom went into a national lockdown. In hindsight it was a terrible choice, but considering the healthcare system we have, it is understandable to have seen it as the only option on the table at the time. The purpose of the lockdown was simple (though it appears forgotten): We have a lockdown to spread out the cases and deaths, so as to not overwhelm the NHS to the point we have to make the choice of who lives via treatment, and who dies by neglect.
The UK currently, at the time of writing this on the 10th November 2020, has 1.23 million cases, and 49,770 deaths related to Covid-19 (key word being related. This has been a problem since the pandemic first began, where if someone contracts Covid-19 then dies from a car crash, they are marked as a Covid “related” death; not from, related). With a population of over 68 million and an elderly population close to 12 million, the case rate amounts to 1.8% of the population so far being infected, and out of the UK population 0.07% have Covid-19 “related” deaths, and out of the percentage that have been infected 4.04% have died; again, “related” to Covid-19.
The lockdown was never meant to stop deaths or cases, merely to spread out cases so we didn’t have to neglect saving people. The problem is we did neglect people.
When the lockdown first came about, cancer treatments, diabetes treatments, and many others were cancelled to save room for Covid patients, so the idea of not neglecting people was a complete lie. The NHS did neglect its patients; it neglected to allow cancer patients to choose whether they wanted to go through with their treatment, taking into consideration the risk of Covid; the choice was made for them, that Covid was more dangerous and more deadly than their cancer. Sky News insultingly reported that roughly 1 million breast cancer screenings had been “missed” because of the pandemic. No, 1 million women didn’t “miss” their screenings because of the pandemic; as if there was a choice, 1 million women had their cancer screenings cancelled for them; not by them, because the government decided it had the authority to decide which conditions were worth treatment…so we could save lives.
It is very anecdotal, but I’ve had many conversations on this subject, and the response is always, “well my uncle’s friend has cancer and he was okay with his treatment being cancelled”. My response to this is always: okay, but what if they weren’t? What if they were more scared of their untreated cancer progressing and killing them? What about the people who aren’t okay with their treatment being cancelled; whether it’s cancer, diabetes, arthritis, or heart transplants?
The typical rhetoric against attempting to rationally consider the positions taken and use critical thinking skills is often the following:
“Well you just want people to die. You’re selfish.”
To that I say fine, we can play that game.
In the UK, there is likely to be at least as many if not more preventable Cancer deaths than Covid-19 deaths, because of the diversion of resources into Covid. Richard Sullivan, Professor of Cancer and Global Health at King’s College London and Director for its Institute For Cancer Policy stated that:
“The number of deaths due to the disruption of cancer services is likely to outweigh the number of deaths from the Coronavirus itself. The cessation and delay of cancer care will cause considerable, avoidable suffering. Cancer screening services have stopped, which means we will miss our chance to catch many cancers when they are treatable and curable such as cervical, bowel and breast. When we do restart normal service delivery after the lockdown is lifted, the backlog of cases will be a huge challenge to the healthcare system.”
On the 6th October Matt Hancock stated:
“Cancer Patients may only be guaranteed treatment if Covid-19 stays under control.”
Even though the NHS was never overwhelmed, millions of cancer screenings were cancelled to “Protect the NHS” and to “Save Lives”. If this is the crowd that claims to care about people’s lives, and proclaim that sceptics of lockdowns are “selfish” and “want people to die”; I think it may be safe to say that pro lockdown individuals have some form of mental deficiency.
Let us turn to the countries I mentioned at the beginning; what exactly can we learn from them?
“Sweden never had a lockdown, nor did it impose really any restrictions. The government took an advisory position for the elderly and other vulnerable people, with social and moral pressure for individual self-restraint and responsibility”
Let us first take a look at the now most hated country, Sweden.
Sweden holds a fairly small population of just over 10 million. Out of those 10 million, 162,000 have been infected with Covid-19, which equates at 1.6%, and out of the population 6057 have died, which is 0.05%; out of the percentage of people infected, 3.73% of those infected have died. This may still seem scary, but remember lockdowns only postpone current cases and don’t do anything to prevent deaths overall, and these are deaths and cases overall so far. But if we expand the perspective a bit and look at the rates and the directions they have been moving in, Sweden is doing pretty well for itself. Sweden hit its peak death rate on April 15th at 115 deaths in one day, and just recently hit its cases peak on November 5th at 4766. Yet since April 15th when it had its peak death rate, Sweden’s death rate has been drastically decreasing, and continues to do so, with its current death rate per day at the time of writing being 3, and it has been on low double digits to single digits; sometimes zero, since the 3rd July when it was at 8 deaths per day.
Sweden never had a lockdown, nor did it impose really any restrictions. The government took an advisory position for the elderly and other vulnerable people, with social and moral pressure for individual self-restraint and responsibility.
Japan is another success story.
Japan is home to a population of over 126 million people, and an elderly population of just over 36 million. Out of its population of 126 million, 110,000 people have been infected with Covid-19, which is 0.08%, and out of the population 1840 have died, equating to 0.001%; the percentage of people infected who have died is 1.6%.
Japan as well, never had a lockdown, though they took slightly stronger measures than Sweden did with regards to masks, and recommending shops close and vulnerable people isolate; these measures however apart from mandatory masks, were not legally punishable.
Japan hit its peak in cases back on the 3rd August when it reached 1,998 infections per day, and currently from the time of writing this, on the 10th November was at 899 infections per day. The death rate is equally impressive. Japan reached its peak death period on the 22nd April with 91 deaths per day; on the 10th November these deaths had dropped to 11 deaths, and has continued to stay at a stable, low double digit level since around mid-July.
The last success story to mention is South Korea, which is most probably the closest to home in terms of population size overall and in terms of elderly population.
South Korea is home to just over 51 million people, and holds an elderly population size of roughly just over 7.6 million.
Out of its population of 51 million; at the time of writing this on the 10th November, 27,799 have been infected, which is 0.05%, and out of the population 487 have died, equating to 0.0009%; the percentage of people infected who have died is 1.7%.
South Korea, like the others mentioned, never had a lockdown. The nation did however hold very local restrictions in terms of isolation if infected.
There are a few additional pieces of information to give context to South Korea. Due to the wounds from the SARS virus still in people’s minds, the general public was very cautious from the start of the pandemic. In addition South Korea has a predominantly private healthcare system, and so with the profit incentive being allowed to function, mass production of testing kits and ventilators were produced and sold; the market process quite literally saved lives.
South Korea hit its peak infection rate all the way back on the 1st March; where it was at 1062 cases per day. Since then it has seen a dramatic decrease in overall cases, where they dropped to double to single digits as early as April. It has since late August however seen a rise into triple digits, however this has been on a decline since the 1st September; the current case rate in South Korea; at the time of writing this, stands at 146 cases per day.
South Korea’s death rate has remained impressive. the nation reached its peak in deaths on the 23rd March at 9 deaths per day, and began to see a decrease in April; South Korea has never exceeded single digit deaths per day throughout the pandemic. The current death rate in South Korea from the time of writing this, on the 10th November, stands at 2 per day.
“These three nations; Sweden, South Korea and Japan have shown that it is not the case rate to be concerned with; it is the death rate. They have shown that lockdowns are ineffective and do nothing to curb overall deaths or cases”
So what can we learn from these countries, and what can we do differently towards the coming new year?
These three nations; Sweden, South Korea and Japan have shown that it is not the case rate to be concerned with; it is the death rate. They have shown that lockdowns are ineffective and do nothing to curb overall deaths or cases, and merely postpone cases to a future time frame.
I’m sure there will be some mad raving lockdown loony, who will try to say I don’t take the virus seriously; to which I say I do take it seriously. I live with a vulnerable person, and funnily enough I’ve made choices that aren’t part of government “guidelines” which better suit my life and my circumstances; most of the time while travelling before the 2nd lockdown I took a taxi everywhere because it would limit who I had to interact with during my journey, meaning I could have better control of my situation.
What measures could be suggested that we take via influence from Sweden, Japan and South Korea? I believe the following would be the most pragmatic if we were to focus solely on preventing deaths rather than inevitable cases:
End the National Lockdown.
Localise decision making to local councils in terms of what restrictions they are to have in place based on demographics of age, medical vulnerability in relation to infection rate. For example if a local area has few elderly residents, few individuals who are medically vulnerable and a double digit infection rate, the local councils could set low restrictions. It would be similar to the tier system but on a much more localised scale, allowing local governments themselves to decide their own restrictions; not on their behalf by Whitehall.
Allow private establishments to choose whether to mandate mask wearing if they are capable of upholding social distancing.
Allow individuals who are consenting with one another to meet for gatherings unless they contradict with local measures.
Mandatory mask wearing in hospitals and care homes. These are vulnerable areas where people are seeking treatment.
Allow for the expansion in private companies producing and selling testing kits and allow individuals to purchase these kits outside of the NHS for home use. Allow businesses such as Boots, local pharmacies and such to sell these testing kits and correlate positive tests back to local hospitals and GP practices.
Allow for the expansion of businesses producing and selling ventilators and leave the decision of whether to purchase or not to local governments in correlation with hospitals within their region, with regards to their demographics of age, medical vulnerability and infection rate. This will ensure that we are not focussed on preventing cases but have the means in the local areas where they are needed to prevent as many deaths as possible.
Do not imprison residence in care homes. If the residence and their families would feel safer leaving the care homes to live with family, allow them to do so; do not make the same mistake of imprisoning care home residence to simply wait for death. In addition do not imprison students at university; if the students feel safer in returning home or staying, the choice should be theirs to make with advice from the student bodies.
Offer financial incentive to people who have tested positive to donate plasma so an expansion in testing on anti-bodies can occur; this should especially be encouraged among young adults.
Allow private establishments to decide the maximum capacity in one group they will allow, in relation to whether they can uphold social distancing .
Allow businesses and business owners themselves to decide whether to open or close. It is immoral for the government to decide who is essential and who is not; your livelihood is essential to you, it doesn’t matter if a politician thinks otherwise.
Allow patients to decide whether they want to take the risk of cancer and other treatments during the pandemic. It is completely abhorrent to allow the government to decide whether people should have treatment; that choice is to be made between patient and doctor alone.
The essence of these suggestions boils down to more decisions being made at the local level based on demographics, not one-size-fits-all approaches that may be needed in one location but are overboard in another. This approach allows individuals to make their own judgements of what is best for their circumstances, and what risks; if any, they are willing to make, while local governments who know their constituents better than the central government in Westminster to make the political choices and work with hospitals and the private sector for producing ventilators and testing kits. We’ve done the one size approach, and it has failed, we’re trying it a second time, and it is still failing; the nations that didn’t take a national lockdown approach; whether they took small measures of restrictions or no restrictions, they are showing success by having an ever declining death rate.
It is inevitable there will be people who say I’m being selfish for wanting to socialise with loved ones; but man is a social animal, and we know the mental and emotional effects prolonged isolation can have on people. If we are to believe that self-interest and selfishness are evil, what is more evil is believing everyone apart from yourself has to take responsibility for your health; the number one person responsible for your health, is you; not the man who decides to go drinking with friends, not the woman who wants to open up her small business to provide for herself, not the grandparents who nearing the end of their lives want to see their family and not be forced into isolation, and it is certainly not the responsibility of young people who have their whole lives ahead of them; who’s progress we have halted by force; it is your health, your responsibility.
“Life is about living, not simply existing and doing everything to remain “safe” so you can keep on simply existing. Yes, making choices to ensure you are safe from death is important; but the timeframe for living is very limited”
Life is about living, not simply existing and doing everything to remain “safe” so you can keep on simply existing. Yes, making choices to ensure you are safe from death is important; but the timeframe for living is very limited, and if you keep pushing that timeframe into a smaller and smaller margin, eventually it will expire, and sooner than you think.
“The Section 114 notice bans all new expenditure at Croydon Council, with the exception of statutory services for protecting vulnerable people”
“£17.7m of the £27.9m of the “new savings” presented to Croydon’s cabinet on 21 September and the full council meeting on 28 September were “incorrectly identified as new savings”
“Croydon’s financial pressures are not all related to the pandemic”. It is under a government review amid claims of “irresponsible spending”
Whilst we have been by no means alone. In the 2 and a half years the Croydon Constitutionals have been running we have regularly reported on what we have seen as irresponsible spending by the council.
These concerns have been validated by the recent audit report:
“There has been collective corporate blindness to both the seriousness of the financial position and the urgency with which actions needed to be taken”
We host a forum on the Future of the BBC. Croydon Councillor Jeet Bains, Sofia Svihurova, former Brighton Group Leader of the Libertarian Party, and Harry Fone of the TaxPayers’ Alliance present their views on what’s next for the Corporation.
We then hold a panel discussion with questions from our online audience.
Hoong-Wai Cheah asks – What’s the harm in feeding the poor? Why can’t we just print more money and make everyone a little bit richer?
File:US Navy 111123-N-HW977-185 Sailors weigh Thanksgiving food drive donations before delivery to the Corona-Norco Settlement House.jpg
What’s the harm in feeding the poor?
What’s the harm in regularly giving people money, with no strings attached?
Have you heard of the saying “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for life”?
Was oxygen ever so scarce for you that you’ve had to conserve it, else you suffocate?
Have you ever had to work hard to receive your regular exposure to sunlight?
Maybe you cannot see the relevance of all these to the initial question…
“The resources which supply welfare isn’t unlimited. Someone had to grow the food, and people have to work to produce and distribute goods and services”
Taking resources for granted
Even though oxygen is a limited resource, our ready access to it means we don’t treat oxygen as if it is somebody else’s resource. We not only consume as much of it as we want, we even indulge in escalating our consumption of it, when we participate in any form of physical exercise.
If a man had free access to money or food on a regular basis, it will no longer be a blessing, but an expectation. That means he becomes dependent on it, and perceives it to be a resource that he does not consider to be scarce, much as we take for granted that the sun will rise everyday to give us our daily dose of sunlight.
The resources which supply welfare isn’t unlimited. Someone had to grow the food, and people have to work to produce and distribute goods and services.
“Someone who was able to buy 10 bushels of food, is now only able to buy 2 bushels of food. This is the effect of printing money, a practice that many modern governments engage in, under the guise of “quantitative easing”
Printing money does not create wealth
But what about money? Why can’t we just print more money and make everyone a little bit richer?
The problem is, money is just a medium of exchange. It is not a resource in itself, so producing more money does not produce more food or goods.
Let’s illustrate what this means: say you have a tiny economy that produces 100 bushels of food a year. In circulation in this tiny economy is exactly 100 silver coins. The people in this economy use these 100 coins to trade for the food each person produces, such that each coin buys exactly one bushel. So you can see that increasing the number of coins in circulation does not increase the number of bushels available to buy.
What happens if someone decides to produce 400 extra coins for himself? With a total of 500 coins in circulation, this person will initially own 80% of all the coins, which makes him able to buy 80% of all the goods available. But the number of bushels available to buy hasn’t changed, it is still 100 bushels. This person doesn’t create more wealth for himself, but actually steals the wealth that other people have produced, by devaluing the coins that the others have: Someone who was able to buy 10 bushels of food, is now only able to buy 2 bushels of food. This is the effect of printing money, a practice that many modern governments engage in, under the guise of “quantitative easing”. Sure, those who had more will have more taken away, but those who have little will have even less remaining.
“The rich and poor aren’t two homogenous groups. People exist on a continuous spectrum of wealth, and individuals travel up and down it throughout their life. When government prints money to spend, all they achieve is to pull EVERYONE down”
Where does free food and money come from?
Coming back to giving people food and money for free. Since food and goods have to be produced through effort, the only way you can receive them for free is if somebody else sacrifices their payment for it. This is easy to accommodate if we are producing in surplus, but it is not safe to assume that production will always be in surplus. If a government creates more money than what is already in circulation, all it is doing is robbing from those who have, hitting the poor the hardest, adding to the numbers of those in poverty. To feed the new ones in poverty, the government can create more money, but the cycle then repeats, eventually creating a whole nation of poverty. This was the phenomenon of runaway inflation that plagued Zimbabwe and the Soviet nations.
But surely just as there will always be poor people, there will always be rich people? Not necessarily. The rich and poor aren’t two homogenous groups. People exist on a continuous spectrum of wealth, and individuals travel up and down it throughout their life. When government prints money to spend, all they achieve is to pull EVERYONE down. If they keep printing money, eventually even the wealthiest will be pulled down. By that point, everyone will be so poor that the resentment toward the few remaining wealthy will be so powerful that they will be brought down by the force of mob rule.
Modern methods of taxation are designed to ameliorate this. By taxing a proportion of people’s income and consumption, we mitigate the effect of reducing everyone’s wealth. But taxation has its limits: taxation will reduce a person’s income. So if a person’s income is so low that after tax they earn less than welfare payments, it makes little sense for them to be in paid employment. The higher the levels of tax, the worse the problem gets. Likewise with the levels of welfare payments. This means that increasing tax beyond a certain level will actually reduce the overall tax take for the government.
Government does not have unlimited resources
All this is to say that government spending is not without limits – government can neither increase tax nor print money indefinitely. Which means the government has to choose to prioritise how it spends its budget.
In the UK, the two biggest spends for the government is 1) its national healthcare service, and 2) social welfare provision. With limited resources, increasing spending on one of these necessarily means reducing spending on the other. Yet socialists are perpetually calling for ever higher increases for spending on both the NHS and on social welfare benefits.
Sure, doing this bit by bit won’t immediately destroy your country – you’ll get away with raising tax a little bit, or printing a little bit of money every now and then. But every little bit adds up – when the movement is gradual, you don’t notice it happening.
Printing a little bit of money will not immediately cause massive inflation, but over time the cumulative effects of printing money means everybody’s spending power is gradually eroded: savings lose their value, those on low incomes will have even lower incomes.
In the same way raising tax a little bit might temporarily increase the tax take, until those who are just about managing to balance their bills find themselves with even less spending money, putting them below the breadline. This also applies to corporation tax: corporation tax is identical to income tax, except the income is a business’ profits. Businesses already struggling to break even will be driven to shut down.
As a socialist, you may think that your demand for increased spending won’t be enough to tip the whole edifice over, but how will you recognise the straw that breaks the camel’s back?
The push to spend more, to print more money, is precisely what leads to mass poverty. This has been the experience of every nation in human history which chose to indulge in socialist ideals.
“The only way out of this trap is to not rely on government spending to feed the poor. Feed the poor yourself, out of your own surplus. Contribute to food banks, give the homeless a meal and a sheltered place to rest, and do your own part”
Why shouldn’t we feed the poor?
But shouldn’t we feed the poor and hungry? Of course we should!
Unfortunately, any welfare system will create dependents, meaning it becomes unethical to reduce spending on welfare. Which means that the social welfare bill will only keep going up. At some point, somebody will need to say “no more”. Unfortunately, socialist ideologues will jump at this opportunity to condemn the ones who are brave enough to call for a stop to overspending.
The only way out of this trap is to not rely on government spending to feed the poor. Feed the poor yourself, out of your own surplus. Contribute to food banks, give the homeless a meal and a sheltered place to rest, and do your own part. Don’t rely on government spending to do it.
In conclusion: If you want to feed the poor, do it yourself. And if you can’t keep it up indefinitely, then we should teach a man to fish, thus feeding him for life.
Image credit: By U.S. Department of Agriculture (Fruit-bar-pic—Web) [CC BY 2.0 or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
External Auditors are under a duty to issue a report in the public interest when a significant matter comes to their attention which they believe the Council should consider or the public should know about i.e. it is in the public’s interest to know about this.(Source)
Croydon Council’s external auditors Grant Thornton have issued a damning ‘Report in the Public Interest’ on Croydon’s “deteriorating financial resilience”.
The full report available at Report in the Public Interest 2020 | Croydon Council, details the past few years of the worsening financial position at the council and more worryingly the lack of response from the borough to resolve the problems, which statements like these demonstrate:
“There has been collective corporate blindness to both the seriousness of the financial position and the urgency with which actions needed to be taken”
“Had the Council implemented strong financial governance, responded promptly to our previous recommendations and built up reserves and addressed the overspends in children’s and adult social care, it would have been in a stronger position to withstand the financial pressures as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic”
I have written many times over recent years about what I saw as the council waste of public funds, be it on BoxPark, Cultural events or the Surrey Street Market refurbishment. But these are political disagreements. When the council has run out of reserves and is threatened with a Section 114 notice it is mismanagement, but still working withing the guidelines of the system. With an Audit report, with the statements that follow, it is unclear if the council took notice of guidelines:
“Having a company dissolved by compulsory strike off is a failure of governance and we have not identified evidence that the dissolution of London Borough of Croydon Holdings LLP has been reported to Cabinet or the General Purposes and Audit Committee”
“Minutes of the Scrutiny Committee noted that the paper (explaining the Council’s proposed decision-making matrices) was produced after the first bid had been lodged and with this paper it would not have been possible to judge the soundness of the acquisition. Whilst opportunities can arise at short notice, good governance would require the strategy to be approved prior to the first purchase”
The full report is well worth reading, it makes 20 recommendations which we should all hope the council fully implement. A number of themes come out in the report of systemic failure in the councils actions, which I have grouped as follows:
Lack of oversight
“The reports were accepted by Members without an appropriate level of challenge to continued service overspends”
“There was insufficient challenge from Members on the financial risks in the budget, credibility of the planned level of income from third parties and deliverability of the savings plan. The Council’s governance over the budget setting and monitoring has not been good enough.”
“In our view this was a failure of governance and showed a lack of understanding of the urgency of the financial position.”
“The strategy for investing in properties was approved at Full Council using guillotine procedures meaning there was insufficient time to discuss and challenge the strategy and the first purchase was made two months prior to approving the strategy”
“There has been collective corporate blindness to both the seriousness of the financial position and the urgency with which actions needed to be taken.”
“The budget was approved without evidence of challenge on whether the revised level of reserves was appropriate or whether the history of delivering services within the budget or delivering savings as planned had impacted on setting the appropriate reserves”
“it is difficult to determine how Members reached the view that the savings plan within the budget being approved was achievable. We do not consider the Council’s governance over the setting of the original 2020/21 budget to be good enough”
“Members of the Scrutiny and Overview Committee accepted the responses received and did not refer the matter to Full Council. In our view this did not demonstrate an understanding of the urgency of the financial position.”
Masking the problems
“The impact of the overspends has been masked by both the accounting treatment of the Dedicated Schools Grant deficit (which we disagree with) and the use of the flexible capital receipts. The Council has failed to deliver real savings in children’s and adults’ social care.”
“In 2018/19, the Council chose to account for the deficit amount as a debtor at the end of the financial year which we disagreed with as the Council’s approach was based on the view that the Government ought to refund the excess spending rather than any evidence that this would be the case.”
“When UASC service costs were seen to exceed the funding available, the Council’s response was to lobby government for increased funding”
“The 2019/20 Quarter 3 financial position reported to Cabinet in January 2020 reduced the in year overspend by £8 million. This is an unusual movement and there was limited explanation in the report and no evidence of challenge to understand the validity of the adjustments to achieve the revised position”
Lack of control of spending
“In the past three years, the Council has reported significant service overspends of £39.2 million within children’s and adult social care”
“the Council focused on: improvements in service delivery without sufficient attention to controlling the related overspends”
“the Council has not demonstrated that it can take effective action to either manage the cost pressures or establish appropriate budgets within Children’s and Adult Social Care services.”
“The Council failed to address the underlying causes of service overspends which during 2017/18, 2018/19 and 2019/20 had a combined overspend of £59.3 million. The overspends were reported in budget monitoring reports but there is little evidence of Member challenge or holding officers to account for the underlying reasons for the overspends or for taking action to address and mitigate the impact in future years.”
“The 2019/20 Quarter 2 financial position reported to Cabinet in November 2019 showed an in-year overspend of £10.4 million. There was no indication that Members understood the implication of using the remaining general fund reserve on in-year pressures and this in our view contributed to the lack of urgency”
Brick and Brick and Investments
“The Council’s approach to borrowing and investments has exposed the Council and future generations of taxpayers to significant financial risk. There has not been appropriate governance over the significant capital spending and the strategy to finance that spending.”
“Despite heavy investment from the Council, the Council has not yet received any significant return.”
“The savings plan in February 2020 included additional income sources that were in our view optimistic including £3 million dividend from Brick by Brick, a company the Council has already lent almost £200 million to and for which the Council has yet to receive any dividend or any interest owing on loans”
“The interest receivable amounts continue to increase however the outstanding debtors indicate that Brick by Brick has not made any interest payments with £5 million owing at 31 March 2019.”
“The investments in The Colonnades and Croydon Park Hotel were not grounded in a sufficient understanding of the retail and leisure market and have again illustrated that the Council’s strategy to invest its way out of financial challenge rather than pay attention to controlling expenditure on core services was inherently flawed.”
“The Council has established a complex group structure and we found little evidence that the complexity and associated risk to the Council’s financial position is understood by members or officers”
“Based on our review of the loan agreements, £110 million of those loans were due for repayment by the date of this report and had not yet been received by the Council”
“At the Cabinet in July 2020, the Council made a decision to incur an additional £30 million of borrowing to purchase properties from Brick by Brick to increase the affordable housing supply available. This is not in line with the original business case for Brick by Brick approved by Members in March 2015.”
“The increasing complexity of the group structures, the interaction between different subsidiaries, the longer-term financial impact for the Council and how to safeguard the Council’s interests is not clearly understood.”
“London Borough of Croydon Holdings LLP was dissolved by compulsory strike off due to a failure to file accounts. The facts or progress in remedying the situation have not been reported to Members or subject to scrutiny”
The above are by no means all of the adverse comments in the report.
Where does this leave us?
We have a new Council Leader, a new cabinet and a new Chief Executive, all of which are to be welcomed. All of those at Croydon Council, both Councillors and senior officer need to ask themselves how we have got into this position. Within the new cabinet the 6 (of 10) members who are long standing cabinet members really need to step up and explain their part in these debacles.
No doubt much blame will be moved to those who have left and to the council officers. Here I am reminded of a speech to house of commons by Diane Abbott. Back in May 1998 the house was debating government policy towards Sierra Leone. Ms Abbott was questioning the Labour Governments Ministers actions, and went onto say:
“In the tit for tat and media frenzy about the issue, a number of questions have been asked over and again. What did Ministers know and when did they know? I would ask a third question, which is why did they not find out?”(Source)
As the repercussions of this report become clear and further questions are raised from the newly published draft 2019/20 Annual Accounts, I expect we will see a focus on new changes, not the past problems.
To have confidence, to believe that Croydon Council will do better, what we need to know from the Councillors in office during this period and now serving in a new cabinet is simply – If they weren’t told about these problems, why did they not find out?
Dr Tom Rogers has been a long standing supporter and party activist, and is the party’s Deputy Leader. He was also the party’s candidate in the 2019 Peterborough by-election and again, in the same year, in the General Election.
Tom thank-you for your time.
You’ve run twice in your home town for parliament, tell us a little about the campaigns and how you feel they went for the party?
Our policy as a party is to stand in every election that we can, as it’s a way of building the party, but especially promoting our deep conviction that Christian values and principles are crucial to us both surviving and then thriving as a nation.
I knew I had to stand when it looked like a by-election was coming up in Peterborough, where I live. The situation first arose when Fiona Onasanya, our sitting MP, was arrested in July 2018 for perverting the course of justice. However, we were on stand-by for nearly a year, unsure of whether the election was going to happen or not, and it finally took a recall petition for the election to be called and then we all went into an overdrive of activity. This was the first time we had stood a candidate in Peterborough and really wanted to establish ourselves in the city, and promote our Christian pro-life message. I had fantastic support from Sid Cordle, our party leader and also my agent in that election — he organised many supporters to come from all over the country to help campaign. We really put a lot of time and effort into personally making our party known to people – and undertook many hours of door-knocking, in order to explain who we were and what our policies are about. I had a certain apprehension, unsure of how people would take us — we of course met a certain amount of opposition, or people who were wedded to the main parties, but overall I was greatly encouraged by the level of support we received, as well as the number of people prepared to stand there and give us a hearing.
As you might expect we connected with a number of Christians, but also Muslims and people of other faiths, who were pleased we were making a stand particularly on the moral issues, for marriage and the family, and also in defence of parental rights over the new compulsory relationships and sex education, as government policy in that area had made many families anxious. People generally were also impressed, however, by our economy policies, and liked our idea of the Turnover Tax, which would ensure big multinational companies like Amazon and Google, who transfer their profits abroad, pay their fair share of tax here, and that’s how we would fund our financial support for marriage (£12,000 grant on getting married) and restoring the Tory’s £12 billion cuts to benefits.
In the by-election we were part of a very crowded field, but were encouraged to have come 7th place in the vote out of 15 candidates. For us, as a relatively new party, the election was largely about making our mark and getting our Christian message out there which we really did. For most people that by-election was really about Brexit, and there was a large protest vote for the Brexit Party, and, of course, the following General Election (just 6 months later) was also mainly about Brexit and there was a massive swing back to the Tories. We didn’t improve on our vote, which was disappointing, but on a personal level I had developed really as a candidate and was much stronger in debates, interviews and getting our message out in the local media. That was important as with the cold dark December evenings we didn’t have as much chance to do all the door-knocking that we did in the summer. Fighting two Parliamentary elections in the space of six months was certainly exhausting, and I was certainly ready for the Christmas break and to spend more time again with the family afterwards.
In the by-election you found yourself ‘cancelled’ from a hustings held in a church! Can you tell us about the events around that?
There were a number of hustings which took place during the by-election campaign — certain of which invited all standing candidates, which is the fairest and most democratic way, and others which just invited candidates from the “main parties”, and I could understand, even if I disagreed, that certain organisers would restrict things in that way given that there were 15 candidates. However, there was a large hustings organised at St John the Baptist CofE Church in the centre of Peterborough, where the criteria for who they invited was completely arbitrary and made no sense – they only allowed 8 candidates, which included the “main party” candidates, but also certain select and favoured smaller party candidates, including the newly reformed SDP and the unknown Renew Party, both of which had polled lower than CPA in previous elections. One would have thought that a Christian church would have actually wanted an openly Christian party candidate to participate at such an event. However, this “St John the Baptist” church certainly does not live up to name of the prophet they’ve adopted — they are a liberal, pro-LGBT ideology, so-called “inclusive” church who no doubt were uncomfortable with having faithful Christians on the platform who actually stick to the Biblical truth on issues like marriage and abortion, and other important issues of our day.
Anyway, we were not invited but Sid Cordle, acting as my agent, was determined that they should do the fair democratic thing and allow me onto the platform. We were in town on that evening for an earlier election-related event nearby, so we thought we’d go along to the St John hustings anyway. Sid tried to reason with the Chair, who was the vicar of the church, beforehand to allow me onto the platform, but we were again rebuffed. At the time I would have just left it, but Sid is a courageous man of God, on fire with the Sprit and he has no qualms whatsoever about taking his complaint to the audience. He therefore stood up before the start of the debate and addressed the audience, explaining that the selection of candidates for the debate was unfair and demanding that a vote should be taken on whether to allow me onto the platform. The Chair, Canon Black, would not allow such a vote to take place and stated the debate would go on with the chosen candidates as planned. Sid and I sat down. The first question was on Brexit and all the eight candidates had their say — I could see Sid next to me with his head in his hands deep in prayer through all this. The Brexit discussion was supposed to address the question of how each party would bring the country back together again after such a divisive debate. Sid was going to ensure the CPA had their say on this regardless — he stood up and again addressed the crowd, stating that only the CPA had the solution to this, as we would honour the result of the 2016 referendum and leave the EU, but guarantee another referendum 5 years after we’ve left so people can actually see and make up their own minds about how Brexit has worked out in reality. However, the Chair did not welcome this intervention and ordered security to remove Sid from the hall. So much for their “inclusive” church!
What does being deputy leader of the party mean in terms of a role, and what are you focused on?
Being deputy leader can mean different things in different parties. It does include being a stand-in for the leader, and sharing with certain frontline duties, such as media interviews and public speaking. However, in our party the deputy leader also has the very specific role of overseeing policy development and the manifesto, and that is what I am primarily focussed on at the moment. It’s very important for us that we have a manifesto that not only makes us distinct from the other parties, but also offers a positive vision and is unafraid of proclaiming real truthful solutions to our nation’s problems, no matter how “politically incorrect” they seem. We were very proud of our 2019 General Election Manifesto, not only of the strong pro-life and pro-family stance we adopted, but also the range of strong down-to-earth practical, fair and workable policies we have on a whole range of issues, from the economy to the environment. We are very blessed in our party to have many people with particular specialist knowledge and talents in many different areas, who were able to contribute strong policy ideas, for instance, in areas like social and health care. The development of policy is very much a collective exercise, in which those with a particular interest will want to contribute along the way, but it’s my role as deputy leader to ensure the process keeps moving and results in strong manifesto items to offer to the electorate at the end of it.
“many parents got to try their hand at homeschooling for the first time. It may not work for everyone, but many found they were actually quite good at it, that they enjoyed the experience, and, most important of all, their kids made far greater educational progress in that time than they ever would have done at a conventional school”
You’ve worked in Education for a number of years, what do you think of the impact of Covid on education and exams this year?
The impact of the Government’s totally erratic and disproportionate response to Covid-19 has been catastrophic across the board – to our economy, healthcare system, to most industries and countless businesses, to our education system, to people’s lives and livelihoods and, above all, to our basic human rights and civil liberties. Historians in future generations (as far as we have a future) will scratch their heads as to why we committed national economic suicide for the sake of a virus with a 99.9% survival rate, and which for most of the population results in an asymptomatic or relatively mild illness at worse. The Government actually had a very right and sensible approach to the ‘pandemic’ at the start of it all – which was to focus on safeguarding the elderly and other vulnerable groups at risk, whilst allowing normal life to carry on as far as possible, whilst natural herd immunity developed through the majority of the population. I guess there was no money in that approach though for Big Pharma and the vaccine-pushers, who just happen also to have the mainstream media in their pockets.
The education system is a case in point. The Government was rightly resisting shutting down the schools in early March, recognising the impact not only on children’s education, but on all the parents who would not be able to work because of new child care responsibilities. It was early recognised that Covid posed an incredibly low risk, if any, to children themselves. But the clamour of the lame-stream media’s cheerleading for school closures was quickly too much for them and the Goverenment buckled – to what end? Once they’d shut the schools for 3 months there was no easy solution to the problem of what to do about exams, etc. I don’t think going on predicted grades was necessarily the fairest thing to do, but was fairer than relying on some over-complicated algorithm and was probably the most practical.
Perhaps the one good thing about the school lockdown was that many parents got to try their hand at homeschooling for the first time. It may not work for everyone, but many found they were actually quite good at it, that they enjoyed the experience, and, most important of all, their kids made far greater educational progress in that time than they ever would have done at a conventional school. That was also our family experience and my wife decided to carry on homeschooling our 4 year-old as it worked so well for him. With the State having done so much to undermine the role of parents, particularly with the attack on their rights over relationships and sex education, then home-schooling during lockdown proved to be a very empowering experience for many parents.
Whilst on Covid how do you feel the established church and churches more generally have acted in lockdown?
It’s really been a tale of two churches.There have been many individual Christians, including brave clerics and pastors, and a number of Christian organisations and smaller churches, that have really discerned spiritually what is going on, and have raised a prophetic voice against the completely disproportionate and oppressive measures of the State. They have been in the minority though and in view of the catastrophic, Godless depravity into which our nation has descended in recent times, then it’s a spiritual no-brainer — if we’re taking the word of God seriously — that, as well as showing active compassion for those suffering, the Church should be declaring the reality of God’s judgement and calling for urgent national repentance.
Unfortunately, that urgent prophetic voice has been all but drowned out by the deafening silence we’ve heard from the established church and other main denominations — and that’s been a sad indictment of how compromised Christianity has become in the West. As a Catholic I was totally dismayed at the attitude of our Bishops which has throughout been one of total craven faithlessness. Their response to the Government has been not just one of total compliance — but, even worse, of over-compliance, to the extent that they have always gone even further than required — as if they believed they could earn extra brownie points from the State. For example, when announcing the national lockdown the Government initially wanted to ban collective worship but keep the churches open for private prayer. However, not content with those oppressive measures the Catholic bishops actually lobbied the Government to go the whole hog, persuading them to shut up the churches altogether! So not only were we denied Mass and the Sacraments (which are supposed to be very essentials of the Catholic faith) for over three months, but the Bishops also denied us entrance into the house of God. That has had a devastating effect on many of the faithful and has sent an appalling message to the world concerning what the Church actually stands for — or even whether it can still stand for anything at all. Look, if Jesus and countless of his faithful followers ever since could mix with lepers, and tend to desperate souls in some of the most dangerous situations on earth and in the history of mankind, how could the Church now simply shut up shop in response to a virus with a 99.9% survival rate? Take measures to protect the vulnerable yes (if they choose to be protected in that way), but give some hope and meaning, why don’t you, to what this life is all about.
Thankfully my faith in God, if not Church leaders, has only grown stronger through all this and I know He will use these events, and the tribulations and persecution that are likely to come, to purify His Church of all the dross so it will be more faithful, more prophetic, more full of the Spirit, so it will do what it was created to do — which is to save souls and represent Christ on earth until His coming.
“we have to keep reminding people of the complete humanity of every unborn child — who is not just a potential life but an actual human life just like each of us”
The CPA works to protect the unborn child. Abortion isn’t an issue we’ve seen gain the same traction in the UK as say in the US. What is your party’s policy on abortion and what are one or two things you would you say to our readers who might be less familiar with the issue to persuade them to it?
We are a 100% pro-life party in that in our manifesto we pledge to protect the right to life (from intentional killing) of every innocent human being from conception until natural death. That is the only way for a Christian party to be. EVERY LIFE MATTERS for the CPA. So in practice that means complete repeal of the 1967 Abortion Act and 1990 Human Fertilisation Act so that all unborn children are legally protected from intentional destruction. We would also repeal the Northern Ireland Act 2018 which was so abused and hijacked in order to impose abortion on that very pro-life part of the UK, completely against the will of the electorate there. We would legislate for a new Offences Against the Person’s Act, if necessary, to prohibit abortion, embryo experimentation and all forms of euthanasia.
We do recognise, however, the difficulties often faced by those who turn to abortion. We would support the nationwide provision of pro-life pregnancy care services, including provision of accommodation for women made homeless by pregnancy, pregnant women with special needs and one-parent families. We would divert the over £200 million of UK taxpayers’ money spent each year on funding abortion here and abroad onto supporting any mother in a crisis pregnancy situation. We would also ensure recognition for the millions of women, and men, who have been deeply affected by abortion. Post-abortion trauma affecting many women must now be recognised and non-judgemental post-abortion counselling will be made available for any woman or man who wants it, no matter how long ago the abortion took place.
Surveys of public opinion still show that there is a general unease about abortion in the population, and most people in UK certainly don’t want an abortion free-for-all, or believe in a “woman’s right to choose” no matter what. For instance, a 2017 ComRes poll (the most extensive UK polling in last decade on abortion) showed only 1% of the population (and 1% of women) in favour of allowing abortion up to birth, and around 60% of women favoured a reduction in the current legal limit. So the abortion industry and it’s champions in Parliament, like Stella Creasy are clearly out of step with public opinion. I’m not saying public opinion is where we are at this stage, but it’s not where the abortion industry is either — probably somewhere in the middle. Most people know in their heart of hearts what abortion really is. The truth has always kept its foot in the door.
The pro-abortion lobby has naturally always tried to make the unborn child a complete irrelevance, to be discarded whenever him or her is inconvenient. So we have to keep reminding people of the complete humanity of every unborn child — who is not just a potential life but an actual human life just like each of us, with a lifetime of gifts and contributions to the world in front of them. Every abortion stops a beating heart — that’s a fact because the human heart is there and beating from just 21 days, that’s 3 weeks, from conception. In fact, some of the latest research from Oxford University suggests even earlier —that the heart could beat from just 16 days, or 2 weeks! Human life is so miraculous in its wonder and complexity that each and every human being can only be the beloved creation of God. Also we have to listen to the stories which demonstrate how abortion is never the right answer, even in response to sometimes very real and genuine difficulties — stories from the women and men who have not found abortion to be the solution to their problems, but something that just created a whole set of new and worse problems. And those who rejected or survived abortion, who were blessed by the choice of life, and now enjoy the gift of life which in so many ways conveys its own amazing answer.
We have seen an explosion of the culture wars in the UK during lockdown. What’s your take on the political climate?
The “culture wars” are something we’ve up to very recently regarded as a mainly American phenomenon, because there’s a more marked polarisation in mainstream politics in America than there is here — there’s a genuine choice, even if I’m over-generalising somewhat, in the USA between the Christian social values and free market capitalism of the Republican Party and the cultural-Marxist social values and increasing economic socialism of the Democratic Party. Whereas in Britain you’ve basically got a liberal and clueless one-party state characterised by cultural Marxism and a mixed market watered-down economic socialism. Despite what orchestrated pantomimes we witness between the establishment parties, they are starting now to fail to delude the electorate into thinking they offer some kind of choice.
The whole disproportionate and oppressive lockdown response to the paltry threat to humanity posed by Covid-19 has of course been the most striking and extensive power-grab of the liberal Deep State that we’ve seen yet. Taken by itself it’s very disturbing. However, even before Covid we saw great signs of a rising populist challenge to the Deep State, an uprising that was most visibly represented by the Brexit referendum and the Brexit party, and also an increasing resistance to and justifiable ridiculing of “woke culture” in all its grotesque forms, which was all very encouraging. There is a definite growing backlash against the attempted brainwashing of the population by the Deep State. The Keep Britain Free campaign, led by Simon Dolan, who is pursuing a legal challenge against the lockdown measures, and the wonderful well-attended anti-lockdown protests, featuring Piers Corbyn amongst others, have been inspirational and are conveying the important message that we need urgently now to stand up for these precious freedoms we hold so dear before it’s too late. I see such a massive threat of Deep State totalitarianism, but also so many green shoots of resistance. Where sin abounds grace abounds the more!
You plan to run candidates in the local elections in May. What would the CPA focus on in local government?
Most local issues are in fact inextricably connected to national issues, or at least decisions made at Westminster, now more so than ever. Many local councils, for instance, are left in the difficult position of having to make drastic cuts to local services and social provision because of sweeping funding cuts from central Government. However, there are still many priorities to be made. CPA local candidates stand, firstly, for the prioritising of the welfare of the most vulnerable and in need, so we will strive to ensure that the elderly, sick and disabled have essential social care provision in place. Actually, one of our signature policies in our forthcoming London Assembly Manifesto will be the provision of dedicated personal assistants to elderly and vulnerable people who would benefit from such help — particularly those who do not have the close support of relatives and family. It is also a manifesto pledge of ours to guarantee every homeless person a free night-shelter and affordable move-on accommodation as we help them back up into society.
We also believe in a zero tolerance approach to crime and the kind of genuine anti-social behaviour that blights many of our communities, and we want to see a far higher rate of reported crime being followed up. However, we are also pledged to provide greater support and practical assistance for those leaving prison — both because it’s the right thing to do and because that’s shown to cut reoffending rates drastically. We also believe in providing reliable and efficient public services and cutting down waste and pollution, creating a safe and clean environment for all local people. We also aim to help revitalise our city centres by a number of means, including the provision of more residential living accommodation – which helps retain local businesses and retail outlets, and reduces crime and depravation by reversing the ‘ghost town’ effect.
It goes without saying that we will also reverse the wasteful virtue-signalling and promotion of pro-LGBT ideology, BLM and other left-wing ideologies that so many councils occupy themselves with — forcing their employees to wear rainbow lanyards and festooning public spaces with Pride flags etc. We believe in safeguarding freedom of speech and belief, and creating a welcoming environment for all citizens. We will particularly safeguard the right to peaceful witness and to offer charitable help outside abortion facilities — as there is now a disturbing trend for left-wing councils to try to introduce censorship or “buffer” zones around abortion clinics — mostly based on completely distorted and uncorroborated allegations about those good people who provide essential pro-life witness. It’s very important that unborn children — the most helpless, voiceless and vulnerable of all — have someone there to peacefully advocate for them, and to offer women in difficult situation the choice and practical help to choose life that they’ll never receive from the abortion clinic.
“Our goal then is to aim to field a full list of candidates in every constituency for the 2024 General Election”
What areas do you hope to run candidates in and what do you see as your party’s route to electoral success?
We will be concentrating our main efforts on the London Assembly elections, where we’ll be running a full list of candidates. There will be other candidates standing locally around the country, and we invite people to stand in their local areas, but London is where our most organised and concentrated efforts will be — to get, please God, a CPA member of the London Assembly. Our goal then is to aim to field a full list of candidates in every constituency for the 2024 General Election — we are praying both for the financial breakthrough and for many more people excited by our vision to come forward to stand as CPA candidates to enable that to happen.
How can people get involved?
The Christian Peoples Alliance party are online and you can sign up for membership or for further information on our website. You can also find CPA on Facebook and on Twitter. We can also be contacted at [email protected]
The Libertarian Listener is a UK political podcast reviewing the week’s major news stories, current affairs and events whilst providing original insights, public opinions and perspectives from the nation’s freedom lovers and liberty seekers.
For the 21 October 2020 episode they spoke with Mike Swadling about – Lockdown Rebels, CHIS Bill, NZ Labour Election, Croydon Constitutionalists.
