Toby on Tuesday

 ‘grace under pressure’

The definition of courage is said to be “grace under pressure.”   If this is true, then Anne McIntosh has behaved with exemplary courage.   A few days ago, she announced that she would not be contesting Thirsk and Malton as an Independent in May, nor would she be campaigning at all in the constituency, but would instead campaign on behalf of Conservative candidates in marginal seats elsewhere.   I have often differed from Anne over the EU, the Climate Change Act and Overseas Aid, but she has been an outstanding Chair of the Rural Affairs Select Committee.   Her work on flood defences and the threat of food shortages has been faultless and I am happy to pay tribute to her record in Parliament.   Anne has endured much but she has never allowed her many difficulties to dishearten her – perfect courage!

Courage is an old-fashioned quality.   But old-fashioned qualities have a habit of enduring, rather like the countless old buildings in our constituency, many of them listed, which are among the glories of North Yorkshire.   I was reminded of this when reading about the regeneration of Margate in Kent and the recent visit there by our much-loved Kate, Duchess of Cambridge.   There are lessons to be learned there for Filey and many other of our old towns where the arts, heritage, hospitality and tourism could combine to bring new prosperity to historic places.   Margate has used its links to the painter J.M.W. Turner, recently and brilliantly portrayed by Timothy Spall in Mike Leigh’s wonderful film “Mr. Turner”, to create a Turner Contemporary Art Gallery.   Round this have clustered hotels, cafes and gastropubs, so that tourism and the arts have supported each other in a restored and thriving town.   If we can do something similar in Filey, alongside the reclamation of our fishing grounds, then something extraordinary would have been achieved.

Filey certainly needs its all-weather visitor centre, an art gallery or museum, as do so many of our historic towns.  Malton’s Food Lovers Festival is doing exactly the right thing and deserves every encouragement.   To support all these projects, UKIP now has a fine Heritage Spokesperson in the very gifted William Cash, son of the veteran Eurosceptic Conservative MP, Bill Cash.   And William, who like so many has simply given up on David Cameron’s Conservative Party, plans to “weaponise heritage”, in his words, by creating a new Ministry of Heritage and Tourism to champion tourism and bring heritage to the forefront of national policy.   UKIP plans to tighten and enforce existing statutory heritage and landscape planning protections, as well as introduce “Rural Conservation Areas” to prevent excessive development.   To protect our green spaces, new development would be concentrated on infill and brownfield sites.

UKIP would reverse the long-term decline of our seaside towns.   The Coastal Communities Fund would be expanded to support the economic development of towns like Filey.   The red tape that is harming our heritage tourism and hospitality industries would be reduced.  And the punitive 20% VAT rate on repairs and maintenance of listed buildings would be scrapped and replaced by a simple 5% rate.    Subsidies for windfarms and solar parks would end, as would the plans for the ludicrous HS2 project.   Developments that threaten heritage sites of national importance would not proceed and brown signs for unique heritage attractions to support local tourism would be ensured.    All of these policies would serve Thirsk, Malton and Filey superbly.   They recognise the lasting qualities of our heritage and its ability to adapt and survive.   This historic constituency has learned to endure, it has always shown “grace under pressure” and has the true Yorkshire qualities of courage and grit, the supreme qualities that will ensure all our futures!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday 

'Bureaucratic Displacement'

 

Just as Channel 4 is screening its four part series, “NHS: £2 billion a Week & Counting”, allow me to introduce you to Dr. Max Gammon. Now Dr. Gammon is a long-standing UKIP activist who has fought Council seats in London’s East End. He is also a senior doctor who has devoted much of his life to studying our NHS. As long ago as 1976, he wrote his seminal work “Health and Security: Report on the public provision for medical care in the United Kingdom.” This created the concept of Gammon’s Law, which he described as his “Theory of Bureaucratic Displacement.” He wrote, “in a bureaucratic system increase in expenditure will be matched by a fall in production…such systems will act like ‘black holes’ in the economic universe, simultaneously swelling in resources and shrinking in terms of emitted production.” In other words, new investment tends to find its way to administration and not to patient care. Since 1976, Gammon’s Law has gone global, embraced by Milton Friedman and healthcare systems from Australia to Saudi Arabia. The challenge for a UKIP Government will be to ensure that scarce resources find their way back from administration into patient care and somehow to reverse Gammon’s Law.

Currently, the NHS costs around £110 billion a year to run, a figure that is growing rapidly. It is the World’s fifth biggest employer with over 10,000 GP practices and 2,000 hospitals serving a population that is both ageing and increasing remorselessly. Here in Thirsk and Malton, the challenge is especially acute, as administrators draw resources from rural areas, with their strong traditions of holistic personal care, towards vast health centres and hospitals in urban areas like York and Middlesbrough. If elected in May, I see the preservation and continuation of medical services close at hand as a complete priority. As one farmer has told me, “If my animal falls sick, the vet is always close by. If I fall sick, that’s no longer the case.”

Now it is often said that the NHS has become our national religion. UKIP is happy to be a full member of this faith, but we must still be clear headed about how the system works. While NHS spending currently represents some 6% of GNP, because of increasing demands, actual expenditure per head of population is falling fast. The three old parties are all proposing to lower expenditure per head over the coming five years, from some £1,950 a year now to around £1,825 for the Conservatives, £1,850 for the LibDems and £1,875 for Labour (Source: The Nuffield Trust). Interestingly, it is only UKIP, with its commitment to finding a further £3 billion a year in NHS investment that will keep spending per head closer to its current levels. This will be a critical number as Polling Day approaches.
This extra spending will become available from funds released by our quitting the EU and reductions in middle management – again, we must never, ever forget Gammon’s Law when new resources become available. And the first principle that the NHS must remain free at the point of delivery and time of need for all UK residents will remain sacrosanct. I have received a good many emails from constituents calling for additional expenditure on cancer treatments and I can safely say, yes, cancer care is precisely where such new investment is needed, not least because directly or indirectly we are all touched by cancer at some stage in our lives.

Now, PFI (Private Finance Initiative) contracts are a classic area where Gammon’s Law applies, with vast expenditure on initiatives that could not be further removed from patient care. A UKIP Government will stop further use of PFI’s in the NHS and will encourage local authorities to buy out their PFI contracts entirely where this is affordable. And we’ll ensure that the NHS is exempted from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, so that aggressive global corporations have no rights of access to the NHS. The risk to our tradition of holistic care would simply be too great. For the same reason, UKIP opposes the sale of NHS data, including patient data, to third parties.

UKIP will also oppose any plans to charge patients for visiting their GP and will ensure that GPs’ surgeries are open on at least one evening a week, where demand exists. We will also ensure that visitors to the UK have NHS-approved private health insurance as a condition of entry to our country, while migrants will need to have paid National Insurance Contributions for five years before having rights of access to the NHS. This will help end the scandal of health tourism and save the NHS some £2 billion a year. Of this saving, £200 million will be allocated to the ending of hospital car parking charges, a matter that goes to the root of holistic patient support. Likewise, UKIP will ensure that foreign health service professionals coming to work in the UK are properly qualified and can speak English to a standard acceptable to the profession. And UKIP will amend working time rules to give trainee doctors, surgeons and medics the proper environment to train and practise. Properly resourced registered nurses and matrons with real powers will replace administrators in a revitalised NHS. There will be a duty on all NHS staff to report low standards of care.

And UKIP will replace Monitor and the Care Quality Commission with elected county health boards to be more responsive scrutineers of local health services. These will be able to inspect health services and take evidence from whistle-blowers. And finally, as the pressures on the NHS grow inexorably, the days of NHS-funded cosmetic surgery must finally give way to more urgent treatments such as cancer care. Behind all these reforms is the passionate wish to concentrate spending on the needs of the patient, not of the administrator. Dr. Max Gammon is not only an NHS visionary and UKIP activist, but also a committed Christian. It is in this spirit that he has approached the future of the NHS. If it is now to be our national religion, let’s focus on healing the sick, and not submit to the demands of assorted bureaucratic jobsworths who stand in the way of a revived NHS!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday 

“The dog ate my homework…”

 

I am one of those who believes that Middlesbrough is still a proper part of old North Yorkshire, and its people are Yorkshiremen and Yorkshirewomen. So I was thrilled last month to read that Dr. Richard Spencer, who teaches biology at Middlesbrough College, was on the short list for the Varkey Gems Foundation Global Teacher Prize. Worth a million dollars over 10 years, the prize is for teachers who make an outstanding contribution to their profession. Dr. Spencer inspires creativity in his pupils through experiments, videos, models, games, poems, songs and dance. This is a huge achievement in a challenging environment and he must carry all our good wishes for the prize. He has already visited the Vatican to meet good Pope Francis.

Yorkshire schools have certainly come a long way since Charles Dickens’ devastating attack on them in Nicholas Nickleby. They were a national scandal then and Dickens’ portrayal of the sadistic Wackford Squeers at Dotheboys Hall did much to ensure their reform. Dickens located his fictional establishment in the neighbouring constituency of Richmond and described it in passages such as, “With this, and wholly disregarding a piteous cry for mercy, Mr. Squeers fell upon the boy and caned him soundly: not leaving off indeed, until his arm was tired out.” That Yorkshire schools should now be known for teachers of the quality of Richard Spencer and not of Wackford Squeers is impressive, to say the least!

I was blessed with teachers who were of the quality of Richard Spencer, who saw their role as instilling a genuine love of learning and then letting their pupils do the rest. I was at Westminster School, which has always concentrated on the humanities, in the shadow of our old Parliament, now diminished and trashed by EU membership. There, it has produced 7 or 8 Prime Ministers, men of courage and conviction, and politicians of all parties from Nigel Lawson, Mrs. Thatcher’s great reforming Chancellor and now a fervent opponent of the EU, to the late Tony Benn, the kindest and most courteous of Parliamentarians, always a fervent opponent of the EU, and the one and only Nick Clegg, who has done such heroic work consigning the LibDems to permanent oblivion! Then I studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Christ Church, Oxford, where I founded the Edmund Burke Debating Society in memory of Malton’s greatest MP, Edmund Burke, whose whole life was based on the now-forgotten concept of government by consent of the electors. The same spirit of trust and encouragement continued there too and this is the spirit that we are now seeking in all of Thirsk and Malton’s schools.

This underlying trust in our teachers and their pupils underscores UKIP’s education policy. To ensure that a truly academic education is available to all, irrespective of means, existing schools will be allowed to apply to become grammar schools and select according to ability and aptitude. Selection ages will be flexible and determined by the school in consultation with the local authority. UKIP supports the principle of Free Schools that are open to the whole community and uphold British values. UKIP will also introduce an option for students to take an Apprenticeship Qualification instead of four non-core GCSE’s which can be continued at A-Level. Students can take up apprenticeships in jobs with certified professionals qualified to grade the progress of the student. To give comfort to parents, schools will be investigated by OFSTED on the presentation of a petition to the Department of Education signed by 25% of parents or governors. And UKIP will scrap the target of 50% of school leavers going to university.

Subject to academic performance, UKIP will remove tuition fees for students taking approved degrees in science, medicine, technology, engineering and maths on condition that they live, work and pay tax in the UK for 5 years after the completion of their degrees. And students from the EU will pay the same student fee rates as international students. These are all sensible ideas, predicated on confidence in the teaching profession and its heartfelt wish to inspire creativity in pupils wherever it can be found.
Finally, I have received a good deal of correspondence from teachers concerned about the increasing workload under which they find themselves, in large measure due to recent reforms and the impact of immigration on class sizes. Their union is calling for a reform of accountability so that it is based on a greater degree of trust. For my part, I have always been a profound believer in bottom-up, rather than top-down, solutions. Every school is different and I am happy to endorse the need to establish that trust so that model teachers, like Dr. Spencer in a difficult area such as Middlesbrough, can be relied on to exercise their own judgment in the interests of their pupils. Teaching needs fewer Wackford Squeers, or his modern equivalents, and many more Richard Spencers!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday

 'And the award goes to….'

 

My chief reason for wishing to leave the EU has always been a belief that we Brits remain the most original and creative people on the planet and the EU is determined to stifle all that genius. This theory was proved right yet again last week at the Hollywood Oscars, when Eddie Redmayne won the Best Actor Award for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything”, the Best Adapted Screenplay Award went to “The Imitation Game” with Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance as Alan Turing, and the Best Live Short Action Film Award went to Matt Kirkby’s and James Lucas’ “The Phone Call”, starring Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent.

But in this galaxy of talent, we mustn’t forget that our corner of North Yorkshire has given us another of the screen stars of our time, the excellent James Norton. James is from Marton, outside Pickering, where he spent what he has called “an idyllic childhood.” Recent screen appearances include roles in “Rush”, “Belle”, Happy Valley”, “Death Comes to Pemberley”, “Grantchester” and “Mr. Turner”. And later this year, he will star as the unfortunate Sir Clifford Chatterley in a new BBC film of D.H. Lawrence’s not all that romantic “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” Holliday Grainger plays Lady C and Richard Madden plays the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors, with whom she has a right old carry on!

I thought of these things last week when the really marvellous National Gamekeepers Organisation, which has over 16,000 members across the country, held a major meeting of gamekeepers from the North York Moors in our house. I can vouch for there not being a single Oliver Mellors among them! And I thought of what our gamekeepers really do. They are out in all weathers, creating the conditions for the harvest of the best, locally-sourced, completely healthy organic food at a time of increasing food shortages, they protect our iconic little birds, our beloved songbirds, from many of those species that predate on them, they patrol and protect our countryside at a time of burgeoning rural crime and they are responsible for bringing literally millions of pounds every year into the countryside, not least in the hills where employment prospects are so sparse. With the number of available farm tenancies now almost non-existent, gamekeepering is a fine alternative career for those from farming backgrounds who want to work in the countryside.

And I was reminded of a press release about our cherished moorland wading birds put out just before Christmas by the North York Moors National Park. What it said was, “The number of golden plovers recorded on the moorland of the North York Moors could be at its highest level for 18 years. The picture looks promising for other wading birds too with no further decline in breeding lapwing and populations of curlew holding steady, bucking a national declining trend. The National Park Authority praised the good work carried out by landowners and gamekeepers to maintain the conditions that benefit these nationally and internationally important birds.” So there was definitely not a single Mellors within this fine group. Rather, this was a meeting of true country people, conservationists who were passionate about their work and the places in which they lived. It is worth remembering all this when Lady C hits our screens later in the year however good the performances, not least James Norton’s.

Now I have always thought that D,H. Lawrence’s novel would have been a better book if there had been a bit less of Lady C’s canoodling with Mellors and a bit more about what our wonderful gamekeepers do to bring nutritious organic food to the pot, to protect our beloved songbirds, to police our countryside and to bring prosperity to rural areas. Just as a fortnight ago, I saluted our farmers, so today I salute those other champions of the countryside, our gamekeepers!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday 

“Emotional crutches….”

 

Last week saw the broadcast of Channel 4’s “UKIP: The First Hundred Days”, with its apocalyptic vision of the start of Nigel Farage’s Premiership. In truth, UKIP’s hallmark good sense and good humour would prevail, and Britain would start to emerge from the politically-correct nightmare into which we have sunk. Priyanga Burford was brilliant as the Sikh MP Deepa Kaur, who would indeed be a fine asset to our Party, but otherwise it was all predictable stuff. Yet these hatchet jobs from Channel 4, The Guardian and their friends do us no harm and in fact vindicate our cause, so I am happy to say to our enemies at Channel 4, just keep those brickbats coming!

But the news of the past days that really affects the General Election here is the leaked document from Conservative Headquarters which states that for their party Thirsk and Malton is not a “target constituency” and the new Conservative candidate is not a “target candidate”. I have been puzzling why this should have happened. At first I thought that it might be linked to last year’s bizarre decapitation of the sitting MP by the local Conservative Association. Despite having been William Hague’s Constituency Chairman in Richmond when he was leader of the Conservative Party, this remains a mystery to me. Instead I believe that it has been caused by the presence in Yorkshire last July of the malign and sinister figure of Matthew Parris.

Now, most of you will not have heard of this little known but deeply influential man. He is a former MP who is at the core and heart of the Cameron experiment and, if you want to discover what 10 Downing Street really thinks about our country and its people, you have to follow the comments and articles of Matthew Parris. Where this is significant is that Matthew Parris was in Yorkshire last July to oversee and manage the selection of the replacement official Conservative candidate. He was the “Moderator” at a closed meeting where that new candidate was chosen, but his attitude to constituencies like Thirsk and Malton only became clear three months later in the run-up to the Clacton by-election.

What he said then, in an article in the Times about the Clacton voters and by association about the Thirsk and Malton voters, was, “I am not arguing that we should be careless of the needs of struggling people and places such as Clacton. But I am arguing – if I am honest – that we should be careless of their opinions.” This in a nutshell summarises the contempt that David Cameron, Matthew Parris and those around them have for non-metropolitan Britain. And he went on, “if you associate tattoos with youth, Clacton will surprise you. Father time is busy with his scythe here….only in Asmara after Eritrea’s bloody wars have I encountered a greater proportion of citizens on crutches or in wheelchairs.” For a moment, the curtain was lifted and we saw through Matthew Parris’ article how constituencies like Clacton and Thirsk and Malton are truly seen by the occupants of 10 Downing Street.

Now, the good men and women of Clacton duly responded and Douglas Carswell won a resounding victory at the by-election, where the result was:

UKIP – 21,113 votes (59.7%)
Conservative – 8,709 votes (24.5%)
Labour – 3,957 votes (11.0%)
Green – 688 votes (1.7%)
LibDem – 487 votes (1.3%)

So if you really want to see why 10 Downing Street has given up on Thirsk and Malton, remember that Matthew Parris was its appointed “Moderator” presiding over the choice of its new candidate last July and its true voice in the run-up to the Clacton by-election in October. For my part, I pledge that, if successful in May’s General Election, I will commit myself to the well-being and security of those on crutches and in wheelchairs and, yes, those who sport tattoos, whatever their age. And UKIP will never turn its back on those who live in constituencies like Clacton and Thirsk and Malton, remote from the febrile world of London, with its desires and demands. The closed, narcissistic world of Matthew Parris, David Cameron and their chums is one in which none of us would ever want to live. In May, there will be a chance to replace it with a UKIP future, not the one caricatured last week on Channel 4, but a sensible moderate world in which truth and good sense finally prevail.

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday 

'Fleeced by the EU'

 

Today is Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day, the final day of celebration in the old Christian calendar before Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent.   In France, they call it Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, when the last rich meals are consumed before fasting begins.   So this is a good day to pay tribute to our heroic farmers, without whom there would be no Pancake Day, no Mardi Gras and no Carnival, which comes from Carne Vale, Latin for good-bye to meat.

The challenge for UKIP during the next three months will be to persuade our farming community that there is nothing to fear and much to gain from leaving the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.    In this, we are greatly helped by our farming spokesman, Stuart Agnew, MEP for the East of England.   Stuart is a Norfolk farmer who has represented Norfolk on the NFU Council.   In the European Parliament, he sits on the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.   He is writing the farming section of our manifesto at the moment and the long-term needs of our farmers will be at the heart of our proposals.
At their core will be a new British Basic Payment Scheme to replace the existing CAP Basic Payment Scheme.   Land will need to be farmed to Entry Level Stewardship standards to qualify, with grassland automatically qualifying.   The Scheme would match the existing overall level of farm support.

However, the rate of support would initially be capped at £80 per acre on low ground, with a pro-rata decrease on marginal and hill land.   There would also be an overall cap of £120,000 per unit, which would therefore be reached on 1,500 lowland acres and pro-rata on higher acreages in the uplands.   The purpose of this cap is to make new tenancies available to young entrants into the industry.   At the moment, there is an appalling shortage of farms to rent and this is one sensible way of dealing with the problem.   Farmers who currently receive in excess of this £120,000 figure would therefore need to create new tenancies, which could be for members of their own families, to increase the number of holdings for new entrants.   There would be additional headage payments in the hills, subject to environmental restraints.

The nonsense of the new “three crop rule” under the CAP would end immediately, as would modulation and cross-compliance, interference in cropping and set-aside.    In this greatly simplified world and with looming food shortages in mind, all these decisions would be taken by the working farmer on the ground, where they properly belong.    Likewise, to meet the practical needs of working farmers, there would be no compulsory individual Electronic ID for sheep, no requirement for re-registration of pesticides, including Asulam, and no blanket ban on burial of fallen stock, although sites would need approval.   Much more red tape would also be removed to enable farmers to concentrate on the job in hand rather than fill in forms.   For example, the rules on white asbestos and Nitrate Vulnerable Zones would be relaxed.

On our dairy herds, it was the EU which insisted that the old Milk Marketing Board should be wound up and, if dairying is now to survive in Britain, something like it will need to return, however much Brussels may object.   The collapse of our dairy sector is a crime for which the EU must be held directly to account.   On Bovine TB, UKIP supports the trial culling of badgers, along with all other possible measures, if our herds are to be protected from this terrible disease.   And on the subject of disease, it is the rigidity of the EU’s Single Market rules that has caused so much damage to our horticultural and forestry sectors.   The import of infected timber has caused a catastrophic spread of disease to our ash and elm plantations, in many ways an analogy for the whole crazy EU project.   Given that we import so much more from the EU than we send there, a London-Brussels trade agreement is certainly achievable, even without the intervention of the WTO and other supranational bodies.   Further, UKIP will abolish the hated Inheritance Tax and ensure that family units can survive intact for future generations.

And above all, a UKIP Government will legislate for the highest welfare standards in abattoirs, to ensure that the disgrace of the Bowood Yorkshire lamb slaughterhouse outside Thirsk is never repeated.   There is nothing in the Koran that precludes stunning before slaughter, and indeed the majority of halal meat is pre-stunned, while a sensible accommodation will need to be found with the Kosher authorities that complies with good practice.   In addition, exports of live animals, including horses, for slaughter abroad will be banned and imports of bush meat will be controlled.   If Britain is to remain the most civilised country in the World, then there can be no abuse of our livestock at death when they have served us so well during their lives.   So our all-important farming sector should indeed have nothing to fear and much to gain from a UKIP Government – roll on the day!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby

 

Toby on Tuesday

‘All aboard the Crazy Train’

 

We all remember the Hans Christian Andersen children’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”   It begins, “Many years ago, there was an Emperor, who was so excessively fond of new clothes, that he spent all his money in dress.”   It goes on to tell how two swindling tailors promised him a new suit in a fabric that would be invisible to anyone who was too stupid or incompetent to see it.   Of course, there isn’t any suit but everyone pretends that they can see it and flatters him on it until it takes a small boy to cry out, “But the Emperor has nothing on at all!”

Last month, a nine-year old Cub Scout called Alex Rukin appeared in Parliament before the new High Speed 2 rail bosses and accused them of being “really, really bad” at maths and of making things up on the spiraling budget of their imperial vanity project.   He went on to identify a £7 billion hole in a scheme that is already likely to cost well over £50 billion.   Like the boy in the Hans Christian Andersen story, he said of the HS2 bosses,   “It really is worse than I thought.   I am still willing to help them with their maths if they want!”

The reality behind HS2 can be found on the EUs own website on ec.europa.eu/transport/themes.   HS2 has nothing at all to do with the transport needs of London or Birmingham.   Rather it is a vanity project designed as part of an imperial high speed rail network for those who benefit from the new European empire.   The StopHS2 website on stophs2.org/ spells out the case against this monstrosity all too clearly, but last month it took a nine-year old Cub Scout to appear before a Parliamentary committee and state the obvious truth.

In the name of “rationalisation”, great damage was done to our rail network by the Beeching Axe of the mid-1960’s.   Among the many notable casualties were routes operated by the old LMS (London, Midland and Scottish) which ran from London through Birmingham to the North.   Much of the LMS infrastructure is still in place and could now be revived at a fraction of the cost of HS2.   But there would be no vanity in doing this and it would not meet the exacting requirements of Brussels and Berlin.   It would be a low-key investment with ordinary passengers, now struggling under rising fares, in mind.  In the two decades since John Major’s rail privatisation, many inter-city fares have trebled and the fares planned for HS2 would effectively exclude most normal passengers.  

It is worth remembering exactly who HS2 is being built for.   The only people able to travel on it will be our new masters, the Eurocrats, the civil servants and the big corporate players.   Yet we shall all end up paying for it, either directly or by greatly reduced public services across the country.   And it will inevitably lose money year on year, a bottomless pit which we shall all be funding.

Now UKIP is the only major political party committed to the immediate scrapping of HS2.   Like Hans Christian Andersen’s small boy, and like Alex Rukin, we are saying to the emperors who now govern us from Brussels and Berlin, you may have been made fools of, but we in Britain are not fools and can see clearly what is happening!  Truth will out and, like your shiny new Euro-currency, HS2 can now be filed away along with all your other crazy schemes!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby