Toby on Tuesday

 

'A Champion of Social Justice (sic erat scriptum)'

 

It’s a funny thing, but dear old Auntie BBC has always gone weak at the knees at the thought of any kind of National Socialist dictator.   In the 1930’s it was Adolf Hitler who made her go all wobbly, speaking only well of him and supressing any nasty news from Berlin.   And she always reached for the smelling salts whenever that dreadful Winston Churchill went on about German rearmament, banning him from the airwaves for being so naughty.   So it was last week on the death of Fidel Castro, who also liked to murder his political opponents and minorities, having children and women shot whenever they tried to flee his grisly regime.   And the roll-call of monsters who were in Havana last week says it all.   President Mugabe of Zimbabwe, President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, President Zuma of South Africa, President Bouterse of Suriname, President Maduro of Venezuela, President Ortega of Nicaragua and President Morales of Bolivia were all there, while Kim Jong Un of North Korea declared three days of mourning and despatched a delegation to Havana.   Gerry Adams was there to represent Sinn Fein and Emily Thornberry to represent the Labour Party.   And for Jeremy Corbyn, “Fidel Castro was a massive figure in the history of the whole planet...an internationalist and a champion of social justice.”   

As for Auntie Beeb, she excelled herself with coverage that was beyond parody.   For Newsnight, she dredged up clapped out Rentamob leftie Tariq Ali to praise Cuba’s “social dictatorship.”   Snooker coverage made way for a special documentary to “Remember Fidel Castro.”   And BBC News drew heavily on grovelling interviews with former Guardian journalist and “Cuba expert” Richard Gott without disclosing that he had been on the KGB payroll through services provided to a Russian agent called Mikhail Bogdanov.   Good old Auntie – there’s nothing like a grisly dictator to get her all excited!

 

And the dictatorship of the EU definitely fits into the same category.   Auntie Beeb’s reporting of Sunday’s referendum in Italy, where the attempt by a government of EU-favoured apparatchiks to tamper with the constitution was soundly rejected, tells us all we need to know.   The purpose of Sunday’s vote was to clip the wings of Italy’s Upper House, her Senate, by reducing the number of Senators from 315 to 100, to strip them of the right to hold votes of No Confidence in the government and above all to end all elections to the Senate.   In future, its 100 members would have been made up of 21 regional mayors, 74 regional council heads and 5 members appointed by Italy’s President.   This Euro-fascistic and blatantly anti-democratic measure would have concentrated yet more power into the hands of Italy’s Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, and by default into the hands of Brussels and the European Central Bank.   Now, since the banking crisis of 2008, Italy’s economy within the Euro currency has shrunk by almost 10% and unemployment has soared, while outside the Euro Britain’s has grown by broadly the same amount and jobs have flourished.   So to defy Italy’s democracy openly as Matteo Renzi did with his power-grab was foolish to say the least.  The Senate that he was proposing would have made our own, very questionable House of Lords like like a model of popular wisdom and insight.

 

In truth, and this isn’t being reported on Auntie Beeb’s news, the Italian people were determined not to go the way of Greece, condemned by Brussels and Berlin to impoverishment and humiliation.  For Italy, this is a moment of liberation.   Beppo Grillo’s Five Star Movement campaigned on the simple messages of transparency in Italy’s shadowy politics and restoration of the Lira, Italy’s old currency, a precondition for any economic recovery in this proud country.   The state of Italy’s banking system is all-too well known, with the extent of Non-Performing Loans far outweighing her banks’ capital and reserves.   Brussels’ solution will no doubt be to seek more control, the imposition of a new “technocratic” government and strict penalties for both depositors and shareholders as part of a bail-in/bail-out by the European Central Bank.   For the EU, the ideology of the Euro-project must at all costs not be questioned.   The obvious solution, following the experience of the UK and of the US Treasury’s TARP programme, is for the Government in Rome to reclaim the Lira and then to recapitalise the country’s banks.   But to do this would be to bring the whole crazy Euro project into question and to accept that you cannot have a monetary union without large fiscal transfers from the stronger to the weaker parts.   In Britain, we can only be grateful that we are finally leaving this ill-judged project.   Defying economic and political gravity leads eventually to destruction.   And Sunday’s vote in Italy could just be the moment when reality finally starts to challenge ideology – although of course that’s not how dear old Auntie Beeb, bless her, will be reporting developments!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby