Toby on Tuesday
‘A complete collapse of intelligence’
Here in Yorkshire, we are exceptionally lucky in having two
outstanding UKIP MEP’s in Jane Collins and Mike Hookem. They
complement each other and both have brought practical experience of the
real world to their new lives in the European Parliament. Mike’s
background is in the Armed Forces, where you would have thought that he
had seen something of the murky side of life. But our Armed Forces,
still the finest on the planet, live according to their own strict code
which could not be more removed from that of the EU. So even Mike was
astonished by the scale of sheer criminality when the other day he was
threatened with a handgun by an illegal immigrant in a camp outside
Dunkirk. These migrant camps in Northern France, driven as they are by
people-traffickers and other villains, are now the most potent images
of our EU membership, images that no amount of hand-wringing by
powerless ministers, desperate not to offend our so-called “partners”,
can eradicate.
But today I want to write not about illegal immigration through
Calais but rather through Istanbul in Turkey, which has received
literally billions in “pre-accession funding” as it presses on with its
application for full EU membership. Now, in order to seek influence
across Africa and the Middle East, Turkey has created an e-visa entry
regime. This is open to 89 countries including Afghanistan, Eritrea,
Somalia and Sudan. It requires just the completion of a simple e-form,
a fee payable online and a flight into Istanbul using either Turkish
Airlines or Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines. For its part, Turkish Airlines
flies to virtually the whole Islamic world, including Somalia. And it
is calculated that there are now some 100,000 temporary migrants in
Istanbul, preparing for the next leg of their journeys into Greece and
then on to Northern Europe, not least to Britain. For them, the
Istanbul route is a fair bit more expensive than the boat across the
Mediterranean, but a good deal more straightforward. It is also highly
profitable for Turkey.
Even Frontex, the EU’s borders agency, has finally acknowledged that
Turkey’s e-visa regime is open to “countries of origin for irregular
migration to the EU…an increasing number of people arriving in the EU
from Turkey…are using forged and fraudulent travel documents.” The
truth is that the whole EU dream is turning into an unqualified
nightmare and we will only regain control of our borders when we bid
farewell to this terminal disaster. And it seems well-nigh incredible
that our own weak Government, urged on by the U.S. State Department, is
still seeking Turkish accession to the EU, despite the ongoing war
against the Kurds. Now, as Mike Hookem knows better than most, this
year sees the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign in the First World
War. Peter Weir’s 1981 film “Gallipoli”, starring Mel Gibson, still
resonates after more than 30 years. As the film showed, the principal
cause of the disaster of Gallipoli, the Turkish peninsula at the tip of
the Dardanelles straits, was a complete collapse of intelligence. As
we seek to stem the tide of illegal immigration from Turkey and
elsewhere a century later, an equal collapse of intelligence, albeit of
another kind, is again the dominating feature!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
‘Brazen lies and false declarations’
Last week I wrote about the very best of the very best, those
enterprising Yorkshire men and women behind Business for Britain.
Creating top-of-the-range products and selling them across the globe,
they build employment and prosperity here for the benefit of all. By
contrast today I am going to write about the very worst of the very
worst, or at least someone who must be a contender for that particular
title, namely the late Sir Edward Heath. It was Edward Heath who, as
Prime Minister from 1970-74, took Britain into the then European
Economic Community. I don’t propose to write about the various police
investigations now underway, but instead want to say something about his
proven crimes. And of course his greatest proven crime, from which we
continue to suffer, was to have given away our sovereignty on the basis
of a brazen lie.
In 1970, Lord Kilmuir as Lord Chancellor wrote privately to Edward
Heath about the proposed EEC accession. What he said was, “It is
clear…that the Council of Ministers could…make regulations which would
be binding on us even against our wishes, and which would in fact become
for us part of the law of the land. For Parliament to do this would
go far beyond the most extensive delegation of powers, even in wartime,
that we have experienced and I do not think there is any likelihood of
this being acceptable to the House of Commons. We should have
therefore to accept a position where Parliament had no more power to
repeal its own enactments (in other words that it was no longer a
Parliament)… we could only comply with our obligations under the Treaty
if Parliament abandoned its right of passing independent judgment on the
legislative proposals put before it…In this respect Parliament has in
substance, if not in form, abdicated its sovereign position.” Yet in
1972 Edward Heath declared on television that, “There will be no loss of
essential national sovereignty.” Kilmuir’s letter, ignored by Edward
Heath, only became public many years later. And when in 1990 Edward
Heath was asked, again on television, whether he had known that his 1972
declaration had been false, he replied, “Of course, yes!”
As Prime Minister, Edward Heath also started negotiations with
Franco’s Spain for the transfer of democratic Gibraltar to a fascist
dictatorship, against the express wishes of its people. He offered
Spain political and cultural access to Gibraltar to start the process of
“persuading” the Gibraltarians to relinquish British sovereignty.
Likewise, he had an obsession with the Chinese Communist Party, busy at
that time executing thousands of dissidents a year. His defence of
Chinese totalitarianism was, “You can’t have a democracy with so many
people!” No doubt he had this precedent in mind when planning for a
Europe of 500 million people in the “post-democratic age.” I can’t
claim to have known Edward Heath myself, but I met him on several
occasions, notably when he twice came to speak for me when I was
standing as a Conservative candidate. It always puzzled me that he
chose to address me as “Tony”. I mentioned this in a light-hearted way
to someone who was close to him and he replied, “Oh, when Ted really
dislikes someone he always deliberately gets their name wrong!” But
what he intended as an insult, I have always taken as a badge of honour
for, in a reasonable and balanced world, an insult from Edward Heath can
only be seen as the ultimate compliment!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
‘Business for Britain’
This week I’d like to introduce you to Alan Halsall, a classic
example of the very best kind of innovative Yorkshire entrepreneur.
Now Alan has spent much of his career rescuing and rebuilding the Silver
Cross company, based in Skipton. Founded in Leeds in 1877, Silver
Cross had run into difficulties when Alan acquired it in 2002. Since
then the company has been reinvigorated with nearly 100 employees,
one-third of whom work abroad, making baby transport and other
baby-related products. These include its iconic prams, pushchairs, car
seats, nursery furniture, bedding, toys and gifts. The company sells
in over 50 countries, is especially strong in China and has a retail
boutique in the Ocean Terminal Centre, Hong Kong. Its offices are in
Skipton, London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. And it has just entered into a
shareholding partnership with China’s Fosun Corporation, which will
strengthen its distribution in the Far East and its employment
opportunities in Skipton. Silver Cross is now a truly global business
of the future, based here in Yorkshire.
I mention all this because Alan is Co-Chairman of Business for
Britain, a new national organisation with strong Yorkshire connections.
What may have radicalised Alan is his own experience of trying to sell
Silver Cross prams in France, where he believes French pram
manufacturers are using spurious safety grounds to ensure that his prams
are excluded from the French market in blatant flouting of the EU’s
free trade rules. In his own words, “When we tried to export our prams
to France we found that they were required to meet additional safety
standards for the French markets, even though they conform to all EU
safety standards required. As a result we had to pay thousands of
pounds to ship the stock which we had sent out for sale to French stores
back to Britain. We had to pull out of France. It was annoying and
expensive.”
Now Business for Britain describes itself as “independent and
non-partisan, involving people from all parties and no party.” Alan’s
Co-Chairman is John Mills, one of the Labour Party’s key donors. If
you google www.businessforbritain.org, you can find out more about the
campaign but its stated position is, “It is clear that the EU needs to
change. It is also increasingly accepted that if it refuses to do so
then Britain should leave.” As well as having the finest possible
Yorkshire Co-Chairman, Business for Britain’s regional operations around
the whole country are being co-ordinated from Richmond by the excellent
Julie Moody, who is really very good news indeed. So with Alan as
Co-Chairman and Julie as Regional Director, Yorkshire brains, energy and
creativity are at the heart of what must be a successful campaign.
As for my part, I shall be supporting Alan and Julie to the best of
my ability alongside my good friend Martin Vallance of UKIP Richmond.
There will be many Euro-realist voices heard over the coming months, but
UKIP and Business for Britain will be two of the most eloquent. And
as for Silver Cross itself, the truth is that Britain needs literally
thousands of new businesses like Silver Cross, selling top-of-the-range
products around the world, free from the dead hand of the corporatist
and protectionist EU. To achieve this is the mission of creative
Yorkshire entrepreneurs with a global outlook like Alan Halsall – they
are the very best of the very best!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
‘Charity/Fatuity’
I though that this week I’d offer a modest proposal to our
Chancellor, George Osborne, as our public borrowing is now the second
highest of all OECD members at 5% of GNP, way ahead of the numbers for
Italy, Spain, Portugal, Mexico and even Greece, and still running at
close to £100 billion a year. Now above all else we really want to
live well with our neighbours, but the two ways to ensure that we fall
out with them are first to have an open door policy, with completely
uncontrolled coming and going, and second to share a joint bank account,
from which they can help themselves at will. That is why the whole
Euro project, which was designed to create goodwill between the nations
of Europe, has led only to mutual recrimination and mistrust.
Of course the same problem goes well beyond the shores of the
so-called “European Union”. At a time of pressing social need within
Britain, our net contributions to the EU budget and to the Overseas Aid
budget are both running at very similar levels of around £13 billion a
year and, as our economy grows, these figures are forecast to increase
to some £16-17 billion a year each by 2020. And both of budgets are
riddled with fraud and corruption. The EU budget has not been properly
audited for 19 years now and infiltration by the Mafia and criminal
gangs is endemic. As for Overseas Aid, much of this is simply stolen
or spent on schemes that are beyond parody.
Now we all know that David Cameron has declared that, other than
same-sex marriage, his proudest achievement is spending 0.7% of GNP on
Overseas Aid. So a sensible step at this time of immense pressure on
our public finances would be to include our net contribution to the EU
budget in our calculation of Overseas Aid. Together they currently
amount to some 1.4% of GNP at £26-27 billion a year. By reducing the
combined total to the internationally approved 0.7% of GNP figure, we
would meet this supposed obligation as a Permanent Member of the United
Nations Security Council while rebalancing our out-of-control public
spending. In economics there is something called the multiplier effect
by which public expenditure spent at home generates additional value
for the economy. Money disappearing abroad has a corresponding
negative effect.
So let’s spend more of our limited resources on our
own people and their needs, deny European crime syndicates and Third
World despots their funding and bring a degree of integrity back to our
public spending. And I offer this modest proposal to our Chancellor as
evidence that UKIP, now fully recovered from gaining only one seat in
May’s General Election despite winning nearly 4 million votes, is now
needed more than ever!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
“Out of the EU Into the World.”
This week I thought that I’d take a rest from Greece’s endless
trauma and write instead about something far more positive – old
friendships and especially UKIP friendships. Now on life’s journey we
are never blessed with more than a handful of close friends, but that
makes us value them still more. And I have been very lucky for a large
part of my life in having a completely trusted old friend, during good
times and bad, in William Dartmouth, MEP for the South-West and
Gibraltar, UKIP’s Trade Spokesman and Coordinator for the Europe of
Freedom and Direct Democracy Group on the European Parliament’s
International Trade Committee.
Our friendship started in the 1960’s at university, with all its
political and other dramas. A close family friendship followed and we
then both stood for Parliament as Conservatives. What really cemented
our friendship in the 1980’s was a shared perception that the
Euro-project was taking Britain in a direction that could ultimately
destroy it and since then, in our own ways, we have sought to prevent
this. During William Hague’s leadership of the Conservative Party, I
as his Constituency Chairman in Richmond and William as an active
Conservative peer in the pre-reform House of Lords, were both part of
the successful campaign to keep Britain out of the deeply flawed single
currency project. And we spotted David Cameron a mile off when he
became Conservative leader, both joining UKIP in late 2006/early 2007.
In 2009, William was elected as MEP for his home region in the
South-West.
Now in his second term, William has always concentrated on his trade
portfolio, which is his great interest. He has wisely sought to live
on excellent terms with everyone in the Party on the old premise that,
if you can’t find something good to say about someone, don’t say
anything. And his energy has been directed first at serving his
constituents, particularly over the European Arrest Warrant and the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and second on
campaigning for a Britain once more open to the world. Last year he
published his 90-page report, “Out of the EU Into the World.” His case
that “the UK does not need to be in a political union in order to trade
and other inconvenient truths” was set out with absolute clarity and
consistency, providing an invaluable resource in the run-up to May’s
General Election.
And William has just completed his “The Truth About Trade Beyond the
EU”. This spells out “the reasons why we would not be leaving any
markets when we leave the EU.” An abridged version of this will soon
be circulated throughout UKIP’s branches as part of our campaign for a
“No” vote in the EU referendum when it finally comes. Again, it will
be an invaluable piece of research and contains vital arguments in
support of our cause. It also underscores the fact that the most
valuable members of our party are often those who are the least
demonstrative, but instead work away patiently and quietly for UKIP.
Their role is to expose the great truths for which we are fighting in
the face of the mendacity and ruthlessness of those in the three old
parties who wish at all costs to promote themselves by destroying our
country. But with the support of UKIP members across the regions our
friends at the forefront of our party like William will prevail, as
indeed we all will!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
‘Three truths…’
I joined UKIP in 2006, when it became clear that David Cameron
intended to be a Conservative leader in the mould of Ted Heath. But
until then I had been active in the Conservative Party during good times
and bad. And from 1996 to 1999, while living in Richmond, I was
William Hague’s Constituency Chairman, giving unfailing support when he
became Party Leader in 1997 and for the two years afterwards. And the
understanding with his supporters on which the campaign for his
leadership was based was to rule out Britain’s entry into the euro for
the duration of a Parliament, the most that he could have reasonably
offered at the time.
Now, it is very easy to forget just how close William’s victory over
Ken Clarke in 1997 was. In the first and second rounds of the ballot
of MP’s, Ken Clarke had in fact been the winner. It was only in the
final round that William came through to take the prize. Had Ken
Clarke won, he would almost certainly have colluded with Tony Blair to
bounce Britain into joining the euro and we would now be just one more
bankrupt member of the failed Eurozone. On the rare occasions when I
saw William after joining UKIP in 2006, he was always his affable self,
no doubt looking at my defection as self-indulgence but never allowing
it to affect his dry humour. So it was with great personal interest
that I read his Daily Telegraph article last week on the Euro-crisis.
What he wrote was, “I remember being regarded as eccentric for
doubting the euro project. Now it has proved to be a monumental error
of judgment, analysis and leadership…In May 1998… I said that Joining
the euro would exacerbate recession in some countries, and that some
would find themselves trapped in a burning building with no exits – a
phrase that brought me a fair amount of controversy and abuse…I was
regarded around the EU as a rather eccentric figure, almost pitiable in
being unable to see where the great sweep of history and prosperity was
heading….There are three important truths for Eurozone leaders to
recognize today…The first is that this crisis is not the fault of the
Greek people…It is no good now expecting the Greeks to sit quietly in a
burnt out room of the burning building I described seventeen years ago.
This brings us to the second truth: that this is not a short term
crisis, but a permanent one, in which any temporary accommodation will
soon be overtaken by events… The third and final truth will be the
hardest one of all for those responsible for the euro to accept: that
this is not just about one country…the same tensions will ultimately
surface in other nations facing a less immediate crisis but a similar
prognosis…In future decades…I believe students will sit down to study
the folly of extending a single currency too far. Sad though it will
be to see it, their textbook is likely to say that the Greek debacle of
2015 was not the end of the euro crisis, but its real beginning.”
Released from the cares of office, William is now free to share his
insights as never before. I well remember the open contempt in which
he was held by the Clarkes, Heseltines, Howes, Blairs, Kinnocks and
Ashdowns of this world, who should now all be hanging their heads in
shame, just as I remember the dismissal of UKIP members as “fruitcakes
and loonies”. But we can all be confident that events have wholly
vindicated us. My hope now is that William will join that other former
Conservative statesman, the great reforming Chancellor Nigel Lawson,
and add his name to those campaigning for an “Out” vote in our
Euro-referendum. To pay some £20 billion a year gross and £13 billion
net, to open our borders to all comers and to hand our country over to
the architects of the Eurozone – now that really is eccentric. Which
is one thing that William, with his native Yorkshire shrewdness, never
is, whatever the Eurofanatics might once have thought!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
‘Vaulting Ambition…’
In ancient Greek drama “hubris” meant pride, the spirit of
arrogance and violence. And it led inevitably to “nemesis”, the gods’
punishment for “hubris”, as in “pride comes before the fall.” So it is
that the Eurozone’s overweening pride is now leading to its inevitable
fall. Last week I wrote about Channel 5’s “Conspiracy” series
(www.channel5.com/show/conspiracy) and my old friend Rodney Atkinson’s
account of the origins of the EU in Episode 1, “The Death of Hitler.”
You can find out more about Rodney on his website www.freenations.net.
For many years, he has developed his narrative in books, articles and
lectures, and he has taken his theme forward in his latest e-book, “And
Into the Fire: Fascist Elements in Post War Europe and the Development
of the EU.” It is available through Kindle for $3.13 and hopefully
before long will also be in hard copy form.
Now where Rodney differs from those who might in the past have been
described as Conspiracy Theorists is that he in fact has a deep
understanding of Germany from his time as a lecturer at the University
of Mainz. And in this respect, he differs little from his friend
Arthur Noble. Professor Noble, who is from Northern Ireland, is
Professor Emeritus of German at the Universities of Metz and Nancy. He
is therefore uniquely well placed to judge Rodney’s writing and of his
new book he has recently said, “Rodney Atkinson’s book is a brilliant
analysis of the Nazi background to the European Union and the Nazi ideas
and ideals which are at the heart of the EU today and are driving its
development. All freedom-loving people and democratic nations must
read this book as a matter of urgency. Current developments in Ukraine
with its Nazi-dominated putsch administration, together with the
contrived pro-fascist propaganda of the mainstream Western media, are
clear proof of the complete accuracy of Atkinson’s analyses and
predictions. Please read this book. The West has forgotten the facts
of history. You will regret it if you do not know what is really
behind the EU and what it is planning.”
Now, like most people I have always tried to be fair-minded and to
see both sides of any question. For this reason, I have until now
viewed Rodney’s insights as the outcome of a brilliantly logical mind
taking his ideas to their extreme conclusion. But having been
mesmerised by events in Greece in recent months, I wonder, I just wonder
whether Rodney might just have been right all along. What I do know
is that the EU’s “hubris” is leading rapidly to its “nemesis” and that
Greece will prove to be the catalyst – yet another word from the Greek
meaning “undo” or annul”!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
