Tuesday 16 November 2010

We will we will tax you


From 1688 to 1815 England and France were involved in what might very well be thought of as a Second Hundred Years’ War (Yes, I know, but the first one lasted more than a hundred years also!) Of the two sides France was by far the strongest, the most populous, the better placed and the better armed. Yet England still won. Why? That’s simple; because we are not as Napoleon suggested a nation of shopkeepers: we are a nation of accountants.

The downfall of France was brought about by ruinous profligacy, especially under the Ancien Régime. In England Parliament, nit-picking and parsimonious as it often was, kept a close watch on expenditure, thus making sure that no more was raised by taxation than was absolutely necessary, and that every penny was made to count. By this process naval efficiency in particular was maximised, good, well-designed vessels captained by skilled seamen making a major contribution to victory, particularly during the Seven Years War, when England was established as the paramount naval power.

Ah, but the past is a foreign country; they did things better there. Now our Parliament is in some ways no more than an impotent regional assembly; now we are part of a new Ancien Régime: now we are part of the European Union, which has none of ‘our’ traditions and all of ‘theirs.’ Our Prime Minister went to Brussels determined to put a stop to the endless demands for more and more money. He came, he saw…and he didn’t quite conquer. The ‘budget freeze’ will still cost the British tax payers millions at a time of serious nation retrenchment.

Our brave new Europe has ‘their’ traditions, yes, the tradition of milking the peasantry of wealth to be squandered away without consequence. It used to be said of the British press that it exercised power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout history. The Commission and the pathetic European Parliament is the new harlot, taxing and spending without fear of consequence.

Let me give you but one example, that of Project Galileo. I confess that anything to do with space, space travel and objects in space bores me absolutely rigid, so I’d never heard of this until I read Costs in Space, an article by Douglas Murray in the latest issue of the Spectator. It’s a scheme dreamt up in the late 1990s because Jacques Chirac, the former French president, thought it would be a jolly good idea for Europe to rival the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, used today in almost all of our satnav devices. There was no need for this but, you see, GPS is owned by the United States, and Europe, if you will forgive the expressions, simply had to get it up.

Here we are more than ten years after: no satellites have gone up, just costs, astronomical costs. You see, that’s what the EU does best, that’s what the Ancien Régime does best: not make things, not achieve things, no, just spend money, more and more and more money. Murray apparently phoned the EU (who, I wonder?) to ask about the final costs. It’s too early to speculate in terms of amounts, he was told. That’s right: after ten years it’s too early to speculate in terms of amounts. Let me translate that: it will cost billions. Originally projected to cost 1.6 billion the final cost is now estimated at 22 billion, based on information leaked to the German government by the Commission.

No taxation without representation was the battle cry that began the American Revolution. We will tax you whether you like it our not, is the motto of the EU. Failure does not matter; failure is of no consequence because the European tax payer will always, in the final event, be made to pick up the tab, to pick up the tab for Galileo and every other wasteful project. Murray puts it thus;

The cost to the UK taxpayer for this political ineptitude has shot up from £385 million to £3 billion. That’s the difference of one of those aircraft carriers that our armed forces need. No organisation other than the EU could come up with routine budget discrepancies literally the size of an aircraft carrier. But what’s a rise like that between friends? After all, we’ll be paying an extra £387 million each year after our Prime Minister’s ‘spectacular’ victory in Brussels the other week.

That’s the thing about Europe, the thing about the Ancien Régime: there is no punishment for failure, almost nothing in the way of accountability beyond the corrupt and venal European ‘Parliament.’ How I envy those American colonist who got so upset over a tax on tea. We’ve gone beyond the Tea Party stage; eyes should now be on the Bastille.

48 comments:

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  2. The British frog has been so thoroughly boiled over the past 15 years there's no meat left on the bone.

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  3. I did not say anything anti-Bourbon, merely restating something I have said before, some simple historical facts. I would make the same comment about profligacy if I were looking at the reign of Henry VIII.

    There is really nothing new here. I share the view of many in the Conservative Party about the wastefulness of the European Union. I do think we would be better off out, something else I've said before. I would simply never vote in European elections, because my contempt for the Mickey Mouse parliament and all who sail in her is absolute.

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  7. Europe is rather like 19th century China: huge, unwieldy, socially and culturally fragmented with no unifying vision of itself beyond superficial slogans . . . and run by career bureaucrats whose real interest is stuffing their own pockets with loot. Now, it, too, is being overrun by aliens. The prospects are not encouraging.

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  8. Suciô, I don't think you appreciate quite how greedy these Europeans are, or understand some of their more distasteful culinary practices. Why, there is still marrow in the bones. :-)

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  9. I will never vote for any other party. Conservative or don't vote, that's my road, illogical or not.

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  11. Adam, sorry to hear that you are not feeling well.

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  12. Calvin, I might very well settle in the States, post degree and post Obama, of course. :-)

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  14. America would welcome you, but we pay taxes here too. If we survive the 2012 Solar flares look into western Oregon.

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  15. Hmmm, Adam, thanks but no thanks. I have no desire to hear the 'great' Comrade Combover speak on anything. Oh, how fortunate Margaret Thatcher was in her enemies. :-)

    Actually, I think you should reassess your position with regard to the EU, which will give you all the feudalism, socialism and welfarism that you thirst so hard for. The day of the nation state is over; the day of the new super feudal state has arrived. :-)

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  16. Yes, I know you do, Anthony, but not like us. If you want to look at a potential future under Obama Care you need go no further than the ghastly National Health Service here, one of the great financial black holes of our national life.

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  21. Oh, but it was a European conquest that brought feudalism to these islands in the first place! You approve of Britain, a political idea rather than a meaningful cultural concept. You think England only exists as a 'culture'. Well, it would continue to exist as a 'culture' under the careful eye of the new European overlords, who would quite happily take away the freedom that you are so obviously uncomfortable with.

    I'm always think what I think without reference to others, and I think Scargill is a complete arse. :-)

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  25. No, it was far worse! Not only did it succeed but the old English aristocracy was almost completely dispossessed; ordinary English people became little better than slaves, and until the reign of Henry IV, almost four hundred years after the Conquest, the language of the ruling class was Norman-French. But, I'm not complaining; I'm a daughter of the Conquest.

    If you can't define freedom say hello to the Brave New Europe!

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  27. Freedom is being me, saying, feeling, acting as I wish, constrained by no-one and no thing. The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.

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  30. Freedom is the power to say "No."

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  31. VAT at 4.5%, no home heating costs, wonderful produce at reasonable prices from the local farmers markets, great bargains in a wide variety of competing supermarkets, petrol at 82 cents per litre, Gran Reserva Rioja starting at 1.90 euros, 60 cents for a packet of cigarettes, good health care, daily refuse collection, an open-air all-year-round lifestyle, great communications with the rest of Europe... the list just goes on and on.

    Three cheers for the far-flung outposts of the EU!
    ;-)

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  32. Health care could be made to work, it is all in the details. How to administer the plan is the key. But nothing in life is really free ,so a reasonably priced plan would work best.

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  33. As for post Obama, John Boehner the new Republican speaker of the House will be the next American President. The situation will be made right in a Germanic fashion. You can bring Adam to America IF you like.You can buy all the glocks that you wish here,just avoid the New England states as they have a socialist mindset there.

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  34. Adam, why don't you tell them yourself? I had no idea that the Yard now had a department for the Thought Police. I have, however, made it patently clear in the past that there are practical constraints on action, and that personal freedom can never be pushed to the extent that it deprives the freedom of others. I do not care who does or does not share my dreams and I'm most assuredly not in the business of conversion. I care even less for your 'majority position'. The woman who is strongest stands most alone.

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  35. CI, I might join you but for all of those awful package tour barbarians!

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  39. That's nothing to do with freedom; that's attempted murder.

    Adam, you don't seem to be able to grasp what I'm saying: I'm offering nothing to you or anyone else: this is my thinking, my road to freedom. For God's sake, if you want to be mundane and mediocre, be mundane and mediocre!

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  44. Now I'm trying to control my temper, I'm sorry to have to say. I'm not fighting any kind of 'war' with you or anyone else. I could not care less about your Uriah Heep view of life. And as far as trying to impose my 'ridiculously high standards' on you are anyone else that’s possibly the most laughably inexact comment I think I've ever read here, the most laughably inexact reading of me and my outlook on life. Do your duty, tug your forelock, be a slave; I could not care less. That's my last word.

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  47. You have just gone up a further considerable level in my esteem with “I confess that anything to do with space, space travel and objects in space bores me absolutely rigid,” and I hope you have some others in your generation that agree with you.

    My interests are in cabbage heads, corn and bean stalks, lettuces and tomatoes and other things firmly stuck in Mother Earth. Even commercial flying is no more than a necessary evil and to participate in only when there is no train or motor transport to where you want to go; anything higher than that bores me stiff.

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  48. Ike, I don't know anyone interested in space! The problem is that fiction went first and made it exciting. The reality is so mundane. :-))

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