Wednesday 9 January 2013

Ode to Joy? Get Lost!



It’s forty years now since Britain joined the European Union, the proudest achievement of Edward Heath, a former Conservative prime minister.  It’s almost forty years since the people last had a say on the matter, deciding that we should stay in on the ‘better terms’ negotiated by Harold Wilson, a former Labour prime minister. 

Let’s be frank: we were deceived, our people were deceived by lying politicians, people like Heath and Wilson, whom I consider…  Hmm, I was going to write little better than traitors.  But that’s far too mealy-mouthed.  They were traitors.  I would dearly love to see Heath exhumed and his head placed on a spike a la Oliver Cromwell.  For good measure the head of Tony Blair should be placed alongside for company.  Oh, this is me in my seventeenth century mood.  The past is a foreign country; they did things better there. 

Before Christmas the Economist published an article warning of the dangers of leaving the Club.  I love the Economist.  I subscribe to the Economist, conceivably the dullest publication on the planet.  What?  Why read a publication that I consider dull?  Simply because it is a perfect reverse indicator, almost invariably getting things wrong.  I know what to think by not thinking like the hacks of the Economist

Look at Europe, look at the disaster of the European Union, a vanity project that may very well pull us all down unless we get out and get out soon.  I personally consider the Club to be the greatest danger England has ever faced to its integrity as a nation, greater than all the tyrants of history; greater than Philip II, greater than Napoleon and greater than Hitler.  In my more negative mood I take the view that we made the wrong decision in 1939 in going to war with Germany.  Hitler can have Poland, he can have France and he can have the rest of EuropeFog in Channel; Continent isolated – is there any better headline? 

So, yes, I’m a little Englander; I really do not care to refute the rebuke.  I would rather that than a citizen of the ghastly European super state, a monster conceived in the mind of lying politicians and mendacious bureaucrats.  What a stupid bunch they are.  How can they not be stupid, those who embraced the euro, the one size fits all currency? 

Look at the consequences; look at Greece, look at Italy, look at Ireland, look at Spain.  Yes, look at Spain, a country with the highest unemployment rate on the Continent, a country shackled to a high value artificial currency.  It amazes me that people are not angrier over the depth of the deception.  How some must look back to Franco with nostalgia.  He at least was jealous over the integrity of his country. 

I once thought that I might go in to politics.  Not any longer.  My contempt for the profession grows deeper by the day.  It really does not mater what the important issues are, the issues that most concern the people, whether it is over immigration or Europe or whatever; the politicians will simply perform their usual conjuring act. 

Democracy is a fraud, a periodic carnival of electoral choice which makes no difference at all to those who have already made up their minds.  I look at Cameron, I look at Clegg, I look at Miliband and I really cannot tell which is which.  Here I am reminded of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.  I am one of the creatures outside the window, Benjamin the donkey for preference.  I look from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but it is impossible to say which is which. 

The simple truth is we are not ‘Europeans’ at all.  We are not like them; we will never be like them.  Most of the Continental nations have a slave mentality, something their history shows time and time again.  They are suited to being governed by autocrats, dictators and bureaucrats; they know no better.  We do.  Our history is the history of freedom, of striving for ever greater forms of autonomy.  The EU is suffocating our past and our traditions. 

Only Margaret Thatcher, far too honest to be a politician, eventually understood what Europe entailed.  Of the whole benighted scheme she wrote;

That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European super-state was ever embarked on will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era. And that Britain…should ever have become part of it will appear a political error of the first magnitude.

She was destroyed for her honesty, destroyed by the like of the reptilian Michael Heseltine and his allies, such a parcel of rogues in a party.  Is there any wonder that the predominant emotion that people have over politicians is one of outright contempt? 

I loath Beethoven, I loathe Schiller, I loathe the Ode to Joy, yet another consequence of the EU.  I loathe the memory of Heath; I loathe all who betrayed this nation.  This is no longer a question of political preference.  It’s something altogether more visceral.  So far as I am concerned Europe can sink, the quicker the better.  And it can take its blue star flag along with it.  

22 comments:

  1. It's very tiresome. But the Great Brown Dope thinks you ought to stay in. I'm sure that makes all the difference.

    You know, there are plenty of distopian books that describe very well the shit we find ourselves in after 150 years of socialist theory dominating the political sphere. Where are the books describing the alternative?

    One that might cheer you up is 'The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress' by Robert Heinlein.

    Before we can create a better future, we must imagine it.

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    1. Oh, Calvin, you bet it does!

      I now have The Death of Grass, purchased after your imprimatur. I suppose one would have to go all the way back to H. G. Wells to find positive depictions pf potential utopias.

      I do need some cheering up, so I'll add Heinlein to my basket. As always, I am grateful for your recommendations. :-)

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  2. The English are noble, the English are nice
    And worth any other at double the price

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  3. What a mess you have made for yourselves.

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  4. Until your last paragraph I endorse every word - well, I have to, I have said much the same myself over the years.

    But don't blame Beethoven just because the bloody EU appropriated some of his music! I suggest instead that you acquire a copy of Leonard Bernstein's "Ode to Freedom" which he recorded in 1989 to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Basically, he changed "Ode to Joy" to "Ode to Freedom" by switching the word "Freude" with "Freiheit".

    There you go, problem solved! :-)

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  5. After reading this article and many of your others I believe that indeed you would make a fine politician. Regrettably despite your stirring words and fine rhetoric it is far to honest and outspoken for you to survive for long in the cesspit and bear pit of modern politics. The days of fine words, Churchill and fine deeds and honesty, Thatcher have long since gone.

    Your point about remaining out of the fight with Hitler is interesting especially if we had done so and Russia and Germany, as that conflict was inevitable, had fought each other to exhaustion. Unfortunately that idea was never tested and I have my doubts that without the British intervention, aided eventually by the USA, Hitler would have ever been stopped not this side of the Atlantic at least. Apart from which the British mentality has always been one of intervention in European affairs and the Europeans have been saved many times from their own stupidity in consequence but never grateful.

    You are quite right we are not true Europeans in the sense that geographically we are but culturally and intellectually are quite different. I lived for eight years in France and was quite astounded by the differences in attitudes and mind set I found there as opposed to British ones. Yes their deep respect of authority and protectionist leanings are very pronounced. I left France last year and have since been living in Montreal, Canada where of course the majority are French speaking Canadians. However apart from the language they do not behave remotely like their French cousins and could more easily be seen as cousins to the British.

    As for the EU there is nothing more I can add to what you have already vehemently and eloquently said except I may agree with you on the "Ode to joy" but I cannot on the composers. Besides Beethoven's 5th opening bars were much use by the BBC (a time when the BBC was itself a useful and decent organisation) during WWII.

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    1. Antisthenes, please forgive my cynicism and my pessimism...and my harshness towards Beethoven. Neither he nor Schiller can be blamed for the hijacking of their work!

      I am, of course, pushing my points to a polemical extreme. So far as Russo-German conflict is concerned, I would have preferred if these two entities had fought each other to the point of extinction. But of course we could not possibly have taken a chance on a German victory, which would have had the consequences you touch on. We sided with one evil to defeat another, not a comfortable position but a necessary one.

      So far as the evil we sided with, I would highly recommend Vasily Aksyonov's novel Generations of Winter. Have you read it? At one point the author depicts Stalin as a sack of shit...literally. :-)

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  6. I see that the point I was going to make has already been made: what has poor Ludwig done to attract your opprobrium? It's not his fault that someone filched the finale of his ninth symphony as some kind of European supranational anthem. It's not as if it's his best symphony either (that would be the seventh).

    On the subject of joining the EEC, as it then was, it was an easy sell by Heath, because economic growth had been greater in the original six countries than in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, but the concessions that Heath made to get in make it clear that he shared this ludicrous notion of a pan-European super-state that has seduced so many subsequently. I would vote UKIP, except that I tend to support my local legalize cannabis candidate.

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    1. Dennis, he should have protested, or at least have had a good spin in his grave! The sixth is my favourite, those lovely pastoral themes.

      Spot on about the Grocer.

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  7. 'I once thought that I might go in to politics. Not any longer. My contempt for the profession grows deeper by the day'.

    My contempt also grows deeper ever day. It is so deep now it actually scares me!

    'Democracy is a fraud'

    What do you think of direct democracy as practised in Switzerland?

    BTW, I am very much pro-European but I am also very much anti-EU.

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    1. I admire Switzerland for having the good sense to be Switzerland.

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  8. Ana, I was with you all the way until you got to Thatcher. Honest politician, pah! A fool and a useful idiot at best. She was a traitor to this country along with Heath, Blair and many others - even HM the Queen. They all signed treasonous Acts which effectively handed this country over to the EU. Thatcher's bit was signing the Single European Act.

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    1. Ekalder, we sometimes think that prime ministers are all powerful; they are not. In many ways Thatcher was a prisoner of her cabinet, no matter how much she shuffled the pack.

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  9. Anna,

    I can but echo the words of Goodnight Vienna - as a rant, it is brilliant.

    You are right when you say our democracy is a fraud, in fact I would go further and say that we have no democracy. When one considers the origin of the word, demos/people and kratos/power, democracy is just that: people power; and as the people have no real power, we do not have democracy.

    Do not lose heart, Anna, as there is hope on the horizon. I know not whether you are aware of what is known as The Harrogate Agenda and its 6 Demands. It is taking a lot of work to get this off the ground and a launch of the HA will be taking place later this year. I believe its aims might interest you.

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    1. WfW, no, I've not heard of this. Do you have a link?

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    2. Anna, 6 Demands:

      http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83181

      If you following on Twitter, DM me with an email adds and I can send you a copy of a draft pamphlet (currently being added to) which might "wet your appetite".

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