Is Today’s World Really A Safer Place Than During The Cold War ?

I grew up during the seventies and eighties in a world dominated by the Cold War, it was a scary time. We all knew if it kicked off between the superpowers it would be curtains for all of us.

Did this worry me? Well no, of all the things that did worry me nuclear war wasn’t one of them. To me I entertained the thoughts that despite all the political finger pointing, both sides would rather live than die so I doubted anyone would push that button. Mutually Assured Destruction actually gave the world a level of stability and in many ways made it an intrinsically safer world than it seems to be today.

Rose Tinted Spectacles

Was the Cold War era, on the whole, a safer era or do we look at it against today’s world through rose tinted spectacles ? In truth it may have been safer but the flashpoints were bigger.

However tricky our relationships with Putin's Russia and President Hu Jintao's China are nowadays, the prospect of our entering a massive and mutually cataclysmic conflict with either nation are vastly reduced.

We seem to have forgotten that the Americans argued passionately for "nuking" communist China during the Korean War and again during the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1954. We also have apparently forgotten how close we came to a nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Similarly, we've forgotten the shock of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which prompted the then German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt to ask, "Is this the new Sarajevo?" (a reference to the outbreak of World War I). A serious of events around 1983 almost triggered a nuclear war, they started with Ronald Reagan referring to the Soviet Union as “This Evil Empire” and culminated in a NATO computer based military exercise being misinterpreted by the Soviets as an actual invasion, triggering them going to a full war status minutes away from attack, before they realised their error.

Those were really scary times, and potentially much more dangerous than our present circumstances because the possible damage that could be inflicted during an East-West conflagration was far, far greater than anything that Al Qaeda can do to us now. No one has the exact totals, but we probably had 20,000 missiles pointed at each other, often on high alert. And the threat of an accidental discharge was high.

Nobody under 25 years old today lived through the Cold War and find it hard to understand.

To recapture that periods danger these days, you need to watch Cold War movies such as; "The Manchurian Candidate," "Fail Safe," "Dr. Strangelove," "The Hunt for Red October," "Five Days in May," "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold." Kids today look rather dumbfounded when told that we came close, on several occasions, to World War III. A new series coming up on BBC2 intends to explore the history of the Cold War and should be interesting.

Many Cold War “What If?” questions still abound. Examples include - What if, Josef Stalin had prevented American and British supply aircraft from flying into Berlin in 1948-49? Those years from 1945 to 1990 weren’t a bed of roses on other accounts too. China's Mao Tse Tung's ‘Great Leap Forward’ led to as many as 30 million deaths, the greatest loss of life since the Black Death. The Soviet Union was incarcerating tens of thousands of its own citizens in the gulags, as were most of the other members of the Warsaw Pact. The Indo-Pakistan wars, and the repeated Arab/Israeli conflicts produced enormous casualties, but nothing like the numbers that were being slaughtered in Angola, Nigeria, the Congo, Vietnam and Cambodia.

It is hard to explain to a younger generation that such delightful countries where they now holiday such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, Chile, Brazil, South Africa, Poland and Czechoslovakia (to name only a few) were run in those days by fascist generals, avowed racists or one-party totalitarian regimes. I am ancient enough to remember the long list of countries you wouldn’t dare visit for your summer holidays.

So maybe we shouldn’t get too nostalgic about the good old days of the Cold War. Today's global challenges, from Iraq, Syria and Egypt, through to radicalism, energy costs and the unproven climate change issue are indeed grave and cry out for solutions.

Overall though, mankind as a whole is a lot more prosperous these days, we’re a great deal more free and democratic and a considerable way further from nuclear obliteration than we were in Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev’s time.

More Unpredictable

The world may no longer be facing a global confrontation between two confrontational super powers with competing ideologies. The current world, however, is a lot more unpredictable. Religious extremism and intolerance is the biggest problems that are creating instability. I also think that in the future, multi- faceted trade disagreements are going to escalate into conflicts between countries.

During the Cold War you knew who your enemy was and into which camps people were falling, nowadays your enemy could easily be found within.

More Insane

At least during the Cold War our adversaries were fairly sane. They were predictable. Mutually Assured Destruction made sense. Nuclear weapons were in the hands of a relative few. There was even a mutual respect for each other's spies, cultural exchanges and sporting competitions. In other words, there was some sense of order and standards that lead to some sanity and predictability.

Today however, we deal with insanity. We now have enemies who make it quite clear that whilst we value life, they value death. They hold, in many cases, an apocalyptic view of how history unfolds.

Radical Islam is now at the core of the vast majority of world conflicts. The history of Islam has been one of growth through spreading by the sword. A good question to consider is whether Al Qaida is as dangerous as the old Soviet Union? They’re certainly not as potentially dangerous. The Soviets had the power to wipe us off the face of the earth. However, at moments of truth the Soviets always backed off. Why? Because they believed in a future for their kids, their nation and their world.

Do Al Qaida really care about all of the this? Just look at the indiscriminate killing they are carrying out against their fellow Muslims, let alone what they perceive as infidels. Any group of people who have teenagers wearing explosive belts in order to commit a suicide bombing is far more dangerous than the Soviets.

The Soviet Union didn’t want to sacrifice itself. The Taliban however, seems to gladly want to if it will promote their cause. As such, the Soviets could be dealt with. But just how do you deal with the Taliban ?

So is it or isn’t it a safer place ?

I think that there are many reasons to say Yes, but probably more to say no.

In the ‘Yes’ camp, we’re certainly no longer staring down the gun-barrel of megaton bombs "keeping the peace" and all that implies. Remember, we were ready for nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Soviets and a pretty psychopathic attitude toward their capabilities. Global trade has now taken over with major nations unlikely to go to war with each other anymore for fear of loss of valuable trade.

In the ‘No’ camp, we can’t ignore the fact that extremist religious terrorists have taken the place of the superpowers. At least during the cold war, global security was so concerned about "the cold war" that minor spats and extremism were clamped down on by one of the respective superpowers.

 The emergence of radical extremism means we’re not safer now, if anything it’s more dangerous. We now have a multi-polar civilization, meaning that we have many who have differing agendas. Examples include, the new liberation movements in Africa or the Jihad movements of militant Islam. While some are more radical that others, there are always factions in each that will go to any length to further their aims, maybe to the point of nuclear holocaust. Besides that, China, Russia, and even some independent (formerly USSR) states still have the capacity to launch nuclear missiles. Add to that India and Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, and/or any of the radical Muslim states, all it takes is one stray bomb and lots of accusations to set off a global war that could still annihilate the human civilization. Don't be fooled by this period of peace, there are still many dangers.

It's less predictable, which could be worse in the long run. In the Cold War, we knew the enemy and there was (except for a few periods) constant negotiation. In today’s multi-polar world, no one quite knows the "rules," and there is much less predictability. In the long run, I think that's more likely to prove problematic.

Different threats, But They’re Still Just As Deadly

Most of us no longer have to worry about mushroom clouds suddenly appearing out of no-where anymore. We’re probably safer from total nuclear annihilation, but the hazards from religious extremism, terrorism, global warming, and from rogue states holding nuclear weapons is greater.

The world is safer from nuclear war, however as 911 and 711 has shown us, we are still vulnerable to terrorists attacks. During the Cold War we knew who had nuclear and chemical weapons. With the break up of the Soviet Union, there is far less accountability and control over who can obtain a nuclear device. We may not have to worry about a global nuclear war, but the threat of a suitcase nuclear bomb being detonated on Western soil is very real.

Before, when you had two powers, they would fight proxy wars against each other, but never with each other because it would lead to nuclear war. Now with only one superpower, and with weapons that now go on sale that anyone can buy, it’s made the world much less safe. Religious extremist want to make a point. They want to create the most damage possible. This is what we face today, a terrorist attack, a plague or a cyber attack on our banking system. We face this now. All of our weapons, tanks, and planes can’t protect us from this either. 

Through the acts of success governments, we have evolved to where we now are as a nation. Unless we take steps to reverse some of those acts, we can expect more of these insecurities. Maybe it is just a result of increasing world population, maybe technology advances or ease of transportation. Without a concerted effort to change it, I don't think the future looks very rosy. And I don't think the world is safer today than it was during the Cold War. It’s a very different world but no safer.

More Waste - £76m for a busway that’ll only have 8 buses an hour on it

On the day that Liverpool announced the suspension of its entire network of bus lanes, at the other end of the East Lancs Road, work stated on a dedicated, bus only,  13-mile route, costing £76m between Leigh and central Manchester.

Work has started on the £76million, thirteen mile bus-only route. It won’t open until 2015. It is known as the Leigh Guided Busway, and features a four-mile section on guided concrete ‘tracks’ along a disused railway that only specially-adapted buses will be able to use. The rest of the route follows the A580 East Lancs Road and includes measures such as dedicated bus lanes and bus priority junctions to help buses avoid delays. It is promised that it will cut journey times from Leigh to central Manchester to less than 50 minutes. The route will only have 14-stops – seven in each direction - and follows the former railway route between East Bond Street in Leigh and Newearth Road in Ellenbrook.

There are currently three lanes for cars along the East Lancs Road, but once the bus lanes are built there will only be two car lanes in most sections. The only vehicles able to use the guided section will be special buses, allowing them to avoid traffic congestion. Services will run along bus lanes on the East Lancs Road through to Manchester city centre.

In an attempt to justify this scheme, Councillor Andrew Fender, chairman of the TfGM (Transport for Greater Manchester) Committee, is quoted as saying: “The Leigh Busway is the flagship scheme of a much wider bus priority package – one of the largest investments in Greater Manchester’s bus network for decades, with over 25 miles of the network being either created or improved. The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway has been successful way beyond expectations and I look forward to seeing the same success enjoyed here.”

Not Wanted

Now I work with a number of people from Leigh who are adamant that nobody wants this scheme, the local press letters pages, similarly reflect this view, indeed I’ve struggled to find anybody that thinks it’s a good idea, so why are they going ahead with it?  Interesting that the Councillor refers to the Cambridge busway, what he failed to mention though, was it was 4 years late being completed and finally cost more than two and a half times the original budget cost. So another Government transport infrastructure scheme that totally overspent, take note Leighthers (and HS2 for that matter).

Unanswered Questions ?

This scheme seems to pose more questions than it’s provided answers to. Here’s just a few I thought of, and they’re fairly simplistic : 

• I am surely not the first to ask the simple mathematical question whereby, if you cut parts of the East Lancs Road from three lanes to two, then unless the buses on the busway take one third of the travellers, won’t the road be even more congested than it is now?
• Another question without an answer is quite simply, as the buses will run between concrete "rails" what happens if a bus breaks down on the guided busway? Its not as if the next bus coming along can simply overtake it. This will only then lead to severely delayed services whilst recovery is underway!
• They proclaim that the busway can reduce the journey time from Leigh to Manchester to around 50 Minutes. Fair enough, but for the vast majority of the day it takes significantly less than 50 minutes to drive the route. Won’t reducing the East Lancs Road to two lanes actually slow motorists down thus increasing their journey to 50 minutes or more ? Or are they being economical with the truth and only referring to bus passengers ? I suspect the latter ! 

See, these are just simple questions, they’re not rocket science !

What do the local people want ?

Most local people are of the opinion they should just scrap the idea & return the route to its original use as a railway or light railway with the Metrolink running on it. Surely a Metrolink extension from Eccles is the answer ? It may cost more buts its usage would be astronomical with a very rapid payback period. Converting the old railway to Metrolink instead of making it a busway is giving the people what they want. But of course, councillors know better !

People in Leigh currently enjoy the green spaces but the busway is going right through it. What a shame to have them spoilt when urban green space is so difficult to find in this country today.

Many people think the East Lancs Road should be improved for cars, especially near Salford endand Leigh should be connected to the tram or rail networks. Most locals already think this busway will prove to be a great white elephant (HS2 anyone?)

Every one I have spoken to from Leigh thinks the same. The busway is an utter waste of money, no use for commuters getting to work in Manchester and it certainly won't bring people into Leigh. If Leigh can’t have the Metrolink then Leigh needs a train station or at least a link to one. Leigh is supposed to be the largest town in the UK without a railway station. There is a costed scheme which you can easily find on the internet, for a spur from the Manchester to Liverpool line to a new Leigh station which will only cost £50m and is supported by all the local political parties, surely this is a better value solution for everyone?  

Traffic Chaos

For the next two years, while the work is carried out, traffic chaos will ensue. Not just on the East Lancs Road but on other routes that people will switch to to avoid the Lancs such as the M62 and M602 both of which are chokka in rush hour anyway. Just how green is this chaos?? All these vehicles will be stood still, belching out carbon, it can’t be good for the atmosphere, and there is no clean green alternative, and they’re not building one either.

It is a total waste of money, all it will do is make this heavily congested road worse. To reduce the capacity of the road by a third when the works are finished is crazy and if anyone with any brains at TfGM or the local authorities could actually work a calculator, they’d see that they couldn't possibly provide enough buses to compensate for the reduced capacity of the road.

Maybe the brains behind this waste of money should be forced to actually sit in the chaos both ways daily. What we really need is proper efficient public transport, such as Metrolink, we need better roads, we don’t need more empty buses.

Idiots

I often wonder whether the idiots who dream up these road chaos schemes ever use public transport or is it the case of do as we tell you and not as we do? Why once again must the motorist be punished? We need more road space for cars not less, very few people use buses they are still perceived as expensive, dirty and not a safe environment to travel in. No matter what you did, this perception will not change so deal with it.

At the end of the day, with the exception of HS2, I've not heard of a more ridiculous waste of money in all of my life. The publicity leaflet they’ve produced admits that there is only going to be eight buses an hour. So they plan to inconvenience thousands of people on the East Lancs Road every day for just eight buses an hour! Total madness! If they're struggling to spend £76m go build the railway spur, or go hunting for a bit more and extend the Metrolink. 

Nobody in Leigh wants it, the people of Salford and the surrounding areas don’t want it. The cost does not justify the upheaval, all it will deliver is a bigger traffic jam. Its TfGM’s version of HS2. TfGM claim that using the busway could cut the journey time from Leigh to Manchester to just 50 minutes. To me, it all seems a lot of money to spend and a lot of inconvenience for other road users just to get a bus that averages 16mph and only stops seven times !!

After ‘Plebgate’ How Can We Trust The Lying Police ?

The whole ‘Plebgate’ issue with Andrew Mitchell and the police has reared its head again over twelve months after it occurred. Why? Well basically because it’s emerged that now three police chiefs are refusing to back down after criticism by the home secretary for not disciplining their officers who were accused of trying to discredit Mitchell.

It’s now come to light that the Independent Police Complaints Commission said a misconduct case should have been answered. The three police officers in question are accused of giving a false account of a meeting with Andrew Mitchell.

The meeting was held after the row between police officers and Mitchell over words he used when he was stopped from riding a bicycle through the Downing Street gates way back in September 2012. A transcript of the meeting clearly shows, that, while he admitted swearing, Mitchell continually denied using the word "pleb" or insulting the police. But afterwards the three police officers who conducted the meeting said he had refused to elaborate on what had happened and should resign.

So it isn't about the whole "pleb" thing anymore. It's the fact that three police officers were proven to have colluded to lie, on national TV, about what was discussed during the meeting so they could heap pressure on a democratically elected minister. This was then exacerbated by their three, respective chief constables going on to support their lying officers.

Liars
Three weeks after the original incident, Andrew Mitchell met Inspector Ken MacKaill, of West Mercia Police, Detective Sergeant Stuart Hinton, of Warwickshire Police, and Sergeant Chris Jones, of West Midlands Police acting on behalf of the Police Federation which represents rank-and-file officers, at his constituency office in Sutton Coldfield. Rightly or wrongly, Mitchell recorded the meeting and from this recording the transcript was compiled.

I've read this transcript and I've listened to the interviews given afterwards by the police who were present. The transcript can be found here:

http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Documents/investigation_commissioner_reports/Transcript%20of%20meeting.pdf

Speaking to the press immediately after the meeting, Inspector MacKaill claimed Mitchell would not provide an account of the incident and called for his resignation. If you read the transcript you will very quickly conclude that this was a complete lie. So the issue now is no longer Mitchell and what he did or did not say to the Downing Street officer. The issue is whether police embellished an event for their own interests. Now to me, that is unethical and frankly below the standard I expect of, not just of the police. but anyone who can use their influence for their own purposes.

The whole thing points to a set-up by the police. After all it wasn’t Mitchell who blew anything out of proportion. It was the police officers who ran to The Sun and The Telegraph with what is now shown to be a false story using some very deliberate provocative words.

As much as I dislike Andrew Mitchell, if you read the transcript of the meeting he does say time and again that he doesn't want to accuse the officers of lying and wants to put the story to bed. It's the police themselves who insist that an investigation is needed, they then walk out to the press, and lie about what was said.

This is all now more about how senior police officers are well up to their necks in the lies and cover up. When you put this in the context of some other recent events, it increasingly proves that the police cannot be trusted to police themselves.

Trust Gone?

In the transcript of the Mitchell meeting is a statement from one of the officers that actually hits the nail squarely on the head, it’s a pity they didn’t abide by this statement. What he actually said was:

“You must understand we are in a bit of a hiatus here because Honesty and Integrity as I have said a number of times over the last couple of days, is a central tenor to the police core value and if that wasn’t the case anything could happen as it should be to politicians and anybody in public life and public office and there is nothing new I can say on that in the last couple of days and to have by implication if not direct accusation to have a Senior government figure suggesting that an officers account of events is inaccurate and possibly untruthful has wider implication, not just for that incident but for the police service in general.”

Rather than admit this in the subsequent statement to the press outside, he lied about what was said and set about trying to discredit Mitchell further. At this point my trust in the police’s ‘honesty and integrity’ was blown apart. These three policemen will now find it hard to present themselves as credible witnesses in any future cases that they might be involved in.

Not the first time
It's not just Plebgate, it's Hillsborough, it's the cover up when Ian Tomlinson died at an anti-globalization march, it’s the De Menezes shooting. Almost daily there are less famous tales of unprofessional police, lazy police, police covering one another's' backs and downright bent coppers. The cynicism and loss of confidence in the police is widespread even among us law abiding citizens. Go on YouTube and have a look, there's plenty of evidence of the police trying to throw their weight around and getting it wrong.

To me police credibility was destroyed by the De Menezes shooting. I can accept that the shooting itself was an honest mistake, but the way the police tried to alter the actual events, blacken Mr De Menezes character & just plain lie about what happened was totally unacceptable. Since then the police have behaved in exactly the same manner over a number of other incidents.

With Ian Tomlinson’s death, I always found it astonishing the police continually claimed he was a rioter then repeatedly used the phrase "pushed to the ground". The "push" came from 1 metre away, at pace with the truncheon impacting into the area of Mr Tomlinson’s liver/kidney. That’s some push!

Oh and remind me again, what was the number of police logs which were "modified" following the Hillsborough disaster, circa 120?

Above the Law
When we imprison people for lying on a speeding ticket and then do nothing to police officers who mislead in the same way it makes the police seem above the law.

There now seems to be a large number of policemen, particularly at senior levels, who believe that the rules that apply to the public in general do not apply to them! These days the police clearly close ranks when allegations are levelled at them.

Imagine if a member of the public lies to the police in an investigation, you can be sure he or she will be taken to account.

With the Mitchell case a major public issue about the honesty of a cabinet member is brought into disrepute by possibly dishonest police officers and these chief constables are refusing to answer or accept the IPCC findings. Utterly Outrageous!! We're told its a few 'bad apples'. If this were true they'd make an example of them. No prosecutions ever arise & the inherent corruption seemingly continues.

Do the police get how it looks?
I have no political axe to grind, but do the police have any idea how badly they are coming across to the general public? We can hear the interview with Andrew Mitchell. Then we can hear how the police reported it. Now we know the report conclusion was reversed.

For the police to just criticise the IPCC for making their views public misses the point entirely; the IPCC view is a view that seems an obvious conclusion.

If there is a good and reasonable explanation of what has gone on, the police need to be shouting it from the rooftops, rather than hiding behind phrases about how the IPCC could have conducted the investigation. This entire affair does appear determined to drag on with lie upon lie and whitewash upon whitewash.

I remain unsurprised that the Metropolitan Police continues to tolerate the presence of liars and criminals in its midst, but I did expect better of the Police Federation who must now join their more disreputable colleagues in public disgrace.

Unless Chief Constables are prepared to demonstrate clear honesty in all the police’s dealings with the public, then they are unfit for purpose and should be sacked instantly.

Sad State Of Affairs
The issue here is not whether you like or dislike Andrew Mitchell, he may well be a nasty little man who thought he was someone special, because he was a government minister. The issue here is the fact that the police, who are the enforcers of the law, lied and fabricated evidence on numerous occasions continuing to push the lie, even documenting the lie with a fake email from a supposed member of the public; who was in fact another police person, then compounding the whole thing by lying again about the meeting with Mitchell.

The British public has to wake up to the fact that morally this country has slipped backwards from the once decent place that it was. The really sad part of all of this is that as a kid I was brought up to believe the police were honest and good and that we should have respect for their position. I lost that long ago. Very sad.

Imagine, if instead of a cabinet minister and a gate, the row had been between my teenage son wearing a hoodie and a police officer. Would millions have been spent on an enquiry? Of course not, it would be down to the police station, fingerprints and DNA taken, cautioned and a police record for life, with no redress against a lying police officer. 

Makes you think, doesn't it !

‘Go Home’ Vans Banned – Why?

You may have seen the ‘Go Home’ illegal immigrant vans on the news that were touring some of the borough’s of London earlier this year, one is pictured below. Well they’ve just been banned, but interestingly, NOT for being offensive, irresponsible or racist. No they’ve been banned because the posters on the vans referred to inaccurate arrest statistics. Now there’s a turn up for the books.

The Home Office using misleading data, surely not ? It seems to me, Cameron’s Government have clearly failed on their claim to reduce legal immigration to tens of thousands, even when the Government's statistics on legal immigration were exposed as merely guesses. They still seem to care not a jot for the numbers of illegal immigrants in the UK for which negative statistic headlines clearly cannot be produced, other headlines today about border control data clearly proves this. We still don’t know how many people are in this country illegally and or legally. One thing the poster is definitely misleading on, is it tries to make us think that this Government actually intends to do something about immigration, which it obviously doesn’t.

We need to remember that telling immigrants to go home and doing something about it are two different things, and the doing something about it part is totally lacking from this and the past government. If government are doing something about it how come they are given bigger houses and bigger handouts than our very own people, how come their cases goes to the European court whilst ours don't get a sniff?

In truth it’s like Nigel Farage says , it's not the illegal immigrants that are the problem, it's the 'legal' (ie EU) ones , the ones we can't do a thing about thanks to Labour opening our borders over ten years ago, that are the problem. How many are working here and how many indigenous people are unemployed? Do the maths, unemployable is solvable.

Anyway back to the ‘Go Home’ vans. It’s reassuring in many ways that they were banned on a technicality. When I first saw the headlines I presumed The Guardian reading, comfy shoe wearing right-on lefties had won again. Oh dear I thought, these Vans are upsetting illegal immigrants so out comes the race card again! It all turned out to be complete and utter rubbish, maybe we should now get another 1000 vans out everywhere?

Do-Gooders

It was only offensive to the politically correct brigade and the do gooders who find everything offensive and the very same culprits who create problems where there are none. I actually found ‘Liberty’s’ van (pictured below, more of a problem because the wording on their posters could easily have created protests and tensions amongst disparate groups, then chuck into the mix the EDL and the rent a mob whose sole purpose is violence & confrontation of police and we're back to race riots. The Government’s van was saying, if you’re in the UK illegally, we can offer you free advice and help you to leave the UK without being arrested as an illegal immigrant.

Don’t forget illegal immigrants are criminals, so what is wrong with giving criminals a clear message? The PC do-gooders will be complaining about posters warning that there are pickpockets operating next as its offensive to pickpockets.

The ASA are quoted as saying the poster was "unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence or distress". So you could say, why ban it then? If someone is in this country illegally then what is wrong with giving the advice to them to go home? What, in fact does cause "widespread offence" is the proliferation of illegal migrants coming into this country and using it like a one stop shop for welfare, benefits, education and free health care, then trying to change our laws and customs to reflect their own failed medieval culture. If the illegal immigrants find it offensive then maybe they could leave these shores and find a country more tolerant of there incumbent needs and drain on resources.

Smoke Screen

But, at the end of the day, the poster vans were a smoke screen, an ill thought out knee jerk reaction, making out the Tories are strong on immigration. The real current problem on immigration that is crippling our NHS and schools etc is uncontrolled EU immigration. Now Mr Cameron you have an opportunity to do something about that. Give us an in/out EU referendum now or alternatively close our borders to EU migrants today. We all know this will not happen though. The Tories are pathetic on immigration that's why the only answer to sort this particular mess out is to vote UKIP. If we don’t do something, this once great country of ours is well and truly doomed thanks to successive spineless governments!

Do I really think things will get better? Not a chance! What a joke we have become.

Sorry Cam', I Still Don’t Trust You

Let me start by saying I’m probably one of David Cameron’s target audience. I’m one of his ‘hard-working people’. I voted for him in 2010, in fact, up until then I’d always voted Tory, indeed I’ve been asked twice now to stand as a Tory councillor (and once by UKIP too). Before anyone accuses me, I’m not rich, I don’t come from a middle class or privileged background (my dad was a fireman and trade unionist, my mum did cleaning jobs). I left school with 8 O-Levels; I’ve got no A-Levels and didn’t go to University. I did a five year apprenticeship which got me a HNC, after that I’ve just worked really really hard at my career to make sure I have a nice house, a nice car etc. Nobody gave it to me; it’s taken nearly 30 years of hard work by me to get there. I’ve always had the ethos of work hard and rewards will come, just as Mr Cameron suggested in his conference speech.

Anyway, listening to David Cameron’s speech at the Tory Party Conference, was interesting, some of it was good common sense and what many of us wanted to hear. He spoke about some of the things us ‘hard-working people’ get annoyed with. His promises to get rid of dole bludgers rings true, why should you get more from other peoples hard earned taxes than you can from working yourself? His comments about the UK being ‘a land of opportunity’ where ‘profit is not a dirty word’ are spot on. I also liked the attack on Labour having learned nothing from their last term in office and his insistence to the Liberals that the Tories are the party of tax cuts not them. Overall I suppose it was a fairly good, if unchallenging speech.

It might have come across as a nice, well aimed sound-bite, but today’s Tory party is not the party of the many. Nor is it the party many of us thought it was back in 2010. It is a party for the aspirational capitalist, and very few others. Yes that accounts for a lot of us, but certainly not the majority. They've gone on to prove they are South-centric, traditional, and exclusionary and they ignore, or have little regard for, much of what goes on North of Watford. All very disappointing for someone who campaigned for them in 2010.

However !

It might have been a reasonable, flag waving speech saying what the Tories will do, however, history has shown that it’s not what Cameron says, it’s what he doesn’t say we have to be careful of !!

If We Knew Then What We Know Now

The Tories/ Coalition Government have done so many things since coming to office that weren’t in either of their manifestoes it’s unbelievable. Nobody voted for many of the things they’ve done, so how did they get the mandate ?

Items which spring immediately to mind are the massive upheaval and cost to ‘reform’ the NHS. The Coalition, and I mean both parties to it, is now engaged in the dismantlement of the NHS in England, motivated by a combination of wild ideological zealotry and outrageous commercial conflicts of interest.  They don’t get it, in general we like the NHS and we’re happy to pay for it, it doesn’t need major wholesale reform or cutting. When Cameron came in we all had great hope that for personal reasons and because he ring-fenced the budget that his 3 letters NHS rang true. He said “no top down reorganisation of the NHS”. We believed him. Then whatever the rights and wrongs of the changes, went and did a top down reorganisation of the NHS. My trust in him started to evaporate.

Another big one for me was the decimation of our armed forces. He did this at the same time as utilising them to fight other people’s wars more and more. Just how much long term money we’d already spent was tipped down the drain after the Strategic Defence and Security Review? Our Army has been cut to such a small size that by 2020, in its entirety they can comfortably all have a seat at Old Trafford. The number of tanks we have has been cut by 40%. Our aircraft carriers were scrapped or sold off with the exception of one which is now a helicopter carrier because, wait for it, he sold all our carrier aircraft (the Harriers) to the yanks for spare parts ! The new generation Nimrod’s that were built at a cost of £3 BILLION and were about to start entering squadron service were unceremoniously cut up for scrap almost immediately after the review. How is that good value for money for us tax payers ? Did Cameron tell us he was going to waste this amount of money before the election ? Did he Hell !!

HS2 is another one, was that in the manifesto ? I don’t remember voting for any promise to borrow and spend £50 Billion of our kid’s taxes to spend on a white elephant few people will actually benefit from or actually want. 

The list is endless. Like I say Its not what he says it what he doesn’t say and that’s why I still don’t trust him and for the first time in a General Election won’t be voting Tory in 2015.

So who will I vote for come 2015 ?

Good question, certainly not RedEd who wants to turn the Country into some sort of former Soviet State where he thinks he’s the Union puppet master but he’s actually their puppet. His approach has got Neil Kinnock written all over it, we didn’t want him and we don’t want Ed.

How about Liberal – LMFAO – What do they stand for ? Just to pee from what I’ve seen, and that’s just the women. I think Nick Clegg had his spine removed during an operation as part of the reforming of the NHS, he’s ineffectual in everything he does, a complete oxygen thief.

UKIP? Maybe ! I agree with a lot of what UKIP stand for, but there are elements of it I don’t. UKIP’s prime policy is leaving the European Union of course. Yes, I agree we should leave the EU in its current state. What we should do though is go back in history and work out what we went in it for in the first place. The original purpose and name we knew it by was actually the ‘Common Market’, it was for trade purposes, that’s what we had a referendum about membership of, and we went in on the basis of better trading relationships. 

It appears that trade now takes a back seat to rules, payments, human rights, people movement, quotas need I go on?  Cameron is right that we need to renegotiate our position but I think it needs to go a lot further than he thinks. It needs to go back to just a trading goods agreement and get rid of all the rest of it. How do we do that? The only way really, is in response to a straight in/out referendum. If the country votes ‘out’, the EU will have to sit up and take notice, they’re in danger of losing too much revenue for them not to. That’s when we are in the strongest position to force a change and reversion to what our parents and grandparents voted for in the first place should take precedence.

And as a little postscript, don’t forget it was Edward Heath’s Tory Government in 1973 that took us into Europe, Harold Wilson’s Labour opposition actively opposed it even forcing the referendum in 1975 after they came to power to gauge whether the population actually wanted to be in it (the vote was ‘yes’ by the way). Oh how times have changed.

So in conclusion. the only thing I can say is : You can’t trust any of them these days !!!