True Economic Governance

[i-euroembrace]The ongoing Euro zone crisis and the potential collapse of the single currency have led to Merkel and Sarkozy calling for ‘true economic governance’ in the EU. Who would have thought it, eh?

Of course, by ‘true economic governance’, our kind European masters really mean a drive towards fiscal union and European taxation. The proponents of ‘ever closer union’ never fail to exploit a crisis for their benefit and further their goals.

However, this attempt was inevitable. You cannot have a currency covering such a wide geographic area, with a single interest rate set by a central bank and just hope that it will work. The collapse of Ireland, Greece, Spain and Italy were predictable, given the cheap rates of credit they were able to obtain in contrast to the state of their national economies and levels of demand.

Yet, while the Eurocrats will always argue that a crisis is caused by a lack of integration (rather than ‘ever closer union’ itself being the actual problem), their road to full fiscal consolidation will be long and contentious – and they are very quickly running out of time and money, with events increasingly playing out beyond their control. At the end of the day, they will be swept along by the markets and events, just like the rest of us. That is European equality for you.

Deceiving Ourselves

[i-violencelondon]I suspect Colonel Gaddafi may have allowed himself a wry smile considering events of the past week.

Our boneheaded intervention in Libya, which we were told was to prevent violence and killing, was doomed to failure before it began. The enthusiastic approval of military intervention by our gullible MPs now appears even more ridiculous given our own inability to keep order on the streets of London, and prevent the deaths of innocent people across our country and Libya.

We try to throw our weight around on the international stage so our Prime Minister can pretend to be an ‘International Statesman’, and so we can continue to deceive ourselves into believing we remain a world power, and not face up to mounting economic and social problems at home.

But these foreign misadventures are not in our national interest or increasingly in our capability, as we dismantle what is left of our armed forces. Britain long ago ceased to be a major player on the world stage – militarily, economically and morally.

Our sovereignty and hard won freedoms have slowly been ceded by our politicians to the faceless bureaucrats of benevolent European integration. We are no longer a free nation, but a subservient state to a foreign and anti-democratic Empire.

Our economy lies in tatters, labouring under the weight of a bloated welfare state, crippled by government debt and sending millions of young adults to acquire meritless degrees at Universities in subjects that nobody wants.

Our society has been corrupted and atomised, with each passing generation having little in common with the next, and little sense of genuine community or belonging. Respect for others, property and authority have disintegrated after decades of state ‘entitlements’, weak justice and assuring youth that rights come without responsibility.

As we have receded from the public sphere and genuine democratic participation, the state has expanded to fill the gap, making it’s assault on our ancient liberties even easier than before. Thus, our liberties are no longer freedoms, but ‘rights’ given to us by the state – rights which can be amended or taken away should the state so please.

And the process continues. While deeply disturbing, the manner in which our Prime Minister and puppet Parliament righteously clamoured for the blocking of social and media websites during violent outbreaks was almost entirely predictable. Five months previously the same Prime Minister and same Parliament had condemned Gaddafi for doing much the same when attempting to quash the rebellion against his rule.

This is the automatic reaction of politicians who find it so much easier to invent new laws or increase the power of the state. Water cannons and rubber bullets won’t fix generations of neglect. The rot at the heart of British society won’t be undone with a few new laws, and the further encroachment of the state.

If we really want to solve the crisis then, then it will take decades to repair – as long, if not longer, than it took to undermine. But we won’t. Instead, we shall call for the seemingly quick solution, for the heads of the violent thugs rather than those that bred them in the first place. We shall call for the army (what’s left of it) to take to the streets, give the police greater powers and ultimately strengthen the state’s role and weaken ours.

An anti-mob shall arise, as unthinking and destructive as the street mobs they oppose, calling for the reduction of our liberties in order to ensure our safety. It is the rule of the mob, but of a different kind.

This is how liberty dies. Not through violence itself, but in the pursuit of ‘security’.

The Smoking Gun

[i-smokinggun]I may be jumping the gun, so to speak, but a report by the Guardian on the IPCC’s preliminary findings suggest that Mark Duggan did not shoot at police before being killed by them last Thursday.

Presuming this to be truth, we now have evidence that a man has been shot dead by police without, in hindsight, justification. It has happened before, and will do again.

Only yesterday I highlighted the link between the rise in gun crime in Britain and the abolition of the death penalty in the 1950s. Yet, suggest forms of capital punishment should be reinstated, and some commentators such as Peter North (son of Dr Richard North) claim that they are ‘not comfortable giving government the power to kill people for any reason’.

‘Uncomfortable’ they might be; but by removing the death penalty, we have not somehow done away with state sanctioned killings, but simply exchanged one type of death for another. Clearly Mr Duggan was not entirely innocent. Though the exact details of events that led to his death are yet to become clear, he was found holding an illegal firearm. Yet, did he deserve to be killed for this crime?

Some may attempt to argue that police were in a difficult situation, and that accidents like this can happen in tense situations. They are right – but surely if that is true, and they are so concerned that the death penalty may result in the death of an innocent person, surely they would be equally concerned – if not more so – that an innocent person may be accidentally killed by the police?

The shooting of the innocent, or killing without intention become an inevitable part of policing once firearms have been issued. It sadly happened with Jean Charles de Menezes, and now it has happened with Mark Duggan. This is not to say that the cases of law-abiding de Menezes and apparently criminal Duggan are equivalent, or to condone the latter’s actions, but that neither deserved their fate.

Accidents are in our nature. We are imperfect beings, regardless of whether we are highly trained members of the police or seemingly ordinary blue collar workers. But we try to restrict our mistakes by ensuring proper procedures and practices are followed, so that they occur as infrequently as we can possibly manage.

This is why the death penalty is the preferable option to the arming of the police, which is, as I have already said, the real consequence of abolishing capital punishment. Mark Duggan was, to all intents and purposes, executed by the police last week – but crucially he was killed without trial, a judge, a jury, a right to defence or repeal.

Duggan’s trial (as we could call it) occurred in the minds of one or perhaps more officers, who weighed up the situation and evidence before them, acting presumably under pressure and forced to make a split second decision over life and death. By comparison, this is a world away from the far more precise, measured and reasonable process of the courts and judicial system.

In a court, Mr Duggan (or a person accused of murder) would have had the benefit of being innocent until proven guilty. He would have been tried by a Judge and heard by a Jury under strict rules of law and procedures. There would have been prosecution and defence, the right of repeal and the fairness of an open hearing. And if after proper judicial examination a man were found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt by a jury of his peers, and sentenced to death for his crime, this would be a much fairer and more just system of punishment than being shot by an armed police officer.

An Inevitable Outcome

[i-londonburning]If only the ‘inevitable outcome’ of which I will write were the collapse of the single European currency, whose death throws, like a slow motion train crash, threaten to take the European Union down with it.

Unfortunately though, the rapid demise of Europe’s anti democratic Union has been predicted on many an occasion and, so far at least, failed to materialise. Therefore one now tends to make such predictions with some level of care.

Consequently, I shall, for the time being, pass over the continuing Euro zone crisis and instead briefly comment on the current violence in London – a city that long ago ceased to be English or British.

The death of Mark Duggan in Tottenham on Thursday, who was shot by police during what the BBC describes as ‘an apparent exchange of fire’, is another unpleasant reminder of the failure of our criminal justice system and our increasingly destructive political class.

As our police force have evolved into another department of social services, and its officers have receded from their once prominent position on the streets of our town and cities, the criminal elements in society have become increasingly emboldened.

On the orders of wise politicians, the police have become a reactive service rather than remain a preventative force – and they ceased long ago to be citizens in uniform, instead seeing each other as an elite group, draped in paramilitary equipment and riding around in expensive metal boxes, all utterly removed from the events outside and the people they are tasked with defending.

Far from deterring crime, they appear – if at all – only once the offence has taken place, sometimes to record the transgression, but usually to provide counselling and lecture the public against ‘taking the law into their own hands’. Yet attempt to engage in a political demonstration and suddenly the riot shields come out in force.

But most worrying of all is how the police have slowly been armed over the course of four decades, with the inevitable outcome being violence and bloodshed. It was the abolition of the death penalty in the 1950s to 60s which created the present situation. The fear and deterrent of the noose quickly gave way, and as the figures starkly prove, gun crime has rapidly risen in the years since.

Areas of London and other major British cities have become no-go zones, ruled by armed gangs who kill without mercy or so much as a thought for the consequences. While the police have retreated to the safety of their police stations and squad cars, when the two gun toting groups eventually cross paths and lock horns, the deaths of innocent bystanders are the inevitable outcome.

This really is only the beginning. Unless we restore the deterrent of the death penalty, gun crime will continue to rise without check, as will unintentional death at the trigger finger of the police. Either it is criminals who live in fear of the law and justice, or we who live in fear of criminals. Which is it to be?

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