The Wider World, the Unknown World

A Latin American writer wrote some time ago a book entitled "El Mundo es ancho y ajeno" "Broad and Alien is the World" (Ciro Alegria - Peruvian writer). The title comes to mind when we try to focus on policies and on trying to make peoples' lives better. Never mind the world outside the country in which we live. Never mind the country in which we live. Never mind the city or town where we live. How much do we know about the people living next door? How much do we know even about our own families, our relatives and about ourselves?

Most of the time we make abstractions, or all the time we make abstractions, of the world in which we live, making working assumptions, to issue policies, to design strategies to get things done because in fact we know very little. What we don't know, replace with statistics and presumptions and ideological stances. We are guessing. And politics is - most of the time - about guessing what can be done and how it can be done. When we get things wrong or not nearly as exactly as we wanted them to be, there is always somebody or something or both to blame for the outcome of our endeavors. And this when and if our intentions are honorable.

When our intentions are based on vested interests, never mind statistics, abstractions and presumptions. We are just single minded about what we are trying to achieve come what may with total disregard for the likes of those who are bound not to benefit or even suffer the consequences of what we are trying to do. And this is politics too.

So there is everything in the political garden, including flowers and weeds. The ones who try to do good for all and the ones who with intent try to benefit merely themselves and some vested interests. But behind it all there is a great amount of ignorance about what is the real world and therefore the chances of success in any case are a mere gamble.

Behind words like 'I don't believe in politics anymore', 'I don't trust anyone' and the like there is the overwhelming reality of 'we know very little about the world in which we live' and 'we know very little about what people actually want and how they are going to be affected by the things we do'.

We must reflect then on the words of Rudyard Kipling, his poem IF, for many of the things that happen in our lives in terms of success and content, are the direct consequence of what we do and what we don't do as individuals. Our perceived success is very much the outcome of what we do, what we don't do, the personal and working relationships we have got, but our collective good and our collective evil are still attached to our perceptions about the world and about the political world. People celebrate/complain when a certain political party wins an election and at this point Politics is a bit like Religion - you either believe or you don't believe - because there is very little factual evidence to prove that our celebrations and our lamentations are justified. We still need to believe because life without hope is unbearable.

Elections are a step into the unknown, a leap of faith, and most importantly elections are about abstractions and we come to the point to know why people vote for a certain political party. We go straight into the field of presumptions. We presume that if a certain political party wins, the said party will do this or that. We also presume that the thing we want a political party to do will be beneficial either for the common good and/for ourselves and for those whose aims and needs we identify with. Elections are also a blank cheque. There is no written guarantee. There are just beliefs, hopes, wishes and expectations.

What we call Democracy is a blend of uncertainties, of don't knows, of blank cheques. We celebrate Democracy, even when most of the time, people don't really have real knowledge regarding what they are voting for. We do have expectations. We have beliefs. We have presumptions.

Even when choices might be made to appear as simple options, a single change can be bring about a chain reaction with many unexpected consequences. Let's say that you are a navigator and that you are about to make up your mind about the direction of travel. Should the course be 30 degrees or 31 degrees? The difference between 30 degrees and 31 degrees might appear to be minimal but, as time passes and the length of the journey increases, you could end up somewhere far away from the desired destination if you choose the wrong direction.

Whatever your intentions, to sum up, politics is about faith. Politics is about believing that you are making the right choices. The world is too big a place for us to be able to have a real understanding of it.

British Farming: 70% of Britain's land mass is dedicated to farming

Farming is done on 70% of Britain's land mass and this is not little achievement.

There are about 220 farm holdings in the United Kingdom, raging in size from 20 hectares to 100 hectares. But despite highly skilled farmers, advanced technology, the high quality of soil and financial subsidies, the income farmers receive in low due to market prices, the cost of land and the scarcity of land for rental.

The age average of farm holders is 59 and this is why it is vital to keep people in agriculture. The total area devoted to agricultural holdings is about 171 thousand square kilometres and this rises to about 180 square kilometres if we include areas devoted to grazing.

British farming is heavily mechanised and intensive but given the size of Britain's population the country cannot meet food requirements and much of the food consumed in United Kingdom has to be imported.

The lion in terms of agricultural yield is England because in Wales 80% of farmland is classified as Less Favoured Area (lower agricultural yield) and the percentage of less fertile lands rises to 84% in Scotland.

In fact, the country produces barely 59% of the food it consumes and this is happening because of rising population. Therefore, if you wish to make an argument against Flood Immigration, your argument would be 'we cannot afford Flood Immigration because we already are under huge stress to try and feed the population that we already have'.

To counter Liberalism and Marxism, the best argument is built on irrefutable facts and the facts coming from Farming are irrefutable. With the quality of land that we have got and despite the technological advances and know-how, the country should be working on the basis of Zero Immigration, at least.

Seven years ago, the country exported £14 billion worth of food and had to import £32.5 billion worth of food. Therefore, we were £18.5 billion in the red in order to feed those living in Britain. Farming does not seem to appear in the Liberal and Marxist political discourse. Liberals and Marxists look at farmers with disdain because in their minds Farmers are allies of the Ruling Elites or of the rich landowners, when in fact the country depends on farming for its own survival and very often farmers have to struggle to stay afloat. It must be said that most of what Liberals and Marxists know about farming is what they see when they visit a local supermarket.

"We need more housing, they say. We must build more houses." Why? To keep bringing in more and more people that will destabilise even more what is already a very precarious existence. If the land cannot sustain a bigger population, then population should be reduced towards the production optimum. If we can only manage to produce about 59% of the food the country needs, this means that the country is grossly over-populated.

 

Man made God and not the other way around

Man made God and not the other way around

It is self-evident that man created God. In the days of Ancient Greece, religion had a completely different outlook with a whole system headed by Zeus at the Olympus where an array of deities, Gods and Semi-Gods constantly interfered in the lives of Man.

To explain Death, Man created the concept of Heaven and Hell. In Ancient Greece, Hell was ruled by a God. There was a constant struggle between deities, Gods and Semi-Gods, a constant quest for power that very much reflected the everyday world. Judaism and its branches called Christianity and Islam - both born out of the Judaism - adopted a system in which there was only one God, the Creator, and got into trouble trying to explain the origins of Man.

If Adam was created by God and later on Eve was created taking a rib out of Adam, nobody could logically explain where the descendants of Cain came from. Were there other women and men not related to Adam, Eve and Cain around? Where do they came from? If there weren't any other women and men not related to Adam and Eve around, did Adam and Eve also had daughters? If they had daughters, then the Human Race was born ouf of an endless number of incestuous relationships and genetic mutations that would have led to different ethnic groups.

To sum up: the concepts accepted by Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the consequences of irrationality, an irrationality that could only be maintained by fear and by a power struggle. Religion is in fact Political Power and for centuries all those who dared to challenge the imposed view suffered terrible consequences.

The so called perfect system presumably created by God is not perfect in any way, shape or form. Since Man appeared on Earth he has been hunted or being a hunter. We only survives thanks to murder and destruction. Millions upon millions of animals that are supposed to be God's Creation have been destroyed, are destroyed and will be destroyed on a daily basis just to keep Man alive. Man also kills for the sake of entertainment and to feed other animals that it is said that Man wants to protect.

The Bible, for example, says 'Thou shall not kill'. Well, incidentally, killing is what has kept Humanity alive. We might blame an asteroid for the disappearance of the dinosaurs but the level of destruction caused by Man has led quite a few species towards extinction. 

Every day, we kill on an industrial basis. Species living in the waters and on the ground are being systematically destroyed, natural habitats are being destroyed and this is the consequence of the actions of Man and Man is faced with a stark choice: if we don't kill, we starve to death. So the statements about 'Thou shall not kill' is purely and simply bollocks. We kill other Human Beings and we destroy Animals by the millions of millions on a daily basis. If you believe in God then the direct conclusion is that God created a monstrosity, an endless chain of pain and barbaric actions.  

British National Party: Monies presumably donated to the party appear to end up in its National Treasurer's pockets

Records of the Electoral Commission indicate that monies presumably given to the British National Party as legacies are shown as loans the organisation will have to pay to Clive Jefferson who happens to be the National Treasurer. For an organisation that has less than a thousand members, claims for hundreds of thousands of Pounds as 'Administration Costs' seem to be absolutely disproportionate.

Those donating monies to the British National Party in the form of legacies should think very carefully, especially when the said legacies seem to be diverted into the pockets of its National Treasurer Clive Jefferson and then resurface as loans made to the British National Party.

Fears that the British National Party has ceased to be a political party to become a cash-cow for the benefit of a few individuals including its National Treasurer seem to be absolutely justified. The information provided to and by the Electoral Commission in the United Kingdom is extremely worrying.

From being a so called Far Right political party, the British National Party has been turned into a Far Wrong political party - although to qualify the British National Party as a political party would be a bit of an exaggeration since its has practically no representation in the United Kingdom and it merely managed to stand about ten candidates in the recent General Election only to lose all the deposits.