THE LAST DITCH An Englishman returned after twenty years abroad blogs about liberty in Britain
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July 2009

How to call a liar a liar without making a personal attack?

politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Is this getting a little personal?.

The success of the New Labour Project is based on lies. The mother of all these lies is that Labour has changed. That it is no longer the party of profligate "tax and spend." That it is no longer the enemy of  prudence and aspiration. That is is no longer a class-based party. Such lies work well and are fertile breeders.

Remember Gordon Brown's one-word slogan as Chancellor? To counter Labour's historical reputation for profligacy, he repeated it ad nauseam; "Prudence." A good Conservative word; the kind that sat comfortably on Margaret Thatcher's lips. A word never heard from Labour before and for good reason. Brown ran up huge debt while the country's credit was was good. he mixed it with stealth taxes equivalent to a 100% increase in income tax. Then he poured that easy cash over Labour's payroll vote like syrup on pancakes.

 "Tax, borrow and spend" - Labour's modus operandi ab initio. Nothing had changed  except for Tony Blair's plastic smile and a stolen word.

The bust Brown promised us  (untruthfully) would never come again is now worse for Britain than any other OECD country. The OECD and the IMF regard our economy as the most damaged in the developed world and are pointing the finger at government debt. Debt now so high it will take generations to repay it. Always assuming, as frighteningly we cannot, that a future government does not make it worse.

Even without tax cuts to stimulate the economy public services must be cut (however much Labour lies to the contrary) just to meet the interest payments. When private borrowers finally return to compete with governments for available credit, interest rates will rise and we must shudder to think what the costs will be then. I think it is fair to say in this context that "prudence" did not truthfully describe the Prime Minister's conduct during his time in Number 11. It was a propaganda word repeated as a mantra to deceive trusting voters. In short, it was a deliberate lie.

Now the party that thinks "he's a toff" is a reasoned argument is crying foul; complaining that in exposing Labour's lies HM Opposition is indulging in "personal attacks" and "dirty politics." Political Betting, usually astute on these matters, thinks this tactic may work. It speaks to the old theme of the Conservatives as "the nasty party." It assists in persuading Labour's core voters to "hate the Tories again." Some wonderful, kind, naieve voters will undoubtedly respond to syrupy themes of "let's all be nice to each other" and "can't we all just get along?" Indeed David Cameron foolishly made himself vulnerable to this tactic by promising to end "Punch and Judy politics." So how are the Conservatives now to respond, without letting Labour off the hook?


The political lies capital of Europe

UK is violent crime capital of Europe - Telegraph.

No-one who is paying any attention could doubt this. For goodness' sake, even Henley Regatta has suffered hooliganism. I hear that the city where I have my pied à terre in the North of England suffers one murder every time there is a race meeting at its ancient hippodrome.

Analysis of figures from the European Commission showed a 77 per cent increase in murders, robberies, assaults and sexual offences in the UK since Labour came to power.

If I were a criminal, Labour is the party I would vote for. In the unlikely event that its politicised police - far more interested in persecuting ideological offenders than real criminals - were to catch me, I could rely on Labour to release me early. As long, of course, as I was guilty "only" of crimes against the person and property. Thought crime is another matter, but for good old-fashioned loutishness and thievery, I could count on Labour. I could also count on it to provide me with a base income and a "cover" for my life of crime.

Of course criminals have been on a decade-long, Labour-sponsored spree. That's to be expected. Remove the risks of crime and it will rise. What really shocks me is how ready the voters of Britain have been to believe political lies. Every Labour Home Secretary has announced that crime figures are stable or falling. See, for example,  here, here, here and here. The press never challenged the lies. The public seems to have believed them.

We are a trusting nation, raised to believe that the British state is beneficient. it isn't. No human agency is. It contains just as many self-serving individuals as any other group. In fact, since politicians, civil servants and state administrators have chosen a life of parasitism, it is quite possible they number rather more people on the make among them than average.

An adult, intelligent electorate must learn to doubt what it's told and trust its own judgement. Our poor, lazy performance as a democratic electorate has allowed freelance thugs to steal our nation from us, while the state's thugs stood uselessly by. If we want to be a free people, there is a price to pay in vigilance.