560 days ago
The Coronation weekend is over but as I drive around the villages around Wrexham and Chester I am struck by how much of the celebratory bunting and flags stay up. Even here on the Welsh side of the border, the red white and blue of the United Kingdom cannot be dodged. My Indian born parents-in-law, old enough to have been born under British Rule, still fly their Union Flags as do so many others. But for years flying such flags was expressly frowned upon by the liberal establishment that runs the media, academia and most of the political class.
2970 days ago
The Hungarian referendum on immigration left me feeling pretty disgusted by all involved. All the players appall me.
The liberal media wags from the BBC and Channel 4 were delighted to interview a raft of fat old Hungarians dressed in national costume heading off to vote. One woman insiated in sitting on the back seat of the car facing backwards with her ample arse in the air so as not to crumple her hideous dress which reminded us of folks in old Nazi propaganda movies from the thirties. Naturally 99% of those voting wandered to the station wearing jeans and looking normal. But the media wanted to show that all those voting to stop migration were old, inbred and stupid. We have seen that agenda before.
3104 days ago
I wrote this article pre postal votes. I have updated it to reflect the fact that they altered the result. EU boss Martin Schulz warned the Austrians not to do it but I guess that they stopped obeying orders from the Germans some time around 1945 and so have almost just elected an extreme right winger as their President. Norbert Hofer denies he is a fascist or a Nazi but he, and his Freedom Party founded by , are pretty right wing. Excluding postal voted Norbert won, overall he lost narrowly. Who is to blame for the rise of the far right? No doubt David Cameron is already blaming Brexit while his new best buddy President Erdogan of Turkey is blaming the Kurds.
In a sense nobody is "to blame".
3380 days ago
I landed in Greece on Tuesday. Within 48 hours the loathsome Blair like lying snake of a PM Alex Tsipras had quit, barring a miracle we will have a second General Election in 2015 on September 20th.
The miracle is if either the second largest party New Democracy (Angela Merkel obeying Euro loons nominally conservative old style crooks) or the 3rd largest party Golden Dawn (Nazis, but sound on the Euro) can form a new Government. They can’t. So we go to the polls in a few weeks.
I have warned you many times that Syriza
3427 days ago
I had a long chat last night with my Eurosceptic Uncle and godfather Christopher Booker and who like me is hoping that Greece votes Oxi. But he knows that we have some strange bedfellows in the Oxi camp.
British Eurosceptics are usually on the right. We want the Euro to fail. As I noted on Friday the Oxi camp here want to have their cake and eat it: they want no austerity, debt write-offs and to stay in the Euro. They are lefties. Hearing the message of support to the Oxi rally from the old murderer Gerry Adams makes both Chris and I wonder about our bedfellows. Oh…as an added bonus the Nazis of Golden Dawn are also strong supporters of Oxi! Truly we travel in strange company.
But there is a third way: Kappa Kappa, the hard-line commies. They are today urging folks to vote Oxi but then to spoil their ballot paper. Kappa Kappa got 5% in the General Election and if half its supporters toe the party line that could well be enough to deliver victory to the Nai camp.
My NBF the KKE precinct captain
3611 days ago
On my first night at the Greek Hovel I wandered into town to watch the World Cup Final. As you may remember I was the only person present supporting the Krauts against the Argies and this drew particular disapproval from one man wearing the heavy moustache one would associate with a Maniot warrior of old. That man was Nicho.
By the end of the summer we were firm friends. He speaks English and is the life and soul of the Kourounis tavern run by the lovely Eleni. The young men call him Papou (grandfather) but respect him as a chap who can drink them under the table, happily do a Greek dance – after half a bottle of whisky – but also be deadly serious.
As the only English speaker bar Eleni he is a conduit for me to wider world. His main job is with an organic food form headquartered in Athens. But he can work remotely and one imagines that business is not exactly booming and so he has plenty of time for more important things such as growing olives.
You will remember that an olive tree is viewed as a being like a beautiful woman who must be treasured and cared for. And Nicho owns a 500 year old specimen which in Kambos terms is like saying that you have Cheryl Cole waiting for you at home lying in a state of undress on your bed.
The Mani
3848 days ago
As you know I have been in Greece for three weeks or more. And I come away in no doubt that the economy is picking up. Athens was almost buzzing whereas last year at the same time it was distinctly un-buzzing. Out in the boonies there has been less change.
In part that is because tourist numbers are up. Perhaps we non-Greeks have become immune to pictures of riots or the fascists of Golden Dawn on the March. There is certainly less fear that you will wake up one morning, switch on the TV in your hotel room and find that your Greek denominated Euros are now worthless drachmas. So that helps.
But there is also a partial domestic recovery. This time last year I walked down the main shopping streets near Syntagma Square
4224 days ago
Just for the avoidance of doubt I am not a UKIP party member and will not be voting at all on May 2nd. However I cannot say that I am put off UKIP by Tory Grandee Kenneth Clarke labelling its leaders as clowns and anyone voting for it as a racist. In fact such a pathetic attack merely makes me think even less of Call Me Dave’s Tories and of the fat old fool that is Ken Clarke.
Clarke states that UKIP is largely a protest by folks against the established parties. He may be correct. The established parties have produced a political class which has engaged in systematic expenses fiddling and extraction of ever more cash from the public purse. And on issues such as the EU they are almost united in ignoring the wishes of most voters. They are an out of touch elite. And with his cushy non-executive directorships as a sideline and having supported every doomed Euro project from the ERM to Britain’s membership of the Euro, the fat complacent Clarke is a typical member of that class.
Rightly many of us view the lot of them with contempt. If the political class get a bloody nose from UKIP in largely irrelevant local elections on May 2nd they deserve it.
As it happens I disagree with UKIP on immigration. Listening to Nigel Farage’s speech at UKInvestor Show I winced as he touched on the issue and also on that of gay marriage which I support. My partner (female and British Asian) has real problems with UKIP on these sort of matters and I can understand why.
But the EU is an important matter for me as is the way that the mainstream parties are all committed to pissing away billions on tackling the non-issue of global warming and are failing to tackle the appalling finances of Bankrupt Britain. And I do hold the entire political class in contempt for their corruption. And so
4225 days ago
Zakynthos. This place was totally wiped out by an earthquake in the early 60s ( apart from one sixteen century church) so it would be hard to describe it has having old world charm but it was pleasant enough. I suspect that one “the season” gets underway it will be Hell on Earth but for now the main language spoken was Greek and it was harmless. Zakynthos has escaped the worst of the meltdown thanks to tourism but even here the signs of unease are clear.
Posters protesting against the rise of the Nazi Golden Dawn party were everywhere to be seen.
In the main square outside a bank Kappa Kappa (the commies) was holding a protest and Concert. This is a communist party that has yet to accept (unlike most European commies) that Stalin had its faults and that it is a good thing that the Berlin Wall has come down. As a result it is pretty unelectable – hard-line Stalinism is not cool even in a country facing meltdown.
And so it started with a video which basically equated, ad nauseam, Golden Dawn with the holocaust. Frankly Golden Dawn does contain some incredibly unpleasant characters and to describe its leaders as Nazis really is not that unfair. The film went on to show that Russia won the second world war
4341 days ago
In case you missed it, yesterday was the 40th Birthday Party of what we used to know as the European Economic Community (EEC) but is now simply known as the Evil Empire. No doubt in the slums of Athens and Madrid as youth unemployment hits 60% they were having a party to celebrate. Back here in the UK our political and media elite were strangely quiet on the matter because they are – for the most part – supporters of the EU in one form or another but aware that the plebs feel rather differently.
In years gone by, we Europsceptics were a minority. Our predictions that the Euro would be a disaster on economic grounds and that the Evil Empire would seize powers from Britain were dismissed by the bien pensants as the rantings of a crazed Xenophobic, little Englander, sort of racist minority. Yet sadly for Lords Howe, Hurd, Pantsdown, Mandelson, etc and for Tony Blair himself we sceptics have been proved 100% accurate in our predictions. And consequently popular opinion among those who pay for this folly (the pleb, taxpaying class) has moved strongly our way. As such the “guilty men” can no longer equate euroscepticsm with racism etc as they know they are insulting well over half the electorate.
The debate among the political/media classes in the UK
