Alistair Darling’s last budget before the election took a widely predicted swipe at cider drinkers. This afternoon he announced plans to raise the excise duty on cider by 10% over inflation, singling out our region’s choice for special mistreatment. Taxes on beer, wine and spirits will rise by just 2% over inflation, so Labour’s champagne socialists will be raising their glasses to the Chancellor tonight.
We already have some of the highest rates of duty in the world and the latest increase is bound to cost Wessex jobs. A 47% increase in cider duty in 1984 resulted in the loss of more than 500 jobs industry-wide and duty increases remain a threat to the success of cider sales today. The cider industry, as one of the few to have achieved growth through the recent recession, is a true success story. Today’s duty increase will undo much of this good work and the impact of a significant price increase to the consumer will probably also be counterproductive in raising revenue for the Government. Currently cider and perry contributes around £370 million annually, or more than £1 million a day, in excise duty and VAT to the UK Exchequer.
Duty on a pint of cider has been traditionally low - around 18p on average compared to 46p for a pint of beer - despite cider's popularity with problem drinkers and the young. There has been intense lobbying to raise its price. Yet alcohol consumption is falling at the fastest rate for six decades, with pub closures the most visible sign – running at 52 a week. In truth, there are no problem drinks, only problem drinkers, and making everyone else drink less is not the solution.
Cider is much more expensive to produce than other drinks and it helps underpin the economy in many rural areas. Raising the tax on cider will make beer more competitive, to the advantage of the big foreign breweries. David Sheppy, of Sheppy’s Cider, from Bradford-on-Tone, near Taunton, said: “We are not pleased. A 10% increase is quite devastating news. A lot of money has been put into investment in the cider industry, and we don’t now want to see that investment wasted.”
John Sheaves, Chief Executive of the food and drink association Taste of the West, described the proposal as "a sledgehammer being used to crack a nut. Because of the nature of the industry, we're not talking about big companies, we're talking about small producers who often employ very few people and have fixed overheads and small avenues by which they can increase prices.
"To slap a tax on sales would impact on those businesses' profitability and ability to thrive. The Government is meant to be trying to encourage home-grown production and sustainable food and drink production as well as trying to encourage rural economic development. That doesn't square with this proposal."
Simon Russell, spokesman for the National Association of Cider Makers, said: "This is entirely the wrong message. It puts at risk the very businesses that are doing so much to bring investment to the rural economy and to use the countryside in a positive, agricultural way including helping with carbon emissions."
It has to be said that not all ‘cider’ sold in the UK is truly worthy of the name. Some of it is just cheap strong alcohol which is called ‘cider’ for tax purposes. It could be made out of corn syrup or anything, with flavouring and saccharin added. A more discriminating approach to definitions could help Wessex a lot.
Tackling ‘alcopops’ by taxing cider will not deter those with disposable income who are determined to drink. They will find substitutes or else pay more. Or steal more, in some cases. Chris Coles, managing director of Topsham-based Green Valley Cyder, stated: "The supermarkets are frequently discounting lagers which you can buy for 25p a can – that's almost criminal, it's encouraging people to drink without encouraging them to make a sensible choice."
Instead of punishing the responsible and irresponsible alike, the Government should enforce more firmly the existing laws on sales and on-street behaviour, adopting a policy of zero tolerance towards those who go beyond their limits.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Raring to Go
Our Annual General Assembly, held at Weston-super-Mare on Saturday, was an upbeat occasion, the forthcoming general election now eagerly awaited.
The internal Party elections saw Colin Bex return as President - and registered "leader" - after a seven-year break. Colin is a retired architect, a tireless campaigner for localism and regionalism, and a trenchant critic of war, waste and the degradation of people and place that flows from rogue economics.
He has stood as a Wessex Regionalist in five elections for Westminster – across four shires – and was unanimously adopted as our prospective candidate for a sixth foray. The chosen constituency remains provisional but all will be revealed in good time.
We have no illusions about forming the next government. The road to victory is a long and winding one but we do not take part in politics for the usual reasons. We fight for what is right, not for what is expedient or profitable. Our fervent hope is that the next Parliament will contain many more who think as we do; Wessex will be a bleak place indeed if the electoral lottery delivers its usual bitter crop.
The internal Party elections saw Colin Bex return as President - and registered "leader" - after a seven-year break. Colin is a retired architect, a tireless campaigner for localism and regionalism, and a trenchant critic of war, waste and the degradation of people and place that flows from rogue economics.
He has stood as a Wessex Regionalist in five elections for Westminster – across four shires – and was unanimously adopted as our prospective candidate for a sixth foray. The chosen constituency remains provisional but all will be revealed in good time.
We have no illusions about forming the next government. The road to victory is a long and winding one but we do not take part in politics for the usual reasons. We fight for what is right, not for what is expedient or profitable. Our fervent hope is that the next Parliament will contain many more who think as we do; Wessex will be a bleak place indeed if the electoral lottery delivers its usual bitter crop.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Mortgaging Democracy
“Will the Tamar Bridge be sold?” That was the question posed by the Western Morning News earlier this month. And not just the bridge. Torquay’s Torre Abbey was mentioned too, though in both cases the relevant local councils denied any sale plans.
Gordon Brown’s announcement that he plans to sell off our public assets was, the paper told us, treated with derision by the councils. It went on to note that “while not able to directly force local authorities to sell their assets, fears have been voiced that the Government could slash the annual grant awarded to each council”, leaving them little option but to sell. While the report described such a move as “sinister”, the editorial went on to back the strategy. Well, it would. We’re talking about the Northcliffe press here, owners of the Daily Mail (the paper that backed the Blackshirts).
Sinister indeed. Which is why local communities in Wessex may well ask what the Government thinks it’s doing targeting local public services for cutbacks now that it’s spent all its money on bailing out the City of London. The real culprits in all of this are laughing literally all the way to the bank. Whether the public sector is a willing seller or an unwilling one, the deal only works if there’s a willing buyer. And there’s no shortage of them apparently. Financial institutions are always awash with money to buy whatever government offers for sale at knockdown prices. So where’s the banking crisis?
Or the budget crisis? There’s always money to fight needless wars, even if doled out so grudgingly that soldiers’ lives are even more needlessly put at risk. And Labour and the Tories are agreed that overseas aid should be protected – and increased. Not to put too fine a point on it, public services in this country are being cut so that those in other countries can be expanded. At our involuntary expense. King Alfred the Great famously sent alms to India in fulfilment of a vow taken when besieging the Danes in London. India today has no need of alms, having nuclear weapons, a space programme and even a foreign aid budget of its own. Yet need or no, it is one of the beneficiaries of our largesse.
Asset sales don’t make sense if you end up renting the asset back for ever and a day. They aren’t about keeping taxes down. They’re about keeping democracy down. Labour claims to be the party of modernisation, the party that refuses to let the present be controlled by the past. It would be truer to see it as the party that lets the present be controlled by the future, as debt slavery constrains the options of generations yet unborn.
For the Conservatives no less than for Labour, the idea of local authorities that own next to nothing is an attractive one. It’s their people who will benefit from the consultants’ reports, the legal fees, the management buy-outs. The issue for regionalists and other decentralists is that local assets, once sold, cannot be guaranteed to remain locally controlled. Bus services run from the Town Hall are answerable to the electorate of the town. Bus services run from a head office in Northumbria or Scotland are answerable to shareholders who may never have even heard of the place being served. The case for local or regional public ownership of the so-called ‘natural monopolies’ is partly about preventing the abuse of a dominant economic position for private profit. But these days it also forms a powerful component of opposition to globalisation, a strong pair of hands resisting the magnet of corporate concentration. No wonder the WTO makes privatisation its primary goal.
Councils that are nothing but bundles of contracts can’t see the point of vital democracy. No-one needs to hear the views of councillors any more because if they’re not in the small print already they can’t be made to count. (Poor service has to be tolerated until the contract is renewed.) If it’s not about debate but only about deals, the councillors are redundant. Step forward elected mayors to do the powerbroker thing, to talk tough with big business and big government. Elected mayors are not a sign of strong local democracy but the very opposite. They are what happens when a community signs its civic life away for a fistful of empty promises.
Happy King Alfred’s Day.
Gordon Brown’s announcement that he plans to sell off our public assets was, the paper told us, treated with derision by the councils. It went on to note that “while not able to directly force local authorities to sell their assets, fears have been voiced that the Government could slash the annual grant awarded to each council”, leaving them little option but to sell. While the report described such a move as “sinister”, the editorial went on to back the strategy. Well, it would. We’re talking about the Northcliffe press here, owners of the Daily Mail (the paper that backed the Blackshirts).
Sinister indeed. Which is why local communities in Wessex may well ask what the Government thinks it’s doing targeting local public services for cutbacks now that it’s spent all its money on bailing out the City of London. The real culprits in all of this are laughing literally all the way to the bank. Whether the public sector is a willing seller or an unwilling one, the deal only works if there’s a willing buyer. And there’s no shortage of them apparently. Financial institutions are always awash with money to buy whatever government offers for sale at knockdown prices. So where’s the banking crisis?
Or the budget crisis? There’s always money to fight needless wars, even if doled out so grudgingly that soldiers’ lives are even more needlessly put at risk. And Labour and the Tories are agreed that overseas aid should be protected – and increased. Not to put too fine a point on it, public services in this country are being cut so that those in other countries can be expanded. At our involuntary expense. King Alfred the Great famously sent alms to India in fulfilment of a vow taken when besieging the Danes in London. India today has no need of alms, having nuclear weapons, a space programme and even a foreign aid budget of its own. Yet need or no, it is one of the beneficiaries of our largesse.
Asset sales don’t make sense if you end up renting the asset back for ever and a day. They aren’t about keeping taxes down. They’re about keeping democracy down. Labour claims to be the party of modernisation, the party that refuses to let the present be controlled by the past. It would be truer to see it as the party that lets the present be controlled by the future, as debt slavery constrains the options of generations yet unborn.
For the Conservatives no less than for Labour, the idea of local authorities that own next to nothing is an attractive one. It’s their people who will benefit from the consultants’ reports, the legal fees, the management buy-outs. The issue for regionalists and other decentralists is that local assets, once sold, cannot be guaranteed to remain locally controlled. Bus services run from the Town Hall are answerable to the electorate of the town. Bus services run from a head office in Northumbria or Scotland are answerable to shareholders who may never have even heard of the place being served. The case for local or regional public ownership of the so-called ‘natural monopolies’ is partly about preventing the abuse of a dominant economic position for private profit. But these days it also forms a powerful component of opposition to globalisation, a strong pair of hands resisting the magnet of corporate concentration. No wonder the WTO makes privatisation its primary goal.
Councils that are nothing but bundles of contracts can’t see the point of vital democracy. No-one needs to hear the views of councillors any more because if they’re not in the small print already they can’t be made to count. (Poor service has to be tolerated until the contract is renewed.) If it’s not about debate but only about deals, the councillors are redundant. Step forward elected mayors to do the powerbroker thing, to talk tough with big business and big government. Elected mayors are not a sign of strong local democracy but the very opposite. They are what happens when a community signs its civic life away for a fistful of empty promises.
Happy King Alfred’s Day.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Organising Murder
"War is organised murder, and nothing else."
Harry Patch
And so the extraordinary life of Harry Patch, the last Tommy of the First World War, has ended at his home in Wells. His years as a centenarian were spent as an eloquent spokesman for the Lost Generation of 1914-18, imparting what he could of experiences beyond the comprehension of his listeners. There were no illusions: the war was "a family row", Remembrance Day "just show business".
The terrible irony is that as Patch’s past is laid to rest, so lives are still being lost in wars of choice. As the coffins pass through Wiltshire’s streets, Brown, Cameron & Co. conspire to whip up war fever, like music hall acts applauding ‘the soldiers of the Queen’. There is talk of ‘a 30-year haul’ in Afghanistan, in this, the 30th anniversary year of the Soviet invasion. The more soldiers die or are wounded, the greater the emotional investment at stake, the lesser the chance of a rational answer to the question, why?
The argument that blowing other countries apart protects us from terrorism is too silly for comment. And while the main party leaders drag us back to the days of Empire, when the Union flag was earning its nickname of ‘the Butcher’s Apron’, they might consider the record of all who have messed with Afghanistan before. The British lost the First Afghan War. They withdrew after the Second. And the Third, tactically a British victory, was strategically a lasting win for the Afghans. The Soviet Union too left humiliated, its whole empire imploding. Not the most encouraging set of precedents. On the first occasion, in 1842, Britain's expeditionary force was all but wiped out. Supposing himself the sole survivor, Dr William Brydon finally made it back to the gates of Jalalabad, he and his horse exhausted. The scene is depicted in Lady Butler’s great canvas, The Remnants of an Army, which hangs in the regimental museum of the Somersets at Taunton Castle.
The prospects of an oil pipeline from central Asia to the coast? Now that’s more like it. A far more convincing explanation of why lives are being laid down for ‘freedom’. Such is the curse geology has laid throughout the Mahometan lands. And as the oil runs out, so instability will worsen. Still more lives will be lost or shattered until we embrace the principle of economic subsidiarity: that nothing should be produced further away from the user than is absolutely necessary. The key to peace does not lie in a global economy micro-managed by totalitarian liberals but in living within environmental limits, regionally and locally. We can have prosperity without growth. But we cannot have growth without conflict.
Meanwhile Brown, Cameron and the rest of them responsible for organising murder in the 21st century must stand trial for their crimes.
Harry Patch
And so the extraordinary life of Harry Patch, the last Tommy of the First World War, has ended at his home in Wells. His years as a centenarian were spent as an eloquent spokesman for the Lost Generation of 1914-18, imparting what he could of experiences beyond the comprehension of his listeners. There were no illusions: the war was "a family row", Remembrance Day "just show business".
The terrible irony is that as Patch’s past is laid to rest, so lives are still being lost in wars of choice. As the coffins pass through Wiltshire’s streets, Brown, Cameron & Co. conspire to whip up war fever, like music hall acts applauding ‘the soldiers of the Queen’. There is talk of ‘a 30-year haul’ in Afghanistan, in this, the 30th anniversary year of the Soviet invasion. The more soldiers die or are wounded, the greater the emotional investment at stake, the lesser the chance of a rational answer to the question, why?
The argument that blowing other countries apart protects us from terrorism is too silly for comment. And while the main party leaders drag us back to the days of Empire, when the Union flag was earning its nickname of ‘the Butcher’s Apron’, they might consider the record of all who have messed with Afghanistan before. The British lost the First Afghan War. They withdrew after the Second. And the Third, tactically a British victory, was strategically a lasting win for the Afghans. The Soviet Union too left humiliated, its whole empire imploding. Not the most encouraging set of precedents. On the first occasion, in 1842, Britain's expeditionary force was all but wiped out. Supposing himself the sole survivor, Dr William Brydon finally made it back to the gates of Jalalabad, he and his horse exhausted. The scene is depicted in Lady Butler’s great canvas, The Remnants of an Army, which hangs in the regimental museum of the Somersets at Taunton Castle.
The prospects of an oil pipeline from central Asia to the coast? Now that’s more like it. A far more convincing explanation of why lives are being laid down for ‘freedom’. Such is the curse geology has laid throughout the Mahometan lands. And as the oil runs out, so instability will worsen. Still more lives will be lost or shattered until we embrace the principle of economic subsidiarity: that nothing should be produced further away from the user than is absolutely necessary. The key to peace does not lie in a global economy micro-managed by totalitarian liberals but in living within environmental limits, regionally and locally. We can have prosperity without growth. But we cannot have growth without conflict.
Meanwhile Brown, Cameron and the rest of them responsible for organising murder in the 21st century must stand trial for their crimes.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Danger: Electricity
It might seem churlish to complain that Gordon Brown has committed the necessary millions to electrify the Great Western main line from Bristol to London. After all, enough money has been spent on other parts of England, and beyond. But complain we do.
Our demand, for the past 30 years, has been for a Wessex-oriented transport system to link our principal cities without having to depend largely on routes directed towards London. An electrified Great Western is certainly not that. A glance at the Government’s map shows that electric trains will run from Paddington to Bristol and on to Swansea (amazing what a Welsh Assembly can achieve), with short stubs branching off to Newbury and to Oxford (how nice for the commuters and the dons). Trains from Plymouth to Bristol and Reading will remain diesel-hauled (but as the locals aren’t bankers and don’t as a rule vote Labour, no-one is going to care). Well, we do care. We care that our money is going into a scheme that is all about sucking the life out of ‘the provinces’ even faster. Why, in a sane, regionalised economy, would anyone want to go to London, the great casino that oversees our so-called wealth? If investment in spine rail routes is needed, why not Plymouth to Paddington or Exeter to Waterloo? Instead of which, an environmentally devastating dualling of the A303 trunk road is now made all the more likely so that Cornwall may compete with Wales.
Electrification too carries an environmental cost, green though its credentials can indeed be if the right renewable sources provide the power. Brunel’s railway is a masterpiece of design, so much so that the UK Government placed it on the tentative list of nominations to UNESCO for World Heritage status. Electrification will change the experiences that are Maidenhead Bridge, Sonning Cutting and Box Tunnel. Unavoidable change can be an opportunity for panache complementing Brunel’s own, and where this is so there need be no net loss. But British electrification schemes are not going to win design awards. In Sweden the supports for the overhead wires have been coloured green, so they blend in; ours are exposed, grey metal. Works of art they are not. So when the accountants’ butchery is complete, we may ask, what will be left of the line to meet UNESCO’s tests of 'authenticity' and 'integrity'? Wessex tourism will lose out on yet another huge potential resource.
We are emphatically a pro-rail party, and for many sound reasons. Peak oil is the one that looms ever larger but there are other environmental and social gains along the way. Using rail investment to increase, rather than decrease our dependency on London is entirely the wrong priority. It won’t do for politicians to say that they’re ‘investing in success’ when they use public money to bolster a competitive advantage that London has built largely from previous injections of public money and the presence of the government of a unitary state and global empire. Getting a faster train to Paddington cannot be more important than getting one at all to Portishead. The list of Wessex towns now without stations is ridiculously long: Abingdon, Bideford, Blandford Forum, Bridport, Cheddar, Cirencester, Devizes, Dursley, Glastonbury, Gosport, Ilfracombe, Lyme Regis, Marlborough, Midsomer Norton/Radstock, Ringwood, Shepton Mallet, Sidmouth, Tavistock, Tiverton, Wantage, Wells and Wimborne are just a few. And then there are metro systems to be built for the Bristol and south Hampshire conurbations. Better rail connections for those who have them are bitter rail connections for those who don’t. The Government’s view – that it’s for local and regional interests to raise their own funding if they wish to supplement national priorities – should lead us to ask why national priorities are so heavily distorted in the first place and what we must do to alter them.
Technology is developing fast. The Parry People Mover is an electric rail vehicle using flywheel energy storage, recharging at stations, with no need for a continuous overhead or third-rail supply. Let’s concentrate for the foreseeable future on the basics, rigorously safeguarding abandoned trackbed and buildings. From there we can move forward to re-open those iconic lines like the Somerset & Dorset forming part of a sustainable transport system for the whole of Wessex, not just the favoured parts. The Scottish Parliament is busy re-opening 35 miles of the Waverley line south of Edinburgh, so let no-one tell you it’s a nice idea but it’ll never happen. It’ll happen alright, just as soon as Wessex has a Parliament too.
Our demand, for the past 30 years, has been for a Wessex-oriented transport system to link our principal cities without having to depend largely on routes directed towards London. An electrified Great Western is certainly not that. A glance at the Government’s map shows that electric trains will run from Paddington to Bristol and on to Swansea (amazing what a Welsh Assembly can achieve), with short stubs branching off to Newbury and to Oxford (how nice for the commuters and the dons). Trains from Plymouth to Bristol and Reading will remain diesel-hauled (but as the locals aren’t bankers and don’t as a rule vote Labour, no-one is going to care). Well, we do care. We care that our money is going into a scheme that is all about sucking the life out of ‘the provinces’ even faster. Why, in a sane, regionalised economy, would anyone want to go to London, the great casino that oversees our so-called wealth? If investment in spine rail routes is needed, why not Plymouth to Paddington or Exeter to Waterloo? Instead of which, an environmentally devastating dualling of the A303 trunk road is now made all the more likely so that Cornwall may compete with Wales.
Electrification too carries an environmental cost, green though its credentials can indeed be if the right renewable sources provide the power. Brunel’s railway is a masterpiece of design, so much so that the UK Government placed it on the tentative list of nominations to UNESCO for World Heritage status. Electrification will change the experiences that are Maidenhead Bridge, Sonning Cutting and Box Tunnel. Unavoidable change can be an opportunity for panache complementing Brunel’s own, and where this is so there need be no net loss. But British electrification schemes are not going to win design awards. In Sweden the supports for the overhead wires have been coloured green, so they blend in; ours are exposed, grey metal. Works of art they are not. So when the accountants’ butchery is complete, we may ask, what will be left of the line to meet UNESCO’s tests of 'authenticity' and 'integrity'? Wessex tourism will lose out on yet another huge potential resource.
We are emphatically a pro-rail party, and for many sound reasons. Peak oil is the one that looms ever larger but there are other environmental and social gains along the way. Using rail investment to increase, rather than decrease our dependency on London is entirely the wrong priority. It won’t do for politicians to say that they’re ‘investing in success’ when they use public money to bolster a competitive advantage that London has built largely from previous injections of public money and the presence of the government of a unitary state and global empire. Getting a faster train to Paddington cannot be more important than getting one at all to Portishead. The list of Wessex towns now without stations is ridiculously long: Abingdon, Bideford, Blandford Forum, Bridport, Cheddar, Cirencester, Devizes, Dursley, Glastonbury, Gosport, Ilfracombe, Lyme Regis, Marlborough, Midsomer Norton/Radstock, Ringwood, Shepton Mallet, Sidmouth, Tavistock, Tiverton, Wantage, Wells and Wimborne are just a few. And then there are metro systems to be built for the Bristol and south Hampshire conurbations. Better rail connections for those who have them are bitter rail connections for those who don’t. The Government’s view – that it’s for local and regional interests to raise their own funding if they wish to supplement national priorities – should lead us to ask why national priorities are so heavily distorted in the first place and what we must do to alter them.
Technology is developing fast. The Parry People Mover is an electric rail vehicle using flywheel energy storage, recharging at stations, with no need for a continuous overhead or third-rail supply. Let’s concentrate for the foreseeable future on the basics, rigorously safeguarding abandoned trackbed and buildings. From there we can move forward to re-open those iconic lines like the Somerset & Dorset forming part of a sustainable transport system for the whole of Wessex, not just the favoured parts. The Scottish Parliament is busy re-opening 35 miles of the Waverley line south of Edinburgh, so let no-one tell you it’s a nice idea but it’ll never happen. It’ll happen alright, just as soon as Wessex has a Parliament too.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Axeman Cometh
Political discourse in the Disunited Kingdom is now turning to public spending cuts. Brown continues to tell us that capital investment is his priority, as if new schools, hospitals and the rest are of any lasting use without the right professionals to staff them. Cameron promises us ‘an age of austerity’, relieved only by tax cuts for his chums. Given New Labour’s mismanagement of the economy, there are, it seems, now plenty of turkeys willing to vote for a Cameronian Christmas Carol.
Our view is that the ideology of public versus private is less important than what the money is spent on and whether that raises or lowers our quality of life here in Wessex. The priorities of a Wessex Parliament could be – and should be – very different from Westminster’s. There is a plethora of politically correct initiatives we’d never miss if the axe fell on them, including the literally tens of billions of pounds of spending on foreign intervention, military and civil. The ever-imperial Tories have no plans to scale back on that, missing no opportunity to impose their culture of nastiness upon the world’s most vulnerable folk like some anti-social disease.
Some matters will, as ever, be glossed over in the spending review. English nationalists will once again wave the skeleton of the Barnett formula in a bid to scare us, though nothing will change. (Add in the figures the formula excludes and it looks much more likely that Scotland subsidises England, not the other way round.) No-one outside the Wessex Regionalists will take apart the figures for England itself to show how London benefits at our expense. In 2007/08, budgeted ‘identifiable public expenditure’ on London was 117% of the UK average; in the ‘South West’ zone, it was 89% and in the ‘South East’ a mere 84%. London received much more per head than any other part of England, more than Wales and almost as much as Scotland. When English nationalists tell us the Celts get a better deal than the English, a lot hinges on which English you mean.
One of the areas rumoured to be up for the chop could be free admission to museums and galleries. To be accurate, ‘national’ museums and galleries, almost all of which are in London, with a few now also to be found in Northumbria. Wessex has the Science Museum store at Wroughton, near Swindon. And what else? Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard is, on the face of it, a national museum. HMS Victory is still officially part of the Royal Navy. Yet admission charges apply. If free museum entry is a good idea – arguably so – then ‘our’ Government should pay for all ‘our’ museums to open free, not those it chooses, overwhelmingly in London. And it if can’t do that, then let the Greater London Authority meet the deficit there, not the long-suffering folk of Wessex.
Just why do we subsidise London, in so many ways, like serfs watching their crops trundle off to their feudal superior’s castle? And what do we get back? Wessex needs its own Parliament, in control of its own money, making its own decisions. With most, if not all, ‘MWPs’ living within commuting distance of the Parliament building – wherever located in our region – we could then at the very least curb the excesses of flipped second homes, to the relief of the Wessex taxpayer. Geography dictates that that is something no British or English Parliament can ever achieve: Britain and England alike are impractically big to govern from a single point purportedly convenient to all. So instead of Westminster and Whitehall deciding where the cuts should fall, how about them now placing their own fat necks upon the block?
Our view is that the ideology of public versus private is less important than what the money is spent on and whether that raises or lowers our quality of life here in Wessex. The priorities of a Wessex Parliament could be – and should be – very different from Westminster’s. There is a plethora of politically correct initiatives we’d never miss if the axe fell on them, including the literally tens of billions of pounds of spending on foreign intervention, military and civil. The ever-imperial Tories have no plans to scale back on that, missing no opportunity to impose their culture of nastiness upon the world’s most vulnerable folk like some anti-social disease.
Some matters will, as ever, be glossed over in the spending review. English nationalists will once again wave the skeleton of the Barnett formula in a bid to scare us, though nothing will change. (Add in the figures the formula excludes and it looks much more likely that Scotland subsidises England, not the other way round.) No-one outside the Wessex Regionalists will take apart the figures for England itself to show how London benefits at our expense. In 2007/08, budgeted ‘identifiable public expenditure’ on London was 117% of the UK average; in the ‘South West’ zone, it was 89% and in the ‘South East’ a mere 84%. London received much more per head than any other part of England, more than Wales and almost as much as Scotland. When English nationalists tell us the Celts get a better deal than the English, a lot hinges on which English you mean.
One of the areas rumoured to be up for the chop could be free admission to museums and galleries. To be accurate, ‘national’ museums and galleries, almost all of which are in London, with a few now also to be found in Northumbria. Wessex has the Science Museum store at Wroughton, near Swindon. And what else? Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard is, on the face of it, a national museum. HMS Victory is still officially part of the Royal Navy. Yet admission charges apply. If free museum entry is a good idea – arguably so – then ‘our’ Government should pay for all ‘our’ museums to open free, not those it chooses, overwhelmingly in London. And it if can’t do that, then let the Greater London Authority meet the deficit there, not the long-suffering folk of Wessex.
Just why do we subsidise London, in so many ways, like serfs watching their crops trundle off to their feudal superior’s castle? And what do we get back? Wessex needs its own Parliament, in control of its own money, making its own decisions. With most, if not all, ‘MWPs’ living within commuting distance of the Parliament building – wherever located in our region – we could then at the very least curb the excesses of flipped second homes, to the relief of the Wessex taxpayer. Geography dictates that that is something no British or English Parliament can ever achieve: Britain and England alike are impractically big to govern from a single point purportedly convenient to all. So instead of Westminster and Whitehall deciding where the cuts should fall, how about them now placing their own fat necks upon the block?
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Cornwall Points the Way
Among all the commentary from the London media about the results from the 4 June elections, it is possible that a few facts about Cornwall may have escaped widespread notice.
In the Euro election, Mebyon Kernow – the Party for Cornwall took 7% of the vote across the Cornwall counting area. In many parts of mid and west Cornwall its share was reported to have been over 10%. MK came fifth in Cornwall, beating the now despised Labour Party into an ignominious sixth place.
Polling day also saw three MK candidates elected to the new Cornwall Council unitary authority. MK had no representation on the old County Council but did have nine district councillors, all of whom lost their seats through the reorganisation. Dr Loveday Jenkin, previously the portfolio holder for Leisure, Arts & Culture on Kerrier District Council, failed to get onto the new authority after her home parish of Crowan was split in two by the Boundary Committee charged with drawing up the new electoral divisions. The three successful MK candidates include Party Leader Dick Cole, formerly a Cornwall County Council employee, who gave up his job, taking a big cut in income, in order to be allowed to stand. The electors of St Enoder rewarded him with 78% of the vote, the biggest mandate of any of the 123 Cornwall Council members. The Labour Party, after 12 years of contempt for Cornish aspirations to self-government, failed to win a single seat. The last few decent human beings left in that party must now surely be starting to look for a new political home.
The Euro results were also disappointing for the English Democrats, who do not recognise Cornwall as a nation. They came tenth in Cornwall, with only one-sixth of the MK vote. Across the ‘South West’ zone as a whole they did rather better, polling 1.6% of the total, compared with 1.0% for MK, but with ten times the population to which to appeal the margin should have been much greater. In fact the EngDems in the ‘South West’ did poorly in comparison with England generally. After London, this was their worst result in terms of share of the vote. Which suggests that Wessex folk are wary of a party that wants to impose a ‘one-size-fits-all’ English Parliament upon us.
The lessons for Wessex run wide and deep.
The first is in minding our own business. Cornish nationalism is now an established fact, the cultural posturing having broken through at last into real political clout. A firm line should now be drawn under those delusional claims that Cornwall ‘will want to come in with us’, that ‘it’s not viable’, ‘it doesn’t fit a rational pattern of English regions’, or that ‘the Cornish thing is purely cultural; if we promise to support the language, they’ll be happy to be part of Wessex’. Cornwall has never been an integral part of Wessex, having always maintained its distinctive character and it’s not just flogging a dead horse to suggest otherwise. The Cornish are our neighbours and can be our friends and our allies. Wessex has enough enemies without adding Cornwall to the list.
The second is a lesson in patience. MK was founded in 1951. It has journeyed over rocky roads to reach its present position. In the 1980’s, its General Secretary defected to the Social Democrats (though came back again, empty-handed) and a hardline Marxist cabal made it unelectable. It isn’t unelectable now. The Wessex Regionalists are relative newcomers, constituted as a party in 1981. But we can be confident that the tide of history will be turning our way too before very long.
The third lesson is that challenging the consensus works. MK is not middle-of-the-road. It describes itself as a modern and progressive political party, a party of principle, campaigning for a better deal for Cornwall and a fairer, more equitable world. After 30 years of Thatcherism, ceaseless centralisation of power within England and across Europe, unregulated free markets gone mad and a culture of greed and growth engrained everywhere, it’s time for alternative politics to make its move.
Finally, MK is succeeding because others before it have failed. A wide-ranging cultural movement has rekindled the flame of Cornish identity, yet as confidence in that identity has grown, so real control by the Cornish over Cornwall has continued to diminish. Government initiatives to help its economy are not even run from within Cornwall. Non-party action has failed to dent the Whitehall armour: a 50,000-signature petition in favour of a Cornish assembly was simply dismissed for nonconformity with the New Labour project. It is likely that Wessex will have to go through a similar process of maturation, realising that the cultural groundwork may make us angry about what is happening but it will not on its own enable us to get even. Faith in the goodwill of the London-based parties needs to wear away completely before folk turn to the only conclusion valid in the long-term. That only we, ourselves, can right the wrongs that afflict our region. The Wessex Regionalist Party is here to welcome each and every one as they reach that resolution.
In the Euro election, Mebyon Kernow – the Party for Cornwall took 7% of the vote across the Cornwall counting area. In many parts of mid and west Cornwall its share was reported to have been over 10%. MK came fifth in Cornwall, beating the now despised Labour Party into an ignominious sixth place.
Polling day also saw three MK candidates elected to the new Cornwall Council unitary authority. MK had no representation on the old County Council but did have nine district councillors, all of whom lost their seats through the reorganisation. Dr Loveday Jenkin, previously the portfolio holder for Leisure, Arts & Culture on Kerrier District Council, failed to get onto the new authority after her home parish of Crowan was split in two by the Boundary Committee charged with drawing up the new electoral divisions. The three successful MK candidates include Party Leader Dick Cole, formerly a Cornwall County Council employee, who gave up his job, taking a big cut in income, in order to be allowed to stand. The electors of St Enoder rewarded him with 78% of the vote, the biggest mandate of any of the 123 Cornwall Council members. The Labour Party, after 12 years of contempt for Cornish aspirations to self-government, failed to win a single seat. The last few decent human beings left in that party must now surely be starting to look for a new political home.
The Euro results were also disappointing for the English Democrats, who do not recognise Cornwall as a nation. They came tenth in Cornwall, with only one-sixth of the MK vote. Across the ‘South West’ zone as a whole they did rather better, polling 1.6% of the total, compared with 1.0% for MK, but with ten times the population to which to appeal the margin should have been much greater. In fact the EngDems in the ‘South West’ did poorly in comparison with England generally. After London, this was their worst result in terms of share of the vote. Which suggests that Wessex folk are wary of a party that wants to impose a ‘one-size-fits-all’ English Parliament upon us.
The lessons for Wessex run wide and deep.
The first is in minding our own business. Cornish nationalism is now an established fact, the cultural posturing having broken through at last into real political clout. A firm line should now be drawn under those delusional claims that Cornwall ‘will want to come in with us’, that ‘it’s not viable’, ‘it doesn’t fit a rational pattern of English regions’, or that ‘the Cornish thing is purely cultural; if we promise to support the language, they’ll be happy to be part of Wessex’. Cornwall has never been an integral part of Wessex, having always maintained its distinctive character and it’s not just flogging a dead horse to suggest otherwise. The Cornish are our neighbours and can be our friends and our allies. Wessex has enough enemies without adding Cornwall to the list.
The second is a lesson in patience. MK was founded in 1951. It has journeyed over rocky roads to reach its present position. In the 1980’s, its General Secretary defected to the Social Democrats (though came back again, empty-handed) and a hardline Marxist cabal made it unelectable. It isn’t unelectable now. The Wessex Regionalists are relative newcomers, constituted as a party in 1981. But we can be confident that the tide of history will be turning our way too before very long.
The third lesson is that challenging the consensus works. MK is not middle-of-the-road. It describes itself as a modern and progressive political party, a party of principle, campaigning for a better deal for Cornwall and a fairer, more equitable world. After 30 years of Thatcherism, ceaseless centralisation of power within England and across Europe, unregulated free markets gone mad and a culture of greed and growth engrained everywhere, it’s time for alternative politics to make its move.
Finally, MK is succeeding because others before it have failed. A wide-ranging cultural movement has rekindled the flame of Cornish identity, yet as confidence in that identity has grown, so real control by the Cornish over Cornwall has continued to diminish. Government initiatives to help its economy are not even run from within Cornwall. Non-party action has failed to dent the Whitehall armour: a 50,000-signature petition in favour of a Cornish assembly was simply dismissed for nonconformity with the New Labour project. It is likely that Wessex will have to go through a similar process of maturation, realising that the cultural groundwork may make us angry about what is happening but it will not on its own enable us to get even. Faith in the goodwill of the London-based parties needs to wear away completely before folk turn to the only conclusion valid in the long-term. That only we, ourselves, can right the wrongs that afflict our region. The Wessex Regionalist Party is here to welcome each and every one as they reach that resolution.
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