Wednesday 14 December 2011

BORROWING AT 2.2% INTEREST RATES - A RECORD LOW!

In the news this morning is the fact that the Government today sold £3billion of new 10 year debt at a 2.2% interest rate. A record low rate of interest! What an amazing vote of confidence by international investors in the UK and this government just days after we are supposedly "isolated" and "a pygmy nation". Contrast to Italy and Spain who paying 6%+ on their new borrowings. If we still had a Labour government and had not implimented an austerity programme then our borrow costs would be like Italy and Spain. That £3billion of debt alone would have cost us more than £100million a year in extra interest - more than £1billion over the 10 years!

Can you imagine the sort of income tax and VAT rates needed to fund Labour's spending policies and to pay the resulting penal rates of interest on our borrowings? Both coalition partners can be proud of the economic policies they have put in place since the last General Election that have brought us back from the Labour road to ruin.

Sunday 11 December 2011

A NIGHTMARISH, TOTALITARIAN, FEDERAL STATE

Although I've supported the Conservatives since my school days, I never was a true fan of David Cameron. When all party members were given the choice between Cameron and David Davies I firmly put my cross in favour of the latter. However since last Friday morning I've had to totally revise my opinion of our Prime Minister. For the first time in forty years we have a Prime Minister who has stood up for Britain's interests and used the veto rather than give in as usual with concession after concession as the continent moves ever closer to a single federal entity with a serious democratic deficit.

I really never believed that he would have the strength of character to say "No!" when alone and totally outnumbered. That takes real guts! Well done Mr Cameron! The 9th December 2011 may go down as an pivotal date in our nation's history.

Of course no sane organisation would ever hold its important meetings during the early hours of the morning. The fact that the EU chooses to do its business that way merely sums up what a completely ludicrious creation it is. Can you think of any other organisation that would choose to start proceedings with an evening meal and then effectively lock its participants in a room through the night until a decision is reached. Totally barmy!

With hindsight it is easy for some commentators to say that the veto outcome was obvious. The French established a set of conditions designed to push our PM into a corner. One of their key goals is to marginise Britain within Europe. Cameron was naive in thinking that he could negotiate an agreement - but that is the mistake that all previous British PMs have made. The EU doesn't do negotiations that in any way align with Britain's national interest - the EU just dictates and demands agreement on its own terms. Perhaps a weasily worded and worthless tit-bit is offered as a fig leaf but never anything of real consequence. Thank goodness that Cameron was wily and astute enough to see the truth.

Where does that leave the UK if the other 26 move ever closer to fiscal union and a single federated European state? Someone has described it as being left on the dock as the Titanic set sail. Others use the analogy of being locked outside a burning building. With the EU now accounting for less than 15% of world GDP we can start to lift our eyes to the wider horizon and the 85% of world GDP beyond. Its a shameful disgrace how we turned our backs since the 1970s on our kith and kin in the Commonwealth. The Queen always knew who our true friends were even if politicians couldn't, or wouldn't see it. Plus China, Brazil - well the list could go on and on - are the future for commerce and trade. True, they are further away than our European neighbours but economically they are the future. Germany may be an economic powerhouse and increasingly the dominant master of the EU but a lot of its perceived 'strength' has been built from the inbalances between itself and other EU states arising from the single currency. In the long term these inbalances are unsustainable - witness how it has left Greece, Italy, Portugal etc.

So the EU (excluding the UK) moves on to a Fiscal Union - a federal single state dominated by France and Germany and controlled out of Brussels. All the other 'nations' will have to get their annual budgets first scrutinised and approved by a non-elected group of commisionaires in Brussels before putting it in front of their own parliaments. Nations (strictly speaking, better now called regions) with less autonomy than Suffolk County Council or even our local Mid Suffolk District Council! Regional leaders that won't toe the line will be replaced as we have already seen in Greece and Italy. That is the nightmarish, totalitarian result that has arisen from the EU attempts to preserve its single currency ideology - a soviet union of Western Europe.

Thank goodness we in the UK are on the sidelines. The whole global economy will suffer when the Euro project ultimately collapses - we can't be immune to that - but with our own sovereignty, own currency and own democracy we can mitigate many of the effects from that fallout. Or, when the democratic deficit in the new EU State finally leads to a civil war within it, again thank goodness we are on the sidelines. The protests seen so far in Athens and Rome are a mere prelude to what's to come in the bleak EU future.