Conservative Policy Forum: Health & Social Care – BCiP Response 3/2018

août 4th, 2018

Group name: British Conservatives in Paris

1.  How has your experience of access and care in the NHS changed in recent years?  
One of our members with recent direct experience of hospital services was full of praise for response time & general professionalism encountered.
Another suggested discharge of patients from hospital could take place too quickly.

2. Given the profoundly different landscape of 21st-century healthcare compared to when the NHS was founded 70 years ago, what should the role of the state be?
“The state role should be to ensure a better synergy between the public and private sector, encouraging the development of a deeper and, therefore, cheaper complementary insurance market for private healthcare to enable more companies and individuals to choose this option.”
A major overhaul in the way the NHS is funded is necessary.

3. What more could be done to support individuals and families to take more control of their own health and wellbeing? How might we shift from a system based on treatment to prevention of disease?
Health issues should be included in the curriculum of all pupils.
Parents should be encouraged to bring up their offspring with a healthy lifestyle (cf diet, sports).
One member: families should be required to “invest more in the care of the elderly”.
Public awareness of health issues should be heightened through recourse to various media as well as through actions in hospitals, schools, employers (eg distribution of leaflets).

4. How might we help people to use the NHS responsibly, e.g. not attending A&E for issues that a GP or pharmacy can clearly resolve? How might we reduce the costs associated with the 1-in-15 patients who miss their appointments?
“Larger and combined GP and pharmacy practices could allow 7 days a week working, and more opportunity for people to secure appointments rather than being forced to go to A & E.”
“Operating an on-line appointments service would allow maintenance of a blacklist for serial cases of missing appointments and introduction of a refundable financial penalty when booking future appointments.”
Raise awareness of the sort of problems that can be resolved through a GP or pharmacy.
One member: make the first “port of call” an online advisory system.

5. How could we further raise awareness and tackle the stigma associated with mental ill health?
Inform the public including re recent developments in practice & understanding (eg re depression) – including through television, social media, educational institutions, even employers.
… also re the (significant) numbers of people involved; and cases of successful treatment/overcoming of problems.

6. What kinds of NHS services do you think could be put online/digital rather than traditional face-to-face?
Initial sorting exercises?
Appointments, repeat subscriptions?
One member expressed reservations about recourse to the digital – out of a concern that failures of communication on important items might occur.

7. What more could the NHS do to encourage people to want to work for it? What sorts of practices do you associate with really good employers in other sectors, which the NHS should adopt?
Try to provide for flexible & reasonable working hours at least for those for whom these considerations are important.
Work to develop a professional ethos including through encouragement of suggestions, & through better remuneration (not to mention ensuring professional conduct & due mutual respect eg between doctors & nurses).
Address practical concerns such as the cost of transport/parking/accommodation as related to the location of the hospital etc in question.

8. How might we continue to fund sustainably a growing NHS?
A separate & clearly NHS-labelled tax
More recourse to private insurance complementary coverage: reference to the French model would be instructive & helpful in this regard.

9. As the NHS budget grows, what health services or treatment areas should be prioritised?
More time should be devoted to initial point of entry visits to the NHS to ensure issues are identified up front.
To provide relief to the system, tasks which can properly be assigned to nurses/social care workers should be so allocated.
Preventive medicine should be developed & accentuated.

10. What could be done to raise awareness among working age adults about the risks of future care costs? How should we fund the need for increased social care?
An explicit separate (“ring-fenced”) tax would help.
Similarly a local “ring-fenced” tax for social care would draw attention to these issues.

11. What should be the guiding principles for Conservatives in making these decisions?
Be lucid & rigorous: eg benchmark against other comparable countries/systems.
Respect for the inherent dignity & worth of each human bein.g
Accessibility.
Openness to innovation.
Openness to a role for non-state actors.

12. Is there any other question you think should have been asked or observation you would like to make?
More in the way of comparisons to other countries would have been both interesting & illuminating.
The importance of cross-party thinking/consensus-building on such fundamental issues would have deserved some attention.
Pharmaceutical product pricing issues could have usefully been addressed.
The needs of certain specific groups (eg the homeless) might also have been addressed.

FEEDBACK ON PAPER

What did you find useful?
The international overall ranking chart
Indications on the evolution of the health situation (eg improvements wrt youth smoking, drinking, unwanted pregnancies).

What did you not find helpful?
Overly broad and optimistic policy declamations not particularly helpful in coming to grips with the issues.

Do you have any suggestions for how we might improve future briefings?
This brief was of good quality.
More and more in-depth comparisons with other countries –elsewhere in Europe, elsewhere in the “Anglosphere” or anywhere else– would be both stimulating and relevant from a policy assessment perspective – & this would apply for many different subjects.

CPF 18-3 Response – BCiP

Tags: ,
Posted in CPF Health & Social Care - BCiP response 03/2018 | No Comments »

French Politics – A Year Later…….The Reign of President Macron Appraised

juillet 3rd, 2018

BCiP member Monique Riccardi-Cubitt shares her thoughts:

Ever since the beginning of the 2017 presidential campaign I have not ceased, as have also done many others, to alert the opinion as to the potential dangers of Macron’s election and his stooge Brigitte. Their life record based on duplicity, venalty, vulgar seduction and moral corruption rendered them ill-fitted to govern France, and could only bring misfortune to the nation and to its citizens. In several articles published in French and in English on Mediapart and the British Conservatives in Paris’s website, I predicted the social, economic, human and cultural disaster of his future presidency. I quoted Professor Christopher Bickerton, University Lecturer in politics at POLIS and Official Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge, who has taught at Oxford, the University of Amsterdam and Sciences Po in Paris. On September 7th 2017 he published an article in The New York Times : Emmanuel Macron Will be Yet Another Failed French President.

 

Macron has been badly elected by default in surfing on the inner divisions and ancestral fears of the French nation. In capitalizing on the Right Wing’s debacle caused by the corruption and mafia actions of the Sarkozy clan Macron, the self proclaimed Jupiter,  succeeded in seizing the supreme power he and his accomplice wife had so ardently striven for. From the very beginning  he distinguished himself by his erratic misbehaviour, his abusive language, his infringements of the Law and of the Constitution  in pushing through liberticidal anti democratic, anti humanist laws. To such an extent that my prophecy on this state of affairs resulting in a country under a constant State of Emergency that allows the Goverment all possible abuses in repressive and restrive legislation, has become true. Not only have citizens’ civic rights, freedom and privacy shrunk considerably, but the country is in real danger of a civil war. Dark politico-religious, financial and économic forces are at work in an underhand manner. It is their implicit interest that such a catastrophic issue occurs, and the threat looms larger everyday. Such is Macron’s arrogant autocratic rule and his political imposture, that daily the destructive manipulations of the despotic author of the premonitory book Revolution and of his henchmen are becoming more explicit, even if apparently denied. As can be seen in the latest episode when the French Ambassador in Budapest brought support to the government of Viktor Orbàn whose migratory policies are all but similar to those of France. He denounced in a telegram to the Quai d’Orsay,  the true modern antisemitism, that of the Moslems of France and Germany … After its publication on the website of  Médiapart, the online newspaper, on June  29th 2018,  the Ambassador was dismissed and publically disowned by Macron. Yet in a first time he latter had declared not wishing to relieve  him of his post… It is characteristic of Macron’s erratic ambivalent credo : En même temps At the same time, allowing his words to deny the intent and the action, to say one thing and its contrary, to adapt to the changing blowing wind of the current opinion, to build a smokescreen where there should be transparency.

 

The result can only be disastrous for France and for Europe. Far from being the self-appointed saviour of Europe, the perversely ambiguous narcissic nature of Macron, his venalty, his Sarkozy-like hyperactive and incoherent manner of governing, his neoliberal policies giving priority to the wealthy few, the milliardaire upper-class, to the detriment of the middle and working classes who are nothing according to him, are steadily eroding and destroying the social, cultural and economic fabric of the country with ensuing disastrous results for the European Community at large. The middle and working classes, the very foundation stone of society, are feeling betrayed by Macron and his government. One can easily predict that, as did happen in the United Kingdom with the BREXIT’s fatall issue, this antidemocratic exclusion of the vast majority of citizens by a government sold to the rule of the financial markets and globalisation will breed in time rampant racism. A scapegoat will have to be found to justify the increasing proverty of the country and of its citizens. It will be easy then to accuse the migrants, the Moslems, those of a different religion or skin colour. At the end of this fateful presidency, France will no longer be a harmonious whole, a country united by a shared culture, its badge of honour and glory for centuries. It will be a worn-out country, deprived of its vital creative forces, bled to death by ‘This poverty born of money’ in the words of Joyce Mansour, the British Egyptian poetess who wrote in French. The country will be torn apart with internecine fights, thus denying the best of its cultural heritage based on Greco Roman and Christian values which recognize and welcome diversity in its universality. France will then deny and destroy the European dream and ideal and accomplish a FREXIT.

 

2018 has been declared the European Year of Cultural Heritage. The Italian Institute in Brussels under the direction of  Paolo Grossi, and with the support of the European Commission, has published a special edition in two volumes of its yearly review Cartaditalia  in four European languages : French, Italian, English and German. It aims to define, acknowledge, and seek the appropriate management to ensure the continuity in time of Europe’s tangible and intangible heritage.  During the presentation at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, on March 14th 2018, Pier Luigi Sacco, the scientific editor of the publication has declared ‘ Heritage is what defines our ability to cope with everyday life, to cope with the world’. It is altogether‘ A flexibility to learn from others, and an accumulation of what we have learnt…It is a complex vision of human nature , a source of superpower…’ whereas ‘identity is static, heritage is dynamic’.

 

The insight and wisdom of those words should inspire and encourage the European Heads of State to ponder on the new impetus to give to the European Union and create a dynamic other than the purely economic and fiancial aspect proposed byMacron.  If they would think in an enlightened humanist perspective taking into account the common past of all Continental countries, as well as of the United Kingdom, the relations with the Balkans, Russia and Turkey would be clarified and simplified. They would become an asset instead of being an obstacle. As in the past under the  Pax Romana  a common vision would unite Western Europe and Eastern Europe, allowing our European culture so rich and so complex to bring forward the values and the ideals that are our very own and have fashioned us through centuries. These values and ideals have been at the source of the New World beyond the Atlantic, yet in time they have diversified. In a rapidily changing world where new centres of power are emerging in Asia, Africa, the duty, the future of Europe, are independent of those of America whose culture owes much to ours. We Europeans have to remember our own values, to project them, to promote them so that the immense common cultural wealth that is ours in diversity, the very essence of the European spirit, might bring forward and carry through a message of peace and humanity.

 

Paul Cassia, University Professor of Law, has published on Mediapart a critical and objective assessment of Macron’s first year :

https://blogs.mediapart.fr/paul-cassia/blog/280618/la-premiere-annee-du-quinquennat-macron-livre-ouvert

He offers to the readers an E-book on the subject, to download free via a link in the article : La République du Futur. Penser l’Après Start-up Nation

MONIQUE RICCARDI-CUBITT

Paris, July 1st 2018

Posted in French Politics - Macron a Year Later, Lies & Deceits, Postures & Imposture, Ship of Fools, THe Decline of France | No Comments »

The Decline of France – by Monique Riccardi-Cubitt

juin 12th, 2018

France 3 TV Channel is about to release on June 13th a film BRIGITTE MACRON, UN ROMAN FRANÇAIS. It is yet another version of the nauseatingly slushy presidential saga, a tale of the seduction of an under-age pupil by a teacher his mother’s age, a woman without qualms nor ethics, who subjected her own husband to a crushing humiliation, and admits having brought suffering to her children in order to follow with impunity the ambitious plans she projected on a youngster enslaved to her will.

This latest version of a countlessly retold story during the past year and a half,  is aiming to whitewash her reputation and  exonerate her of all guilt since she supposedly acted ‘par amour’ notwithstanding the offence committed in the eyes of the law.  In so doing  it is meant to appeal to the heart of French citizens now that the presidential rate of popularity is plunging  in the opinion polls. Even Macron’s early supporters are denouncing the evil of effects of his social and economic policies, and of the accelerated rhythm of senselessly destructive reforms, dangerously disrupting the country.  It is the worse possible example of the French system of double standards, and a particularly potent symbol of its decadence and corruption.

LA FRANCE UN DÉCLIN J’ACCUSE

Monique Riccardi-Cubitt (Countess)
BCiP Member

 

 

Posted in THe Decline of France | No Comments »

A By-Election of Importance in Lewisham East – by Peter Huggins

juin 5th, 2018

The 2nd. of March was cold and there had been fresh snowfall. A train with a dozen carriages crawled painfully along the icy tracks in the early evening, each carriage packed with commuters hoping to get home to their dormitories after a day’s toil ending with a difficult trek to the station in a blizzard. Between two stations, the train shuddered and stopped. It did not move for four hours. The passengers were jammed together in intense discomfort. There was no thought of sustenance or a hot drink. Staying upright and surviving was all that could be hoped for. There were no toilets on the train. Movement was anyway virtually impossible for the patient passengers in the packed carriages. At last a mutiny began and passengers disobeyed the instructions of the railway staff to stay put. They opened the emergency doors, streamed out of the train and began to plod through the snow to the nearest station. Trains here are powered from a third rail at ground level. The railway staff were forced to turn this off for fear that a passenger might be electrocuted. The passengers plodded on, their town shoes sodden with the freezing snow. They painfully made their way home, on foot or by bus, where busses were running. The mutiny was uncomfortable but successful.
Public opinion was strongly in favour of the mutineers, not those running the antiquated railway. Where was this train? Was it perhaps the infamous slow train from Minsk to Smolensk? In fact it was the even more infamous North Kent line from London Bridge to Chatham, one of the world’s oldest and least reliable tracks. The train was stranded between Lewisham and Blackheath in South East London in the heart of a constituency about to lose its popular MP, the Labour remainer Heidi Alexander, who had been offered a deputy mayor (transport) job with the Labour ‘remain’ Mayor of London. Commuters to Blackheath and beyond were about to be given a channel for their protests about the railway, Brexit, knife crime and much else in a by-election provoked by Heidi Alexander’s departure.

Voters in the Lewisham East constituency do not have much sense of identity about their arbitrarily drawn up collection of wards. They do have a strong sense of identity with South East London.

On the North, the constituency is bounded by wonderful Greenwich Park with the Royal Observatory, the Naval Museum (Henry VIII’s palace), the ex-RN college, the Seamens’ Hospital and views across the Thames to Canary Wharf, St. Paul’s and beyond. On the East, the A2 leads over Shooters Hill to Kent. This is the Roman road to the coast and Chaucer’s pilgrims’ road to Canterbury£. It makes a straight line through Dickens country with Woolwich, the Royal Artillery and Military Academy on the North along the Thames. Here, in hulks on the river, convicts were assembled for transportation to Australia, sometimes working in Woolwich Arsenal during their wait. On the South of the constituency are the prosperous stockbroker Tudor suburbs of Bromley and Chislehurst. This is the country of Orpington Man, not a cousin of Neanderthal but a phenomenon of the 1960s when the Liberal party had one of its perennial recoveries from extinction. On the West are Camberwell and Deptford, old dockland country now gentrified on the river side. On this fringe of the constituency is the home of Millwall football club. (Song:’ Nobody likes us, we don’t care’.) Its somewhat bellicose supporters easily become agitated, particularly during matches with local rivals Charlton, Crystal Palace and West Ham. Further inland is genteel Dulwich. Like Blackheath, this is a chunk of Hampstead in South London.

The constituency is mixed socially and economically but mostly without extreme wealth or poverty. Lewisham East has rather more people in good jobs than the national average and higher levels of education. The Blackheath ward is prosperous and popular with city workers, civil servants, journalists and academics. A couple of generations ago it was ‘Separate Tables’ territory where retired colonels treated themselves to rock cakes behind the lace curtains of joyless teashops. Now it bustles with boutiques, exotic restaurants, prosperous estate agents and a renowned concert hall. In Blackheath and elsewhere in the constituency, voters worry about the Brexit effect on their jobs. Whether merchant bank high-fliers or Bob Cratchit pen-pushers, as they stand patiently during their interminable train journey from the City, they read in the Evening Standard of yet another Brexit-fearing finance house moving jobs to Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris or Dublin. These are people with much spleen to vent and much concern to express in the by-election.

Lewisham East and contiguous constituencies have a venerable political past with local MPs who included Gladstone, Morrison, Callaghan and Rosie Barnes, the Labour schismatic who won Greenwich from Labour and held it for the Social Democrats/LibDems for a dozen years. This is an area of moderate radicalism, unlike Woolwich to the East where there were traditionally many more Daily Worker readers and fellow travellers.

In view of the by-election, the most important characteristic of Lewisham East is the position of its voters on Brexit. This is ‘remain’ country, even more than the rest of London. About two thirds of the constituents voted ‘remain’. A friend in the constituency was recently witness to a heated political discussion in a local pub. A contributor referred to Jeremy Corbyn as a Marxist freak and Boris Johnson as a château bottled charlatan to general approval and amusement. This is not easy territory for the Conservative or Labour party leaderships.

The Labour majority of Heidi Alexander in the General Election was strong at over two thirds of the vote. The candidacy for her vacancy was fought hard and sometimes acrimoniously by two Corbynite Momentum and Unite candidates and a strong ‘remainer’, Janet Daby, committed to the Single Market and Customs Union. She won the candidacy by a large margin and got the ex post endorsement of Corbyn. All three candidates were ladies from ‘minority ethnic groups’, as required by the Corbynite pc doctrine. The LibDem candidate, Lucy Salek, was installed with little competition and backed with a visit from Vince Cable including photoshots at Millwall football ground. The Conservative candidate, Ross Archer, got 23% of the vote at the General Election and is well known in the constituency. He is a respected local party worker who has so far taken a consensual line on Brexit issues.

Especially with her ‘remain’ credentials, it would be surprising if the Labour candidate were to do badly in the contest. Ross Archer, on the other hand, is likely to be strongly contested for second place by the LibDem Lucy Salek. The UKIP candidate got less than 2% of the vote at the General election and is likely to fare even worse this time. There is a plethora of minor party candidates including the inevitable Monster Raving Loony Party which will give voters plenty of choice and some entertainment. The results of the election are likely to draw a flood of analysis and comment because this is a constituency strongly representative of the whole of London and the Home Counties. The election campaign takes place during the brief lull before the Lords amendments to the Brexit Bill come back to the Commons.

An election is worth many opinion polls and June 14th will be a milestone on the long march which began with the Brexit Referendum. The ‘People Have Spoken’ phase is receding and Parliament is back in control and centre stage. Ross Archer has a daunting job. He has to navigate a minefield of difficult issues. To succeed in obtaining the respectable vote which the Conservatives badly need, he has to explain, justify, reassure and cajole on many complex issues. A minimum list would include falling house prices, fragile commuter train services, knife crime, the inadequate police budget, the NHS staffing crisis, the continuing squeeze on real incomes and the Byzantine problems surrounding Lewisham town council attempts to take over and redevelop the Millwall football ground with a shadowy offshore financier.

I join with the Conservatives of South East London in wishing Ross Archer courage, good luck and success in a key contest.

Peter Huggins

The Author, BCiP member Peter Huggins, has deep roots in South East London. He was born in Greenwich, went to Primary school in Woolwich and grammar school in Blackheath. Before moving to work in Paris, Peter and his wife Christa lived in Blackheath on the fringe of Greenwich Park.

Posted in By-Election of Importance in Lewisham East, Chairman''s blog | No Comments »

Brexit: Speaker Dinner with Neil Carmichael – 31st May, 2018

juin 5th, 2018

With feelings on Brexit mixed within the British Conservatives in Paris, we followed on from Conservative MEP David Campbell Bannerman’s presentation last year of the case for « leave », with another speaker at our dinner on the 31st May, 2018 in Neil Carmichael, former MP for Stroud (2010 – 2017).

Neil spoke trenchantly in defence of the case for the UK to « remain » within the EU, which he admitted required reform but was not to be blamed for all the problems facing the UK. The country now faced the prospect of becoming poorer and less influential outside this major trading bloc, having prospered during the +40 years or so of EU membership. It was time now for Parliament, which had always maintained its sovereignty on behalf of the British people during this period of membership, to reassert its authority on the final outcome.

On the sensitive question of uncontrolled immigration which had been of concern for many leave voters, immigration from outside the EU had always exceeded that from within the EU over the +40 years or so of EU membership, despite the British government always retaining control of its own immigration policy.

Taking an example from international trade, the Chinese ambassador had been perplexed when told that the UK would now be able to trade more with China after leaving the EU, when to his knowledge Germany an existing EU member was already selling 3 – 4 times as much

On geo-political relations, all US presidents (apart from the current one) had been comfortable having the UK within the EU as a useful and influential channel for communication.

Posted in Speaker dinner with Neil Carmichael - 31 May 2018 | No Comments »

The Marxist Roots of the European Union

mai 15th, 2018

The inauguration by European Commission President J-C Juncker in Trieste on the 5th May, 2018 of a statue of Karl Marx, commemorating the 200th anniversary of his birth, has BCiP member Evelyne Joslain exploring the actual influence and contribution of Marxism on the construction of the European Union in her article below.

LES RACINES MAUVAISES DE L’UNION EUROPEENNE__ Evelyne JOSLAIN, 13.V.2018

L’actualité offre des faits éclairants aux plus malvoyants.

Le 5 mai, JC Juncker a non seulement inauguré une statue de 5 m, cadeau de la Chine communiste à la ville de Trieste pour le 200e anniversaire de Karl Marx, mais s’est fendu d’un discours qui ne laisse plus aucun doute sur l’idéologie inacceptable de l’Union douanière qu’il préside. Il a déclaré, faussement, « qu’il n’y avait aucun rapport entre la philosophie pure de Marx et les millions de morts et désastres » survenus partout où cette « philosophie » avait été appliquée à la lettre.

Juncker a salué « la contribution » et « l’influence » de Marx dans la construction européenne (sic!) et exalté son « inspiration créatrice », intimant par là que l’UE avait besoin de davantage de philosophie marxiste pour toujours plus de « justice sociale ». Il a soigneusement occulté les rapports de Marx avec l’anarchiste Bakounine et tant d’autres vérités qui dérangent, comme son anti-sémitisme et sa haine de toute religion.

Pour ceux qui croient que ce type de discours est l’apanage du pape François et que la France ne sortira du socialisme qu’en passant par l’UE, voilà qui devrait faire réfléchir.

Marx, idole de Juncker, était lui-même « mauvais », c’est à dire malsain, hypocrite et finalement inhumain. Comme les révolutionnaires français de la Terreur, qu’il admirait, et comme la plupart de ses futurs adeptes et « idiots utiles », des « intellectuels » de l’Ecole de Francfort, puis Sartre et Cie jusqu’aux néo-marxistes qui pontifient aujourd’hui, il était fils de cette bourgeoisie qu’il exécrait et avait eu accès à un enseignement supérieur pour en faire le pire usage: détruire un système existant (la propriété privée et le capitalisme) afin d’instaurer la dictature d’un prolétariat qui n’en demandait pas tant, prétexte en fait pour la dictature étatiste d’une oligarchie sur les peuples.

Marx s’est trompé sur tout. Sa théorie économique a échoué partout, laissant des champs de ruines. Ses idées sociétales également, son « déterminisme historique » étant voué, comme tous les déterminismes, à être brisé par les faits. Après les duretés des débuts, le capitalisme s’est révélé la plus grande force de progrès social que l’humanité ait connue. Les lieutenants de l’idéologie marxiste version dure ont laissé des noms dont la seule évocation fait froid dans le dos: Lénine, Staline, Pol Pot, les Kim coréens, Castro, Chavez, Maduro…mais ceux de la version édulcorée, Alliende, Peron…,tout en échouant lamentablement, ont laissé une trace « romantique » indue.

Il faut un procès du communisme et du marxisme, comme il y eut Nüremberg contre le nazisme.

Et justement, dans les archives du National Sozialismus d’Hitler trouvées en 1945, les Alliés ont découvert des documents provenant du conseiller économique Funk qui détaillent le maître-plan du Führer, plan qui incluait « une intégration économique de l’Europe et la création d’une Europe fédérale », elle même fondée sur la conviction de…nul autre que Lénine! « Que la fédération était la solution transitoire pour parvenir à une union complète de toutes les nations ».

Le mondialisme est une idée socialo-marxiste.

A l’entrée du Parlement Européen, une plaque avertit le visiteur que « La souveraineté nationale est la source des maux les plus criants de notre époque et que le seul remède final à ce mal, c’est une union fédérale des peuples ».

« Remède final »? Cela fait écho à « la solution radicale » de Marx et à « la solution finale » d’Hitler. Troublant.

Ainsi, l’UE n’est pas que le produit des élucubrations cyniques d’un Jean Monnet: elle est le dernier avatar d’une idéologie révolutionnaire, totalitaire, criminelle, génocidaire. Elle parle des maux du passé alors qu’elle compile toutes les théories issues du marxisme qui ont amené tant de malheurs.

Juncker, qui devrait porter un bonnet à grelots, assume ces racines mauvaises tout en refusant d’en reconnaître la malignité.

Le « marxisme culturel » qui sévit en Occident aujourd’hui est l’unique réussite de Marx. IL anime tous les mouvements de gauche, quels que soient les noms trompeurs qu’ils se donnent (travailliste, socialiste, démocrate, progressiste, liberal-démocrate, social-démocrate…), des bobos inconscients jusqu’à l’ultra-gauche internationale ultra violente, hyper motivée et subventionnée.

Bien sûr, l’UE n’a ni camps ni victimes physiques. Mais elle est ouvertement autoritaire et s’adonne à un capitalisme dévoyé: capitalisme de copinage qui ne profite qu’aux gros intérêts avant de devenir un capitalisme d’Etat à la chinoise. Elle broie les peuples, elle oppresse les classes moyennes, elle a déjà instauré sa dictature en ce qui concerne l’écologisme et la mise au pas des médias.

Et comme Marx, l’UE se trompe sur tout.

Le marché de dupes signé avec l’Iran (dont Trump vient de la sauver bien malgré elle) et le discours marxiste de Juncker devraient guider le choix des électeurs au prochain scrutin.

Evelyne Joslain

BCiP Member

Posted in Marxist Roots of the EU | No Comments »

PESCO vs NATO: The European Military-Industrial Complex

avril 17th, 2018

BCiP member Evelyne Joslain compares the EU’s proposed  « Permanent Structural Cooperation » (PESCO) concept for an integrated European Defence Force with the proven security of NATO backed by American power.

PESCO contre OTAN: LE COMPLEXE MILITARO-INDUSTRIEL EUROPEEN__ Evelyne Joslain, le 11 avril 2018

Le verdict de John Bolton sur l’UE, en 2016, était le suivant: « L’UE est aux prises avec d’énormes problèmes__financiers, migratoires, sécuritaires et autres, dont une monnaie en difficulté et aucun contrôle sur les crypto-monnaies qui se développent. L’Amérique voulait une Europe forte, or, l’UE est un ensemble moindre dans cette structure artificielle que n’était l’Europe avec la somme de ses nations libres ».

Espérons que Bolton réussira, sans le dire, ce que Ted Malloch, initialement considéré comme éventuel ambassadeur américain à l’UE, s’était vanté imprudemment de vouloir faire à cette monstrueuse structure supranationale: donner une impulsion calculée pour son implosion qui est de toute façon inévitable, comme l’était celle de l’URSS.

Cela serait un secours providentiel par l’extérieur car il est évident que les Euro-forcenés au gouvernail de cette nef des fous deviennent de plus en plus irrationnels et sont déjà surpuissants, vouant à l’échec toute révolte intérieure.

Un des écueils vers lesquels ils nous mènent, leur dernière marotte, lancée en novembre 2017,  c’est un nouveau « club » appelé PESCO (Permanent Structural Cooperation), c’est à dire une force de défense intégrée, (premier pas vers une armée supranationale avec son QG et un ministre) fondée par le Fond de Défense Européen, censée assurer aux 27 une « égalité de sécurité » (sic!). Ce qui est en complète contradiction avec « la libre circulation des personnes et des marchandises »…

Une fois encore, on est en pleine utopie impériale égalitaire.

Les Anglais, qui eux sortent du cauchemar intégrationniste, ont sur la question des vues très sobres. Conscients que  la sécurité de l’Europe est due à la présence de l’OTAN depuis 70 ans, ils ont le bon sens de concentrer leurs contributions militaires vers la seule alliance qui ait fait ses preuves, qui est en train de se renforcer à l’Est et pour laquelle quelques changements salutaires sont en discussion, comme le largage possible de la Turquie…

L’idée d’une défense européenne a elle aussi 70 ans et reste une vieille mauvaise idée car on ne peut qu’être sceptique sur son hypothétique réalisation. Mais les Euro-forcenés, toujours les mêmes (le « couple franco-allemand », Juncker et Cie), ont trouvé de nouveaux arguments de vente: « la sécurité sera renforcée, les faiblesses de l’Europe seront plus facilement repérées, la défense sera moins chère et l’Allemagne, stimulée par la France, va redevenir une vraie puissance militaire »…

Tout cela serait drôle si c’était sans conséquences.

Or, en novembre dernier, si 23 pays ont signé pour leur adhésion, ce que l’inénarrable Federica Mogherini juge  » historique »,  il s’avère que le fonds de plusieurs milliards d’euros requis pour soutenir le pacte n’est toujours pas réuni; que les pays de l’EU déjà réticents, la plupart défaillants, à payer la quote-part de 2% de leur PNB à l’OTAN, envisagent de gaspiller leurs maigres allocations au militaire sur ce projet alors même qu’ils vont être privés de 12 milliards d’euros par an du fait du départ des Britanniques; que des conflits de financement sont donc à prévoir entre OTAN et PESCO; que les activités concrètes de PESCO, qui serait opérationnel en 2025 avec pas moins de 17 « projets militaires »(!), ne sont pas clairement définies (on soupçonne des missions humanitaires, style ONU) et que les capacités militaires actuelles de la quasi-totalité des pays de l’UE sont risibles au regard de telles ambitions.

Par exemple, les trois corps d’armée allemands, la Bundeswehr, la Deutsche Marine, la Luftwaffe connaissent aujourd’hui des carences en matériel et en personnel qui les rendent impropres à une défense collective, malgré toutes les rumeurs de « remilitarisation du pays ». L’état militaire mental en est encore plus éloigné. En 1944, Patton disait des Allemands: « Il faut leur reconnaître une chose: ce sont des guerriers ». Il avait raison mais cela n’est plus vrai. Les Allemands ont été dénaturés par la culpabilité.

Qui pourrait croire qu’avec leur nouvelle mentalité pacifiste, les Allemands (l’un des deux pseudo-piliers du PESCO), se mobiliseraient pour les pays baltes, la Pologne, l’Italie, la Grèce?

Bref, beaucoup de grandiloquentes et vagues déclarations et seulement deux certitudes: une nouvelle bureaucratie, donc des impôts supplémentaires (puisqu’il ne serait pas question d’alléger les états-providence européens pour autant) et l’affirmation d’un orgueil aussi mal placé que dangereux à se désengager de notre unique protection fiable. Les récentes frappes en Syrie démontrent que, hors de leur propre sol, les Européens ne sont militairement crédibles qu’alliés à la force de frappe américaine.

Certains, par anti-américanisme pur, rêvent d’un « bloc continental » qui tournerait le dos à la « thalassocratie atlantique » (comme si nous Français n’avions pas toute légitimité géopolitique à en être !) et envisageraient même des accords militaires futurs entre PESCO et des voisins comme la Turquie et la Russie.

On peut craindre le pire.

Mais à l’évidence, derrière la publicité pour le projet actuel, se profilent des intérêts politiques et industriels qui n’ont pas grand chose à voir avec la sécurité de 500 millions d’Européens.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in PESCO vs NATO: European Military-Industrial Complex | No Comments »

Russia and Salisbury – Why did Putin really do it?

avril 10th, 2018

‎Former BCiP member Robin Baker poses the question of the real motivation behind the attempted assassination in Salisbury: 

The attempted assassination in Salisbury of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, presumably on the orders of President Putin, is hardly surprising. Both Russian and Soviet autocrats have regarded the right to have their opponents killed off as one of the perquisites of their office since Tsarist times. Stalin had Trotsky, then living in Mexico, murdered in 1940. Few will have forgotten the assassination of Georgi Markov by a poison tipped umbrella in London in 1978 or the killing of Alexander Litvinenko by poisoning with radioactive polonium-210 in 2006. The number of deaths in the UK in recent years that can be attributed to Russian agents is thought to be as many as 14.

However the attempt on the lives of the Skrypals has a unique and disturbing feature: it was carried out in a way that posed grave risks to other members of the local community, in fact by smearing the deadly nerve agent over the front door handle of Sergei Skripal’s house. Theresa May had come under much criticism over her reaction as Home Secretary for having tried to block investigations into the facts of the Litvinenko case on the grounds that they could endanger Anglo-Russian relations. It would seem that the method used on this occasion could have been designed to provoke a harsh reaction from the May government.

If it were so designed it was brilliantly successful, as was the reaction itself. May’s achievement not only through the steps taken by the British Government’s but in generating similar actions from friendly states, has been outstanding. Even Boris Johnson has been widely praised for his success as Foreign Secretary, something unprecedented in the life of this government. So Theresa May’s position as Prime Minister has been significantly strengthened. How does that impact on Putin?

Putin does not like the European Union. Russia does not wish to join nor would it be permitted to do so, the Russians see the post Warsaw pact adhesion of former allies to both NATO and to the EU as surrounding them and that they regard as a threat. So Putin perceives it as in his interest for the EU to be damaged.

The United Kingdom leaving the EU will certainly damage both the UK and the EU itself. This is now generally expected to happen. However it remains dependent on Theresa May winning the necessary parliamentary votes. That the Government is not confident of winning votes on Brexit in the House of Commons is shown by the fact that they have been avoiding them after their defeat by Dominic Grieve’s amendment to the Brexit Bill. That amendment means that MP’s will now have the right to vote on approving or rejecting the final terms of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. Should they vote to reject them the Government still cannot leave the EU without parliamentary approval, so MPs would vote to approve leaving without a deal. It is far from certain that the Commons would support such an outcome.

Theresa May’s weak position has previously encouraged Conservative MPs to vote against her. The strengthening of her position following the Salisbury attack may well make that less probable.

The question in my mind is whether that is what Putin wanted all along?

Robin Baker

Tags: , ,
Posted in Russia and Salisbury - Robin Baker, Welcome | No Comments »

Brexit and Transition – a view from France.

avril 4th, 2018

BREXIT ET TRANSITION – a view from France by BCiP member Evelyne Joslain, le 31 mars 2018:

Le 29 mars, le Ministre du Brexit, David Davis, a publié un article dans Brexit Central pour rappeler à ses compatriotes les progrès accomplis dans les négociations et pour faire le point: « Dans un an d’aujourd’hui, après des décennies d’adhésion, des années de
consternation et des mois d’âpres négociations, nous quitterons enfin l’EU et ce jour-là restera dans l’histoire ».

S’il est indéniable que les négociations ont pris beaucoup de retard du fait des blocages multiples dus à l’esprit de revanche mesquin des Eurocrates, les Brexiteurs ont tout de même bien avancé depuis le déclenchement de l’Article 50 et Theresa May, malgré ses
faiblesses et ses contradictions, a fait preuve d’un certain courage dans la tempête et d’une ténacité surprenante, comme si elle était dopée par les attaques de tous bords.

Le Projet de Retrait de l’UE est passé au Parlement malgré les Euro-nostalgiques fielleux et frileux. Début 2018, la « note de départ » à payer a en fin été fixée: 37.1 milliards de Livres Sterling payables sur…45 ans. Car si cette union douanière (aux droits de douanes très élevés du reste !) affiche entrée libre, la sortie, elle, ne l’est pas.

La priorité était de régler le coté humain afin de rassurer les citoyens directement concernés dans leur vie personnelle et pour désamorcer les tensions : le sort des expatriés anglais dans l’EU est désormais résolu tout comme celui des membres de l’Union vivant au Royaume Uni, dont 3 millions de Français exiles fiscalement à Londres et qui ne reviendront jamais. Les statuts de résidence sont inchangés et c’est une immense victoire d’avoir obtenu cela.

Enfin, le fameux accord marchand entre l’Angleterre libérée et l’UE, si épineux en raison des services financiers à inclure, est en bonne voie. Rappelons que le slogan des Brexiteurs ces derniers mois était: « pas d’accord, pas d’argent ». Au cas où l’impasse n’aurait pu être brisée, les Britanniques étaient déterminés à claquer la porte et à rejoindre l’OMC. Ce qu’ils pourraient encore faire en cas de coup bas imprévu car « rien n’est acquis tant que rien n’est définitivement établi ».

Reste en souffrance la question de la frontière irlandaise: les prétentions de l’UE à vouloir garder l’Irlande du Nord dans le Marché Unique et dans l’Union Douanière ne prévaudront jamais car c’est là une chose qui ferait éclater le royaume jusque-là uni, ce  « qu’aucun  Premier Ministre britannique ne pourrait accepter », a sèchement rétorqué May. Aussi l’obstacle est-il reculé à la toute fin du processus de sortie, ce qui est plus logique puisque l’on ne connaitra les détails de l’accord marchand UK_UE qu’en fin de parcours.

Enfin, a été conclu un accord pour une période de transition (Transition Deal) et là aussi les Brexiteurs marquent des points même si les plus pressés y voient un retard inutile vers le but ultime qui est de retrouver leur souveraineté pleine et entière à se gouverner
soi-même, leur système juridique ancestral, la liberté d’avoir sa propre politique étrangère et de commercer avec qui l’on veut. Ce qui n’empêche nullement le royaume d’être toujours une nation de la vieille Europe et de continuer une collaboration consentie dans certains domaines.

Pendant la transition, point capital car il répond aux revendications libertariennes du mouvement, les Brexiteurs ont obtenu le droit de pouvoir négocier les futurs traités marchands avec le reste du monde. En revanche, ils ont échoué à supprimer la Politique Pêchière Commune, l’équivalent sur mer de la PAC honnie, et l’industrie de la pêche, qui a beaucoup contribué à la victoire du 23 juin 2016, se sent à juste titre trahie. Toutefois, la transition est strictement limitée à 21 mois après le 29 mars 2019, ce qui place le jour de la libération totale des Anglais, et de leurs pêcheurs, au 29 décembre 2020.

De plus, l’attaque de Salisbury a ranimé un sentiment de sympathie appréciable envers nos amis anglais. De savoir qu’ils sont à mi-parcours et qu’ils tiennent le bon bout devrait faire passer la pilule de la transition. Qu’est-ce que 21 mois de plus dans le temps long d’une nation?

De plus, pour les aider à ronger leur frein, ils peuvent comparer leur sort au nôtre. Eux descendent de la galère tandis que nous, nous ramons enchainés, à cadence infernale, vers des écueils évidents mais que les élites aux commandes ne voient pas, ivres de leur vanité et aveuglées par une utopie qui est à contre-courant de l’histoire.

Or, l’Histoire n’est jamais charitable envers ceux qui cherchent à lui barrer la route…

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Brexit and Transition, Welcome | No Comments »

Best Wishes for Easter from Erika Angelidi

avril 2nd, 2018

“This is Erika Angelidi, the Representative of the Conservatives Abroad in Greece.
I wish to all Happy Easter! May Peace and Joy be in your hearts!”

Thank you Erika. Our best wishes for Easter to you in return from British Conservatives in Paris, together with our thanks to you for your thoughtful contributions to our blog.

 

 

Posted in Best Easter Wishes 2018 - Erika Angelidi, Brexit Negotiations & Public Opinion, Conservative Policy Forum - Values, Post Brexit - Erika Angelidi | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »