PETER HITCHENS: We need a genuinely new political party, not a rabble of rebranded Blairites

Author: 

C. Morrison,   Chas, Bill 

Date: 
Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - 23:30
Article link: 

 

Jack | 24 February 2019 at 02:04 AM :
*** What is wrong with politics is the malaise which has infected the entire country. Everyone has been infantalized. Families don't want the responsibility of looking after their elderly relatives any more (social services should be doing that), or the responsibility of raising their children, who grow up in creches or with child minders.***

The public don't really have a choice -- blame ruling politicians and the socially destructive system they inflicted, not its victims.
In a modern fragmented society, many people have to live far away from relatives. Even when they don't, how can they be responsible for caring for elderly people or children when the State's economic ideologues have set up a system whereby they are *all* expected to constantly be out at (officially-defined) "work"?
Incidentally, do you realise that "carers allowance" is not issued to those over formal retirement age -- as in, grandparents who would previously have been more able to care for children but now may well need to keep on "working" instead?
Or that, however much the likes of IDS might try to deny it, the means-tested Universal Credit he as DWP minister fronted for Unum actually makes it less -- not more -- viable for families to live together?
Back in the 1980s there was an arrangement -- Home Helps -- which functioned well ... unlike the few minutes of rushed 'care' accorded to the elderly and ill nowadays.
The public didn't demand that change, any more than they demanded that at Council level there be a proliferation of political correcter apparatchiks, nests of 'development officers' etc. instead of limited resources being expended on useful things such as care and infrastructural maintenance.

*** Politicians don't want the responsibility of running the country. ***

Establishment politicians and their party franchises (differentiated wrapping paper, but near enough identical contents) were long since bought by transnational corporate interests and/or are adherents to ideological fanaticism they are usually careful to mask with semantics, especially at election time.

...

I cannot understand your obsession with re-nationalising the railways. As far as I am concerned, and I speak as a one time long serving commuter, the railways are far better now than they ever were. My local station is now open all day every day including weekends whereas when I first lived here it was rush hours only. A new line and platform has been opened at another local station and trains are far more comfortable and clean than before. . I often use Virgin trains to travel to Cheshire and find the trains comfortable, clean and always on time.
London termini such as London Bridge, Liverpool Street, and St Pancras have been transformed.
Re nationalising would be a disaster and leave us at the mercy of people like Len McCluskey, an appalling prospect. Are you reverting to your early socialism?

...

Many people argue that Shamima Begum should be brought back to Britain and tried here. I cannot understand why anybody thinks the British courts have the right, let alone the duty, to try Shamima Begum.

If I were her defence lawyer I should immediately argue that
"this honourable court does NOT have jurisdiction in the matter before it".

Her (alleged) misdeeds were all perpetrated in Syria. To me, that fairly and squarely means that she should be tried in Syria, by a Syrian court and before a Syrian judge. If she is found guilty her punishment should be determined and administered in Syria - and if that punishment happens to be hanging then she should be hanged by a Syrian hangman.

It is quite simply no business of ours.

(There is a red herring here, which is sometimes trotted out - if herrings can trot. It is argued that we do not extradite people to countries which have the death penalty. But she is already in Syria - so there is no question of extraditing her.)

This nonsense, of British courts purporting to have jurisdiction in matters in which they clearly do not, has been going on for some time - since long before ISIS was heard of.

Think of the pop star Garry Glitter, who allegedly had sex with children in Thailand. (Since a British court found him guilty do I still have to use the ritual word "allegedly"?)

I do not for one moment condone Glitter's misdeeds, but they were surely a matter for the Thai courts, to be punished under Thai law. At the time I was both surprised and amazed that there was no diplomatic reaction from Thailand at this blatant infringement of their sovereignty.

Reverting to Shamima Begum, if the Syrian court hangs her, then the question of her British citizenship and/or the revoking thereof, becomes academic.

If they merely sentence her to prison, then after her release will be time enough to debate whether or not she should be allowed back into Britain. (My guess is that she would by then be an old lady, and not much threat to anybody.)

 

 

 

 

 

Own comment: 

There are still a few thinking people left in the U.K., although they are an endangered species. Peter Hichens happens to be one of them on most issues.

He takes on the case of the U.K. denying entry to one of their citizens, and attempting to revoke her citizenship. He makes the same point that I have always made: One day they will come for you. Once you accept that the government can revoke citizenship for one reason, excpect those reasons to multiply to anybody they find invonvenient.

There is certainly a sense of injustice in this young stupid woman being stripped of citizenship for going to whore herself to jihadis, when the U.K. itself was sending money and political support to these same people. If they were so dangerous, then all those responsible for aiding them using British taxpayer money need to be stripped of their citizenship as well, that is, if we even accept the premise that citizenship can be revoked, which I do not. This is just virtue-signalling and U.K. roguery rolled into one.

Then there is the issue of whether the U.K. has any legal standing in this issue, given all her alleged crimes were overseas. A government can only punish people for crimes committed on its own soil, and as Bill correctly points out if anybody is to try her it is the Syrian authorities.

I do not expect any of these to make a difference to anybody on this case because Islam, sadly, blinds not only its adherents but often also those who oppose it - often because propaganda has taught them that Islam is to blame for everything when most often the cause is much closer to home - as if all the suicidal tendencies of the West would disappear if Islam were to vanish.