Introducing Comrade Dawkins

State needs a big stake in JLR

Dear Editor, 1948 was an important year for the British car industry.

In that year we had the second largest car industry in the world and in spite of a world war we had an industrial base to be proud of.

In 1948, for the first time under the new Jaguar brand name, the company launched two new models called the Mark V and later on the world famous XK 120 model. Two fabulous vehicles.

In that same year and just down the road a certain car company, which unfortunately no longer exists, called Rover launched a new vehicle inspired by the American Jeep and using readily available aircraft aluminium – it was called the Land Rover.

Thanks to Gordon Brown we are about to get a taste of 1948. Last month the IMF predicted that the UK economy would shrink by 2.8 per cent which will be the worse contraction in our economy since 1948.

Gordon Brown’s policy of reckless borrowing is projected to leave the economy saddled with more debt than we had in 1948, and that was after we had fought and won the Second World War.

Sixty years later we now have a relatively small car industry that is almost entirely foreign owned. This country produces about 1.5 million cars a year and that production is overwhelmingly dominated by the three Japanese manufacturers Nissan, Honda, Toyota and the German manufacturer BMW.

This almost exclusive foreign ownership of our car industry is yet another reason why this country is so ill prepared for Labour’s recession.

As the financial crisis gets worse, we will all be forced to watch as these foreign owned companies begin to shut down or reduce car production in the UK.

This government has had plenty of warning of this over the last 10 years about the dangers of foreign ownership but has done nothing to reverse this trend. They chose to let Rover go to the wall and they stood passively by while Jaguar and Land Rover were passed from pillar to post by foreign car companies. Owned by BMW when Labour came to power in 1997, then sold to Ford in 2000 and now sold to TATA last year.

At the same time over the last 10 years we have seen how other foreign car companies have retreated to protect their own home production.

This government has watched passively as Dagenham closed, as Browns Lane closed, as Ryton Closed and as Vauxhall at Luton closed.

That is why the Government has been floundering over the last two months in response to calls for help from Jaguar Land Rover.

They simply have no idea what they to do when confronted with the problems of trying to support foreign owned car companies.

For two months we have had mixed messages – Gordon Brown saying he will do what he can to help and Peter Mandelson saying he will not let Jaguar Land Rover fail.

These are all empty words and promises that will be shown to have little substance.

If Peter Mandelson says Jaguar Land Rover will not fail what will he do when TATA tries to move production of the Defender model to India which will be a likely option for them in the future? Will Peter Mandelson try to stop it? If TATA moves the Freelander model from Merseyside to Slovakia to reduce production costs, again a serious option for TATA will Peter Mandelson stop that? Of course he won’t, TATA will do what is best for TATA. We have allowed Jaguar Land Rover to fall into foreign hands and the loss of control is the price we will pay

Our European competitors do things differently, of course they don’t hand their industry over to foreign companies.

The French and the Germans have not dithered for months, they have acted immediately in the national interest and offered huge financial support packages to their national car makers.

The national German car industry employees about two million people and makes about five million cars. They have put massive loans and subsidies already into their car industry and have introduced a scheme to give new buyers a £2.5K subsidy to buy a German car.

The French car industry produces about three million cars per year, employs over two million people and has already announced a huge range of assistance including a £1,000 subsidiary to buy a French car.

The French Government has even hinted that they may take a stake in their own car industry.

What companies does this government chose to take a stake in – it pours billions into the banks.

They then put another £12 billion into a crazy wasted VAT reduction scheme.

If this Government had the slightest idea how to support manufacturing in general or the car industry in particular then they should have bought Jaguar Land Rover last Match from Ford instead of letting it go to TATA. The price tag then was £500 million – that’s about £33K for each of its employees. That would have been a bargain.

They could have then have put perhaps £3 billion into a development fund to built up the company and then floated it off ten years later ensuring that it remained British.

It’s not too late. Forget about European rules on state aid, the Germans and the French have.

This Government should seek to take a large stake in Jaguar Land Rover, perhaps even purchasing it and be prepared to make the necessary investment to build up the range of models.

Coun Nigel Dawkins,
Birmingham City councillor for Bournville,
Cotteridge and Stirchley.

Well, I must say I never though I'd see the day when Tory would want the state to buy a failed company. The reason that Jaguar-Land Rover keeps being put up for sale is because it is not a viable business. Dawkins is a member of the party that ran down the car industry in the first place. He is standing to represent the party that sold the remains of the British car industry to a German firm, I'm sorry but how dare he complain.

This Blogger is not a fan of neither the Thatcher or major governments but lets put this in perspective. It is an accepted part of mainstream economics that industries come and go. Both of Britian's leading party have form when it comes to nationalising failing industries. The labour Party started the trend when they went messing with coal in 1948. Labour compounded this in the 1960s by taking control of the steel industry and thus sealing the fate of British heavy industry (the contribution of Harold MacMillian who's Mussolinite corporatism saddled British industry with inefficient poorly sited plants and gave both workers and employers a raw deal in collective bargaining). The Conservatives soon got in on the action by nationalising large chunks of the aviation and ship building industries. Ship building like coal mining had been in decline since the 1890s, but aviation wasn't doing to badly.

Lets look at the car industry in more detail. I am inclined to agree with Counsellor Dawkins that in 1948 the British car industry was in a state of some strength. The ravages of war and the level of industrial development in the UK circa 1948 relative to the rest of the world meant that in 1948 the British car industry was second only to the American.

In 1948 Italy and France were recovering from war and their national car industries were a shadow of what they are today, the mighty German car industry is almost entirely a post-war construct. Volkswagon didn't produce cars in any volume until 1949, the year of the foundation of the Federal Republic. the rest of the world offered no competition, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (with the notable exception of Czecholslovakia) were light years behind the West. In the Far East China was experiencing civil war, Japan was a semi-industrialised American colony, South Korea was almost entirely rural. The current success stories of motor production Mexico, Turkey, Iran, Egypt barely had paved roads.

In such an economic climate is it really surprising that the UK's car industry was in such good shape? I don't wish to knock the British car industry unfairly but I think that in the 1950s a heavily protected market led to a degree of complacency that bled commercial flops. Even the iconic Mini could only be produced by the BMC at a lose!

The death knell came in the 1960s with state interference. the Planning Board bankrupted the successful Hillman company by forcing them to move production from the West Midlands to an undeveloped part of Scotland. Likewise; Tony Benn's 1969 merger of the two main players the British Motor Corporation and the Austin Motor Company into British Leyland proved a disaster. The two companies proved impossible to integrate, unionists made restructuring impossible thus destroying the entire industry, duplication and design problems lead to financial meltdown and a dwindling customer base. Leyland just could not compete with the cheaper, better engineered and styled cars from Europe and Japan. We have seen the same thing in the USA with GM, Ford and Chrysler. Then as now nationalisation beckoned...

The Thatcher Government starved the car industry of funds-however, they did try to salvage what remained in the former of Rover Group. Unfortunately Rover Group failed because a company of its size just couldn't stay afloat in the world of modern mass manufacturing. The reason that Rover passed out of British hands was simple. There simply was no longer, the skill capital, or desire to keep a substantial car industry.

The Reckoning

The job of government is to protect the people. With the peoples consent government acts as an arbitrator in disputes through the courts and Police, thus enabling the peace to be kept. The rule of law enables people to govern themselves. The state gets it's power from the people. The only legitimate base for state power is that the people have devolved their powers to the government. The Government has a defensive role-this defence can be extended to health and social security in the form of mandatory insurance.

The Government has no place in industry. Industry is the providence of the private citizen. The Conservative Party has historically had a greater measure of respect for the private citizen than the Labour Party. It would appear that Nigel Dawkins wishes to cash this inheritance in at the pawnshop of broken policy.

It is now recognised that the UK was never a great manufacturing nation. Britian has never had a trade surplus. Today manufacturing nations like Germany have trade surpluses of 150 Billion Euros a year. In 1900 the UK had a trade deficit equal to over £16 billion in today's money, the national income was about £400 billion a year (2008 £). The country have a massive trade deficit that was plugged by the financial service industry and shipping. The same is true today. Manufacturing contrary to popular opinion has not declined, it has merely grown more slowly than the rest of the economy. In 2006 the UK exported nearly £450 billion worth or manufactured goods, that's more than ever before.

The UK's industrial economy has been changing for a long time. Government intervention merely makes the pains of adjustment worse. If the coal industry had been allowed to decline gracefully instead of being left to slump, maybe the coal mining communities would have been able to us their own ingenuity to adapt and improve their own lives immeasurably. Likewise government intervention in the steel and car making industries succeeded; not in helping the poor by giving them jobs but adding to their ranks by running down the industry so it couldn't compete with Europe, East Asia and Brazil.

Governments can't run companies. Governments are kept in power by voters. They can't make hard decisions that affect their workers when their workers are their bosses and pay their wages! They are in power for just over a decade at most and thus can't think about the long term. This short sightedness is great for running a county. We want leaders on their toes. We want business' on their toes, however that is business' problem not Gordon Brown's!

A Proposal

If a successful firm like TATA can't make a go of Jaguar Land Rover I don't think anyone can. Dawkins concern for his constituents and the countries manufacturing base is admirable but miss placed. If the UK is to survive in the new economy it must move up the value chain. The engineers at Jaguar Land Rover have valuable skills that can be put to use in new firms which are viable for the next century. There is no point propping up outdated sunset industries in an overcrowded market. If the Government gives Jaguar have a billion this year it will have to give it another half a billion next year and every year. Is it really worth it? Why not give that half billion to a new West Midlands County Council (like the one that existed before Thatcher destroyed our local government)? The council could set up a new bank to support local industry. A bank that charges low interest and gives generous loans. It could underwrite new industries. New industries that will see the West Midlands made a manufacturing powerhouse once more.

I'm talking about new technologies like wind turbines and fuel cells. Highly skilled precision industries, a thousand new metal bashing shops, independent and creating real communities around those who work their.

Why throw good money after bad? If Jaguar falls give the workers a hand up not a hand out.

Don't vote Tory 2010 if you support free markets and hard work!

List Books

Have found an awesome site called List Books!

List Books allows you to sell unwanted books for free. All you have to do is fill out a simple form for an account. To purchase you just have to click buy.

The site is set out much like Amazon. Books are organised into categories much like Amazon's e.g. children's, military, thriller, gay, lesbian, transgender etc., you have the option of browsing lists or using the internal search to find a particular title.

There is a reasonable chance of finding what you want; as currently just under 20,000 titles are listed. The site is being spread through word of mouth, so sales can be slow. I have around 60 titles listed at present and I've been a member for 4 days, so far I've not sold one.

The site is maintained by a Mr. Lee Penny, who seems to be a kind of wealthy eccentric. He is giving away a website that clearly has a fair degree of commercial potential and paying the running costs out of his own pocket.

The site often undercuts Amazon's market place because sellers have no listing fees, subscription or VAT costs (most are clearly individuals getting rid of old books not dealers) . The buyer pays standard Royal Mail Rates for delivery. Unlike Amazon payment is not automated so you have to arrange payment with the seller via internet. Most sellers have paypal, although all accept cheques and postal orders.

I would recommend the site to all readers, I have already told many of my freinds, it is a great service.

List Books home page

How Nick Griffin Made His Millions

Nick Griffin is a wealthy man. He has never had to complete an honest days work in his life. When he is not jetting around the world, or travelling round the UK (in a crappy Rover 75 I would hope!) spreading the word of hate he can more often than not be found at his South Wales estate. It is here that he plays at being a country squire and hosts the annual BNP Red white and Blue Rally... Sorry I mean Festival.

Some of this cash is old money. The Griffin's are not a a poor family. Nick's father is a successful accountant and the family trust no doubt pays out a nice annuity... This helps explain the estate, private education and most crucially why the BNP has been able to sustain deposit crunching defeats like the 3.6% vote share bludgeoning at the by-election Henley in 2008. As a point of reference turnout was just over fifty percent and the Green party won 3.8% of the votes cast.

This is not to say that Nick Griffin is just a spoiled brat who has used his daddy's money to further a frankly quite pathetic political career. No, Nick Griffin has been quite successful at adding to the family pot and by extension the coffers of the British Nationalist party. Nick Griffin is the high powered co-owner of an employment agency and foreign language school.

How decent and sensible of him you might think. Mr. Griffin is clearly a true gent, a real country squire who just wants to help all those poor, displaced White British who have been put out of a job by the unwashed hordes of French-Canadian bankers and Indian Computer Science PHD's. His language school must be a work of genius. You can just see it now, rows of nicotine stained old women on long term sickness benefit and paunchy skinheads sitting in a class room learning to know their enemy. May be Richard barnbrooke could set up a film school so they can learn how to shoot, soft, gay porn flicks? Help finance more election defeats.

However this is not how the Griffin business empire works....

In 1980, Nick Griffin became close freinds with Roberto Fiore a key suspect in the Bologna Railway Station Bombing. The Bologna bombing was carried out by Neo-Fascists in a city famous for its communist links, 85 people were killed and 200 injured in what remains one of Europe's worst peace time terrorist attacks.

Fiore moved in with Griffin and the two shared rooms for several years (and possibly more if the bisexual rumours are true). The two of them developed a new ideology called 'The International Third Position'-essentially a poisonous mixture of Roman Catholicism , Neo-Nazism, Neo-Fascism and the occult. It is somewhat like the Ku Klux Klan.

In more recent times Griffin and Fiore have gotten into business together. It is Fiore who manages the day-to-day running of their businesses. Easy London (Londra Facile) is an employment firm that assists Italian speakers in finding employment in Britain! It is also involved with advertising in Italian speaking countries for immigrants and provides advice and naturalisation classes for those who have come over. Speaking from a liberal perspective this is a noble undertaking-but a bizare one for two virulent nationalists and noted xenophobes to be involved with. Especially if you consider the recent British Jobs Campaign.

The language school is another bizarre undertaking. CL Languages, specialises in Italian but in the 10 years since it was founded has expanded into teaching other languages. The school gets a lot of its custom from new immigrants; many of whom are of African or Asian Origin.

Even more bizarrely for a successful company (it has 100 students at a time who pay £30 an hour for tuition). Its accounts, which are managed by Griffin senior showed a profit of only £2,214 for the 2007 financial year. This leaves you wondering; where does that money go?

Edgar Griffin, who was expelled from the Conservative Party in 2001 because of his links with the BNP, admits that his clients business is 'substantial'. Citing confidentiality he refused to tell the Guardian newspaper what the school did with its money. In the same article Simon Darby refused to comment on speculation that the BNP was receiving funds from the school. He stopped short of saying that in refusing to comment on the allegations he was 'just following orders' by stating that 'he had never met the man', but that he knew 'that [the Griffin family] knew him well'.

I have presented the case it is up to you to make up your mind as to whether or not the leader of a party that bases much of its its anti-immigration stance should be helping immigrants get work and become naturalised. I for one feel that it is highly ironic that immigrants are being made to donate to people who publically state that they don't think that they should even be allowed into the country in the first place. That Nick Griffin and Fiore should be involved with those who actually want to intergrate (like almost all immigrants do) and that these brave souls money might end up being used to agitate against them is quite frankly macarbe.

The Guardian Article

Easy London (Site is in Italian)

CL English (refrence on a listing site)

South Birmingham BNP: Their Progress to Date

Here is what our opponents are doing at the moment:

Every citizen of Birmingham should be ashamed that the BNP can get three branches established in our city.

They are kicking off their European Election campaign. The simple truth is that the BNP know they are no hoper's, that's why they pump so many resources into second order elections. Getting a seat, or seats in the European Parliament will give them credibility (not that it has helped UKIP).

Currently the BNP are drawing crowds in the low hundreds to hear them speak. I guess many of them are bused in. At the last election they were able to stand a candidate in every Ward-that's one candidate in all 40 Wards. Most of them kept their deposit...

VOTE JUNE 4th 2009!
We are lucky in the West Midland European Constituency. Our seat threshold is set so high the BNP will never get. Turnout in Euro elections is never above 40%, so it is easy for the BNP to get a seemingly high result. This might transform itself into funding, media attention and eventually political power.

WTF???

A pretty goddam funny video.

A trip inside the warped mind of a believer.

The Socalist Workers Party: Parasites?

The exploits of Militant Tendency in the 1980s are well known.

They nearly destroyed the Labour Party and helped clear the way for Thatcher's wholesale demolition of local government. Selfish, short sighted and blinkered, they are three polite ways to describe this 'party within a party'.

Militant; was an evil seed born in the 1920s and 30s by Leon Trotsky himself and left to germinate in the body of the British socialist movement.

This blogger is no friend of the Labour Party, Unions or 'socialism' of any shade but he does respect Neil Kinnock's struggle against Trotskyist factions within his party.

Trotskyism is a cancerous ideology. Formed by a bitter Trotsky in the decade before his assassination it appears to be a wholesale rejection of the authoritarian strand of communism born from the ashes of post civil war Russia.

Trotsky paints a beautiful image of a pure communist world-a democratic world in which everyone chooses to be a communist. He apparently rejects the strictures of Marxist dialectics and avoids the pitfalls of Stalinism and Stalin's 'Socialism in One Country'.

This is patently absurd. Is this peaceful Trotsky who places so much emphasis on choice and education the same man who starved millions in Southern Russia for daring to choose democracy or anarchism over Marxist Communism? The very same Trotsky who ordered the murders of several hundred thousand 'enemies of the revolution'? The man who placed his machine gunners behind the lines so as to shoot unarmed conscripts who fled in the middle of battle? Yes it is the same man.

It is this man who's 80 year old ramblings still inspire Militant Tendencies successor; the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP is an essentially parasitic organisation that all progressives should avoid at any cost.

Leon Trotsky told his followers to infiltrate existing progressive organisations and use them to further the 'common cause'. He pointed to the British Labour Party as an organisation ripe for 'entryism'. This was militants goal.

After Militants defeat in the 1980s the members merged with the SWP. The SWP proudly proclaims on their website that they are 'will to work with anyone who will help build the moment'. Please compare those final four worlds with Trotsky's words from 1928. The Socialist Worker Party is a zombie that continues to proclaim Trotsky's oppressive, ill thought out, ideology through out the world by hijacking other organisations.

Just look at any anti-war march or anti-capitalist rally. Which parties name appears on the placards? Why, the SWP's of course!

This is because the Socialist Workers Party has taken over the 'Stop the War Coalition' and uses its name to further their own pathetic 75+ year old crusade for world revolution.

Or National Student Union has also been hijacked by this group of deluded perpetual teenagers and power grabbers. This denies moderate students and those who disagree with the SWP's outdated and brutal politics a say in how the organisation works and where they place their resources and campaigns.

The Respect Party has now been totally hijacked by the SWP. The two parties are inseparable and have been coordinated just effectively as Hitler 'coordinated' the German Civil Service. A vote for Respect is a vote for revolutionary Marxism and the corpse of Leon Trotsky.

Most worrying of all is the SWP's involvement with radical Islam. Despite the paternalist instincts of many socialists and the state the so called 'proletariat' is more than capable of looking after themselves. For this reason they reject the desperate middle class despotsy of the radical left.

This has left the SWP and other extremist groups to find new targets. Today you are more likely to find a Marxist trying to 'build the movement' at a Mosque assisting those who hate freedom more than any student Marxist ever could in getting the law changed so they can oppress their female relatives and children.

This is proof of the mercenary and ruthless nature of the SWP.

It is also especially worrying in this era of heightened racial tensions and unemployment. Of course if you believe (millennial cult like) that the revolution is just round the corner little things like fascism and harmony between races and communities doesn't mean anything. After all peace and equality is just round the corner, isn't it?

Of course down here in the real world we are concerned about such things. We reject cheap ideology and doctrine and believe that the little things, like challenging prejudice and oppression in our neighbourhoods is the ay to go.

I for one do not hate the rich and want to set people free to be happy and unequal. As a liberal I do not want to control people, patronise them and force them to be equal in poverty. Even the poorest person wouldn't choose that.

As a final note think about this.

The SWP can't get foot soldiers so what do they do? Get a load of young Muslim (mostly men) angry about Gaza or the Iraq War, create division not the (fascist sounding) 'unity' they so love so much, and then get them to chant their slogans and hold their banners. That then makes it look like they actually have support.

Such moves are stupid and small minded. Not only is it selling out. It is breeding support for the BNP. The BNP says that the UK is becoming like a 'Third World Country' with different groups fighting in the streets. The SWP only goes and gives them angry, dark skinned, young men smashing things up in (justified) anger.

It is retarded and idiotic. They are creating polarisation, driving otherwise sensible people into the arms of extremists be they the BNP or radical clerics.

Perhaps they only want lots of people to buy badges and stickers from their front Unite Against Fascism? Capitalism cuts both ways:p

Q. Who owns the NHS? A. Nobody

The tragic deaths of 1,400 people on a single A&E Ward in Staffordshire; over a period of just 3 years reminded me of a newspaper article I read a few years ago.

The colum was about how state owned companies and services; run by managers who get paid no matter what with little regard for 'clients' who may be hundreds of miles away care very little about the services they create.

The NHS is a text book case in this. The Health Minister has powers inherited; quite literally, from a Medieval Monarch. The NHS is no more broken in 2009 than it was in 1949, 1969, 1999, quite simply because it has a flawed design.

The National Health Service is the pinnacle of inhuman statist, corporatist, paternalistic folly. It showcases everything that was wrong about the political settlement post 1945. It was designed, in keeping with our feudal theme, to dispense the benefits of healthcare and sanitation to great full proles. Free healthcare is a noble aim, however, people's control over their own destiny must take priority over all other concerns. Otherwise you wined up with an unwhealdly, abrasive, corrupt and essentially heartless janopoly like the NHS. Such organisations become inefficient and subject to special interests. The petty politics of junior ministers, the news cycle and shop stewards.

It is often forgotten now that before the NHS many areas of the UK had perfectly adequate public healthcare systems. Birmingham was offering NHS style care decades before Labour managed to win a majority at a General Election. The NHS can never hope to compete with a locally managed system.

If our Government ever wants to improve the health system then they should decentralise. Just by reversing the Thatcherite reforms of the 1980s that created target setting and took healthcare out of the hands of local bodies, who understood local priorities and needs we could make a start!

Even better devolve the day to day running of healthcare to local authorities. Money to provide uniform coverage could come from central government if needs be. People could take control of their own health provision by encouraging health co-ops and private insurance. The private sector needs to be encouraged not scorned. Routine health and General Practice services could be provided a lot better by a private firm. Private firms have to look at customer satisfaction otherwise patients go elsewhere. A local GP with a monopoly on local care, soaking up grants for meeting Stalinesque targets, does not have this incentive.

If healthcare was provided through mutuals and co-ops then the views of members would legally have to be taken into account. The NHS, despite some recent improvements, is yet to have this oversight.

You own your body, demand to take back your healthcare!