Dear Ealing Southall Constituent (and one or two others),
You are receiving this email either because we were in contact during the recent general election campaign or because I thought you might be interested anyway. If you would prefer not to receive further newsletters please let me know and I will remove you from the circulation list.
If you have your own list of local contacts please feels free to forward this on to them.
The views expressed in this newsletter are my own and may not therefore correspond exactly with UKIP official policy. However I am not aware of any conflicts.
July 2015 Budget: Osborne announces a 1 million increase in unemployment.
Well, he did not put it quite like that of course. What he did say was that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has forecast the creation of 1 million new jobs over the next five years. What neither he nor the OBR added however is that, on the basis of current trends, we will by then have 2 million more new immigrants. Simply deducting one figure from the other shows how net unemployment will increase. And it won’t be the immigrants who are unemployed, though many will be working for scant wages as part of some board and lodging scam, thereby adding to wage compression for the rest of us. The young, the old and the disabled are all set to find jobs more difficult to find.
He also tells us that unemployment is down to 5.5%, but omits to include the thousands of people now classified as self-employed but who are not earning a penny, the thousands more sanctioned off benefits, and the many thousands in part time jobs who want full-time employment. It’s pure window-dressing. The real danger is that he believes his own propaganda, which in turn will lead to further mismanagement of the economy.
Because the other big mistake he makes is to treat welfare expenditure as fixed. It’s not. It’s cyclical. It goes up and down with unemployment. He tells us that “Britain is home to 1% of the world’s population; generates 4% of the world’s income; and yet pays out 7% of the world’s welfare spending”. Frankly that is precisely what I would expect in the middle of a recession. Historically the surplus/deficit changes by about £25 bn for every 1% change in unemployment. And he knows this because he is only trying to save £37 bn over the next five years when the deficit is over £75 bn, and yet predicts a surplus at the end of it. Either that, or he can’t add up – you can take your pick!
Not that I hold any candle for tax credits, nor for the effect they have on breeding for benefits. There is certainly scope for savings there, and that is the big thing he got right. Credit where credit is due.
And then there is the news that average weekly earnings are rising by 3.3% per annum. What we are not told is how the rich are once again surging ahead at the expense of the poor.
For a fuller analysis of the budget please see my blog article here, and on Welfare reform here.
Wheelie Bins
Hot topic in Ealing just at the moment. But how many of you realise that in fact you don’t have any choice in the matter anyway? It is the result of an EU Directive (No. 2008/98, which you can read here if you are a masochist) which requires every council to recycle at least 50% of your waste. This can only be achieved with wheelie bins, so that you can sort your ex-stuff out for them. You might get some influence over the time of collection, or even the size of the bins, but what you can’t avoid is having to sort your waste. And that requires multiple bins. Thought you lived in a democracy? You don’t. You just have to do as you’re told.
So if you want to go back to living in a democracy there is only one action that should achieve this – voting OUT in the forthcoming referendum.
Executive Pay: A closed market.
The perennial problem of excessive executive pay is raising its ugly head again, this time as regards the BBC and NHS.
Now I am a capitalist in the mould of Adam Smith, who observed that capitalism is only of benefit to society if it is contained within a strong framework of law, both to control fraud and prevent deceit, and to ensure open competitive markets. It is open competition which ensures profits not profiteering, and these are the constraints which make capitalism a form of socialism.
Yet these days executive recruitment is entirely conducted behind closed doors by head-hunters. It is a closed shop. We don’t tolerate closed shops from the Unions, so why should we do so from head-hunters? You can find a broader discussion of the situation on my blog here. In essence I am proposing the introduction of a procedure I call Cheapest Competent Candidate. At it’s simplest it would require all recruiters for positions above a certain pay level, in the public sector at first but ultimately in Company Law for public companies as well, to produce a short-list of at least five names, and then to require each of them to bid for the job just as you would do with a contractor, appointing the lowest bidder.
Obvious, isn’t it?
Greece: The Dance of the Dunces.
We all of us I am sure have the greatest sympathy for the Greeks in their current predicament. So it has been with considerable frustration that I have watched the negotiators on each side make such a pig’s ear of sorting it out.
Of course Nigel Farage is absolutely right to say that the best solution for Greece is to abandon the euro and leave the European Union. However we have to accept that, for the present at least, the democratic wish of the vast majority of Greeks is to keep both. So the question arises: was there any other way they could have agreed a constructive way forward? I believe there was and still could be, and I described it more fully on my blog here.
Those of you who read my election address will recall how I castigated the Coalition for not setting up a Sovereign Wealth Fund to hedge our own national debt. Here we have an even more critical situation where one side wants to write off the debt and the other doesn’t. Hedging it could satisfy both.
Clearly this was a case for Economic Superman. Trouble was, nobody beamed me up! Ok I know that sounds a bit superior but honestly, when you are forced to watch a fiasco such as this, how else can you feel?
Calais: Global Migration into Europe and the UK.
They can’t come here. And they can’t go back. So simple logic tells us they must be provided for somewhere else in a secure and decently run refugee camp. So what have our glorious politicians done about it? Absolutely nothing.
Now I have never visited the Falklands so I could be mistaken, but at first sight they would appear to make an ideal location for such a refugee camp. The west or south islands in particular. A long way from the UK. Because they are secure and under British sovereignty we could make sure the camp is properly set up and run. Of course it will be expensive, but not half as expensive as any acceptable alternative, and it could be paid for, pro-tem at least, out of our overseas aid budget. Nor do we have to wait for the EU to sort itself out. We can get on with it unilaterally and immediately. Both genuine refugees and economic migrants to the UK could go there straight from Calais or wherever they are found, with the paperwork and appeals sorted out after they arrive. They could be given a small allowance to enable a local in-camp economy to develop which would, through trade, be of benefit to the islanders as well. They would eventually be taken back directly to their home countries, with new passports obtained for them where necessary, when they themselves decided they wanted to go.
So what are we waiting for?
The coming Referendum Campaign.
It is now clear that the OUT campaign will involve many disparate and well funded groups, of which UKIP is but one. You can read how our effort is coming along here. Do please consider making a contribution. This is YOUR future we are talking about. Watch out for future newsletters tackling in detail the issues involved.
UKIP is onto a winner either way. If the referendum is successful then our raison d’etre is fulfilled and we can all go home. If not it will leave UKIP as the ONLY remaining route out of the EU and our support will rocket. There would then be a real chance of UKIP filling the vacuum left by Labour and the LibDems as the only competent left-of-centre alternative to the Tories.
Our Values: Reflections on my 2015 General Election campaign.
I have a confession to make. I was over-confident. And as a result lost my deposit. Not what I expected at all. Even so, everyone else thought 4.1% was good going. My mistake was to get distracted for a few days by family matters; not to send an article to the Ealing Gazette like the other candidates; and missing one important hustings. Also if I had canvassed the Southall Green ward, which I hardly touched, as thoroughly as Southall Broadway, where I personally delivered a leaflet to every house and had many street conversations, and where most of my votes came from, I would probably have reached 8 or even 10%. Ah well, as my mother never ceased to tell me, pride comes before a fall. Whether having had some helpers and a budget of more than £1500 would have made any difference I am not so sure. Personal contact was everything.
I was also disappointed not to be offered a closing speech at the declaration. So for the record here is what I would have said:
“Well, it was not to be. Even so it has been a pleasure and a privilege for me these last few weeks to meet so many of you as I have canvassed around, and I can only regret that I managed to cover so little, about a quarter, of the constituency in all. Most of you I found to be open-minded and genuinely interested to discover for yourselves what UKIP stands for, and on the odd occasion where that was not so I was glad of the opportunity to correct some of the misconceptions that appear to have arisen about us.
We are of course a multi-ethnic, multi-class one-nation libertarian party. We believe that all races, all colours, all creeds and all faiths should be treated equally. We do not condone discrimination of any kind, positive or negative, and believe that selection should always be based on merit alone. We see ourselves as a left-of-centre progressive party with an agenda not only to create greater fairness and equality of opportunity in society, but also with a passion to re-establish Britain’s independence, her freedom to create her own laws, and to have a government that is accountable only to the British people and to no-one else.
Listening to the television coverage as it has unfolded this evening, it now seems that we shall have a small majority Conservative government. And whilst I share with you many reservations about that, I do rejoice that now, almost certainly, we shall get a referendum on Britain’s future independence from the European Union. I look forward to that campaign, and in particular to the opportunity to have a debate about the future of our country free I hope from the divisive party loyalties and prejudices that so often disfigure political discourse in this country.
Let us now come together as one nation, and as one society, to make this momentous constitutional decision. I am confident that the British people, including of course all of us here in Ealing Southall, will have the courage to stand up for our country, for her freedom and for her independence, as valiantly as any previous generation. Of course there will be the nay-sayers, and the appeasers, including much of big business, too timid to countenance any change at all. But we shall expose their bland assertions, and their lazy assumptions, and establish beyond all reasonable doubt the case for leaving the European Union.
So until then it only leaves me now to thank all of you who have made this election today run as smoothly as it has, to congratulate Mr. Sharma on his emphatic victory, and to wish all of you good night, such as is left of it, and god bless.”
Incidentally, you may be wondering where I am in this photo of the declaration platform published by the Ealing Gazette? So am I! As I recall Mrs. Sharma was standing close by her husband’s left shoulder, and I was close next to her. We both appear to have been airbrushed out! Ve-ry in-ter-est-ing! I shall leave you to draw your own conclusions.
New UKIP Ealing Website
Our local party covers the three constituencies Ealing Southall, Ealing North and Ealing Central and Acton, and our joint website is being updated in advance of the referendum campaign. You can find it here.
With best wishes to you all
John Poynton BSc. FCA FIMC
UKIP Parliamentary Candidate for Ealing Southall 2015
http://jepoynton.com
John Poynton 