THE CRASH-OUT

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Many in this country, and most in the UK, have no idea what the “backstop” actually is.

At its simplest, it involves re-locating a border, specifically the Eire/UK border. It is proposed that we try hard to think of an imaginary line in the Irish Sea and having solidified that thought, we must then regard it as the new border between the UK and the Rep. of Ireland. That’s what the backstop comes down to, an imaginary line in the sea.

It is all very fine in theory if you also imagine that six of the nine counties of Ulster just aren’t there, but they are and they are part of the UK, (The Good Friday Agreement says so). Therefore the backstop must involve either the UK ceding Northern Ireland to the EU or splitting the Union and allowing one member of it to remain in the EU while being a part of the UK at the same time. But then there is no BREXIT. Plan Z would be to tell Northern Ireland that they are on their own.

You can bet your ass that Arlene Frosty and her dull crew of ‘No-merchants’ won’t be ceded to anyone without blood on the streets first. They consider themselves to be more British than the Queen. In their mindset, the mainland is a continent to their immediate East called the UK so this EU-Europe thingy must be on the other side of Asia somewhere.

Down here the party line is, ‘there will be no hard border.’ In fact, Finance Minister Pascal Donohue was on Morning Ireland earlier and I nearly fell off my perch when I heard him say, “Dere will be no hard border on our border.” At this point it may be instructive to inform readers that, prior to the UK and Ireland joining the EU, neither party legally required a passport to enter the other’s sovereign territory. At that time, the early seventies, we had different currencies, different laws, different attitudes, different life’s experience and different Governments and yet we could travel freely between the two islands without formal ID. Effectively then, when we both joined the EU, nothing really changed between us.

So the British Government want out of the EU but without a hard border between the Eire & the UK. The Irish Government don’t care whether the British stay or leave but won’t accept a hard border. The EU would like the UK to stay but will try all it can to punish them for leaving. The EU also doesn’t want a hard border, hence the backstop that could only be patrolled by a Navy, but whose Navy? Meanwhile the UK itself appears to be split between those who want to leave and those who want to stay. A poster I used to have in the seventies just about sums it all up. It read, “Sometimes when you’re up to your bollocks in alligators, it’s hard to remember that the original idea was to drain the swamp.”

So May is heading back to Europe to re-negotiate because she doesn’t want a hard Irish border. The EU leaders she will meet don’t want a hard Irish border either but say that there can be no re-negotiation. Over here we are all shivering with economic fear as to what the outcome could turn out to be. Looking into my crystal ball today I see a future where at the eleventh hour, the EU Commissioners will send May back to London empty handed, leaving her and her Government with no option but to crash out of the EU. Varadkar & Co will jump up and down in Dublin bleating and moaning and saying it is unacceptable. Then Leo will be summoned for a come-to-Jesus meeting in Brussels and on his return, he will tell a perplexed Irish Nation that it was the best deal we could get and it could have been worse if Fianna Fail were in power.

In other words, business as usual, nothing to see here, suck it up and get on with it. It was ever so!

BACK TO BREXIT

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Among other things last evening, there was a mildly heated exchange in my company between and Englishman in favour of leaving the EU and an Irish woman promoting the Irish establishment’s party line on the issue.

This took place around a convivial dinner table in a Cork hotel and it informed well the confusion over each others positions. I have to admit that I do not understand everything about it, (who does?), but the Irish media are misleading us by claiming the British were lied to in order to get them to vote leave.

Certainly there were lies told by both sides during the run up to the vote but then consider the deluge of lies we were told before being forced by to vote on the Lisbon Treaty a second time. That Lisbon Treaty, as I wrote at the time, was the death knell for the Irish Constitution. It was an evil document which sneakily made an ignorant Irish Nation hand over its sovereignty to an unelected elite in Brussels in the guise of something else and we didn’t even get thirty pieces of silver in return.

It is my belief now that the British have realized this in their own circumstances and a majority of them chose to take their sovereignty back, hence Brexit. In that regard, I support the Brexiteers in their quest and I believe also that at some time in the future, we Irish will begin to grumble about leaving the EU but more about that anon.

The Irish woman above claimed that the British despise the immigrants and that was the core of the issue. In the seventies when I travelled first to the UK I left a 100% white Irish nation only to arrive in a very coloured London, much to my astonishment at that time. There were black policemen, bobbies with turbans instead of helmets, Pakistani shop owners, covered Arab women and the brown skins on many nations on the streets of the Capitol. Far from being anti-immigrant it seemed that the British welcomed them in by the ship load.

The accepted narrative here claims that the British en-masse are anti-European and that is patently untrue. It was De Gaulle who blocked their first application by Wilson to join and it took Ted Heath to finally get them accepted into the EEC. But like ourselves, they understood they were joining an ‘economic union.’ We didn’t vote to give up our Irish identity in order to be ruled from Brussels. That it has morphed into that now should make us all very nervous, not just the British.

From the outset, I always understood that joining Europe was a voluntary act and while membership brought responsibilities, departure if unhappy would also be voluntary. I mean, what kind of club would force a disgruntled member to remain in its club. Dissent from within is infectious. So for me, when the British decided democratically to leave then there should have been a simple two stage process. First would be the formal disengagement involving an army of civil servants from both sides. Once the terms of the severing of ties was agreed upon the second part of the process would plan the relationship the UK would have with the Union once outside it. What would be the social and economic rules of interaction between both parties?

I have written here and elsewhere that there has been a marked lack of generosity of spirit on the EU’s part in this wrangle. It would have been judicious at the beginning if the EU elite had simply said, “Look we understand you wish to leave and that is your right. But how about we have a trial separation for say, twenty years, after which we sit down again and discuss how it has worked out for both parties? We may discover that it has been a win-win for the EU & UK, in which case, carry on. Or we might also discover that difficulties, we didn’t anticipate twenty years before, had arisen in the interim and it would be in everyone’s best interests for the UK to re-join.” That approach would have been wise and sensible with no bridges burned on either side. Were the EU afraid of something they’re not telling us? I see no justifiable reason to make an enemy of the UK now by insisting the backstop is non-negotiable. In any negotiation, everything is negotiable right up to the signing of a legally binding agreement.

Back in 1945 among the ruins of Europe, Gen. George Marshall put in place a plan to rebuild Europe. Unlike our so-called bail-out recently, it was a generous and giving plan that didn’t involve loans to be repaid with interest. Instead it was a heartfelt positive flow of money and resources to get society and industry back on track in Europe after years of devastation. There was an upside for the Yanks in that they were the industrial engine of the world at that time and with the American monies received, the fledgling European Governments bought American equipment and ideas to build factories.

In among that, there is the little known story of the birth of the modern German motor industry. A British Captain was given charge of an area of Wolfsburg in 1945. His men came across a factory which used to make the cute beetle car for Hitler. This captain instructed his men to take some undamaged parts and make as many beetles as they could with them. They made thirteen and the captain then sent some of these back to the British army engineers in the UK to test the vehicles for suitability in the armed forces. In the weeks that followed, the largest ever post war order came for one single model of Volkswagen car and the savvy captain brought in German managers and engineers to get the plant in Wolfsburg up and going. Even more amazingly, the post-war British Government gave Volkswagen back to the Germans. It’s all so easily forgotten as the modern snowflakes chant their anti-British rhetoric.

Forgotten too is the sacrifice made by thousands of “Tommys” as they beached in Normandy for Operation Overlord only to be cut to pieces by withering German machine gun fire. They were fighting and dying to free France from fascism. They did so again in the Low Countries and all the way across Germany itself. A mere 73 years later an unelected European elite seeks to humiliate them for their audacity in seeking to leave the club they run exclusively for themselves.

The sin the Brits appear to have committed is their stated desire to be free to run their own country. That ladies and gentlemen is the foundation stone of true democracy.

What exactly is the alternative to that??

HOT AIR & THE CLIMATE – Part 1

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Dickie Attenborough kicked it off when, during an address to the UN, he stated that, “The collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizons if no urgent action is taken against global warming.”

Spotting a useful bandwagon from a mile away, our own Mary Robinson hopped on it with her own statement. “David Attenborough’s climate change speech ‘has echoed around the world,” the ex-Nodding President said. “We must take action with much more ambition to be on track for a carbon-neutral world. That’s why what David Attenborough said is important. The situation is potentially catastrophic, but it is doable. People need to take steps in their own lives. They need to get cross if governments are not doing enough,” she added. Undoubtedly she will soon be off again, jumping onto a huge four engined jet to fly half way around the world, (leaving a trail of CO2), to attend another lavish conference on man-made Global Warming.

Then I came across this Channel 4 documentary, by British television producer Martin Durkin, which argues against the virtually unchallenged consensus that global warming is man-made. A statement from the makers of this film asserts that the scientific theory of anthropogenic global warming could very well be “the biggest scam of modern times.” According to Martin Durkin the chief cause of climate change is not human activity but changes in radiation from the sun. Some have called The Great Global Warming Swindle the definitive retort to Al Gore’s, An Inconvenient Truth. Using a comprehensive range of evidence it’s claimed that warming over the past 300 years represents a natural recovery from a ‘little ice age’.

I urge all of my readers to take an hour out of their busy evening to see and hear the other side of the Climate Change story as presented by this film.

Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a very common, naturally occurring molecule that contains two oxygen atoms and one carbon atom. In everyday conditions on Earth, carbon dioxide is a commonly occurring gas that is all around us. It is colourless, odourless, is naturally present in Earth’s atmosphere and is an important part of Earth’s carbon cycle. All humans and animals exhale carbon dioxide when they breathe, and plants absorb it during a process called photosynthesis in order to grow. It is not toxic, poses no great danger to man and indeed if it were in short supply or even absent, the planet would die. Carbon dioxide is essential to all of us.

The thoughtful scientists on the above Channel 4 documentary present the real facts about CO2 and this Earth. Firstly, the feared greenhouse gases represent only a tiny portion of all of the World’s gases. Then 95% of the feared greenhouse gases are simply evaporation from the oceans. The other 5% of greenhouse gases contain as little as 2% carbon dioxide. Of that little 2%, man-made CO2 is in the minority. Only .117% of atmospheric carbon dioxide is directly attributable to human technology. That’s less than one per cent of the existing CO2.

So, is there really a problem? To this unprofessional eye, the weather is unsettled these last few years and the seasons are less distinct. But weather is not climate. However, if as the film contends, man-made CO2 is far too small to have any effect on climate, then what could? To quote another source, “It is ten times as likely that atmospheric CO2 is coming from natural sources, namely the warming ocean surface, as it is likely that it is coming from anthropogenic sources.” The changes in CO2 track ocean surface temperature, not global carbon emissions. Burning fossil fuels is not increasing atmospheric CO2. Recovery from the Little Ice Age, driven by the sun, is causing the oceans to release CO2. It is temperature driving CO2 release, not the other way around. Just as it has always been. As the sun gets quiet in the next few years, sea surface temperature will begin to fall, and the rise in CO2 will cease. If the sun stays quiet for 30 or 40 years, ocean surface temperatures will fall far enough to reverse the CO2 rise, the globe will enter a new little ice age, and things will get really interesting.” It is a web site really worth visiting if Climate Change is of interest to you.

But back to the fiery nuclear ball in the sky. “Sunspots have all but vanished in recent years.” Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago — and it signaled a solar event known as a “Maunder Minimum,” along with the start of what we now call the “Little Ice Age.”Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada’s National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a “stethoscope for the sun,” Tapping says, if the pattern doesn’t change quickly, the earth is in for some very chilly weather.

If you look, there are plenty of climate sceptics, of which, here’s a selection:

1) Global Warming Scam Exposed

2) ‘Global warming the greatest scam in history’ claims founder of Weather Channel

3) The Stunning Statistical Fraud Behind The Global Warming Scare

4) The Global Warming Scam by Vincent Gray

The above is just a small sample of the alternative view.

At this point I will end this article but I will write the second part of it shortly as I believe it is important that this topic be debated even more. It is not sufficient to state, as the IPCC is doing, that the science is irrefutable. That is not how true science works. It is however, how dishonest politics works and with the amount of money poring into fighting climate change measured in Trillions, we’d need to be sure it is actually a real problem first.

A TROUBLESOME KNACK

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Steve Jobs came to Cork in 1979 and set up his first manufacturing plant outside of the US. From the initial 14 workers who began operations there in 1980, the plant has grown to employ over 6,000 people now. Jobs had picked a greenfield site at the time, bought the freehold and had the building designed to look out onto open countryside of hills and valleys. It was, and still is a lovely view.

A small industrial estate sprang up behind Apple and beyond that towards the city, they built a large estate of social housing known as Knocknaheeney. For as long as I can remember though, on visits to the plant you had to drive past an itinerant settlement on the roadside about a hundred yards from Apple’s front door. It seems these people can just park themselves anywhere they wish and because they have a reputation for violence, the Gardai won’t intervene. On one visit, a meeting I was at, (in 2003 I think), was interrupted and the General Manager was called outside. He was told that the itinerants had taken over the entrance to the Apple staff car park and they wanted €10,000 in cash to vacate.

One way or another, that dispute was dealt with but I do not know if that particular scam was ever repeated. But the encampment across the road remained for many years and was a bit of an eyesore for senior managers when entertaining important visitors from overseas. As the years passed, Apple applied for and got permission from Cork Corporation to change the road layout at the front of the plant. In short, Apple procured the existing stretch of road from one side of the building/s to the other and in return, a new semi-circular detour was created consisting of about a half a mile of new roadway.

Then the Corporation approached the itinerants and offered to build them permanent homes if they would abandon their illegal settlement. The new estate was developed by the city council in 2013 and 2014 beside the new roadway. At the time we were told that round-the-clock Garda security on the housing estate building site cost taxpayers at least €300,000. We were not told just how much it cost, (at the time), to provide these brand new homes for the traveling community but there is a description of what was provided for them. It included seven one-bed bungalows, three three-bed houses, three four-bed houses, and nine spacious bays for caravans. The bays are each equipped with a standalone welfare unit which includes a kitchen/dining area, a living area, a utility room, a bathroom, and generous storage space.The homes came with solar panels and stoves with back boilers to maximise energy efficiency, built-in wardrobes, fully-fitted kitchens, and flooring provided throughout.There are hundreds of people on the housing list in Cork who would give their right arm for far less than that.

But the real grumblings of public dissent didn’t begin until we heard that, “A new community centre was built on the site to house community initiatives such as a homework club, computer literacy courses, learner driver courses, and boxing, but it was vandalised within months of opening.” Now if you know anything about the itinerants then you know that nobody from the settled community would have dared to enter that place and vandalise anything. There can be only one set of suspects for that act of stupidity. For the last couple of years on my visits to my sister’s home, I have often used a route that takes me past Apple and the new itinerant estate. There is no easy way to say it but the place is a filthy litter-strewn mess and again, that’s not down to the settled community.

This morning the Examiner has more news about the site. In an article entitled, “Illegal dumpers in Cork to avoid prosecution,” we are told that, “Prosecutions are unlikely against those responsible for a new wave of illegal dumping activity around a €5m purpose-built Traveller housing estate close to Apple’s European headquarters in Cork.” So it cost €5m of taxpayers money to house 16 itinerant families, (not counting the €300,000 for the Gardai), and in return, they have been illegally dumping suites of furniture, kitchen chairs, several white goods, plastic toys and containers, tyres, carpets, and metal over their back walls. The security cameras installed nearby to overlook the estate have also been subject to repeated damage and vandalism, said officials, meaning there is no proof of who has done this dumping, hence no prosecutions.

Incredibly, back when the site was finished, the members of three families on the halting site refused to move into the new homes and a standoff over facilities for horses and possible disturbance money ensued. Talks took place over several weeks and agreement was finally reached which saw all Traveller families relocate to the new housing estate in June 2015. Yes! You read that right. Beautiful new bungalows were built free gratis for these people not 200 yards from the shacks and caravans they were living in and the cheeky fuckers wanted “disturbance money” to move in. We’ll never know if they got that disturbance money either but what we do know is that when they did finally move, they made a filthy dump out of what was a really nice new custom made estate.

Let me pause to say also that I have met and known a few really nice and good itinerants but carry-on like the above really does blacken all of their names. The itinerants have been given the status now of a recognized minority so you may not tell the truth about them under fear of imprisonment. Because of that, I can only present the facts as I’ve laid them out here.

You can make up your own mind how you feel about it yourself but for God’s sake, don’t verbalise those thoughts to anyone else.