Guest 1551- Registered: 12 Jul 2015
- Posts: 5
#1
I am working on an essay on why we need a central government at all. Most people do not know their MPs. Especially if they do not live in the place they are supposed to represent. Why can't the County Councils run Britain with people voted into office who actually live in the locality. Working together they could come up with something where there is an elected Senator to each County who can sit in the Commons, and an elected Lord Mayor who can sit in the House of Lords, instead of the fiasco we have now. In the fifties there were forty-two counties in England. Now there are Ninety-two with Thirty-three in Scotland, Thirteen in Wales, and Six or Seven in Northern Ireland. Each with a County Council running the Counties quite well. With nearly every town with its local council helping them.
There is far too much money going into central government, and not enough coming back. The people of the Counties know their councillors well, and most have their people at heart. Surely, we can come up with a better system of elected government than we have now. I cannot put my trust in people who are already well-off before they take office. Their real interest cannot be with those who work hard for a living...there are too many temptations elsewhere. The Dispatches program opened that can of worms when two ex-ministers were charging lobbyists for their services, talking about fees of between £3000 to £5000 for a mornings work. Not many know about the all-party lobbying groups either. I believe Britain and Europe are being grossly over Governed to the tune of billions of pounds wasted on overcharging of expenses, as usual paid for by the taxpayer, who is their employer. Things will not change until the people wake up. Andy Stucken is right. The people of Britain seem to lack a backbone when it comes to voting. If Mr Corben gets in as Leader of the Labour party, maybe there will be a chance for the working man. He did not need the cruel criticism of Tony Blair the other day on national TV as Blair's Labour government was no different to the Conservative Party, and he seemed to do alright out of it...The people need someone like Corben, he is for the working man and Britain.
Blair's unjust criticism of Corben showed just how much he cared about the working man. He is out of politics now and making good money elsewhere, he should keep his mouth shut. With Blair and Brown you got the same whoever you voted for, Labour or the Conservatives. If you voted for the Liberals or other parties all you did was split the vote in favour of the top two parties. It is not a democratic system when the votes, which go to the minor parties are completely wasted...like in the last General Election and the Independent vote...
We do not need Eight-hundred non-elected Lords and Ladies either. As businesses are trimming their staff, so too, do we need to trim out politicians down to a manageable size. The House of Lords has become nothing more than a retirement home for elderly senior politicians who want a more lucrative retirement package, one which keeps their lobbing windows open. The only way to stop this insult to democracy is to change to a better and fairer system of government for the people by the people, before those growing up think what we have now is the norm. I believe the County Council system or one like it will work for Britain, because the people know exactly who they are voting for. Their voted in representative will be living in their community and have an interest in their community, also for a broader Britain...It will also cut the number of useless politicians down to size.
Guest 1555- Registered: 23 Jul 2015
- Posts: 29
#2
Reginald and Howard want me to blog on politics so I will. The more the merrier. I too believe that those who write in this forum should add their name.
I do not know how old my fellow bloggers are, but I was born before the Second World War; however, too young to fight in it. I have grown up with seeing the political scene change from post war elation to a feeling of anticipation for the future, to abject austerity for the masses, to opulent living for the rich and powerful. To a point where the utilities and British assets have been sold to powerful investors probably politicians and foreign buyers. After all there seems to be little knowledge as to who is buying our assets. However plenty of knowledge on who is selling them and who is not benefiting from them.
Why does society have to put up with people who can get away without paying their fair share of taxes? Surely, the government can change the law so that these tax havens can be closed and 122 billion in lost taxes will not be lost again. All it needs is a change in the law. Illegal and legal have become words the government plays with as the situation arises. Why should most of the people be expected to pay their taxes while others have mechanisms in place, like creative accounting, which most working taxpayers cannot afford, that help them to avoid paying their taxes...unless the politicians are in it also? In a fair society everyone should pay their fair share including those who are abusing the system...no matter who they are. This is not Communistic in any way. Not if it benefits the Community.
Reginald says the County Council idea is not viable. I say it could work as the people in their respective Counties do know who they are voting for. It is costing us billions in politicians who never seem to get anything done, but still get paid huge amounts in salaries. Expenses too, and what they can make out of the all-party lobbying systems we have in place. The system of non-executive directorships is rife. Share options are rife. And fees for services rendered as to Consultancies are rife, even nepotism of close family members is rife. There needs to be more transparency as far as politicians are concerned. It is only because the people as a whole suffer from reluctance to vote. Mainly because of an inadequate 'First past the post' voting system, which splits the vote that we do not get the true result of the vote in our General elections
If we go on as we are then argument will follow argument and nothing will come to fruition. I do not believe our MP is up to the job. He has too many distractions as a Whip in the House of Commons. We need someone who is totally committed to his or her constituency.
It would be better if each head of a County was an MP working closely with other County MPs, all duly elected. This system would give us 92 counties in England, 33 in Scotland, 13 in Wales, and 6 or 7 in Northern Ireland, all voting in proportion to each other. All Counties with a duly elected second-in-command who could sit in the House of Commons while the Main MP could sit in the House of Lords. Both could be of differing political parties.
Why do we have to put up with over 800 unelected Lords and Ladies, and 650 Commons MPs, plus the County Councils and town councils to boot? All with excellent salaries, expenses, and debit cards...plus a huge army of public servants. This, not counting the hundreds of MEPs and Commissioners we have in the European Union...We as a nation and a European Union are being grossly over governed and it is becoming worse as more are jumping on the Bandwagon...or is it the Gravy Train?
All we have for their 'Hard work' since Thatcher's time is Austerity more Austerity, and the constant bailing out of the banks by those who pay the taxes. I believe it is the bank's debt the taxpayer is paying off and not the peoples'. Iceland did not stand for it neither should we. When it comes to selling the banks off again plus selected publicly owned companies like the Royal Mail, the taxpayer is asked to accept huge losses, well over a billion, without any recourse to the law. As I mentioned before we may as well be ruled by a Dictator.
Those who fought in the Second World War for our freedom from tyranny are now in their late eighties and nineties and rapidly dying off. Why did millions of British Commonwealth, British, American, and Russian citizens have to die? Why? Because they were made of sterner stuff and would not stand for defeat by Hitler...It was lucky we had a politician who would not lie down. If we were invaded today, I believe our politicians would negotiate Britain to the invader for profit... They have the power and it seems the greed. The people have had nothing but austerity year after year. They do not even have a voting system that works.
It might seem harsh to some to criticise our politicians of today, but nothing has changed for the better for decades. The young still cannot afford to buy a family home at a reasonable price. The education system is in tatters. The NHS, I believe is being deliberately run down to planned privatisation. And in the end the working people will be the rent payers of those developers, big and small, who will exploit them. Britain has become nothing more than a giant game of Monopoly. It must be a game won by the people or the future will be bleak.
***
I have been in Dover since coming over from India in 1947 when all the British nationals had to leave. I went to St Mary's School in Queen Steet Dover, which no longer exists. I do not like the changes being done to the Dover seafront by people who do not really have the town's people at heart. I used to play in the rock pools with my twin brother under the prince of Wales Pier and had my first job in Dover painting the wrought iron legs, which are now filled in with concrete.
I feel a sense of loss at what The Dover Harbour board is contemplating. If the Yacht Marina is moved out of the inner harbour and into the bay it will become just another rubbish dump. It is obvious that big business is moving in against the wishes of the Dover people.
I worked at the Dover Harbour Board for thirteen years on the small boats before I retired in 2003 as a survey and environmental cox'n. The last ten yearssurveying the bottom of the harbour and its approaches. I know the tides and the bottom better than my own hand...and a lot of silt moving out there. If they fill the Granville Docks in, where I used to help unload fruit boats in the good old days. It will just become another huge lorry park in the future.
I also think the small boats are open to abuse by the swarms of immigrants coming over from France and further afield. With fewer customs, once the immigrants twig there is another way in they will take it. I have been to sea in three Merchant Navies since 1959 and have always believed Britain, being an island should have had a container fleet Merchant Navy manned by british sailors, the best in the world, trading with its Commonwealth. The Greek fiasco has proved the politicians cannot be trusted,nor the big Banks, to have any intrest in the working people of Britain, only in themselves... Who owns the town, is it business interests in Europe, the Harbour Board, or is there a hidden agenda. What is the plan for the Western approaches from Shakespeare Cliff to the Admiralty pier. QUESTIONS have to be asked and honest ANSWERS given. Already European countries have huge interests in our utilities and other, used to be publicily owned, businesses. We may as well not had a war, not when we are being slowly taken over by foreign interests. Britain was once a country to be proud of and brave people defended its honour and died for it. I am seventy-seven years old now and retired. I still remember the gaps left in the high street by German bombers, and those Dover people whomust have lost their lives there. Just what did my father and those brave people fight for? I had the honour of sailing with two or three merchant seamen in the fifties and sixties, who had actually been in the water a number of times after being torpedoed. Over fifty thousand seamen died and thousands of our Navy, Airmen, and Army died for our freedom. Will the young remember them when those left are gone. I no longer free free any more, only a sense of foreboding for our younger generation.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
#3
Why don't we just let Brussels sort everything out for us? It's been moving that way for years and sometimes I feel we are powerless to resist.
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 1555- Registered: 23 Jul 2015
- Posts: 29
#4
I have been looking at the blog totals of some of the bloggers. One has over 48.000 most have 8 to 10.000, but none of you seems to be saying anything of importance that will change the political landscape. There are people reading these blogs who do have the power to change things for the better; therefore, they must contain constructive ideas for the future.
Isn't it about time we began to see the real picture of what is really going on in Britain? We have Jeremy Corbyn, who has been a Labour politician for some time. He is a man I admire for his lack of criticism of his opponents; those who say the Labour movement with him as leader would be dead in the water. His main critics including one who handled taking Britain into the Iraq war have a lot to answer for. All did very well out of their time as leaders of the government, and I assume are doing very well now? What I cannot stand is the way allegedly honourable MPs are trying to scupper the chances of a man who has the working people at heart and not afraid to say what he thinks. A man who wants to give back to the people the publicly owned assets that were privatised over the last three decades by the politicians who must have benefited from those robber-baron decisions. To this day, the British public do not know who has profited from the sale of publicly owned utilities...who had the first preferences to the sale of the shares? I believe Jeremy Corbyn could change Britain, as far as the working man is concerned, by giving back power to the people, as long as the militants do not gain the upper hand in his government. What is needed is another Oliver Cromwell, a man strong enough to give the people a fairer government where the rich do not prosper from the sale of publicly owned facilities. Facilities where the profits are given back to the people to help fund health care and other public needs. They must not be sold to greedy individuals who would profit from them. Especially so as the owners are never known.
I am the first to agree that there are those in our society who should not be earning welfare benefits that far outstrip the wages of most of the ordinary hard working tax paying people. However, there are also those at the top whose salaries far outstrip the working wage by hundreds of thousands of pounds...sometimes even millions. Most of the latter do not even pay the taxes they should, instead accumulate vast fortunes in offshore and tax haven accounts, which are lost to the country of origin forever. I must include the politicians in the latter as they do not seem to be suffering austerity as those in the middle and lower income brackets who do pay most, if not all, of the taxes.
If these people want more than one child, they should be prepared to pay for the second child upwards themselves. Why should the taxpayer shoulder the burden of those who use their children as an extra income?
I believe a little hardship in life goes a long way to people finding work. However, I also believe it is up to the government to provide the necessary trade apprenticeships and education opportunities for the young to develop their skills for the future workplace. The last two years of school should be given over to teaching the young, who are between sixteen and eighteen, the life skills they will need when they do leave school. The old who are retired can be valuable in this enterprise as most have had the experience of living fruitful lives in a time where greed only hard work ruled the roost. Too many retired people are being thrown onto the scrap heap and forgotten...or worse, resented for what they have worked hard for. The old have a knowledge base that should be tapped to give the young the benefit of their experience. People keep moaning about the ageing population and yet among those retired are skills and experience that are being wasted. Skills where all the shortcuts of various trades and businesses reside. When these experienced people die, there is no recourse to their life expertise, as it is lost forever. The mark of a healthy society is one, which works together from the bottom up... Young and old together.
I was born in a time where I could choose my apprenticeship and after three to five years I would have a trade. I learned the shortcuts, which made me more efficient, from those who were older than me. We need to go back to that time, but without the militancy of the Unions which, brought about the downfall of Labour, by men seeking power for their own ends. I want to believe Jeremy Corbyn is not one of these, and the only way to know that is to give him a democratic chance to lead a party of the people...a Labour party with credibility. The New-Labour party under Blair and Brown, major critics of Corbyn, was only another way of saying Conservative...it became obvious after a short time they were in it for themselves. All it did was to give the politicians a merry-go-round of power. The power that gave a lot of them enormous wealth, with a false nobility at the end more lucrative than any pension except the bank. There is a deep division in a society which needs to be healed. It will not be healed if people are content to write blog after blog without getting anywhere. One constructive blog is worth thousands of mediocre ones, which say nothing, do nothing, and go nowhere. Blogs are meant to make people think constructively. To risk a cliché, some bloggers manufacture bullets for others to fire, and in the end achieve nothing.
The working voters need to back the only man who has proved time and again he has them at heart. Politics in Britain today has become a massive money spinner for those politicians who are skilled in the art of lobbying and counter-lobbying. Politicians can literally make millions in one term of office, and accumulate a massive pension to boot. When politicians are caught with their hands in the till, they should be heavily fined and expelled from politics. Not just reprimanded, then allowed to return to politics as though nothing happened...sometimes with an honourable title that has lost its meaning.
You must not believe everything the media prints either. It is like the Bible, full of truths and untruths, fairy tales, and fables manufactured by men who sought power over the minds of others, usually the most vulnerable. This blog may be controversial to some people, but the fact remains, Britain needs to find a new direction or this land of ours will have no assets to speak of and people living in perpetual austerity. What with the banks and austerity, which is not the fault of the people but of the monetary policies of the banks, we as a once great Britain is now continually in debt. We, unlike Iceland, have a future of continual austere trauma. Greece is already contemplating selling its airports to the highest bidder, what next its beautiful tourist islands? Is the European Union going to the highest bidder in Greece's downfall too? When will people realise it is not the Greek people's fault but that of the banks. The European Union is not working because it is being manipulated by corrupt people who have been allowed to gain great power.
America and Britain are to blame for the rise of Isis. Does America control European policy? It seems to have a heavy hand in Ukraine politics, NATO too? Where is the world going? Are we now in a tailspin to oblivion? It is about time we the ordinary people considered these questions...of who is to blame? The weather is in worldwide decline. The ice is melting. It is about time we pulled the plug on fossil fuels and went over to the cleaner options like solar power, hydrogen, and many other cleaner options. We cannot have a ruling elite and poverty stricken masses... Past history tells us so. This world is for all who live on it. Not everyone can be a captain of industry. Some of us need to be consumers for the world to work as a team. If greed is eliminated, this world can become a better place for all. I do not need religion to want a better world for I am not religious. It is religion, and political greed, which is at the bottom of all this trouble. Without religion and corrupt politics, people would focus more on what needs to be done. It's a pity so many of us cannot see that, for what we believe today is taught to us as small children. Something, which is making us blind to what is needed to live in a better caring world.
You do not need a Prophet to see into the future, for nothing could be plainer. We the human species have become a predator on our own kind. There is only one credible, provable power on this Earth of ours and one we will never overcome. We are planting the seeds of our own destruction. When we are gone, Nature will plant some more and continue on in another direction. The rich cannot live without the consumer and the consumer cannot live without the rich. All that is needed is a sharing caring world and that must start from the top as those on the bottom are always vulnerable to those who hold the power to change things.
Another law, which needs changing is the law of Euthanasia. The Dutch and the Swiss have it, so why not the British. There are old people suffering the worst humiliation at the hands of the so-called caring industry. I am one of the elderly and I would not like to think I have become a burden to my loved ones. My Will shall state my final wish, that if I become a non-person. Unable to think or do for myself I would wish my loved ones to make the same decision they would make for a beloved pet. I would not wish them to be in a financial constraint because of my inability to function as a healthy fully mentally capable human being. I do not want to become a vegetable if I have left instructions as to the method of my demise when I was in full command of my facilities. I reserve the right to die with dignity without politicians keeping me alive because people who are in the lucrative business of caring for the old have lobbied them to the contrary. Therefore, my Will shall be made to that effect. If my loved ones cannot make that decision, as they would for a beloved pet, then I could never forgive them for going against my wishes when my brain was intact. The law of Euthanasia must be in place as soon as possible as a great majority of people believe in it.
Recently a trained nurse Gill Pharaoh made the decision to end her life at Seventy-five after a lifetime caring for people she knew were suffering from not being their selves and worse. People who had become non-persons through a stroke or worse, the loss of their personality. She did not make this decision lightly and had the full cooperation of her loving family. What the people want in law should be made a personal choice in the country in which they live. It is not for the politicians or the doctors, who follow the Hippocratic Oath to the letter, to decide who shall live or who shall die...that life belongs to the sufferer and to those who love them, because of the prior permission given. The vets have no problem with a decision when much-loved pets are brought to them to end their misery. The doctors find it in their hearts to do the same for human animals. Animals as we are with a language, who have the capacity to make their own decisions when in full possession of their mental facilities. Religious thinking cannot enter into it because religion is a manufactured thing and a misguided belief in the Supernatural...no matter of what faith. The decision must be one of Natural selection made because a loved one does not wish to become a burden to their family should their quality of life become unbearable through a greatly diminished sense of self-consciousness...When all that is left is a live body of flesh without a functioning mind. If I have shocked people, I intended to. It is about time people faced the facts of life instead of living in a dream world...
***
I have been in Dover since coming over from India in 1947 when all the British nationals had to leave. I went to St Mary's School in Queen Steet Dover, which no longer exists. I do not like the changes being done to the Dover seafront by people who do not really have the town's people at heart. I used to play in the rock pools with my twin brother under the prince of Wales Pier and had my first job in Dover painting the wrought iron legs, which are now filled in with concrete.
I feel a sense of loss at what The Dover Harbour board is contemplating. If the Yacht Marina is moved out of the inner harbour and into the bay it will become just another rubbish dump. It is obvious that big business is moving in against the wishes of the Dover people.
I worked at the Dover Harbour Board for thirteen years on the small boats before I retired in 2003 as a survey and environmental cox'n. The last ten yearssurveying the bottom of the harbour and its approaches. I know the tides and the bottom better than my own hand...and a lot of silt moving out there. If they fill the Granville Docks in, where I used to help unload fruit boats in the good old days. It will just become another huge lorry park in the future.
I also think the small boats are open to abuse by the swarms of immigrants coming over from France and further afield. With fewer customs, once the immigrants twig there is another way in they will take it. I have been to sea in three Merchant Navies since 1959 and have always believed Britain, being an island should have had a container fleet Merchant Navy manned by british sailors, the best in the world, trading with its Commonwealth. The Greek fiasco has proved the politicians cannot be trusted,nor the big Banks, to have any intrest in the working people of Britain, only in themselves... Who owns the town, is it business interests in Europe, the Harbour Board, or is there a hidden agenda. What is the plan for the Western approaches from Shakespeare Cliff to the Admiralty pier. QUESTIONS have to be asked and honest ANSWERS given. Already European countries have huge interests in our utilities and other, used to be publicily owned, businesses. We may as well not had a war, not when we are being slowly taken over by foreign interests. Britain was once a country to be proud of and brave people defended its honour and died for it. I am seventy-seven years old now and retired. I still remember the gaps left in the high street by German bombers, and those Dover people whomust have lost their lives there. Just what did my father and those brave people fight for? I had the honour of sailing with two or three merchant seamen in the fifties and sixties, who had actually been in the water a number of times after being torpedoed. Over fifty thousand seamen died and thousands of our Navy, Airmen, and Army died for our freedom. Will the young remember them when those left are gone. I no longer free free any more, only a sense of foreboding for our younger generation.
Guest 1555- Registered: 23 Jul 2015
- Posts: 29
#5
When nearly 4,000,000 people voted for Ukip in the last General Election they may as well voted for the Conservatives. Cameron must indeed have been pleased that Ukip came along to split the vote. The voting system we have in this country is not democratic, nor is it fair, when you think those who vote Conservative have always voted Conservative. What UKIP did was to take the majority of Labour voters away from the Labour party. The voters who always sit on the fence; those who are mainly responsible for voting governments in, split their vote between the UKIP and the Conservatives. Hence we have a Conservative government in power and five more years of Austerity, mainly because the Labour Party under a mediocre leader had no force. Neither will they under the current crop of potential leaders, unless it is JEREMY CORBYN a man for the people. Mr Corbyn is known to be a fair and honourable man. Unlike his predecessors he does not lower himself to blatant criticism of his opponents, and has shown he is on the side of the working man and the public ownership of utilities and other past nationalised assets. WHAT he does not need in government are militant Unions who seem to strike and act, like spoilt children, when their exorbitant wage demands and leave requirements are not met. It is these greedy people who could scupper his chances. What is needed is a fair wage for a fair day's work. Also a fair vote of at least 40% or over of the membership before a strike is called. The public have suffered enough.
If the Labour electorate want to get anywhere they will need to turn out in bigger numbers at election times. And when they do, do not split the vote between the lesser parties, as then, their votes will count for nothing. The system we have at the moment will see to that. The Conservatives will vote in every election as that is the party of the wealthy, the not so wealthy, and the snobs. They see it as their duty to vote Conservative just as their fathers and grandfathers voted before them... They cannot see themselves as ordinary people, but above all others. What they have in common is that they all vote in elections for one party, whereas the people do not.
If the working man is too lazy or too apathetic to vote, or votes for a party that has no chance of getting into power, then they may as well not vote at all. But be aware there will never be a future for a working man's party unless working people do vote for the party that has their reasonable interests at heart...and vote in their millions. Nationalisation is good for Britain because the profits from publicly owned facilities can be put back into Britain to boost the NHS, the railways, and the nationalised Utilities, sold under Thatcher, and not go into the pockets of those privatised profiteers who will either take it out of the country as their own profit or invest it into offshore companies, banks, or tax havens, where it is lost to the country forever.
Make no mistake, the Blair and Brown's New-Labour government were no different from the Conservatives. The leaders were only in it for themselves, and are still only in it for themselves. The British people today are not the same as those who fought in the Second World War...the latter were made of sterner stuff. They do not have the same spirit or the willingness to fight for the values, which that brave generation believed in, or the values the working man should have by right. Even the media is different with its half-truths, blatant lies, and political affiliations, if and when it suits them.
How can the big banks own the land and the tax paying people be responsible for the losses those banks incur, except of course their CEOs, who never seem to lose. How can each and every citizen of Greece owe a debt of €30.000 to their creditors, unless it was gross or even criminal mismanagement by a corrupt government, before the last one was elected? The last government in Greece had no choice but to resign. I still believe the banks were behind that fiasco too? The European Union is not and never has been good for the British people. All that will happen is that the poorer nationals will migrate to the richer nations and destabilise them accepting wages lower than the basic British standard. Britain was brought up without Austerity. Most of the new European Union members were brought up to live on their wits and that alone will stimulate the 'Black economy to a criminal level.' All to the decrement of the British worker who has always been used to a decent living wage by law. In all fairness the basic wages of all member countries in the Union should be on par with the countries their citizens want to migrate to, before they are allowed to migrate.
I will never forgive this government for bilking the taxpayer out of billions of pounds in bailing the banks out and then selling publicly owned assets and bailed out banks back to the investors for what amounts to a huge profit for those who bought them back and a huge loss for the people who pay the taxes. Sometimes I wonder how many politicians jumped on the band wagon at such an opportunity. Something we the people will never know because the public never insist on asking for more transparency...is that how apathetic we have become?
Being old is not so bad for me. At least I will not be around when Britain is nothing more than an insignificant island owned by people who do not deserve to own, or to govern it. Administered by people who seem to be in it for themselves... Maybe that's what we deserve for being so complacent when it comes to seeking a good life for all and not just for the favoured few... Will our Britain ever change for the better? At this time I very much doubt it. They say a pessimist can always see the truth; an optimist has to suffer before it is revealed to them.
***
I have been in Dover since coming over from India in 1947 when all the British nationals had to leave. I went to St Mary's School in Queen Steet Dover, which no longer exists. I do not like the changes being done to the Dover seafront by people who do not really have the town's people at heart. I used to play in the rock pools with my twin brother under the prince of Wales Pier and had my first job in Dover painting the wrought iron legs, which are now filled in with concrete.
I feel a sense of loss at what The Dover Harbour board is contemplating. If the Yacht Marina is moved out of the inner harbour and into the bay it will become just another rubbish dump. It is obvious that big business is moving in against the wishes of the Dover people.
I worked at the Dover Harbour Board for thirteen years on the small boats before I retired in 2003 as a survey and environmental cox'n. The last ten yearssurveying the bottom of the harbour and its approaches. I know the tides and the bottom better than my own hand...and a lot of silt moving out there. If they fill the Granville Docks in, where I used to help unload fruit boats in the good old days. It will just become another huge lorry park in the future.
I also think the small boats are open to abuse by the swarms of immigrants coming over from France and further afield. With fewer customs, once the immigrants twig there is another way in they will take it. I have been to sea in three Merchant Navies since 1959 and have always believed Britain, being an island should have had a container fleet Merchant Navy manned by british sailors, the best in the world, trading with its Commonwealth. The Greek fiasco has proved the politicians cannot be trusted,nor the big Banks, to have any intrest in the working people of Britain, only in themselves... Who owns the town, is it business interests in Europe, the Harbour Board, or is there a hidden agenda. What is the plan for the Western approaches from Shakespeare Cliff to the Admiralty pier. QUESTIONS have to be asked and honest ANSWERS given. Already European countries have huge interests in our utilities and other, used to be publicily owned, businesses. We may as well not had a war, not when we are being slowly taken over by foreign interests. Britain was once a country to be proud of and brave people defended its honour and died for it. I am seventy-seven years old now and retired. I still remember the gaps left in the high street by German bombers, and those Dover people whomust have lost their lives there. Just what did my father and those brave people fight for? I had the honour of sailing with two or three merchant seamen in the fifties and sixties, who had actually been in the water a number of times after being torpedoed. Over fifty thousand seamen died and thousands of our Navy, Airmen, and Army died for our freedom. Will the young remember them when those left are gone. I no longer free free any more, only a sense of foreboding for our younger generation.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
#6