What are the British Conservatives up to?

[Peikko 1,575]

I should have gone ahead and highlighted to whole piece, it's all that good.

[Peikko 1,575]

Here's another article on Tory world view:

At the Tory party conference in Manchester, where I currently am, there’s a whole herd of elephants in the room trumpeting forlornly for attention. One is the EU, about which I wrote in the Mail yesterday.

Another is Abroad. You would scarcely know that this country is locked in a desperate – and desperately under-resourced --war in Afghanistan. You would scarcely know that the world stands on the precipice of an Iranian terrorist state armed with nuclear weapons. These matters are presumably finally to be discussed on Thursday morning, in a conference session dealing with the whole of international relations and defence. On the one hand, you could argue that it’s a prestigious slot, just before the Leader’s speech in the afternoon. On the other, you can be pretty sure that the Leader’s speech will crowd out anything else in the news bulletins for the rest of the day and the following day’s paper.

It’s as if the Tory high command doesn’t want much attention paid to its foreign policies – or the absence thereof. As a result, stopping the Taleban from getting its hands on Pakistan’s nukes and the crisis over Iran haven’t even risen above the radar, let alone figuring as some of the most important problems Britain faces. Instead, as one prospective parliamentary candidate declared:

‘Spending cuts are the big issue of our time’.

That's a sense of priorities for you.

Another ten-ton elephant which has been almost wholly ignored is the attack upon this country's values both from within and from without. A speech on the fringe yesterday by the Community Cohesion spokesman Baroness Warsi illustrated the lethal confusion in the Tory party over this issue. She started by making the important point that there is now in Britain

a growing intolerance and illiberal attitude towards those who believe in God.

As a result, she said,

our country’s Christian culture is being downgraded

through such absurdities as schools trying to ban nativity plays at Christmas. But her own party actually backed the government’s criminalisation of Christian and other religious bodies which oppose same-sex adoption -- which has forced the Catholic church to shut down its adoption agencies altogether because it is now illegal for it to put its Christian principles into practice in this regard. So when it comes to beleaguered Christianity in the UK, far from defending it the Tories have actually been in the front line of attack.

Moreover, Baroness Warsi – herself a Muslim -- claimed that Muslims were being picked on merely for practising their faith, and quoted Peter Oborne’s claim that anti-Muslim hatred was

Britain’s last remaining socially acceptable form of bigotry.

These claims are deeply misleading and disingenuous, not to say profoundly offensive and alarming in the state of mind they reveal. There have indeed recently been some distressing attacks on Muslims. But given the serious provocation not just by acts of Islamic terrorism against British citizens, not just by the large number of radicalised young Muslims that the security services say they are trying to monitor, not just by the street demonstrations calling for infidels to be beheaded but also by the refusal by Muslim representatives ever to take a measure of responsibility for this situation or acknowledge that something is badly wrong with their religion and culture, it is surely a matter of note and a testimony to the innate decency and civility of British public life that there are thankfully relatively few attacks on Muslims. It is Jews who have to be protected at every single Jewish communal function, including synagogue services, against Islamic, neo-Nazi and other fanatics; it is anti-Jewish bigotry which has reached unprecedented levels since 9/11. Rather less decency and civility there, alas.

As Tim Montgomerie suggested on ConservativeHome, ‘anti-Muslim hatred’ is a term that should sound an alarm bell. It is currently applied not just to true acts of bigotry against Muslims but also to legitimate and indeed vital criticism and analysis of Islamist violence, intimidation and cultural imperialism. In its jargonised form of ‘Islamophobia’ it is being used increasingly to shut down debate, a move which is gaining alarming traction at the UN and should be fought tooth and nail by all who care about defending western rights and freedoms.

For the Conservative Party not only to fail to grasp this fact but even to lend itself to such attacks on legitimate debate shows once again that in its desperation to demonstrate its ‘anti-racist’ credentials it is in danger of putting itself on the wrong side of the civilisational threat to this country, which it so comprehensively and grievously fails to understand.

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[mawilson 2,133]

The funny thing is - the $ to the Euro is almost 1:1 at the moment, and has been over the last few months.

The Bank of England's (as well as the Fed's) unspoken policy is to reduce the value

of sterling (dollar) below its purchasing power parity level to make exporters more

competitive.

I expect sterling to fall even further (to US$1.50 or less) and below €1.00 over the

next year or two.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

The funny thing is - the $ to the Euro is almost 1:1 at the moment, and has been over the last few months.

The Bank of England's (as well as the Fed's) unspoken policy is to reduce the value

of sterling (dollar) below its purchasing power parity level to make exporters more

competitive.

I expect sterling to fall even further (to US$1.50 or less) and below €1.00 over the

next year or two.

If that happens then we might get our manufacturing industry back again.

[mawilson 2,133]

The funny thing is - the $ to the Euro is almost 1:1 at the moment, and has been over the last few months.

The Bank of England's (as well as the Fed's) unspoken policy is to reduce the value

of sterling (dollar) below its purchasing power parity level to make exporters more

competitive.

I expect sterling to fall even further (to US$1.50 or less) and below €1.00 over the

next year or two.

If that happens then we might get our manufacturing industry back again.

Hopefully.

Current fiscal expansion (government spending) cannot last forever - it will stop within a year.

The consumer sector will not be able to fill the gap left by the government unless the banks

return to their unsustainable and reckless lending practices (which is not likely to happen

because they still have overstretched balance sheets.)

It is the corporate sector that will have to keep the economy afloat, but it will be only able

to do this by operating out of a strong competitive position.