TRUMP UPSETS EUROPE.

Isn't it amazing how politicians pick and choose ?

A few short months ago, assorted political figures welcomed the contributions of American President Barack Obama when he encouraged the British electorate to vote to stay in the European Union, saying that leaving would bring nothing but disaster. Now, those every same political figures, Merckel, Hollande and others, have utterly rejected comments made by President-elect Donald Trump, telling him that Europe is perfectly able to manage its own affairs without any assistance or comment from him, thank you very much.

Trump, of course, has been saying things which run counter to the views and policies followed by the EU, consequently his remarks are unwelcome and receive short shrift. Obama's comments were fully supportive of the views and policies followed by the EU and were, therefore, seen as being wholly supportive of the status quo.

Politicians hate change unless it's initiated by themselves. They also hate non-politicians getting involved in what they see as their own fiefdom; most of all, they hate not being in control. Obama was in favour of the EU remaining unchanged and in the stifling stranglehold of Merckel et al; Trump

threatens to shake things up. Inevitably, established, powerful political leaders dislike and distrust him; what a shame for them that he'll be the real King Pin after Friday and will be the one pulling the strings.

TIME TO BURY THE NHS.

I am fed up to the back teeth with people whingeing and whining about supposed problems with the National Health Service and social care arrangements in this country. There is one problem and one problem only - people want the best and most comprehensive services in the world but don't want to pay for them.

When the NHS was founded, there were crazy notions that, over time, the general health of the nation would improve and the demand for healthcare would decline; how could anyone have been so naïve ? The truth, of course and as anyone with half an eye to the future would have realised, was that it would lead to an ageing population with different health needs, while scientific advances would lead to more treatments of every sort becoming available. An increasing and ageing population plus the identification of 'new' conditions, developments in treatment and new and evermore expensive drugs equals financial demands racing out of control.

As regards social care, in the past the elderly were most often cared for by their families but not so today. Granny and granddad are packed off to some care home as soon as they become a burden meaning that the demand for care home places has skyrocketed. The younger generations, anxious to preserve their anticipated inheritance, don't at all like the idea of anyone but 'the state' paying for this, not actually realising that they are 'the state'. Should the government dare to suggest that taxes might have to rise to pay for the extra demand, all hell will break lose.

The solutions to this apparent conundrum are simple. Firstly, the people have to come to understand that the notion of 'something for nothing' doesn't work; one way or another, additional resources have to be made available. In respect of the NHS people have to stop running to see their GP every time they have a runny nose and have to realize that hospital services, Accident & Emergency in particular, must not be abused. We have to recognize that we can't go on expecting everything to be free; GP services and A & E are essential and should be free, as long as they're not abused, but there is no reason why some other elements should continue to be free. Abortions, vasectomies, fertility treatments and family planning prescriptions are usually lifestyle choices and should be chargeable; it is highly questionable whether cosmetic surgery, except when reconstructive following other surgery or injuries, should be a free service and it is highly debatable whether treatments required as a consequence of an individual's abuse of alcohol, tobacco or drugs, or for other largely self-inflicted injuries, should be free. Other treatments for conditions which are neither life-threatening nor debilitating should all be assessed as to whether it is reasonable for the state to pay out of general taxation. In the end, the NHS should become a service to provide for genuine medical need, while the vast array of peripheral services which have grown up since its inception should be covered by insurance schemes. Such schemes could easily be designed to ensure that those who are unable to pay are not disadvantaged while those with the resources pay their fair share. People would then be free to decide what services they wanted to use and what they were prepared to pay for rather than be taxed to pay for services on which they never make any demand and, sometimes, have never even heard of.

Turning to social care, there is a very simple solution. There is no reason at all why those with property and savings should not be expected to pay for their own care. The idea that 'the family home' is, in some way, sacrosanct is an utter nonsense; younger generations have no right whatever to expect to benefit from their parents' estates and, if a house has to be sold to pay for care home services, so be it. The mechanics of a system would have to be worked out but this is the obvious and simplest answer to an issue which successive governments have so far failed to address; clearly, they've been frightened of the likely political fall out but, sooner or later, the nettle will have to be grasped.

What we need today is a Prime Minister with guts and a Government with vision; we need to stop looking back and start looking forward. We need a genuine restructuring of our state-run services, starting with health and social care. The NHS is dead and it's time to bury it.

MARK CARNEY : EX-EXPERT.

A few short months ago, a variety of important people made great play of the horrors that would follow if we, the people, dared to vote to leave the European Union. David Cameron, George Osborne, Barack Obama, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, assorted senior European political figures, the head of the International Monetary Fund, loads of others AND the single most important financial 'expert' in this country, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, all told us that all hell would break lose if we were stupid enough to ignore their advice that we should stay in the egregious and stifling clutches of the EU.

Of course, all of these self-proclaimed 'experts' have now been proved to have been utterly wrong. One actually has to wonder if they weren't simply wrong but actively tried to distort the facts and lied to the people, but we'll let that pass. Cameron and Osborne tried to sell us down the river with a meaningless agreement, Obama threatened our trading status with the USA and others just said that we would suffer financial meltdown. It's all proved to be nonsense.

Yesterday, Mark Carney did an almost total 'volte face'. He said that Brexit was 'no longer' the biggest domestic risk to the UK's economy, though he did claim that credit for this is due to him and the actions of the Bank of England in the aftermath of the referendum vote; ha-ha.. He also indicated that the Bank is 'very likely' to revise its previous economic forecasts very soon, predicting a much better outlook for the UK than previously suggested. Carney said that he was 'surprised' that his earlier forecasts had not come true, and now sees Brexit as being much more of a threat to the EU than to the UK.

Let us be clear. This gargantuan figure of the financial world, this superman and unchallengeable expert was completely wrong in forecasts that he made less than 9 months ago; not only that, but the failure of his forecasts caused him surprise. He now proposes to issue a new raft of forecasts, though why anyone should believe them escapes me, and has also taken it on himself to predict that the EU's financial stability is now much more in question than the UK's.

God save us from experts ! The one thing that is most clear is that we should ignore them all, especially those who are so certain of their rectitude that they threaten us with Armageddon if we don't do as we're told.

BBC SAYS 'BYE-BYE' TO HIPPOS, 'HELLO' TO ZUMBA !

The BBC is forever whining about a lack of resources and yet it still manages to waste licence payers' money on trivia and rubbish.

For years now, viewers been treated to a miscellany of 'fillers' between programmes; in my youth, we even had the quite famous 'Potter's Wheel' which was, at least, interesting and educational. In recent times, such items have been replaced by an assortment of quite pointless interludes including hot ait balloons and hippos. Yesterday, apparently, marked the introduction of the latest set of meaningless and pointless 'idents', as the BBC appears to call them.

Out go the circling hippos and in come a series of images designed to "capture an evolving portrait of modern Britain in all its diversity", whatever that might mean. True to its own modern style of profligacy, the BBC has actually paid someone, no doubt a handsome sum, to invent a daft new set of silly images; these include a group of swimmers, a 'zumba' class and wheelchair rugby players in action. The commissioned artist, a photographer named Martin Parr, must surely be laughing all the way to the bank.

The BBC, its presenters, reporters and guests have been at the forefront of those bemoaning the imposition of supposed austerity by the evil Tory led governments of recent years and yet they can still find the cash to pay for this nonsensical and utterly unnecessary trivia. It seems that image is all and the BBC feels it essential to broadcast its socialist ideals above all else and whatever the cost.

If these pointless 'fillers' are needed, the BBC must have vast stores of material from which it could draw at no cost; why, then, does it need to arrange special commissions for such things ? If ever there was a case for doing away with the licence fee, and the BBC, it is proven by such nonsense as this.

VOTER FRAUD : TIP OF THE ICEBERG.

We seem to be beset by lawlessness of a type which did not exist in the past, and the government's response is to invent evermore laws that restrict the freedoms of us all rather than to address the problems head on.

A few days ago, we were told that the supposed problem of 'voter fraud' is to be dealt with by requiring all voters to provide identification at their polling stations; it's suggested that we may be required to show passports, driving licences or utility bills before being permitted to cast our votes. All of this is because a handful of voters, predominantly, if not wholly, from non-British cultural backgrounds, have been found to have engaged in some dubious ballot box dealings. Rather than deal with the overtly cultural issues involved, our government plans to use the 'problem' as a way to increase its control over all of us. This is wrong.

I always take along the polling card which is hand delivered to my house; if this is no longer sufficient evidence of my identity I, for one, won't bother voting as I have no intention of being railroaded by a succession of inept governments which refuse to address the real problems in our society.

Shockingly, this matter is but another in a series of such cultural clashes which we face. We have forced marriage among some immigrant populations and slavery amongst others; we have abduction, imprisonment and gang rape carried out by still others. Parts of some of our once-great cities are now unrecognizable and are virtual 'no-go' areas for their former indigenous populations. In some places we have 'community leaders' who act almost independently of the official forces of law and order, imposing their own codes on the people.

Our governments have done nothing about any of this, all in the name of 'multiculturalism', equality, diversity and other such nebulous terms. Having allowed millions of immigrants to come to our country, they have done nothing to encourage, even demand, integration into our culture but have, instead, allowed the growth of what amount to separate communities with their own ways, customs and laws. This is madness.

There can be no doubt that the lack of leadership from our government, the lack of enforcing a true national identity and national laws, and the growth of separate sub-cultures within our society is destructive. It will lead to terrible times ahead.

GEORGE MICHAEL : WHO ?

Once again the BBC shows itself to be obsessed with its own industry. Today's news broadcasts have been utterly dominated by stories about the newly deceased pop singer, George Michael, to an extent which would suggest that he was, at the very least, some middling member of the Royal Family. How ridiculous.

Michael was, in actuality, a rather pathetic figure who enjoyed a brief period of fame in the 1980s and lived on the memory ever after. The paucity of song clips played on the radio today demonstrates rather well that his output after the breakup of the duo 'Wham !' was of little note. His fans will obviously not agree but the fact is that he was a very minor figure in the world of real music.

He was a covert frequenter of dubious places in the same 1980s but was later caught "engaging in a lewd act" in a public lavatory in Beverley Hills; a few years later he was accused of engaging in public sexual acts on Hampstead Heath in London, something which he apparently thought was perfectly reasonable to do. Michael was a drug user and addict who had various encounters with the law; he was arrested at least twice for "driving while unfit through drink or drugs", and also received cautions for possession of both Class C and Class A drugs.

His lifestyle clearly led to health problems. In 2011 he suffered what was labelled as a viral infection which caused pneumonia and nearly killed him; given that Michael was homosexual and that one of his earlier partners had died of AIDS, the nature of the 'viral infection' could be questioned. In 2013, Michael somehow managed to fall out of a moving car of which he was, apparently, the only occupant; he suffered head injuries and was airlifted to hospital.

How on earth does the death of such a person add up to being the single most important news item of the day on our national broadcaster ? Worse still, the 1 o'clock news gave over most of the first 20 minutes or more of its broadcast to this item. On a day when severe storms struck parts of Scotland and the Northern Isles, 92 people died when a Russian aircraft crashed into the Black Sea, the row over Israel's disputed 'West Bank settlements' continued and a massive hemi-centennial storm struck central Australia, was the death of a pop singer really the most important news ?

There can be no better demonstration of the way in which news priorities have become skewed in recent years. The media and its inhabitants, regardless of how unsavoury they may be, is all; all else is nothing.

ISRAEL : A LAW UNTO ITSELF.

The reaction of the Israeli government to being censured by a vote at the United Nations demonstrates just how toothless and useless that organisation is.

For many years, the Israelis have been encroaching further and further into the so-called 'occupied territories' by building increasing numbers of settlements on what is, historically and legally, Palestinian land. Numerous attempts have been made to point out the error of their ways to the Israelis but the United States has always vetoed any such actions. Suddenly, the US decided to change its stance and, hence, a vote of censure at the UN was not blocked. The Israelis are not exactly happy about being told that they should desist from their blatantly illegal actions; it would be more accurate to say that they are apoplectic with rage.

Fanatical Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that Israel will 're-assess its ties with the United Nations', a clear indication that he has no intention of taking the slightest notice of the vote. In fact, the Israeli government never has taken the slightest notice of world opinion on any of its actions and is a de-facto 'law unto itself'. Of course, this leniency, or fear, on the part of the rest of the world goes back to the Second World War and the atrocities committed then by Germany; no one is allowed to forget this or be overtly critical of Israel for fear of being anti-Semitic and stirring up old memories and thoughts. What balderdash.

What the Israeli government does has no connection whatsoever with the Jewish religion and criticising them is not anything to do with anti-Semitism. In truth, the Israeli government is one of the most unpleasant in the world. They operate a policy of apartheid, treating their Palestinian citizens with disdain, disrespect and hatred; this has nothing to do with Judaism but is a straightforward political choice, justified by claims of self-protection which simply don't bear scrutiny.

To me, the whole notion of a state founded on a religious basis is ludicrous but the modern day actions of the Israeli government have nothing to do with any true religion, any more than is the case with the governments of numerous Muslim countries. Israel, as well as various Muslim countries and even a few Christian ones, behaves as if it has a, literally, God-given right to do whatever it likes. These countries are backward, primitive and inward-looking in their approach to the world, though access to modern technology can make them extremely dangerous. We all know about the terrorism being perpetrated by so-called Muslim extremists, but they don't have the atomic bomb. Israel does and their extremists are, therefore, every bit as dangerous, in fact, much more so. Netanyahu, as one of the more fanatical and extremist rulers of that country in recent times, terrifies me at least as much as the terrorists on our streets.

Now that the United nations has finally passed a vote critical of Israel it needs to follow it up. If they don't it could be catastrophic for the whole world.