Thursday 10 May 2012

This Evening's Question Time Programme.

I'm currently watching BBC's Question Time programme. The abiding theme is do we have austerity or growth and how do we achieve either?

The real issue is the problem is much greater than those essential questions. The big question is one of control: who, once the course is plotted or the plan made, has the power to enact those plans and steer that course?

The answer is, in the UK, no-one has the power to do much of anything about the problems that are killing our country. You'd think our sovereign government in Parliament would have the power to solve the issues. But the problem is they don't: so much power has been given away to supra-national organisations that Parliament has all the power of a Town Council.

In order to control unemployment, we need to have control of immigration, in order to limit the influx of people from outside the country. That way we can have some idea of how large the population will be and plan accordingly. Those plans fall apart when we have uncontrolled immigration adding a huge influx of people  into the job market.

But of course we don't have control of immigration, the EU does. We can't stop immigration from other EU countries, so its impossible to prepare and plan for the future.

You'd think our sovereign government would have control over fiscal measures, but no, the EU is increasingly making grabs for power in this area too. During the worst economic period of the last century, the EU Commission actually demanded increased contributions from member states. No state can contest these increased demands and so we have to pay up despite being on our uppers.

Now we have the spectre of increased fiscal control from the EU, with the EU Commission moving towards having the power to control the budgets of member states.

There are other areas of competence that have been surrendered to outside control, making it virtually impossible to control what happens within our borders.

Without our hands on the levers to control huge swathes of our country's legislation means we are truely out of control.

Recovery is virtually impossible until we can control our own destiny. Relying on others (i.e. the Eurozone) to drag themselves up as well is not a proactive strategy. You don't win a 3-legged race by tying yourself to a corpse.

There is an air of self-delusion about all of this.

The EU political elite is deluding itself that it is benefiting the EU member states with its governance.

The UK political elite is deluding itself that it is still in power and can do anything about our current problems.

We are deluding ourselves that we can trust the other two groups to sort it all out for us.

Its about time we started making our own decisions to benefit ourselves, our children and our country.

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