The Decline Of England

What A Sad Little Empire Britain Has Become -- Janine di Giovanni, Daily Beast

Already choked by austerity, Britain released its 2013 budget this week to howls of outrage. Janine di Giovanni talks to the struggling citizens of dreary, depressed London.

Cyprus may be falling to pieces. Greece, Spain, and Portugal may be going down the tubes, too. But England is not far behind.

The embattled George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is probably the most loathed man in Britain today—next to Tony Blair, who celebrated the anniversary of his greatest mistake, the invasion of Iraq, earlier this week. Osborne released his dreaded 2013 budget on Wednesday (the ludicrously named United Nations “International Day of Happiness”), calling it a plan for “those who aspire.”

Aspire to what? London today is a grim shadow of itself, one of the most expensive cities in the world. The kingdom’s economy, ravaged by austerity, has stalled—according to The Economist, “It needs structural reform; looser money and more infrastructure spending.” Single mothers, average earners, small businesses, and job seekers are really struggling.

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My Comment: High taxes. Bureaucratic paperwork and red tape that would make a Soviet commissar look efficient in comparison. Massive debts to sustain a social network that can no longer sustain itself. I can list a hundred reasons on why Britain has declined .... and they would all hit home. But the British people voted for this type of society and system decades ago .... and continued to vote in the politicians who sustained it. But now .... those who paid the bill in the past do not want to pay it anymore .... in short .... the money has dried up.

A Commentary On Britain's Aircraft Carrier Decisions

Harriers leaving Ark Royal. The new aircraft carriers were designed to carry larger, longer-range jets Photo: ROYAL NAVY

We’re All At Sea Over Our New Aircraft Carriers -- Con Coughlin, The Telegraph

The PM is being urged to do a U-turn on buying jets – but it’s the ships that are wrong, says Con Coughlin.

It says something about the Government’s ability to produce a coherent defence policy that all three Service chiefs are now united in their determination to overturn one of the Coalition’s key decisions.

Only 18 months ago, Liam Fox announced a major overhaul of our multi-billion-pound aircraft carrier programme. Instead of equipping the carriers with a new generation of Harrier jump jets, with their limited range and payload, Dr Fox wanted to fit the carriers with more conventional fighters which could operate over longer distances, carry more weapons and employ the latest stealth technology.

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My Comment: Con Coughlin roasts the previous Labor government on their decision .... as well as the present coalition government .... for the policies that they have implemented on what the future "look" of the Royal Navy will be .... and deservedly so.

Two Must Read Commentaries On The London Riots

Fear, intimidation, cruelty, injustice, savagery: The mass criminality in the big cities is merely a speeded-up and concentrated version of life on most large estates

Years Of Liberal Dogma Have Spawned A Generation Of Amoral, Uneducated, Welfare Dependent, Brutalised Youngsters -- Max Hastings, The Daily Mail

A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black reporter named Joe Strickland.



He said: ‘Don’t you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: “It was a great fire, man!” ’



I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today.



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Police Water Cannon And Plastic Bullets? After 50 Years Of The Most Lavish Welfare State On Earth? What An Abject Failure -- Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail

Bitter laughter is my main response to the events of the past week. You are surprised by what has happened? Why? I have been saying for years that it was coming, and why it was coming, and what could be done to stop it.



I have said it in books, in articles, over lunch and dinner tables with politicians whose lips curled with lofty contempt.



So yes, I am deeply sorry for the innocent and gentle people who have lost lives, homes, businesses and security. Heaven knows I have argued for years for the measures that might have saved them.



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My Comment: After spending hundreds of billions of pounds over the years .... this is the end result. Yup .... money ill spent and wasted to pursue a dream of a liberal utopia.

Britain's Lack Of An Aircraft Carrier Is Starting To Hurt The Libyan War Effort

Friendly fire: An Italian AV8 Harrier fighter jet lands on the Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi during during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)'s Libya mission codenamed Unified Protector. News.com.au

Italy Shames The Royal Navy -- CDR Salamander

The Royal Navy speaks so it can sleep at night.

Adml Sir Mark Stanhope said the campaign would have been more effective without the Government's defence cuts.

The aircraft carrier and the Harrier jump-jets scrapped under last year's strategic defence review would have made the mission more effective, faster and cheaper, he said.

Sir Mark warned that the Navy would not be able to sustain its operations in Libya for another three months without making cuts elsewhere.

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My Comment: A must read, especially view of what happened in Tripoli and on the front line yesterday.

Time To Make A U-Turn On The U.K. Defence Budget (Commentary)

It's Time The Government Made A U-Turn On The Defence Budget -- Con Coughlin, The Telegraph

We’ve had u-turns on the NHS, prison sentences and even on how we can best take care of our trees. So why not a u-turn on the Government’s ludicrous decision to cut the defence budget at a time when our Armed Forces are engaged in active combat?

When the Coalition came to power last year it insisted it would avoid the kind of foreign military entanglements that came to define the Blair era. Never again would a British government send our troops into battle in some foreign land without the proper equipment and resources.

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My Comment: There will be no u-turn on the U.K. defense budget. This is a minority government, and with money scarce they are prioritizing their spending elsewhere.

Only In Britain Do Hate Preachers Who Promote Islamic Violence Against The West Get Subsidized By The Taxpayers

Subsidised: Despite being in Belmarsh prison, jailed cleric Abu Hamza is getting his West London home renovated - at the taxpayers' expense

Jailed Hate Preacher Abu Hamza's Home Has A £40,000 Makeover... Paid By Taxpayers -- The Daily Mail

Hate preacher Abu Hamza’s family home is having a £40,000 makeover paid for by tax­payers, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Workmen from at least three construction firms have already spent two months doing up the £700,000, five-bedroom council property in an exclusive West London street.

Astonishingly, it is the second time in only five years that council bosses have approved expensive renovations on the property where the hook-handed cleric’s wife and eight children live supported by benefits worth nearly £700 a week.

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My Comment: Only in the U.K. can someone promote hate and violence .... keep his passport and citizenship instead of being deported .... and get subsidized to live (by the taxpayer) while having his family live in a £1million home (that is also paid by the taxpayer).

Shesshhh .... how can I get into this deal?

Our Military Humiliation In Afghanistan Is A Scandal - And The Cover-Up Is An Even Greater One -- A Commentary

British soldiers on a joint foot patrol with US marines in Musa Qala in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photograph: Omar Sobhani/Reuters

From The Telegraph:

The under-funded British Army is being forced to make the same mistakes in Afghanistan that it made in Iraq, says Christopher Booker.

One of the best kept secrets of our recent politics, thanks to the news management of the Ministry of Defence, was how our occupation of southern Iraq turned into one of the greatest humiliations in the history of the British Army. In the end, after our hopelessly ill-equipped and undermanned contingent had been forced to abandon to the insurgents the two main cities of the region, Basra and Al Amarah, the Americans and Iraqis had to intervene to take them back. Last Christmas, having failed in our mission, we were contemptuously ordered to leave his country by the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

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If There Isn't A War On Terror, Then What Exactly Are Our Boys Dying For? -- A Commentary

London suicide bombings case (AFP: AFP PHOTO DYLAN MARTINEZ)

From The Telegraph:

David Miliband has betrayed a misconception about the nature of this conflict, writes Con Coughlin.

The two British soldiers killed in southern Afghanistan on Thursday died fighting for their country against a deadly and determined foe. Gereshk, the area in central Helmand where they were engaged in a night-time operation against enemy forces, is a stronghold of the Taliban, the hardline Islamist movement that is trying to overthrow the democratically elected government.

The British Army has been at war with the Taliban for more than seven years, since the latter provided a safe haven from which Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network planned the September 11 attacks against the US. Yesterday's deaths brings the total number of British fatalities to 141. Add to that the 178 British service personnel who have been killed during our six-year involvement in Iraq, and the scale of the country's commitment to fighting Islamist militants is not inconsiderable.

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