 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
September 18, 2000
|
WHO'S TO BLAME?Tony Blair is in the unusual position of being despised by most of the people he has spent so many years pandering to their every prejudice. Therefore, he seeks to blame OPEC, the protesters, the fuel drivers and the oil companies. His approval rate (for the fuel crisis) hits 3%. However, the root cause is the same. The British do not like being taxed. They may be more pliant than the Americans, but the old Labour (or old Conservative) trick of bribing the voters with their own money is simply not working. The Labour Party were busy in self-congratulation when they thought they had increased taxes but lying about this, but they have been proved terribly wrong. The Government and its wholly owned broadcaster, the BBC, talked about a threat to the democratic process. The 90% of the population who supported the protests asked when they were told that they would have me the most expensive petrol in the developed world. A THREAT TO DEMOCRACYAlthough one can argue about the undoubted reluctance of the oil companies to move the trucks, and whether this equates to the Blairites version of the Jewish Bankers cartel, it did actually show that democracy was under threat. From the Government. The fact is that with the rare and honourable exception of certain Conservatives there is no opposition to a smug belief in the rightness of the elites over the people, the very antithesis of democracy. WHERE DOES THE BLOODY MONEY GO?There is a foreign policy dimension to the petrol crisis, or rather a number of dimensions. The first is the sheer cost of all our foreign involvement and obligations. One can go on about the unnecessary military expenditure, for non-defensive purposes such as bombing Iraq, policing Bosnia or defending Sierra Leone, supporting an Empire is expensive, even if not your own. Nevertheless, there is also the European Union. Britain pays in the region of £10 billion ($14 billion) a year net to the European union, which works out to £1 million an hour. That is an enormous sum in itself, and nonpayment of this Dane-geld would pay to cut the duty in half. PAYING TWICEThis is before the obligations from international organisations. Take, for example, immigration. Whereas a government on its own (even this government) would probably try to clamp down on immigration to take advantage of state provision, the United Nations charter stops them if they claim to be "asylum seekers". Britain may need a large number of immigrants to pay the pensions of the retiring baby boomers, I can accept that and I am not persuaded by those who argue the cultural case against immigration. So what about immigrants who add to the burden? They also add to hospital waiting lists, problem children at school and petty crime rates. The United Nations forces Britain to accept these people. The government often quotes the small sums that go to international institutions, while omitting to explain the amount of money saved and taxes generated if the needless regulations of international bodies were not obeyed. There is one silly agreement that has a large share of the blame, the Kyoto agreement on fossil fuels. It may not be the prime reason why the tax was raised so high, but it provided ample covering fire. THE OTHER BLOCKADEWhat really goes down well is the pure hypocrisy. The farmers, truckers and the rest were stopping oil going to people who needed it. Well, Tony Blair would never tolerate an oil blockade of his own, would he? Apart from Iraq. The fact that oil prices could be drastically lower if we left Iraq alone is not mentioned by our masters and better. I wonder why not? THE PLEASANT REVOLTThere were never more than 2000 at the gates of the refineries and determined oil companies could have got through the blockades so this was not the peasant's revolt that many of us wished for. Nevertheless, it was not the dark plot imagined by our increasingly paranoid government. It was a warning to the government that its actions have consequences, a warning this exceedingly narrow and arrogant regime is unlikely to heed. Please Support Antiwar.comA contribution of $50 or more will get you a copy of Ronald Radosh's out-of-print classic study of the Old Right conservatives, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism. Send contributions to Antiwar.com or
Contribute Via our Secure Server or
|
