Remain - or Brexit? Industry.

In my previous post on the forthcoming referendum, I sought to deal with the economics of the situation - dealing especially with some of the claims made by those in the current Conservative government who favour the Remain camp.  These were claims made in the leaflet that the government put out - at a cost of £9 million. Of course, that was £9mill. of taxpayers' money, and it is always easy to spend other people's money!

In this post, I want to share some thoughts on the situation with regard to industry in the UK or, it might be said, the lack of it!

Since joining the then EEC in 1973, the whole of the British coal industry has gone.

Nearly all of the shipbuilding has gone.

ICI has gone, sold off to Americans (who ran it into the ground and laid off thousands)

British Steel has gone - sold off to Far Eastern companies. Again, thousands were laid off, year after year until, there wasn't the workforce to make it the continued production of steel a viable process.

All our power companies, and possibly the water companies as well, are foreign-owned - even "British" Gas!   How many knew that EDF stands for "Eléctricité de France"?

Coachworks, that built our trains in Derby and York, have had to close or lay thousands off, because our governments insisted on giving the work to foreign coach builders.  This, we were informed, was because, under EU regulations, they had to put the work out to EU tender.  Of course, other countries quietly ignored such regulations, and subsidised their own companies so that they would be sure to undercut any tender from a UK company!

I am currently visiting in N.Ireland, staying with friends in the North Antrim town of Ballymena.  I think that it is three major employers in this one town, who are closing down and making hundreds more redundant.  I confess that I am unable to confirm that this is because of EU interference - but the pattern would suggest that the EU has played at least some part in these closures.

We are now living in a country were no job is secure.  Workers rights don't exist (don't believe the government's spiel about how we are better off in the EU in order to protect our workers' rights).  If you want to claim unfair dismissal nowadays, you need to have worked for the company for two years (unless you are claiming discrimination).

There are more people working through agencies now than ever before - including the NHS! - and, whereas in the past, agency workers were on good money, they aren't anymore.  It is the agencies who make the "big bucks", and who are effectively killing the economy. For example, people are unable to get a mortgage, a bank loan, a car, or credit to buy goods, if they work through an agency.

And let's not forget "Zero hours contracts"! Where did these appear from? Where were the EU workers' rights that day ?  Why are they still being allowed to be used, and why are the government allowed to sanction people who refuse to take these jobs, by stopping their Jobseeker's Allowance?   Of course, they play right into the hands of some employers - the very ones who are in favour of the UK remaining in the EU! 

More to come. Whatever you do, please use your vote if you are eligible to have one. It is a privilege,and a responsibility that is not afforded to all!

Burn, pillage, rape!

I'm uncertain as to how historically accurate that heading is when it comes to the Viking invasions of the British Isles in the 9th to 11th centuries A.D.  However, the 'rape' aspect was much in the news yesterday with reports of  two Asian men who were jailed for subjecting a series of vulnerable girls to rapes and sexual assaults.  The men were the ring leaders of a gang that befriended girls aged from 12 to 18 in the Derby area and groomed them for sex.

Former Home Secretary, Jack Straw, claimed that while Pakistanis are not the only people who commit sexual offences, "... there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men ... who target vulnerable young white girls."  "... they see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care ... who they think are easy meat.  And because they're vulnerable they ply them with gifts, they give them drugs, and then of course they're trapped."   I am not one of Mr Straw's natural defenders/supporters but, in this case, I am with him all the way.


That is more than can be said for his Labour Party colleague Mr Keith Vaz.  He, not unexpectedly, has stated that he does not believe there was a "cultural problem" and has called for a high-level investigation of such grooming across the UK.  Certainly, it is wrong to place the blame at just one national background/heritage; but even Mr Martin Narey, chief executive of the childrens' charity, Barnardos, stated that in the area of sexual abuse, "... there is an over-representation of people from minority ethnic groups – Afghans, people from Arabic nations."

None of this comes as a surprise to those of us who keep a watch on the situation of the persecuted church in some fifty countries around the world - many of them Arabic/Muslim countries.  We know that Christian girls, and young women, are systematically physically and sexually abused, and raped, by Muslim males from teenagers to grandfathers.  In many of these countries (Pakistan being one of them) such attacks are made with apparent impunity - as long as the female is from a Christian family, she is of no value!

In July, 2010, a third-year Christian student nurse was unconscious for 56 hours after a Muslim doctor and his accomplices allegedly beat, tortured and raped her at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi, over several hours – then tried to silence her. The doctor was reported as having a history of abusing Christian nurses with impunity at the teaching hospital – an example of Christian women being treated as an under-class in Pakistan. The nurse's family reported that they had received threats from the doctor.

Two months earlier, a 14 year‐old girl was drugged and then raped by two Muslim boys after they had abducted her from her school in Kamboh colony, Lahore.  The girl was waiting for her younger sister after school when the two 17-year-olds overpowered her, took her away by motorbike, and forced her to consume a soft drink containing tranquilisers. Shortly after being raped by each boy she lost consciousness. She was found on the road near the school gate by a neighbour after her mother raised the alarm.

As one who has often stated that rape is a more heinous crime than even murder, I have every sympathy with the girls from the Derby area, and trust that they will each receive a measure of counselling that will enable them to recover from the crimes committed against them - psychologically and emotionally, as well as physically.  I also trust that their ordeal will have heightened public awareness of what is all too common-place in those countries where it is the Christian minority who are seen as "easy meat"!