A goodbye to broken Britain (From The Northern Echo)

A goodbye to broken Britain

11:11am Tuesday 6th September 2011 in Peter Mullen By Peter Mullen

YOU get some unpleasant surprises.

Last year, a new family started to attend our church every Sunday. As Rector, I was, of course, delighted – especially as they are all so committed and they are talented musicians. Mum and dad and three teenage children: a happy addition to the congregation and a real boost for the parish. I was beginning to think, as parish priests do, that this vigorous young family would play a big part in the leadership of St Michael’s in years to come. Then, last week, the head of the family gave me the startling news that, come the New Year, they are all off to live and work permanently in New Zealand.

Naturally, I asked why they had decided to do this. He said: “I’m just sick to death of the corruption. Living in England today is like being in a banana republic. And what’s the point in pretending to own the high moral ground by trying to bring about change in Libya when our country is a shambles.”

He mentioned the MPs’ expenses scandal which, he said, “was supposed to have been cleared up in 2009, but really nothing has changed. They’re still lining their pockets”.

Then he mentioned what he called “the utter corruption of local government”. His chief complaint was that top officials in the town and city councils throughout the land are still giving themselves pay rises, massive pay-offs and huge boosts to their pension funds while they admonish the rest of us on the need for economy. “They are cynically rewarding themselves with massive pay increases while closing libraries and other public amenities and blaming the removal of these resources on supposed government cuts,” he explained.

He pointed out that we are just being told a pack of lies about these so-called cuts. “In fact, central government is borrowing and spending more this year than it did last. The figures will be higher still in 2012.”

He spoke of “the client state” of public employees – astronomically increased in the Brown years – getting paid out of taxation for doing non-jobs with laughably politicallycorrect titles. He said: “And hundreds of thousands are being paid to be idle – and in many cases paid more than those in work. So, they reason rightly, it doesn’t pay to work.

And when Ian Duncan Smith says this injustice has to end, he is shouted down by his coalition colleagues.”

But, worst of all, he referred to the “criminal waste” of billions of pounds – money we haven’t got – on wind turbines, which are virtually useless because they work only when the wind is blowing. In calm weather they actually use up more energy than they provide because they have to be maintained. He drew attention to how these constructions disfigure the landscape, “turning our countryside into something like industrial slums”.

He described the renewable energy programme as the biggest scam in a century.

Farmers and landowners are being sumptuously bribed to put up these useless wind turbines on their land. In a few years, it will become clear to everyone that we have wasted all that money and ruined the landscape on gadgets that are of no practical use. The obvious sensible future for energy policy is new, clean, coal mining and a vigorous nuclear programme. But this will not happen because the Government is in thrall to the green lobby.

So they’re all off to Kiwi land. I wish them every blessing – but I shall miss them.