From The Liberty Wall – Nations without States – Love Your People: Love Your Nation: Love The Aborigines!
Date: November 27, 2017
Categories: Liberty Wall
Category » Liberty Wall
From The Liberty Wall – Free Speech: How Do We Protect It? – Some People Still Believe In Free Speech For All … GET OVER IT!
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WE UNDERSTAND that the above e-poster is the first in a series that will be produced in support of Free Speech.
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The e-poster was recently produced and viralled out by the group Free Speech: How Do We Protect It? One of the main aims of the group is to examine and expose instances whereby elements of the State try to curtail the rights of individuals and/or groups – no matter how ‘unpopular’ they may be..
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As the Facebook site – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1607711629485795/ – of Free Speech notes, to ensure that everyone has the right of free speech and assembly, Britain should introduce ‘a formal constitution and bill of rights’ which would be based on the ‘concept of civil and religious liberties for all’.
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We believe in absolute free speech with very few exceptions to this rule – say for those who promote violence. Either we all have rights – or none of us has rights. We support civil and religious liberties for all.You can check out the original e-poster here https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1639828429410422&set=g.1607711629485795&type=1&theater&ifg=1
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Freedom lovers are encouraged to ‘like and share’ the e-poster – and viral it out using all forms of social media. Do it today!
Date: October 29, 2017
Categories: Articles, Liberty Wall
From The Liberty Wall – St. George’s Committee Debate (6) – Self Determination For The English Nation?
READERS with good memories may recall that towards the end of September, Nations without States (NwS) held a debate. The subject was that call by Frank Field (the Labour MP for Birkenhead) for an English Parliament. As strong supporters of self-determination, NwS naturally welcomed this development. You can check it out here: http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-nations-without-states-debate-3-%e2%80%93-an-english-parliament-for-the-english-people
However, Nations without States weren’t the only group who were interested in Frank Field’s call. As may be expected, the St. George’s Committee (SGC) also debated – and found favour – with his comments.
The SGC were particularly interested in the idea of a ‘Common Senate’ which would take the place of the House of Lords. Established on almost Syndicalist lines, it would include experts on both arts and culture. Whilst it would be a UK-wide body – and not exclusively English – it was felt that it could prove useful when promoting English (as opposed to British) arts and culture.
The National Liberal Party has reproduced the SGC article below. However, you can also read it (and take part in the debate) here: https://www.facebook.com/stgeorgescommittee/posts/1566913953351750]
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St. George’s Committee Debate (6) – Self Determination For The English Nation?
AS EVERYONE who visits this page should be aware, the St. George’s Committee (SGC) is an Anglo-centric movement. Our task is to preserve, protect and promote English history, heritage, traditions, identity and culture.
As a general rule the SGC steers clear of politics, despite the fact that there is a very fine line between politics and culture. Indeed, some English Advocates would argue – with some justification – that there is no distinction between politics and culture.
In the past we have touched upon political issues. In particular, we’re interested in any situation which will help us fight Anglophobia – where the establishment seems to portray any pride in England and the English in a wholly negative and derogatory manner.
We’re going to steer into political waters again with this St. George’s Committee Debate. Here we wish to draw attention to a recent article in The Express by Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead. The article – Let us rule our England with an English parliament – is reproduced below. If you want to read it online here’s a link to it:
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/834711/frank-field-english-parliament-constitutional-reform-brexit
The SGC is interested in Frank Field’s article as we feel that any form of Self-Determination for England should help us fight Anglophobia and ‘preserve, protect and promote English history, heritage, traditions, identity and culture.’
We’re also excited about his idea to form a “Common Senate” (in place of the House of Lords) which would include those from ‘the professions, arts and culture, industry, including both employers and trade unions.’ The inclusion of those from the ‘arts and culture’ is a move that will be applauded by the vast majority of thinking English Advocates who’re particularly interested English arts and culture.
However, on saying that, the establishment of a “Common Senate” could be a double-edged sword.
As we mentioned at the start of this debate, the SGC aims to ‘preserve, protect and promote English history, heritage, traditions, identity and culture’. So how do we think about Frank Field’s idea to abolish the House of Lords? Should we not want to defend all institutions?
We’d appreciate any thoughts – good, bad or indifferent – on Frank Field’s idea for an English parliament and the questions that we’ve raised. Simply post your views in the comments section below.
It goes without saying that there are no official links between the St. George’s Committee, Frank Field MP, the Labour Party or The Express.
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Let us rule our England with an English parliament, says Frank Field MP
The task of the St. George’s Committee (SGC) is to preserve, protect and promote English history, heritage, traditions, identity and culture. Would an English Parliament help achieve this?
Establishing an English parliament was the inevitable outcome once the Blair government began to give way to Scottish nationalism.
But just as it took much political heaving to get through the first devolution bill, the passage to establish an English parliament will be further hindered by Brexit fallout.
Politicians are scared of the constitutional changes that were set afoot by Scottish devolution.
They should give up worrying. Brexit will drive reform on the constitutional front, just as it will do through much of public life.
Once the Blair government began the process of devolution, particularly to Scotland, but also to Wales and Northern Ireland, we faced what was called the “West Lothian Question”.
The then MP for West Lothian, the late Tam Dalyell, posed the question thus: should MPs from Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland be able to vote on matters which affect only England? Politicians have since sought to answer Tam’s question but with little success.
What has not been posed is a new question, but here it is: Isn’t the answer to the West Lothian question to establish an English parliament? The only rational conversation I had with Gordon Brown was when he questioned if I genuinely believed in an English parliament. I replied that I did.
“But how do you get over the size?” Gordon enquired. “England is so dominant that it makes devolution for England impossible.”
It is the size of England that makes devolution more, not less, important. But England’s size does put a price on success.
England, yet again, needs to be generous in establishing the new constitutional order.
There’s no problem with establishing an English parliament. The House of Commons as we know it today would be abolished. In its place would be the election of MPs to an English parliament that would sit in the House of Commons.
The English Parliament would therefore be on a par with parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A second move would be to abolish the House of Lords. We have a bigger second chamber than China, although our population of 65 million is dwarfed by China’s 1.3 billion.
In place of the Lords should be a “Common Senate” to which the Northern Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English parliaments would send legislation for scrutiny, just as now with the Commons sending its legislation to the Lords.
The Senate should be elected, but not by giving party whips the chance to stack it full again with their candidates who failed to get elected to the Commons. Elections there will be but the establishment of the Senate will reflect those great organisations – the professions, arts and culture, industry, including both employers and trade unions – which would get to elect one or two senators for a fixed term of 10 years.
Likewise, there would be elections of another group of senators based on geography.
British representation has always had a strong local basis. Again, these senators would be elected on a regional basis and would serve a 10-year term. The 10-year term would limit the power of any whipping system trying to control the business of the Senate.
Only the feeble-minded who managed to squeeze through the new devolved electoral system would be easy meat for the whips.
The legislation from the English parliament, and those from the other three parliaments, would be considered, revision offered, but the Senate would not have powers of outright rejection.
Sovereign constitutional powers would reside in each of the four UK parliaments.
English senators would have to work with other senators on major pieces of business.
The Senate would decide taxation, foreign affairs and defence, with all three shared between the four UK powers. Division of seats would ensure that English senators would succeed only if they had the support of other countries’ senators.
Election to the English parliament would be on a constituency basis, just as now. This constitutional change would not only empower voters but it would reduce the bill.
The Lords cost taxpayers £108million in 2015-2016. Cut to a third of its size its cost would similarly fall. While the cost would fall, the effectiveness would increase.
It would attract people who head their own sections of public life. Likewise, each senator would know that their term was limited, a move that should increase their sense of value and independence.
• CHECK out our previous debates:
St. George’s Committee Debate (1) – How Do We Promote English History, Heritage, Traditions, Identity & Culture? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-st-george%e2%80%99s-committee-debate-1-%e2%80%93-how-do-we-promote-english-history-heritage-traditions-identity-culture
St. George’s Committee Debate (2) – Why Does The Establishment Hate The English? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-st-george%e2%80%99s-committee-debate-2-%e2%80%93-why-does-the-establishment-hate-the-english
St. George’s Committee Debate (3) – Is Anglophobia A Form Of Racism? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-st-george%e2%80%99s-committee-debate-3-%e2%80%93-is-anglophobia-a-form-of-racism
St. George’s Committee Debate (4) – Can English Culture Survive Under Westminster Rule? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-st-george%e2%80%99s-committee-debate-4-%e2%80%93-can-english-culture-survive-under-westminster-rule
From The Liberty Wall – St George’s Committee Debate (5) – What Dangers Do We Face? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-st-george%e2%80%99s-committee-debate-5-%e2%80%93-what-dangers-do-we-face
Date: October 16, 2017
Categories: Liberty Wall
From The Liberty Wall – Free Speech: How Do We Protect It? – March Of The Thought Police (Part 1)
‘We believe that Britain should have a formal constitution and bill of rights, based on the concept of civil and religious liberties for all. We also feel that a civil rights watchdog should be established to protect the people’s ability to make use of these rights.
We believe in absolute free speech with very few exceptions to this rule – say for those who promote violence. Either we all have rights – or none of has rights. We support civil and religious liberties for all.’
• Taken from the Facebook site – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1607711629485795/ – of Free Speech: How Do We Defend It?
FREE SPEECH is particularly interested in – and deeply concerned about – attempts by elements of the States to try to curtail free speech. To some extent this is our raison d’être.
With this in mind, or attention has been drawn to an article – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4612720/Tim-Farron-s-ousting-Lib-Dem-leader-left-victory.html – which appeared much earlier this year. It concerns former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron. Freedom lovers may recall that he was effectively forced to quit because of his Christian beliefs.
The following article was written by Dominic Sandbrook, a former history lecturer, freelance writer and newspaper columnist. Please note that we don’t agree with everything Sandbrook says. We feel that he focusses solely on ‘Leftist’ attempts to curb free speech. To us, both ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are mirror images of each other – and there are illiberal liberals and totalitarians on both sides! Despite this, we feel that supporters of free speech will find his article of interest.We feel that the best way to stimulate debate on the issue of free speech is to reproduce his article in four sections. It goes without saying that there are no official links between Free Speech, Dominic Sandbrook or the Daily Mail.
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Tim Farron’s ousting as Lib Dem leader is another victory for the Left which gags free speech and imposes its own warped views
Tim Farron, former leader of the Liberal Democrats. Did his Christian views bring him into conflict with illiberal liberals?
ONE OF the great myths of our age is that we live in a time of unparalleled tolerance, a paradise of liberalism, conscience and free speech.
You can think what you like, say what you like and do as you please, and nobody will ever tell you otherwise.
That is the theory. The reality, alas, is rather different. For this week came yet another worrying sign that the prejudices of our liberal cultural elite are no less stifling and no less repressive than the taboos they pride themselves on having banished.
At the heart of this is the Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, who resigned on Wednesday after less than two years in the job.
I hold no torch for Mr Farron, who never struck me as an international statesman in waiting. But when I heard him say he could not reconcile his heartfelt Christian principles with his leadership of an avowedly liberal party, I wondered what had happened to our traditions of tolerance and democracy.
At the heart of his dilemma were his views on gay sex, which on several occasions he had failed to say outright was not sinful, as well as his disapproval of abortion (he later claimed to have changed his mind on the issue). But he never tried to impose those views on others. Nor did he propose to outlaw homosexuality, or to recriminalise abortion.
For his liberal critics, however, this was not good enough. As they saw it, he was guilty of what George Orwell called ‘thoughtcrime’. Only a full recantation — and presumably the renunciation of his Christian faith — would have been enough to save him.
‘I seem to be the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in,’ Mr Farron said on Wednesday, ‘in which case we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society.’
Alas, this is not merely an issue for the Lib Dems, for the sickness of liberal intolerance is far more widespread. Seeping out of our schools and universities, the culture of hysterical outrage is now in real danger of polluting our public life, stifling debate and silencing dissent.
Just look, for example, at the absurdly strident way the Left has reacted to the prospect of a deal between the Conservatives and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists. As staunch social conservatives, rooted in the Presbyterian churches, the DUP are opposed not just to gay marriage but to the extension of abortion rights to Northern Ireland — views clearly too much for the metropolitan dinner-party elite.
Never mind that the DUP are the single biggest party in one of the four nations of our kingdom. Never mind that their views are shared by the vast majority of ordinary people in Northern Ireland, who are understandably sick of being caricatured as reactionary primitives.
To the Left, such people are thought criminals. There is no place for dissent in the modern liberal imagination, no room for those who question the new orthodoxies of the chattering classes.
So racism must always be treated as the ultimate evil.
The equality of the sexes can never be questioned; indeed, the very idea of gender itself is deeply suspect. Immigration is always good. Welfare is wonderful; capitalism is monstrous. America is corrupt; Israel is worse. Patriotism is always bad, especially British patriotism. And so on.
Date: October 8, 2017
Categories: Liberty Wall
CATALONIA & KURDISTAN: NATIONS WITHOUT STATES JOINT PRESS RELEASE
Date: October 6, 2017
Categories: Articles, Liberty Wall
From The Liberty Wall – National Liberal Trade Unionists – Why Nurses Deserve To Get A Pay Rise
ATIONAL LIBERAL Trade Unionists – NLTU – may be familiar with NHS psychiatrist, Dr. Max Pemberton who writes for the Daily Mail. Indeed, one of his articles – http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-national-liberal-trade-unionists-debate-5-%e2%80%93-is-it-racist-to-want-nhs-nurses-to-speak-english – formed the basis of the most recent NLTU Debate in late June.
Our attention has just been drawn to another of his articles (which calls for a wage increase for nurses) this time written towards the end of July, which we’ve reproduced below.
It appeared shortly after the BBC released figures relating to its top earning actors and presenters. As this Guardian report notes – https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jul/19/evans-lineker-bbc-top-earners-only-two-women-among-best-paid-stars
Chris Evans and Gary Lineker earned £2.2m and £1.75m respectively. In contrast, nurses earn on average between £22,000 to £28,000 a year.
The NLTU wholeheartly agrees with Dr. Pemberton’s view that if ‘there was any public servant who deserved a pay increase, it’s nurses.’ Indeed, we’d go further and say that all medical staff should automatically have a wage increase that – at the very least – keeps up with the rate of inflation.
As usual, we’d appreciate your feedback once this article appears on the NLTU Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/277840098977231/
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Why Nurses Deserve To Get A Pay Rise
Staff demonstrating in support of the National Health Service. National Liberal Trade Unionists support their campaign for higher wages.
‘WHAT would you do with £2 million?’ asked the nurse at the sink.
‘I know – imagine it,’ came the reply from another nurse, rolling her eyes.
A patient joined in: ‘Don’t tell me you’d give up working in this place!’ They all laughed.
I’ve heard these sorts of conversations before, usually when there’s a Lotto roll-over. Not this time.
For a few days this week, on the ward where I work, the main topic of conversation was what the BBC pays top staff. Much of it was daydreaming about what they would do if, instead of the £22,000 to £28,000 that the average nurse is paid, they earned a few million, like Chris Evans or Gary Lineker.
But the nurses weren’t bitter, which made the whole thing more poignant. I suppose if it was money that motivated them, they’d packed in nursing years ago.
But it’s a warped world where someone like Casualty actor Derek Thompson is paid 15 times more to pretend to be a nurse and pretend to save lives than an actual nurse who saves actual lives.
While nurses might not go into nursing for the money, financial reward is how our society indicates the value we place on a profession’s contribution. And more fool all of us for not valuing the contribution nurses make. For it won’t be Claudia Winkleman of John Humphrys who’ll be staying beyond their shift to resuscitate you when you have a cardiac arrest, or who will be there when your child breaks their arm and needs painkillers and a kind, calming word.
Nursing is often a thankless task, and I have nothing but overwhelming admiration for the job nurses do and the gentle dedication with which they do it.
It seems strange that the argument is that nursing is a vocation – a job they do because they love it – yet the same logic isn’t applied to the BBC ‘talent’. There are plenty other excellent actors and presenters who’d do those BBC jobs for less.
If there was any public servant who deserved a pay increase, it’s nurses. But many nurses feel the only way to make a decent living is to move into management. And without them the NHS will collapse.
• FOR MORE information on the National Liberal Trade Unionists – NLTU – check out https://www.facebook.com/groups/277840098977231/
• READ ISSUE 1 of Liberal Worker – the voice of National Liberal Trade Unionists. To get hold of your FREE pdf copy simply request it by e-mailing natliberal@aol.com Also look out for more information about issue 2 in due course.
• CHECK OUT previous NLTU debates here:
National Liberal Trade Unionists Debate 1 – How Can we Achieve Our Main Aims? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-national-liberal-trade-unionists-debate-1-how-can-we-achieve-our-main-aims
National Liberal Trade Unionists Debate 2 – What Should Be Re-Nationalised? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-national-liberal-trade-unionists-debate-2-%e2%80%93-what-should-be-re-nationalised
National Liberal Trade Unionists Debate 3 – Bob Crow: What Is His Legacy? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-national-liberal-trade-unionists-%e2%80%93-bob-crow-what-is-his-legacy
National Liberal Trade Unionists Debate 4 – How Should Trade Unionists View The EU? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-national-liberal-trade-unionists-debate-4-%e2%80%93-how-should-trade-unionists-view-the-eu
From The Liberty Wall – National Liberal Trade Unionists Debate 5 – Is It Racist To Want NHS Nurses To Speak English? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-national-liberal-trade-unionists-debate-5-%e2%80%93-is-it-racist-to-want-nhs-nurses-to-speak-english
Date: October 5, 2017
Categories: Liberty Wall