German domination of Europe? Be it football or European Union politics the Germans always win in the end.

England International Gary Lineker once said: “Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end the Germans always win.” 

Politics in the European Union comes across to me as being a similar “game”.  The European Council, made up of the heads of government of the 28 European Union member states, meets at a venue in Brussels around every 3 months to define the EU's general political direction and priorities. It identifies issues of concern and argues over what action should be taken.

The “game” is refereed by the European Council President and lasts for two days.  It concludes with the Germans always winning the argument and telling the other 27 member states what to do.

I actually don’t mind if Germany wants to dominate Europe or if the countries making up the EU want to be marshalled by Germany.  England might even be ruled more efficiently if the Germans were organising things rather than the present British political establishment which seems to be running our country for the benefit of the global financial elite*.

Be that as it may, as a “Little Englander” I would rather see England as an independent country minding its own business outside both the EU and UK.   Let Germany and its followers in Europe navigate their own future.

Charles De Gaulle was right over fifty years ago when he said: “England is in effect insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her markets, her exchanges, her supply lines to often the most diverse and distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities and only slight agricultural ones. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions.”  Those words ring just as true today as they did in 1963.

This from 23rd June 2014 by Peter Hitchens on his Daily Mail Blog is on a similar theme.

Some Thoughts on German Domination of the European Union

I admire many aspects of German society and think it is, on the whole and in many particulars, a better-run country than Britain. Increasingly, I wish that Britain had stayed out of the 1914 war, and that this had resulted in a quick German victory over France in 1914, which would in turn have led to a sustainable settlement between the Russian and German Empires in the east, and the survival of both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, whose collapse has caused so much misery and continues to do so to this day.

What’s more, I have absolutely no objection to living next-door to a German-dominated Europe, provided that Britain is not required to belong to such an arrangement. And I have never been able to see why Britain should be so required. A German-dominated Europe looks landward and to the east, would always be balanced by Russia (and these days by China, whose influence in Europe is growing very fast). A maritime Britain would need have no conflict with such a continental system.

I agree with much of what he says especially with regard to a German-dominated Europe.

*London City Airport, a valuable piece of English infrastructure, has been sold to Canadian and Kuwaiti interests.
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35666988

How Somerset's MPs stand on the European Union Referendum.

This morning's Western Daily Press (February 23rd) lead article by Tristan Cork reported on how the West Country's 36 MPs stand on the European Union Referendum.

 The list below refers to Somerset's MPs, all are Conservative.  Four are for "leave", two would "remain" and three are "undecided".

Bath - Ben Howlett MP                                                        Remain.
Bridgwater and West Somerset - Ian Liddell-Grainger MP Undecided.
North Somerset - Liam Fox MP                                            Leave.
North East Somerset - Jacob Rees-Mogg MP                       Leave.
Somerton and Frome - David Warburton MP                       Leave.
Taunton Deane - Rebecca Pow MP                                       Undecided.
Wells - James Heappey MP                                                   Undecided.
Weston super Mare - John Penrose MP                                 Remain.
Yeovil - Marcus Fysh MP                                                      Leave.

For the West Country as whole the figures were fourteen "leave", eleven "remain" and eleven "undecided" or "undeclared".  Bristol's three Labour MPs are all in the "remain" camp while Charlotte Leslie MP (Conservative) was undecided.

My constituency MP is Marcus Fysh.  The Western Daily Press article reported his views as follows.

Yeovil MP Marcus Fysh said the way that deal had to be done showed why Britain should leave. "The process of renegotiating really demonstrated how unreformable it is, with major decisions having to be made by a committee of 28 who all have different interests making it very difficult to get decisions," he said.
"I don't think leaving will have a detrimental impact on the operation of Italian helicopter firm Finmeccanica in Yeovil, but while immigrants have a beneficial part to play in the economy, the 300,000-plus a year put an enormous strain on our services like housing and schools," he said.

I agree entirely! 

Sand Point and Middle Hope on the Somerset Coast.

Sand Point is a peninsula reaching out from Middle Hope just north of the village of Kewstoke and Sand Bay on the North Somerset coast.  It, together with Middle Hope, is an outlier of the Mendip Hills and resembles a smaller version of Brean Down 5 miles to the south west.  To enjoy the coastal scenery Sand Point is best approached from Weston-super-Mare along Kewstoke Road although from the M5 the shortest route is via Worle and on through country lanes to the coast.  Car parking is free to members in the National Trust car park at the northern end of Sand Bay. 

The view, on a misty day, from Sand Point south across Sand Bay to Birnbeck Island.

My visit was on a misty grey day early in the year but that enhanced my ability to appreciate the tranquillity and solitude as I explored the gently undulating grassland of Middle Hope before venturing on to the more craggy and difficult path to Sand Point.  It was not the best day for enjoying the views up and down the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary but my walk was pleasant enough and I came upon some interesting features.

 

Unsurprisingly, there is an Iron Age hill fort near the highest point (at 157ft) of the peninsula.  Further east there are stone walls built by French prisoners of war during the Napoleonic War while at the eastern end of Middle Hope there was a World War Two weapons testing area.  Atop the cliffs are the ruins of a stone hut, dating from the 1850s and in use until the 1930s, where fishermen boiled shrimps caught on the mudflats below. 

The ruins of a the stone shrimpers hut on Middle Hope.

 

Also of interest is the fact that a line from Sand Point to Lavernock Point on the Welsh coast marks the boundary between the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP for North East Somerset, questions need for West Metro Mayor.

I do not always agree with Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP for North East Somerset.  In the past he has been quoted in The Daily Telegraph as saying England would become a "small, shrunken, shrivelled place" if Scotland voted for independence while his use of “London Plus" to describe England, Wales and Northern Ireland if Scotland left the Union is outrageous.  In more recent times he has spoken in parliament against having a separate national anthem for England.

Be that as it may, I have to agree with his comments opposing the possible introduction of a Metro Mayor to have authority over Bristol, South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset.   Mr Rees-Mogg was quoted in this article by James Crawley in the Western Daily Press of February 11.

MP questions plans for one West mayor.

“Plans to introduce a mayor who would have powers across much of the West have been questioned by MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Talks have been held in the last couple of weeks about a the possibility of introducing a Metro Mayor who would have authority over Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.

The four current council leaders, including B&NES Council leader Tim Warren, have been in talks with central Government about what powers he or she could have.

One of the suggestions by those in favour is a Metro Mayor to take office in the next few years and who would be able to unlock billions of pounds for new investment. The leaders met two weeks’ ago in Weston-super-Mare where they agreed to continue with talks on a devolution deal. But North East Somerset MP, Mr Rees-Mogg, believes a Metro Mayor across the wider region would have “no historical resonance with the public”.

He added: “It is not a cohesive community, with entirely different interests between rural Somerset and urban Bristol.”  The 46-year-old MP has made his views clear at a time when Bath and North East Somerset Residents prepare to vote for whether BANES should have a directly elected mayor or not. . . . ”


In my view City or Town Mayors are all well and good but, as I have written before, our shire counties must be reformed and re-empowered to act as a counterbalance to the vigour of our great cities.   The administrative County of Somerset, for example, should be re-united within its time-honoured boundaries by combining with the unitary authorities of North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset.   As such it would be better able to obviate the threat of Bristol’s urban expansion south and west through the green belt at the expense of rural communities, farming and landscape.

 

  

England, the land of the English, betrayed by Labour, Liberal and Conservative politicians, is doomed!

It took only 31 years (1914 to 1945) for the inept and incompetent British political establishment to cause the fall of the British Empire.  According to this article "Unmaking England.  Will immigration demolish in decades a nation built over centuries?" by Benjamin Schwartz in The American Conservative, they appear to have made an even quicker job, in the 19 years since 1997, of ruining the nature of England. 

However, whereas the end of the British Empire was the result of blunders and short-sighted decisions by political leaders such as Asquith, Lloyd George, Chamberlain and Churchill, the unmaking of England by Blair, Brown, Cameron and Clegg has been determined and deliberate.

The concluding paragraphs of Schwartz's article illustrate what patriotic English politicians and activists are up against.

"In the context of the enlightened cosmopolitan values that hold sway in Britain today, once the majority’s views are thus ruled beyond the pale, liberal democracy permits—in fact demands—that the majority be excluded from political consultation. At the very best, it is safe to say that the confines of acceptable public debate on culturally determined ethnic differences, national identity, and mass immigration are exceedingly narrow. The consensus of the bien pensant can, of course, be just as effective as outright censorship in its stultifying political effect, as Orwell explained:

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.

In the case of the political discussion surrounding the impact and ramifications of mass immigration, the result, whether one applauds or bemoans the situation, has been to exclude the majority sensibility from anything resembling full and free public expression and to deny the majority’s concerns and preferences anything resembling their full political weight.

The impotent seething abundantly in evidence among Old Britain is rooted in their disfranchisement, in the disdain with which their political and cultural leaders have forsaken them, and in their realization that those leaders, ensorcelled by fatuous slogans and intellectual fashion, in pursuit of vacuous and untested ideas, have irretrievably transformed an ancient nation."

I found the article, which I came across on Robin Tilbrook's (Chairman of the English Democrats) blog, made depressing reading.  England, the land of the English, is doomed if those leading Conservative, Labour and Liberal politicians in the British establishment who are determined to promote mass immigration, multiculturalism and diversity carry on unchecked.

Here is a link to the entire article.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/unmaking-england/

The Battle of Cynuit near Combwich in Somerset. Key to King Alfred's decisive victory over the Danes at Edington.

My interest in Combwich and the Battle of Cynuit was aroused in a rather roundabout fashion which began with a newspaper article on an aspect of Cornish nationalism.  Apparently Cornish nationalists have come up with the idea of place names on signposts being in English and Cornish in order to promote the Cornish language.  The thought struck me that something similar could be done here in Somerset in order to preserve and promote the Somerset dialect.  So, I consulted my copy of Roger Evans’ Don’t Tell I, Tell ‘Ee!  An affectionate look at the Somerset dialect (Countryside Books, 2008).  In the chapter on the pronunciation of Somerset place names, alongside the more well-known Weston-super-Mare pronounced “Wessun” and Crewkerne pronounced “Crook-urn”, was Combwich pronounced “Cummidge”.

I had never come across Combwich before so I went back to the bookshelves for a little more research.  Combwich is mentioned in most histories and guides on Somerset.  However, in Ralph Whitlock’s Somerset (Batsford, 1975) and the Reverend E.H.Smith’s Happy Memories of West Somerset in 100 Pictures (1945) there is mention of the Battle of Cynuit.  Further reading revealed the significance of the fighting which took place in this quiet corner of Somerset over eleven hundred years ago.

Cynuit – the key to victory.  In the year 878AD the Anglo-Saxon campaign against the Danes begun in Somerset, and led by Alfred the Great, saved the Kingdom of Wessex and thus determined the future of English nationhood and western Christian civilisation.

It could be argued that the key to Alfred’s campaign and ultimate victory over the Danes at Edington (Ethandune) was the earlier battle of Cynuit (or Cynwit) near Combwich, a village on the west bank of the River Parrett.

A view of the harbour at Combwich on the west bank of the River Parrett.

Following his escape from Chippenham and flight to Somerset Alfred conducted a guerrilla campaign from his fortress on the Isle of Athelney against Guthrum and his Danes based in the Polden Hills.

Guthrum, unable to get to grips with Alfred’s forces because of the lakes and marshes around Athelney, sent for ships and men of the Danish fleet which had wintered over in Wales.  Consequently the Dane Hubba sailed with 23 ships and 1400 men for the River Parrett intending to force a passage upriver toward the Isle of Athelney.  However, Hubba’s progress was halted where the river narrows at Combwich, by Odda, Alderman of Devonshire, and his Saxons.  Hubba and his men disembarked and battle commenced. 

Under ferocious Danish assault the Saxons were forced to retreat inland to the hill-fort of Cynuit (the present day site of Cannington Park) one and a half miles south west from Combwich.  The Danes, confident of success, prepared to lay siege to the fort, but the next morning Odda and his Saxons, with nothing to lose, launched a counter attack.  Hubba and 850 (some sources say 1,200) of his men were slain, the survivors fled to their ships.  Odda and his victorious Saxons then made their way to Athelney to bolster King Alfred’s forces on his island fortress.



Cynuit hill-fort viewed from the east.  The hill, the present day site of Cannington Park, is 262ft high.

Guthrum’s Danes on the Polden Hills were now constantly harassed by Saxon raiders from Athelney.  Meanwhile, Alfred travelled to Egbert’s Stone on the east of Selwood in Wiltshire where an army of Saxons from Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire was gathering.

Alfred led his Saxon army west from Wiltshire to the Polden Hills then on along the ridge to Edington (Ethandune) where the Danes, demoralised and lacking reinforcements after the Battle of Cynuit,  were decisively defeated.

Evidence of battle.  There is, of course the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the writings of Asser, Alfred’s official biographer, to ponder.  Physical evidence has been found in quarries in the vicinity of Cynuit as the Reverend E.H.Smith reports: “As mute witnesses of the severity of the battle men’s bones are constantly being exhumed above the quarry now being worked on the site of the fight – in fact the writer has himself picked up and examined many, and at widely different dates, as fresh areas of quarry are opened out.”

An alternative history.  Yes, yes I know, Hubba could have been a Viking, Cynuit might have been in Devonshire at Contisbury Hill or Castle Hill near Beaford while Edington in Wiltshire is suggested as “Ethandune”.  However, in my view history is fifty per cent fact and fifty per cent opinion, so, especially as I was born in the county, I am happy to support the judgement that all the action took place in Somerset!

      

 

 

A poetic tribute. Long life and success to England's farmers.

Friesians at Barrington Court in South Somerset.

Apples in the orchard at Barrington Court in South Somerset.

While looking at some photos taken last autumn at the National Trust's Barrington Court in South Somerset I was reminded of a poetic tribute to England's farmers who, despite the trials and tribulations of climate, economics and politics, put food on my table throughout the year.


The author is unknown, but the words are from a double handed farmhouse mug which belonged to my great-grandfather who farmed at Lye Hole, east of Wrington Vale in North Somerset, in the 1890s.


Let the wealthy and great
Roll in splendour and state
I envy them not I declare it
I eat my own lamb
My own chickens and ham
I shear my own fleece and I wear it
I have lawns I have bowers
I have fruits I have flowers
The lark is my morning alarmer
So jolly boys now
Here's God speed the plough
Long life and success to the Farmer.