Enough of the people, enough of the time

Politics relies heavily on the manipulation of human psychology, and stops just short of the tricks of the religious faith trade. However, politics and religion share the tactic that if the lie is big enough and restated frequently with sufficient conviction, some people will believe it.

This was of course neatly summed up in Abraham Lincoln's observation: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Honest Abe might also have added the thought "...and if you can fool enough of the people enough of the time, you will get elected".

And that, TMP suspects, is the sole motivation for politicians scrambling up greasy poles in the broken and discredited UK electoral system, and why an unelected House Of Lords remains a vital part of the nation's ability to question the type of inept elected government such that we currently possess.

Virtually assuring the end of the Lords, some of the people who could not be fooled all the time in the shape of it's weighty Economic Affairs Committee (whose members include two ex-chancellors and other Cabinet members) took eight months to consider government immigration policies, and declared them to be based on bogus assumptions.

Their Lordships made short work of the alleged "overall benefit" arguments, and stopped just short of accusing the government of the ultimate act of gerrymandering, by shipping in voters that are traditionally expected to favour the Labour Party, ever since the politics of bogeymen built on the myths of Enoch Powell that were drawn along party lines.

Their Lordships' remarks were most likely tempered by the expectation that the usual accusations of racism and intolerance would be levelled at anyone daring to question the sacred dogma of Labour's unfettered approach to multiculturalism - but the best estimate of the numbers involved in the random immigration shambles roughly equate to the apparent housing shortage. However, any focus on house prices needs to bear in mind that house prices are substantially fixed by land prices, which are in turn "fixed" by the rationing effect of inept local authority planning policies - and the policies of central government that seem perennially incapable of spreading the action in the economy beyond the South East corner.

The government's initial response came from one of Brown's B Team, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne, who said the report confirmed the government's assessment that migration had added £6bn to the economy in 2006. "That's important in any one's book".

That's about the amount that Gordon Brown wasted in the stroke of a pen when selling the country's gold reserves at the bottom of the market, plus annual parking fines; and a mere drop in the ocean of embarrassment that engulfed King and Darling in the Northern Rock fiasco. In the Great Scheme of Things, £6bn is bugger all when set against the problems we have now stored up for a nation that appears to be sailing into recession.

Immigration (however many there really are) over many years has changed the way of British life in many areas of the country where the settlers have chosen to "consolidate their communities" as a bolster against the need to become integrated with the rest of British society. A trip around Golders Green will remind us that has been going on for many years, and can be managed in a way that can provide delightful choices of ethnic cuisine and economic self sufficiency, but does not involve attempts to blow up London landmarks or murder British citizens. However, it is the unfettered immigration of Labour's past ten years that has enabled and encouraged fanatics who openly seek to destroy British society in course of a misplaced religious fervour that requires them to try and impose their own belief system - a whatever personal cost. And using our social fund cash in the process..!

Yet the mistreatment of the loyal Ghurkhas (and their handful of votes) who have served the country continues to produce examples of meanness of spirit that perfectly illustrates the curious autism being displayed by the social misfits now at the top of government.

Surely this discredited and inept administration cannot survive much longer? Can it...?