A couple of weeks ago, I likened the EU to an old, warm overcoat in winter; totally flea and vermin infested but to throw it off might lead to the big freeze. It is widely recognised now that Greece should never have joined the Eurozone and it will not do to blame the Greeks' use of Goldman Sachs for their entry into the quagmire. Any of the other Eurozone States should have seen with both eyes closed that Greece could not properly qualify. It was only the political insistence of having as many countries as possible within the zone that caused them to let Greece sneak in.

For seven years Greece has suffered austerity and crisis and nothing they can do while constrained by the euro will improve matters significantly. In the next seven years, there will be votes, there will be changes of government, there will be strictures, there will be orders from the EU that must be followed for bailout cash, yet that is what it will be - bailout - just enough to stop the ship of state sinking but never enough to get it underway again. In those seven more years, the ship, if still afloat, will not have moved forward. 

The Greek people on the decks of the Olympic, threw Captain Samaras overboard and appointed midshipman Tsipras to take the helm. He offered hope that he would steer a new course and the people believed him. But the new chief engineer, Varoufakis failed to restart the engines of commerce, without which the helmsman could do nothing but cry and twiddle the wheel. As the water laps at the gun-whales of the stricken ship, the people's belief in their early-promoted midshipman is evaporating fast. Heading slowly for the sinking ship is an EU pilot-cutter, waiting for the people to throw Syriza overboard en bloc, so that an EU appointee can take charge. 

Salvation will come for the stricken ship when the EU jettisons those people deemed a burden and expendable. Then and only then, with much cash injected for new engines, will the ship get underway. With luck and continued benevolence from its EU masters, the ship of state should dock safely in Piraeus circa 2022 with people on board who had abandoned all hope.

Tsipras should not have offered to re-float the ship of state on the back of EU funds and demands. Far better to seek a commission from Thor Heyerdahl and build a modern day
Kon-tiki raft, but named The New Drachma. With this he could rescue the bulk of his people and sail slowly but surely along a new course to better times. Better times? Nothing could be worse than the slow, painful drowning this once-great nation currently faces.

The dust has not yet settled after the UK election. There will be arguments and recriminations, that’s for sure. At this moment, there are many people complaining that the result is not democratic, but it was and is. Perhaps the system of democracy used is outdated, but we all voted within the rules of that system...there was no mass boycott and on that basis it was democratic...the majority opinion prevailed.

England took the Greek notion of democracy, shook off the dust and started to mould it into a workable system more than five hundred years ago. The proven British model is used as a basis throughout the English-speaking world and elsewhere too.

Democracy is frequently held up as the ideal form of government. It is not, nor will it ever be ideal; yet in terms of being closest to what the majority of a nation’s people believe, there has never been anything better.

Many argue it is not right that the Conservatives have absolute power with only 37% of the vote. They say the ‘first past the post’ system is unfair, but forget that it was designed for a two Party system. The coming of the Labour Party in the 1920s made it worse. The Liberals became a perpetual third place Party where their seats never reflected their proportion of the vote.

Up until the last election in 2010, the two main Parties were quite happy with this and only the LibDems seriously backed electoral reform and proportional representation.

The 2015 election saw some eight different Parties in contention, which has resulted in the greatest disenfranchisement ever. The Scottish National Party is cock-a-hoop that it secured
a majority north of the border by gaining 56 seats for 1.8million votes. Yet the fervently 
Euro-sceptic UK Independence Party secured only 1 seat for 3.8million votes. There is little doubt that the British model is now broken. It cannot be cobbled back together and needs to
be changed.

However, if 37% brings forth a questionable democratic system, just ponder for a moment
that P.R. has its own perils. Think how a voter might feel if s/he had voted for the Noddy Party because it promised to ban bells on hats. Yet, the Noddy Party, with 40% of the vote, fails to secure a majority under P.R. and has to form a coalition with the Big-Ears Party, which with 11% of the vote is vehemently opposed to banning bells on hats. Thus 40% of the people wanting bells to be banned have to endure them because of the demands of a minority. Is this model more democratic?

My post, ‘The End of Democracy’, took a fearful look at the burgeoning power of the EU at a time when there was a real possibility of a Labour+SNP government. Neither Party supported the view that the British people should have any say on our membership. This may have been something that helped trounce Labour.

However, I am delighted with the result because the victors were the only ones (with any serious chance of winning) to promise a referendum on our evolving membership of what has become the European Union.

Achieving true democracy is such a daunting challenge that sometimes it is possible to see why the EU, with one foot in our door, seeks to avoid it. It seems to move inexorably toward benign dictatorship, which might be its perceived ideal. Some say the EU seeks to achieve totalitarianism without the furore of having a visible dictator at the helm.

Making democracy work so that it unites a nation is hard, but making it work to unite a confederation of nations is near to impossible. It is particularly so where those nations have differing priorities, different attitudes and different methods of doing things. It is no small wonder that the European Union formulators have adopted a system that is more dictatorship and less democracy.

Some argue this is exactly what is on offer and if you believe benign dictatorship is an acceptable method for the efficient organisation of human beings, rejoice because that is what the EU is.

If, on the other hand, you believe the people should have the right to dismiss those in power, a British referendum to exit the EU may serve as a clarion call to other nation states. An omen of the effects of unbridled power, controlled by big business, is clearly before us. Perhaps other countries will then hold referenda and so dismantle this monstrosity, which is the ill-conceived child of fascist parents.

However, as big business and sinister forces appear to be the power behind the EU throne – beware! They will spend a fortune on publicity and persuasion to frighten the British people into voting to stay. This will be the true challenge for those wanting democracy because it will be hard to slay those hidden behind the monster.

I have a vote in the UK election on the 7th of May.  I know how I will cast it. It is my democratic decision, but it has been a dilemma. In 1964, before I could vote, I asked a shopkeeper friend who he would be voting for. ‘Nobody, probably,’ was his answer. I persisted and eventually he confessed that he knew where he was putting his cross, but business considerations counselled him against revealing it.

I feel the same. As an aspiring author, I know that more than half my potential readers will not agree with my decision and I thus risk a large potential readership. Many people are afraid to stand up and be counted for similar reasons. This election, though, is like no other. Silence is a costly option; more costly than losing readers. This time our very freedom is at stake and once surrendered, like innocence, it cannot be restored. So I shall speak for my grandchildren and their children; I shall speak for my genes. I write because I am able to; I have no need of fame or fortune in my twilight years. If I have no readers, I shall not starve.

In 1975 I voted ‘YES’ to remaining in the Common Market. As a 27 year-old, I saw no reason to vote ‘NO’; it posed no threat. Yet forty years on, it seems to me it is the biggest threat to our traditional values and way of life ever posed...even greater than the Second World War.

I read once that it was not Hitler and his henchmen that made totalitarianism work, but all the little men and women that toiled to carry National Socialism forward; without the minions, the master race would have been stillborn. Now we have a burgeoning EU super state that seems to go its own way like one of those automatic vacuum cleaners, constantly avoiding difficult obstacles but continuing to sweep up all impediments before it.

There is much evidence to show that the European dream had its foundations in wartime Germany. It is said that Hitler pondered the governance of a conquered Europe where Germany would seem to be devolving power. The methodology was established, but when National Socialism was not victorious, the plan was wrapped in cotton wool until reopened seven years after the war when it was used to form the European Iron and Coal Federation. This has now mutated into the European Union, but The Federal States of Europe must still be the goal to bring those 70 year-old dreams and plans fully to realisation.

The question is though: Just whose dreams were they? Surely not Hitler’s – he was too busy directing a disastrous war. So who could have been whispering in his ear to cause his dream? Just who started an idea that was translated into a cohesive plan that survived the dreamer’s passing? Europe’s post war politicians couldn’t have carried a National Socialist goal forward – or could they? Just because we have been able to identify some of the architects of the EU as having been supporters of Hitler, does not necessarily mean that it was Hitler’s own grand plan. So whose grand plan is it that we are following?

Maybe the architects of the plan needed a Hitler to give it birth. After all, he must have had some quite powerful support to take over Germany. Yet immediately after the war, hardly anybody would admit to having supported him. How then does his dream survive?

Maybe we should be asking exactly who benefits from the success of the European project. Certainly not Hitler or his long-gone henchmen nor could any neo-Nazi cadre be sufficiently well organised or hidden to make it happen. It would be insane to suggest that our many politicians with Jewish antecedents could be kow-towing to a Nazi-planned takeover of their adoptive countries by a National Socialist inspired European Union.

Yet in all respects, we see the EU acting as a Fascist organisation with its directives, immunities and democracy-eroding policies. So who is behind it?

Nearly ten years ago I wrote a novel called ‘Assurance’, a period thriller looking at a microcosm of English society and speculated on the erosion of democracy. I wrote it as a tongue-in-cheek piece of fiction, yet now I wonder if there might be some truth in it. I invited readers to decide if such a takeover of a country was possible, but left it to them to ponder exactly who was behind it.

Each day something about the EU leaves a bad smell. I spend a lot of time in Greece and can see Brussels quietly destroying the elected government. I have no truck with Syriza, yet I am horrified to see how easily democracy is being trampled on. It has already been overturned in Ireland and I fear it will be overturned elsewhere until we all accept the new European order.

I hope Britain will be allowed a referendum on this overriding issue, which transcends the NHS, Taxation, Welfare, Trident and all the rest because, if we don’t have a chance to throw off this non-democratic yoke, nothing else will matter. We will have to do as we are told by the hidden power pulling the strings, or else! 

A Cretan holiday changes a successful woman’s life...  

On their first evening in a luxury Elounda hotel, two forty-something, single professionals bump into Cretan Kharilaos. Unable to say his name, they settle for Harry. Judy quite fancies him but he seems to prefer Caroline. In a fit of displaced pique, Judy soon suggests he could be a charlatan and coins the name Harry the Louse. 

The louse, apart from being a horrible parasite, is a slang word for a despicable man who is devious and scheming with women. Yet Caroline is drawn to the well-read, property rich, crisis-hit gentleman, whom she believes does not deserve the ‘louse’ epithet. 

When Harry introduces Niko to Judy, the name Nick o’Louse surfaces, but it is quickly forgotten and the women agree to stop wrangling and shelve the ‘louse’ nicknames, unless...

Then Harry suffers a major setback, giving Caroline a chance to capitalise. Just who is the innocent abroad? Will Harry get his hands on Caroline’s hidden assets before another, or will she seize and doctor his family jewels? Could Niko take Judy on a journey into the unknown or will she solicit a high-flying lifestyle? Clues over, now just expect the unexpected! 

‘Harry the Louse’ will be priced at £5.99 ($8.99) after release on 22nd May, but is available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle at just £2.99 ($4.49). To convince yourself it is a bargain, take a quick peep at the first two chapters posted on Harry's page at: http://www.richvens.co.uk/harry-the-louse.html then click on the link.