This morning, on the Jonathan Cowap show on BBC Radio York, our Honorary President Godfrey Bloom was involved in an opinion panel discussing topics ranging over marriage, Brexit, driverless cars, social care, and the credit card industry. The discussion was spread over several interview sessions. He was paired with Abigail Scott Paul of the Joseph Rowntree foundation.
If you would like to listen to the various elements of the opinion panel, please click on the different audio links below:
Marriage and Brexit:
Driverless Cars and Social Care:
Dog Ownership and Credit Limits for Individuals and the UK State:
I disagree with Godfrey Bloom on the very first topic: Poverty – I don’t like poverty, but I don’t want a world without it because poverty is what catalyses initiative. A world without poverty sounds nice, but in reality it wouldn’t be.
Marriage – Why? I agree with the principle of marriage, but the institution is in terminal decline for very obvious reasons. Parliament should revert to the previous position and make divorce difficult and abortion almost-always illegal. Encourage arranged marriages of young women from a very early age: 14 or 15. Women would then be prolific while staying married, and men would want to marry. If there is a secret of a good marriage, a fortiori monogamy, then it must be that people should marry as early in life as possible and grow and mature with their spouse.
Anna Soubry – If this woman does not want to receive death threats, then she should stop conspicuously working against the interests of her own country.
Brexit – the interviewer sounds a bit dim. It’s not a credit card debt that we have run up with the EU. It’s a budget, in to which we have contributed, so if anybody has run up credit, it’s the EU with us.
Driverless cars – the Heinlein story, The Roads Must Roll, comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll I can’t see how driverless cars can work in anything other than special situations where the vehicle can travel along an exact pre-planned route. Possibly there might be commercial potential for designated trunk routes, for lorries, buses and coaches, etc., and maybe ordinary cars could switch to a ‘driverless’ function while on motorways, but I can’t at the moment see how it would work very practicably on local roads.
Social care – I agree with the guest that the best solution for this is going to be in the insurance market. Godfrey Bloom’s ideas also sound interesting. I don’t like the idea of this being met by the taxpayer. There again, the annual foreign aid budget is currently around £12 billion. Shouldn’t that be spent on the domestic population or returned to the taxpayer, as Bloom suggests, to enable private and mutually-funded care?
Dogs – I walk Bridlington beach with my dog. Didn’t know Godfrey does, I’ve not seen him yet. I’m the one with the scary rottweiler.
Credit cards – don’t get one, in fact don’t get into debt. No need to. I believe the root of the problem is the housing market, which made housing unaffordable (or less affordable) and created a credit boom. End immigration and introduce a land value tax (as recommended by David Webb on here) and the credit industry would contract.