How Big Business Destroys Small Business

The way a Free Enterprise system is supposed to work is like this, companies compete against each other to provide better service's, better products and cheaper prices. This system can be quite brutal as it can drive companies out of business. But for all of it's faults Free Enterprise is good for small business as the entry level is not that high. But today we do not have a Free Enterprise system, instead we have Crony Capitalism.

Crony Capitalism is a system where by both Government and the financial markets protect big business. Government protects it by regulations, these regulations are an annoyance to big business but they help to keep small business under control because they often cannot comply with the regulations. The financial markets keep small business under control by denying it access to financing.

I'm going to use an Australia company as an example of how big companies destroy small business, that business is Bunnings. Bunnings is an Australian icon, the company operates out of massive warehouses where they sell everything you need for building or repairing, houses and gardens. Bunnings is also famous for it's sausage sizzles, where by community groups hold sausage sizzles outside of the stores with Bunnings providing the equipment and the community group providing the food and taking home all of the profits. I've served on a few sausage sizzles and eaten one or two sausages at other times.

But the reason I will be concentrating on Bunnings is not because it is a bad company but because it is a symbol of a problem that is all too common in our economy. I recently started asking people if they needed to buy a hammer where could they buy one? They always answered Bunnings. I would then ask them where else they could buy a hammer? The most common answer was, ummm, as they thought about it. A hammer is not a complex piece of technology, it doesn't really need a specialist store to sell you one. Any old hardware store should do, but there aren't any old hardware stores anymore, Bunnings drove them out of business.

The thing people like about Bunnings is the convenience, here you can buy, timber, gardening products, hammers, drills, boxes the list of items seems endless. But what people don't think about is that in each Bunnings warehouse is somewhere around 5 businesses. Instead of 5 independent business we have instead 1 chain store. A chain store that likes to use a number of tricks to make people think they are saving money when they probably aren't. The store is very basic, while there are many items there are no frills. Prices are often very specific, $12.77 for example, which makes you think that that price was hard fought over, the cheapest it could be. But the reality is that the price is often arbitrary, decided by Bunnings itself.

But the real problem is that when I spend money in an independent business, my money is going to local people. People who in turn will spend most of their money locally. But when I spend money in a chain store, the money can go anywhere, but it probably won't be local. Instead of supporting locals, and our own local economy we instead give our money away to where? In most cases we simply don't know. This helps destroy local communities, economies and of course jobs, it also destroys opportunity.

The destruction of small business has a lot of knock on effects. It takes political power away from local communities and gives it to big business. It means that all of our eggs are being put into one very big basket, what happens when we fall over? Bunnings is a massive company, a company that is owned by an even larger company, Wesfarmers. Have a look at that link and see how many companies it owns. It owns three liquor retailers, how much competition can three retailers in the same market provide?

Instead of healthy competition we instead have the pretense of choice. Small business only survives because big business cannot work out a way to do the job that they do. Once they do work out then small business is destroyed. And by small business what I really mean is entire industries, hardware once consisted of small family run stores, now big business runs the hardware business. Competition has been destroyed and if anyone wants to compete, then all they need is a spare $1 billion dollars.

Do you have a spare $1 billion dollars? If not how do you compete? The answer is you cannot, big business is destroying small business and it is going to cost us all a lot of money.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
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Don't Support Family First

Today Australia has a new Senator, the former Senator from South Australia, Dob Day, was forced to resign when a company that he was part owner of went bankrupt. As a bankrupt cannot remain in Parliament. In Australia a Senate seat when it becomes vacant between elections is filled by the State Parliament voting in a replacement Senator. In theory that can be anyone, in practice it is someone from the same party as the recent Senator, in this case Family First.

Family First is socially and economically Conservative, but they are not actually Conservative because they accept too much of Liberalism, including civil patriotism. So today Australia has it's first black African in Parliament, ohh and she's a women.

I first heard of this on Facebook when Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy put the "happy" news on it's Facebook feed. They were quite enthusiastic and very happy that someone from the Commonwealth would be in our Parliament, she was born in Kenya. I was however much less impressed and I wrote that I would never support Family First again as we don't need foreigners as Senators. To which I received the expected reply from a third person informing me that she was an Australian citizen. To which I replied that I too have a worthless bit of paper and it's called an Australian birth certificate.

I am sick and tired of these civic patriots treating my country as a bloody social experiment. I'm sick and tired of parties that should be on our side being as evil as everyone else. I'm sick of us being replaced and told that we are not allowed to complain about it. I'm sick of the traitors from the Governor-General all the way down to the Antifa thugs. I'm sick and tired of being betrayed!

One more Invader being supported by Traitors......and they think that there will be no comeback!!

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James II, King and Traitor

King James II was King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1685-88, in only three years he would manage to destroy the peace of the realm and push forward the course of Liberalism. But to explain all of this I must go back further.

In 1603 Queen Elizabeth died without having had any children, so Parliament called upon the King of Scotland to become King of England. This started the process that created the United Kingdom. James became King James I of England and Ireland as well as remaining King James VI of Scotland. King James had a troubled relationship with Parliament, in short he believed in the Divine Right of Kings and Parliament did not. The Divine Right of Kings was the idea that as the King was King because God had put him there, that meant that no one could legitimately criticise the King because to do so would mean criticizing God. 

This debate continued into his son's reign, both Kings came to view Parliament as questioning their legitimacy. There fore they did not summon Parliament as often as past Monarch's had and that created a massive problem. Because only Parliament had the right to raise taxes. So only when the King's Government needed money to raise an army to enforce the Kings authority in Scotland was Parliament recalled. This Parliament felt it's issues were more important than the Kings and presented him with demands regarding the future relationship between King and Parliament. Each side felt it was slighted and were jealous of their prerogatives. This dispute would end in civil war.

King Charles I lost both civil wars and was executed by Parliament. Parliament had called the King a tyrant but when it had power it could not do the job of the King. The rule of Parliament was depending on the time and place either incompetent or tyrannical. Oliver Cromwell the great Parliamentary General dismissed Parliament and created a Dictatorship called the Commonwealth with himself as the Lord Protector. He ran the Commonwealth like it was an Army, to run an Army like an Army is normal, to run a country like and Army is tyranny and the Lord Protector became a Tyrant. Under the Commonwealth even Christmas was banned.

In exile the Prince of Wales waited for the chance to return, he lived in France with a large contingent of other exiles, he even had thousands of soldiers at his command, all paid for by France. In fact at the Battle of Dunkirk, also known as Battle of the Dunes fought in 1658 between Britain and Spain English troops fought on both sides, some loyal to the Commonwealth and others to the Prince of Wales. By 1660 the Commonwealth had failed and pretty much everyone knew it. Parliament reformed and recalled the Prince of Wales to become King. He of course accepted and this period is known as the Restoration. 

The reign of King Charles II was a relief to most people regardless of their background. The civil war was finally over and the tyranny of the Commonwealth was at an end. In it's place the English stage rose to prominence, political stability returned and the British Army and the Royal Navy trace their beginnings back to this period. But underneath there remained tensions, both Parliament and the King were weary of each other, but as the same time both were determined to make it work. The major controversy of his reign was religion. England and Scotland were Protestant and to them the issue was settled and not open for debate. But King Charles II had been heavily influenced both by his Catholic mother and by his long stay in France. In public he was Protestant but increasing in private he was Catholic, in time people started to notice. But before they did he signed Treaty of Dover, a secret treaty between the King of England the King of France. The Treaty was designed to destroy the Netherlands, but it also included this clause:

"The King of England will make a public profession of the Catholic faith, and will receive the sum of two millions of crowns, to aid him in this project, from the Most Christian King, in the course of the next six months. The date of this declaration is left absolutely to his own pleasure." 

This wasn't known until 1771!

The religious question which nearly everyone thought was settled the King himself was going to upset. The King was going to destroy the peace of his own realm. Because the truth is that no good could have come from this, Parliament would not have accepted this at all. How do we know this? Because each time he tried to bring in religious toleration Parliament rejected it. It was one issue on which there would have been no compromise.

In 1679 it was revealed that the Prince of Wales, the Kings brother James, was Catholic. This lead to the formation of political groupings either supporting or opposing him, the Tories and the Whigs. The Whigs opposed him and their opposition was so extreme that some were executed. In 1685 King Charles II died and on his deathbed he was received into the catholic church. His heir was already known to be Catholic. So now both people and Parliament, overwhelmingly Protestant were presented with the news that their beloved King had converted to Catholicism on his deathbed and their new King was also a Catholic. It was not welcome news, it was seen as a betrayal.

But Parliament did support King James II, what they wanted was a private Catholic, what they got was a very public Catholic. In the first year of his reign there were two rebellions, one in Scotland put down quite easily and a second in England known as Monmouths Rebellion. The Duke of Monmouth was Charles II oldest illegitimate son. The Army stayed loyal to King James and defeated the rebellion. Within a year things were to change, the King wanted a larger Army which was unpopular with both people and Parliament. He refused to compromise with Parliament and except in his first year he did not call it. He accepted an Ambassador from the Pope and began to put Catholics in positions of power. Most of the new officers in the newly raised regiments were Catholic, but even worse he began to remove Protestants from office so he could install Catholics. 

The peace that had been achieved between his brother and Parliament he himself was destroying. He created this situation all by himself, no one forced him to upset his realm. Neither the people nor Parliament wanted a Catholic King but they accepted him because he was the rightful King. But loyalty is not one way, the King must also be loyal to his people and the simple fact is that he was not loyal. He sort to undermine his people and to convert them to a religion that they had already rejected. Whether they were right or wrong to reject it is another issue, the fact remains that they had rejected it.

By 1688 the Whigs contacted William of Orange and asked him if he would become the new Protestant King of England, Scotland and Ireland, to which he agreed. He raised an army, nearly all Dutch, and landed in England. This invasion is known as the Glorious Revolution because there was hardly any violence. Instead the army refused to fight to defend King James II and so did everyone else, instead he went into exile once again. His cause would be known as the Jacobite cause and would continue until his son, known to history as Bonnie Prince Charles died in 1789.

And there you would think the issue would be at an end, but no there are always people who think that the current Monarch, Queen Elizabeth II and her family are illegitimate. People who think that because King James II was overthrown he remains legitimate. But just as man must be loyal to the King, so must the King be loyal to his people. King James II was not overthrown because he was Catholic, he was overthrown because he was disloyal. He sort to take from the Protestant majority and give to the Catholic minority. We see that today, where our Governments take from us to give to others, it was just as wrong then as it is now. 

I would also like to address one further issue, their are those who read this who think that I am anti-Catholic, but it would be just as wrong for the King of a Catholic Kingdom to betray his Catholic subjects. Loyalty is not just something that we give, it is something that we need to be given in return. It is not an optional extra it is of vital importance.

King James II was a King but he became a Traitor!

Long Live Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia

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The Forty-Ninth Month

March was another great month, in fact my second best ever!

5,575 July 2016
4,717 March 2017
4,523 March 2015
4,362 February 2017

So as you can see the last two months have been really good!

Although I am not expecting this month to be as good, but I do live upon hope.

My worst day in the past month was the 31st March when I had only 51 visitors, although even this is good news as it means I did not have a single day with under 50 visitors. My best day was very good with 392 visitors on the 20th March.

March-April

Entry	Pageviews
United States	1540
Australia	722
Russia	425
United Kingdom	336
Canada	107
Germany	87
France	65
Brazil	59
Ireland	59
Ukraine	43

February-March

Entry	Pageviews
United States	2198
Australia	898
Russia	564
United Kingdom	269
Canada	253
Germany	104
Ireland	88
India	78
France	59
Netherlands	52

For much of the month both the United States and Australia were higher than last month, but within the last week they have both declined in numbers. 

The United Kingdom is the only country to be up over last month.

Russia, Canada, Germany, France and Ireland are all down.

India and the Netherlands have both left the top 10 and Brazil and the Ukraine are back in.

I have also received visitors from the following countries: Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, U.A.E., India, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Ghana, South Africa, New Zealand, Mexico, Bahamas, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina 

I hope to see you all again soon.

Mark Moncrieff

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The End of Checks and Balances

In the 1640's the English Civil War (technically two civil wars) decided the supremacy of Parliament. And as Britain went on to become a successful Parliamentary democracy it has influenced, either directly or indirectly, every Parliament that exists today. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 a system of checks and balances were introduced into the British Constitution. This Constitution is, unlike the more famous American one, unwritten. It divides power between three different institutions, the Crown, Parliament and the Judiciary.

In the United States Constitution the division of power was written down, but the principle is exactly the same. Each branch of the Government provides a series of checks and balances upon the other two branches. The Government was not the ruler of the people but the Guardian of their liberties. The best way to protect their liberties was to have a permanent stable Government with an approved method of peacefully changing the Government.

But what allowed each to function was the division of power. Each branch had it's rights and responsibilities and each was the custodian of both the rights and responsibilities. In fact the system had at it's heart a basic assumption, that both people and institutions crave more power. The system was designed so that it harnessed this force and used it in a constructive manner. Each branch being jealous of the power it had and refusing to give it up.

For the past 50 years Parliaments in every Western country have given up power. The best example of this is the United States, both the Presidency and the Supreme Court have taken the power the Congress and Congress has accepted it largely without protest.

Each decade since at least the 1930's the Supreme Court has created law, which is simply not it's job. What should happen is if the Supreme Court decides that a law is unconstitutional, then it should pass it back to Congress who then makes a new law. Instead Congress refuses to contradict the decisions of the Supreme Court and now whatever the Supreme Court decides is law. But this issue was settled in the 1640's, Parliament is supreme, why has Congress given away it's power to the Courts?

In the case of the Presidency things make more sense or at least it is more logical. The United States Constitution made the President the Commander in Chief of the armed forces and he is also responsible for foreign policy and foreign relations. But only Congress can declare war or sign a peace treaty and only Congress can vote to finance anything. Here is a clear example of the checks and balances. But how could the President threaten war if everyone knows he doesn't have that power? Because if he cannot threaten war it shows that he is weak, that the United States is weak and that can have serious consequences. So the Congress began to give the President the ability to threaten war and in time to wage war, all without the authority of Congress. It's not constitutional but it is logical even if you don't agree with it.

But the Congress also gave it's power away to other bodies that were not in the Constitution, the United Nations being the most powerful of these, although not the only one. In fact this started in the 1800's when Governments, not just the United States, began to sign up to International Courts and Tribunals, mostly concerned with settling Maritime issues or minor territorial disputes.

When created the British and American Constitutions were about what the Government were allowed to do, but today unless it says the Government cannot do something then it can. The interpretation has changed from restricting the actions of Government to unrestricting the actions of Government, unless specifically restricted.  

When you look at other countries you see this exact same thing happening, it certainly is not restricted to the United States. The transfer of power away from the peoples representatives to unelected people. The system was never designed to be treated like this, it was never imagined that Parliaments would willingly give away their power. But maybe that's the answer, Parliament is supposed to be where the people have power and the weaker Parliament is the weaker the people are.

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The Broad Front Strategy

In my last post some lessons from nationalism in Britain I wrote about the things that had been done right and those things that had not been. Overall I thought there were some good insights. However there are some things I think that should be pointed out as times and circumstances have changed.

Lets take Australia as an example, currently Australia's population is 24,000,000 and of those 7,000,000 were born overseas. And you can add to that the effects of Liberalism, Feminism and crony Capitalism. We are no different to anywhere else in the West, we are slowly but surely being destroyed.

Now I do not say that to discourage you but instead to fire you up. We can win this fight but we need to fight better and harder than we are at present and we need to be more organised. The days of compromise are over because it always meant we had to give up our beliefs in exchange for the Liberals going slow, but still winning. That is not a compromise and we should stop pretending that it is. To that end I put forward the Broad Front Strategy.

There are four areas in which we need to organise and fight:

1. The Streets

2. Elections

4. The Institutions

3. Culture

Now let me look at each area separately.

The Streets
The Left likes to use the streets as it's own private fight club, they believe that they are above the law and above morality. But we do not have to simply put up with it, we can march, we can protest and we can fight back. But all of that needs to be organised.

The Left will target people on their own, they will target young and old people and they will target women. All of these things have to be known and countered. Ironically they will also use women to attack knowing that they will get hurt to gain sympathy. I have even seen them use babies as human shields. Remember at all times that they are dishonourable and that they do not deserve our respect, a good rule of thumb is to return the respect that you receive, if you receive non then show non.

But a word of caution, remember the objective, the objective is that we want to win back the West. The aim is not to simply fight for fightings sake.

Elections
The West is Democratic, do not lose sight of that fact. To achieve our aims we will need to fight elections and win them. There are two major problems here, 1. most parties on the Right are not Conservative even though they call themselves Conservative and 2. there are often too many parties.

In each country and in each election we need to find the candidates who are worth our vote. If we cannot get 100% of what we want can we get 75% or 50%? If I was British I would have voted for UKIP at the last election, not because they are what I want but because they offered 60% of what I wanted. Keep moving Right when voting.

Secondly instead of forming new parties, join ones that already exist and encourage those on the broad Right to cooperate. When 10 parties are after the same vote that vote gets split, instead we need to cut down the number of candidates so at least one of them on the broad Right stands a chance.

This is also important, too many political parties think that the campaign starts when an election is called. The candidate needs to be known and approachable well before the election is called. He should do letterdrops and door knocks to let people know who he is and what he stands for. He also needs support from his supporters.

The Institutions
There are many who say that the Institutions are lost to us and that we must fight on other battlefields. However I would like to put a different face on it. Firstly the Institutions, the churches, media, Academia, the Bureaucracy and Big Business are hostile to us, but we must never forget that they play by rules. Rules can be manipulated, they have done that and so can we.

Secondly not everyone in the Institutions is hostile to us, there are fellow travelers, people who believe in fairness and people who can be turned to our position.

Thirdly we need to use their own rules against them, that will achieve two things, 1. it's hard to live by rules and we can cut out those who are opposed to us 2. when they try to manipulate the rules we can use that against them as well. There are many people who get very angry when they find out just how dirty they can be.

All Institutions live by rules, they love rules, they worship rules, using their own rules against them is cruel and fitting. Institutions lose power without rules, they cannot exist without them. So there is only so much that they can manipulate them. In the long run we need to win them back, in the short term we need to start putting pressure onto them, we need to let them know that it costs to oppose us because at the moment they don't feel that way at all.

Culture
It has been said that the culture wars have been won by the Left, if that is so why does the fighting rage on? The battle over culture has not been won by the Left, but currently they are winning. We need to encourage and support those who engage on this battlefield. Books, art, opinions, traditions, public holidays, dating, raising children, there are so many ways that the culture is fought over. Don't give up, fight to keep those things that we already have. Then fight to regain more of our culture.

Support and join organisations that you agree with, attend activities that you want to survive and support people who are doing the same things.

Final three points
Leadership, community, use your strengths.

Leaders are important, be loyal to leaders but remember that they have to return that loyalty, we want leaders not a cult of personality.

If you can don't do things by yourself, find like minded people and make time for both serious and fun activities.  Don't make it all serious and don't make it all fun. Create communities, build communities.

Use your strengths, find out what you are good at and do that, find out what others are good at and use them in that role. It's a simple thing but too often you find people being put in situations that they are not suited. Use strengths as much as possible.

We are preached to from so many places that it can be hard to draw a line and fight, we are so often betrayed by others who have given up the fight. But we know that unless we fight we cannot win and unlike the broad Left we know that in 100 years time there will be people just like us wondering why things are so much worse. The tide is turning and we need to be part of that. If we are too win we need to fight on as broad a front as we can!

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