Letter to Daily Telegraph from Stephen Bush, published on 29th January 2020
Criticism of the plan to let the Chinese telecoms company Huawei provide the bulk if not all the nation’s 5G network has largely concentrated on the security implications of the proposed deal (Charles Moore 28th, Nick Timothy 27th January this newspaper). But 5G networks are not just about communications. They are planned to form the basis of the so-called internet of things to which a vast range of consumer goods and commercial products as well as enabling military hardware will be connected.
The provider of the network will specify the way these items will be connected, which will in turn have a profound effect on their actual design. Since China is already the largest source of electrically powered consumer goods in the UK , China’s manufacturing firms will form a myriad of partnerships with Huawei to achieve a virtual monopoly of the UK and other Western electrical goods markets if allowed to.
The way for Britain to work with Huawei on 5G is through a formal joint venture with a wholly-owned British company set up for the purpose by the Government. Huawei would provide access to their present design and manufacture technology in return for its access to the UK market. The exploitation of any technology generated by the joint venture would be shared too. A joint venture like this would protect British security from the inside, vastly enhance British industrial capability, and be a real test of Huawei’s sincerity.
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 26th May 2014
In his perceptive article on how foreign London has become, Charles Moore mentions that many of the capital’s residents are “not British citizens and therefore cannot vote”.
In fact, all Commonwealth, EU and Irish citizens are permitted to vote in local and European Parliament elections.
Commonwealth citizens can vote in British general elections as well, a hangover from the Empire. In London around two million of the 5.5 million electors (36 per cent) are foreigners, a situation without parallel in any other country in the world.
A first step to making London a bit less of a foreign city would be to remove the bias in favour of continued high levels of immigration by restricting voting entitlement to British citizens only, fully accepting that this will only be possible in respect of European Union nationals when Britain leaves that organisation.
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 4th February 1992.
Charles Moore is right (article, Jan. 31st). There is something rotten in the State of the Union, and that is the corrosive defeatism which has gripped most of the British political class since Suez. To this defeatism must be added the automatic denigration of our country by the majority of journalists and other members of the chattering classes who gullibly reproduce any claim about the superiority of continental countries.
Dirk Bogarde’s review of two books on Germany (Weekend, Feb. 1st) is a case in point. Beside his fantasies about the three-language abilities of ordinary Germans is the matching remark about our “impoverished, rather smug island”.
According to the OECD, the real disposable incomes per head in Britain, Germany (before unification), France and Japan are only trivially different when calculated in purchasing power parities. Last year a German study revealed that of the best 50 companies in Europe, 27 were British, while the value of the top 500 companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange is greater than those of Frankfurt and Paris combined. Britain’s net overseas assets (at around £130 billion) are the greatest of any country in the world (including Japan).
Yet these facts about our real strength do not prevent George Jones, for instance, referring to Britain’s “declining economic influence” (Jan. 31st) when discussing pressure brought by the Germans and Japanese on Britain to give up its UN Security Council seat.
The increased pressure for the separation of Scotland from the Union is a predictable consequence of Britain’s insane policy of surrendering her independence to the European Cmmunity – itself a direct consequence of post-Suez defeatism.
To paraphrase Ludendorff’s supposed remark about the British Army, we have become a lion of a country ruled by ninnies, and nobody wants to be part of that when there is an alternative. Whichever party announced it was reclaiming Britain’s independence and would not ratify the Maastricht surrender would both win the next election and save the Union.
