We are at a turning point in history with regard to the way we transact to purchase goods and services. We have been made familiar with electronic transactions whereby payments can be made by presenting your card or phone app to a reader or making purchases online by filling in card details which can then be saved for future use. As time has gone by our banks have developed the ability to program these electronic transactions so that for instance they may decide for your safety that you may not spend more than £100 online or more commonly limit your cash access to say £400. The next step is to create a digital pound, a little like bitcoin et al except instead of being fully secured for an individuals access, government will hold your funds with assurances from them that your funds are safe with them. In doing so the next tiny step towards the full blown chinese style social credit system has been created. Linked to the "carbon footprint" levers of control which incidentally is a term coined by the oil industry, it opens up the future possibility of declining purchase where people have exceeded their carbon allowance. The US have already passed enabling legislature for a digital dollar and the UK will be looking to follow suit. It will be sold in a very benign way but the control possibilities will become limitless. But knowledge is power and the more people that are aware of how the digital pound could be misused the better.

Looks like we are just going to have to continue online for a while until our meetings at branch and regional level can be resumed, so here is hoping that the pubs and clubs hosting our meetings are still in existence.

There is definitely a need for safeguarding our elderly and susceptible but the one size fits all approach from our government is exposing our institutions to a lot of strain.

The police are having a field day - They think they have a holiday from fighting crime so that they can concentrate on easy targets and are doing ridiculous things like randomly stopping motorists (always the easiest of targets) and stopping people from escaping city centres and exercising miles from anyone in the country. There is one thing for sure it has proved that we definitely do not have a shortage of police.

We should concentrate our efforts on safeguarding the vulnerable groups but as far as possible allow the UK economy to function or the cost to us all at the end of the day in lives and welfare will be much worse than the effects of the virus.

Here we are in April 2021 and there is a huge amount of hysteria at the moment on the subject of IDs but let us cut through the fog and present some clarity

•  There is a need for national ID to allow the nation to define it's citizens which then allows illegal immigrants and benefit fraudsters to be identified and claims on our system to be controlled
•  This cannot be a forgeable entity like an ID card or an easily damaged characteristic like a fingerprint but a more robust biometric like Iris pattern
•  This characteristic ID must be held on a national database with very limited access and scan equipment held only by our police force, social security, NHS, polling stations, border force and Customs
  

In this way control of ID would never pass to Pub doormen, Stadium turnstyles, theatre receptions, event entry kiosks etc

However, the biggest worry of all, as we progress to a New World Order designed to eliminate nation states, is can we trust that our democracy does not drift into a totalitarian state that inherits all the established data and misuses it to control citizens in a tyrannical manner.

Tonight 18th July 2019 is the big night for UKIP North East as we entertain the 5 leadership candidates who will persuade us that we have a rosy future under their guidance.

The UKIP Leadership candidates are:

- Ben Walker

- Freddy Vachha

- Helena Windsor

- Mike Hookem

- Richard Braine

All will be attending the North East hustings.

Date: 18th July

Time: 7pm

Venue: Hetton & District Working Men’s Club & Institute (known locally as The Big Club)

Address: Rear of Richard Street, Hetton le Hole, Houghton le Spring, DH5 9HN

Format.

Candidates to give a 3 minute presentation.

Audience questions to the candidate  

Short interval

Audience to question the candidates collectively

Questions submitted in advance by email will be given priority. When submitting a question please state if it is for an individual candidate to answer or for all candidates to answer.

Please bring your membership card with you.

If you are unable to attend then watch this space for a link to video of the event tomorrow.