VENEZUELA IS COLLAPSING AND IT’S ALL SOCIALISM’S FAULT

WE may be mesmerised by the Middle East and Far East but far away to our west another humanitarian disaster is unfolding. The once mega-rich Venezuela is bankrupt and its people heading for mass starvation.

Reports come in of once-employed citizens scouring the garbage for a scrap to eat after all the stores have been stripped bare. Inflation is over 1,600 per cent per annum, meaning the currency is literally less valuable than toilet paper, which has also run out. But surely Venezuela has huge reserves of oil in an oil-hungry world? Yep.

So what went wrong? In a word… socialism, applied in practice. First communist Hugo Chavez, massively admired by Jeremy Corbyn and his chums, took over.

He brought the wealthy land to the edge of ruin. He died. A rigged election brought his mate Nicolás Maduro to the presidential palace. (No shortages in that building.)

He completed the task of pushing the country over the edge into complete ruin. It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how many examples worldwide we witness in the wake of applied socialism, the faith never dies. Generation after generation, youngsters who have never generated a penny and greybeards who never even tried, march up and down clamouring for this utter and provable economic failure.

Over the next seven weeks we in our sceptred isle are going to witness the suicide-addicts yelling for socialism with the media luvvies beaming away in approval from the TV studios. How fortunate the latter all live in urban townhouses with kids at private school.

After all, we wouldn’t want to see real socialism applied to the mandarins of the BBC and the bureaucracy with all that lovely viewer/taxpayer lolly sloshing around. Or would we?

It is a fact that over 100 years real socialism has been enforced in about 50 societies and in every one has led to ruin. Like heroin it just sounds so intoxicating.