"I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead."

Well, who’d a’ thought it? An American TV News leading with a cricket story! Not, of course, England’s record win over Pakistan but the gambling scam. ‘A disastrous day for cricket’; ‘the world of cricket on its knees’. Steady on, dears; it doesn’t even begin to compare with the Hansie Cronje scandal – team captain, good looking, rich, one of the world’s top batsmen national hero fixing matches. It was like discovering that Mary Poppins was on the game.

If TB expected phrases of praise on the donation of his loot from the biog to wounded soldiers he had another think coming. The media is now probing the sources of the £20 million he seems to have made in 5 years. The latest is the news that he has just forked out £1 million for his daughter’s apartment just round the corner from Chateau Blair in London. She already has a £250.000 crash pad in Strasburg. The Blurs now have 9 properties. Latest reports suggest that they are now looking at properties in Barbados. How naf! Suggested price tag is £4 million. The autobiography is not even published yet but the Blairs have received no plaudits for their donation; the general view is that it is conscience money. I disagree on the grounds that he doesn’t have any such thing. There is much speculation as to whether they are worth £20 or 60 million, but it has not gone unnoticed that the UK taxpayer is still picking up the bill for their security.

And still in relation to Blair, the establishment has rushed into print to rubbish speculation about the strange death of Dr Kelly. The Home Office pathologist asserts that it was a classic case of suicide by cutting his wrist and overdosing on pain killers. He also had a dicky ticker, we are somewhat belatedly told. He said that he was so incensed by the way Dr Kelly had been treated during the WMD inquiry that he went out of his way to detect signs of homicide. Call me an old cynic (what, moi?) but trying to find evidence to support a prior opinion hardly strikes me as scientific objectivity. He makes the quite telling point that the doctors who published their misgivings and started the story running again were orthopods and the like without his specialism in forensic pathology. This prompted a response from a Professor that the pathologist was not a toxicologist but no report had been revealed giving an expert view on the effect of the painkillers. The truth should come out if there is ever an inquest, but I think the real truth is that the Government of the day had acquired such a corrosive reputation for preferring spin to truth that people became inclined to believe the very opposite of everything the Government said.

In addition, I reckon that the public has become distrustful of experts because they have seen all too often how charlatans will craft their findings to fit the conclusions demanded by their paymasters. As a result there have been some spectacular cock-ups - the millennium bug (I’m sure a lot of people made a bundle out of that), the assertion that AIDS and CJD would wipe out vast numbers of people (I recall that the media said that AIDS would affect one UK family in four), the prediction in the 1970s of the coming of a new Ice Age, the forecast in 2006 that drought would be the usual climate of the UK because of decreasing rainfall, the swine flu epidemic which according to our grandstanding Health PS would infect 5 million people (or was it 15 million?). I could go back to when it was authoritatively predicted that manufacture of motor cars would be limited by the number of chauffeurs available.

‘Deepwatergate’ has now moved to the financial pages but I guess that it will be back up front when the Bly Report commissioned by BP is published in a couple of weeks. With inquiry reports from the Justice Department and the Congressional hearing plus the Presidential Commission into industry practice due to come out at various times, it looks as if the story will run and run. Focus is now switching to Transocean. It seems to be a rum set-up, with management in Geneva, operations in Houston, rig-building in South Korea and Singapore, and drilling all over the world. Last December, Transocean had a blow-out at a North Sea rig, but this time the blow-out preventer worked. ‘Deepwater Horizon’ had apparently not returned to port since it was built 9 years ago.

Within a month of the spill, Transocean decided to pay a € 1 billion dividend, in stark contrast to BP, which forewent the divi and instead deposited £2 billion for compensation. The Swiss Government blocked the payment.

Elsewhere, we learn that Big Oil now has the technology to deal with a repetition of the Deepwater disaster. This begs the question as to why the technology wasn’t developed before it was needed rather than afterwards.

Your comments about the US media indicate that the exasperation is transatlantic. Your domestic CNN seems to be as bad as CNN International is good. Most anchors should have a ‘w’ in their title. Unlike your version, CNN news here carries almost no commercials, which means that I have to dash to refill the glass during the very short breaks. ‘Quest means Business’ often runs for 45 minutes instead of the full hour, the quarter-hour then being taken up with excellent short news reviews from Africa and the Middle East. Quest has been around a long time. I first came across him as BBC World’s Wall Street man; then he had a news-magazine programme on CNN with Alison Bell until she disappeared overnight in a scandal involving the sainted princess’s ex-squeeze. The silly woman who was over-promoted as Editor of the DT described his voice as ‘like gargling in vomit’, so it’s not just the Yanks who cringe at his throaty delivery. She got fired shortly afterwards.

We also get interesting snippets out of ‘Backstory’; it has just covered Katrina five years on and getting back to normal in Florida after Deepwater. The activities of the Federal Government and the Army Corps of Engineers seem inept. New Orleans is still a bit of a shambles. In Florida people got fed-up with waiting for the Government to get going that they did what was needed themselves.

We have abandoned the print media apart from the Sunday Times, which passes the morning until the pubs open. Half of it is thrown away unopened. We usually get to about page 16 before finding anything of interest. The big story this week was the Pakistan cricket gambling scam, but the ST didn’t mention it. We no longer watch TV news; we have Skynews running at 6 p.m. in another room so they we can catch any interesting headline, which is very rare. All the news services are partial and biased. For instance, over the week-end there was a confrontation in Bradford between mobs of whites and Asians. The whites were described as ‘right-wing extremists’ and the Asians as ‘anti-racism protestors’. As nobody interviewed anybody from either group, how did they know? Which reminds me of being at lunch a number of years ago with a Scottish Chief Constable. He said that the best way to disperse a mob in Aberdeen was to rattle a collecting box.

We certainly have no intention of paying the Dirty Digger to get into Timesonline. It is difficult to forgive The Times for outing one of the most popular bloggers whose topic was real life in the Police. He was a serving copper and the Times dropped him deep in the merde; the blog was closed down. We now get most of our news from the Economist, the Torygraph online (not much these days since it became an oversize red-top), the BBC website and, particularly, surfing.

And finally

Ten reasons to get out of the EU from the excellent Dan Hannan MEP:

1. Since we joined the EEC in 1973, we have been in surplus with every continent in the world except Europe. Over those 27 years, we have run a trade deficit with the other member states that averages out at £30 million per day.
2. In 2010 our gross contribution to the EU budget will be £14 billion. To put this figure in context, all the reductions announced by George Osborne would, collectively, save £7 billion a year across the whole of government spending.
3. On the European Commission’s own figures, the annual costs of EU regulation outweigh the advantages of the single market by €600 to €180 billion.
4. The Common Agricultural Policy costs every family £1200 a year in higher food bills.
5. Outside the Common Fisheries Policy, Britain could reassert control over its waters out to 200 miles or the median line, which would take in around 65 per cent of North Sea stocks.
6. Successive British governments have refused to say what proportion of domestic laws come from Brussels, but a thorough analysis by the German Federal Justice Ministry showed that 84 per cent of the legislation in that country came from the EU.
7. Outside the EU, Britain would be free to negotiate much more liberal trade agreements with third countries than is possible under the Common External Tariff.
8. The countries with the highest GDP per capita in Europe are Norway and Switzerland. Both export more, proportionately, to the EU, than Britain does.
9. Outside the EU, Britain could be a deregulated, competitive, offshore haven.
10. Oh, and we’d be a democracy again.

Keep buggering on, as Winston used to say.

We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality

There have been around 400 hits on the blog but of course this is no guide to the size of our readership. A dearth of comment and reaction continues. Readers e-mail:-

‘best read of the week’
‘love it’
‘addictive; I suppose I must now make time to read the bloody thing’.

To our muttons!

So farewell, then, the Manx Grand Prix. For the pleasure of a few petrol-heads we have 12 hours house arrest on a Bank Holiday (and on two more days during the week) so that they can spend 2 hours doing 200 m.p.h on public roads. The weather has been almost entirely perfect which has meant that at least we have not had to suffer weather-related postponements that mess-up the whole week. But two competitors were killed early in the first race of the second day, so the whole day’s events were cancelled, and an additional day of road closures was the result. A non-competing biker was also killed a day or so earlier after being hit by a Range Rover, the vehicle of choice for ambassadors of good taste like premier league soccer players, low-rent pop stars, and poseurs of every description.

The early opening of the roads as a result of the cancellation meant we could nip out for a quickie. In the pub was a nice young man missing his right arm and leg after hitting a hare at supersonic speed in last year’s races.

The whole damn thing is an anachronism; OK when the Island had a population of 5000 and very little on the roads. Now that it is a busy financial and commercial place the disruption to business must far outweigh any tourism revenues, not to mention the public cost of putting on the event. But if you criticise, the mantra is ‘There’s a boat in the morning’.

Crossing on the ferry to England during the TT earlier this year we were surprised to see large numbers of bikers returning to England before the event had even started. I was told that they only come across for the week-end previous to the opening of the TT so that they can ride the circuit on ‘Mad Sunday’. On this day anybody can roar around the circuit at high speed without the intervention of the Old Bill. Crazy, man! One of them killed himself 15 minutes after getting off the ferry.

We have just had the coldest August since – well, the last coldest – with temps closer to November. July was the wettest since Noah. We are already using central heating. The locals go around dressed for a tropical beach, and barely-covered boobs are a traffic hazard. Toughies, these Manxies. Or thick. On the brighter side, the latest economic figures show an unemployment rate of under 2% - a negative rate actually, because there are vastly more vacancies than jobs leading firms to recruit off-island. One of my drinking chums, who is a bit of a linguist, told me that during a short walk to his office he heard Spanish, French, Turkish, German and a Slavic lingo. No Manx, though. The second most widely spoken language is Afrikaans. We also have Thais in some numbers and Filipinas are the mainstay of the hospitals and care homes). The economic growth rate is a healthy 6%.

I am convinced that the main reason is that our politicians are inept and idle, and having no ideas they do no harm. The common view is that not one of them could sleep straight in bed.

The Great Cricket Scandal has had more front page coverage for Pakistan than the flood disaster. There was Heffer harrumphing away about the whole international game being run by imbeciles and controlled by racketeers. It is revealed that Pakistan has form going back twenty years or more – and I don’t mean ‘form’ in the sporting sense. Truly, ‘We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality’. Heff is dreaming of another England when cricket meant a system of values, sportsmanship and

THERE'S a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

Not any more, maties. Now it’s big money, big crookery, cheating, gamesmanship, sledging, and the rest. Heretofore there was so little money in the game that the suits weren’t interested. With big TV contracts all this has changed. One England player gave a hint of today’s earnings when he bought a large country house in Cheshire, the epicentre of bad taste. He then pulled down this beautiful old pile to build a pad that would challenge the vulgarity of the rich footballers who favour the area. Unfortunately, he did this before getting planning permission, leaving him the proud owner of a £5 million pile of hardcore. Quelle fromage!

PC rools OK?
Here is Rod Liddle in the Speccie:

Terrific piece by Douglas Murray in the latest edition of the magazine. He explains how he was reported to the Press Complaints Commission for having repeated an Irish joke made by a councillor (who was forced to apologise for it) and called for readers to send in more Irish jokes by way of protest. One of the points which Douglas doesn’t make is that the joke in question doesn’t necessarily confer the intimation of stupidity upon the Irishman in question. It could just as well be the intimation of great wit or knowing perversity. The joke is this: man walks into a Dublin bar and sees his friend sitting with an empty glass. “Can I get you another, Paddy?” the man enquires. “Well now what would I be wanting with another empty glass,” Paddy replies. As Douglas says, it’s not a very good joke. But why the furore? The witless idiot of a union rep who heard this joke uttered by the aforementioned councillor instituted legal proceedings which eventually won him thousands of quid in compensation. This is a madness, isn’t it?

My understanding of the law according to TB is that it is an offence to utter something that the listener considers to be discriminatory. Whether it is a fact, whether it is something that a reasonable person would regard as discriminatory is irrelevant. The offence is absolute; there is no burden of proof. Welcome to the world of George Orwell. In any case, Irish jokes are not about demonstrating that Paddy is stupid; they are all based on the Irish gift of stretching logic until it screams. For example ‘How do I get to Ballygorblimey?’; ‘If Oi were you, sorr, I wouldn’t start from here at all’. I rest my case.

Grubstreet news.
The meeja surely reached new depths this week with the sleazy stuff about Willie Hague’s personal life. Apparently he spent a night in a twin room at a hotel with his Special Advisor. Ooo, Mabel! Nudge, nudge; wink, wink; know wot I mean? Slimy innuendo, Chinese whispers, muck-raking – the stuff of life for the bottom-of-the sewer tabloids. Except that this one was run by the Daily Not-so-Torygraph, the broadsheet red-top. It once had a circulation of over 1 million; it’s now 687,000. Good show! And what is odd about the whole nonsense is that after 30 years of gay rights campaigning, statutory protection, and all the rest it is still regarded as pejorative to imply that someone is a homosexualist.There’s no evidence whatsoever to support the snide innuendos against Hague. He has been such a public figure since the age of 16, when he fired up the Tory Party conference, that it seems inconceivable that he has escaped being outed for nearly 40 years. One never knows, but so what? As Mrs Pat said ‘It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses’

And we hear that Piers Moron is to take over from Larry King Live on CNN, he who is best known for being fired as Editor of the Daily Mirror for publishing fake photos of British soldiers beating up Iraqis and being decked by Jeremy Clarkson. I bet that this will have the life of a mayfly.

Economics for dummies.
Stiglitz was on CNN yet again, pontificating about how everybody was wrong about the economic situation except him; we are all doomed! Then there was one of the Bank of England MPC members wittering on about double-dip recession. You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize-winner like Professor S to understand that the basic driver of markets is confidence. You can talk it up and you talk it down. And if guys in your position continue to talk it down it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

It must be true; I read it in the papers.
‘More than 50% of US troops deployed to Iraq receive disability pensions’. Less than 50% of troops are likely to be fighting men, so they must be a bit careless with the paperclips.

What’s in a name?
The boss of Delhi City administration is Mrs Dikshit.

‘Few things in life are more agreeable than seeing your neighbour fall off his roof’.

Far from slipping away, the great Mosque debate is now getting on to the front pages here. On one day The Independent carried three different feature articles, although there was no eureka moment in any of them. Quest did a piece with a very reasonable, articulate, and intelligent Muslim Republican politician, who also made the point about the danger of encouraging alienation and a feeling of being Muslim first and American second He also questioned what would be a reasonable distance if 2 blocks is too close – 4 blocks? Six? Or what? Reasonable debate seems to have been lost, and O looks as if he is facing both ways. The polls show that 26% of Americans believe that because his middle name is Hussein, he must be a Muslim himself. So a person whose name is Robin must be a bird, OK?

The Big Spill is dead but it won’t lie down. We hear that the State of Alabama is going to sue BP. Will BP join the Federal Government as a co-defendant? ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but to be counsel was very heaven’. Transocean’s writs were 249 at the last count. The CNN’s man in Florida was struggling on Quest to make a story. The best he could do was to produce yet another ‘expert’ saying that OK there was no oil to be seen on the beaches, other than Factor 8, but the fish were ingesting the oil which could be disastrous for mankind. Handy on the BBQ, though.

After all the sound and fury of poor old Tony Hayward being monstered for taking a day off to go sailing, it is now alleged that apparently the Chairman of BP, Svanberg the Invisible, took a cruise on his luxury yacht with his squeeze just after the spill. And this was not a couple of hours around the Isle of Wight. This was an odyssey to Thailand, Singapore, Bali, and Australia. Whether he took this vacation or not would have made no difference to capping the spill. However, he is said to work at least two or three days a week for his £750,000, so he must have needed the break.

And here’s a funny thing.

This story seems to have gone largely unreported apart from the Daily Mail and an Aussie paper. Private Eye has mentioned it, natch. It didn’t seem to interest Fox News, gobby US Senators, O, the meeja jackals who tore Tony to pieces, or anyone on the other side of the pond. Perhaps the Mail fabricated it.

At the same time, you guys are still asking for Mehgrabi to be returned to the Scottish bridewell. Spiky comments here suggest that the reason for his unexpected survival is being released from the tender mercies of the NHS. It is also mildly embarrassing that the only documents not in the public domain are those embargoed by the US Government, according to the Haggisbashers.

One of the sanity-preserving institutions in this increasingly flaky world is Richard Ingrams. He is one of the original founders of Private Eye and of The Oldie. He also does a column in The Independent which is reproduced in the Oldie newsletter e-mail every Friday. Eye and Oldie probably do more to expose the malfeasances and mock the pretensions of those set in authority over us than all the conventional media together. It was the Eye that gave the lead on the above revelation. Between them Oldie and Eye also have the best cartoons.

It may also be noticed that I am a fan of CNN International. The spoken English is better than we get on UK news channels, the women are mostly better-looking (although if Fiannula gets any bigger I will need a wide-screen box), all presenters are very articulate except Andrew Finnegan who can sometimes lose the plot , ‘Quest Means Business’ is a must when our Richard is there, but he seems to have more vacations than POTUS. The short programmes on Africa and the Middle East are outstanding. The financial commentators are remarkably articulate without a teleprompter, although I challenge the fastest short-hand writer to keep up with Maggie Lake. The oddity is that it is not transmitted in the US. Same problem with the superb BBC World News Service, which is not transmitted in the UK. From my experience, CNN in the US is as bad as BBC News in the UK.

A further comment on the fair-trade racket. One of our supermarkets carries a big banner announcing that it stocks Fair-trade wines. Eh? Where are all these impoverished peasants producing Chateau Collapso? Chile and South Africa, that’s where. Chile is a medium income country that features in the top 70 nations in terms of GDP and the Human Development Index. South African wine farms occupy some of the most highly-valued real estate on the continent. I believe that there is still a quota system to prevent wine lakes and keep prices stable. I have visited quite a number of SA vineyards and have yet to see a farmer with his broekies in tatters.

A most uplifting scene on TV news was the coverage of the bull that leapt out of the bullring and charged the spectators all over the ball park. Truly, as Confucius say, ‘Few things in life are more agreeable than seeing your neighbour fall off his roof’.

Yes, we have no Obamas

I hear so much about why we are in trouble and how we need to dig ourselves out of the recession that I swear one can hire an expert to confirm anything one wants confirmed. Finally, however, a pattern is emerging that has most pundits in agreement. Namely, we exercised panicky knee-jerk reactions through this and that finger-in-the-dike monetary and fiscal measure without regard to the long term. Our salvation can only come through a reasoned, workable and manageable long-term plan that will measurably and demonstrably reduce the national debt. The plan should also act to initiate the process of confidence building in government's ability to lead the economy and control spending.

This seems like a reasonable solution and one that would garner favor among the masses in spite of inevitable sacrifices that will need to be made. However, I continue to fret over the possibility of losing sight of other priorities of a less savory nature. Namely, tort reform, term limits, tax reform, defense spending cuts, and measures to control the overweening lust for power and wealth of those managing our financial institutions. These priorities collectively demonstrate the extent to which our basic power institutions have gone ballistic with respect to spending, entitlement and entrenchment. Once dealt with, immediate attention is needed to upgrade our educational systems and redefine the dysfunctional relationships that now prevail between teachers, students and parents. Nor can we neglect to redefine the role of labor unions with a view toward rationalizing legitimate employee demands with economic realities.

Great news; O is pulling out of Iraq. Wait a minute, the last convoy just crossed over into Kuwait. Can we expect that remaining soldiers will eventually leave without the security of a convoy? How can there still be thousands of soldiers remaining if we have just pulled the combatants out? Are we about to seriously commit to hiring mercenaries and civilians to fight and administer our wars? Was hiring mercenaries not a primary reason for the demise of empires?

Our entire military complex needs a remake from top to bottom. Defense Secretary Gates has just come up with a cut and slash plan to bring the military back to earth. Fareed Zukaria did a super expose on military spending and military excesses that would seem to not only justify, but mandate, huge spending reductions along with a major effort to render the military more efficient and effective and considerably less self serving. Strange, Defense Secretary Gates also announced his intention to resign next year. I trust that what looks very much like a hit and run maneuver will not crater for lack of continuity and determination. We shall see, but I am not optimistic, nor do I expect to see financial reform, tax reform, tort reform, union controls, improved education and term limits. I do believe we are out of control and require something devastating to bring us back to reality.

All hat and no cattle

Well, kiss me neck. So O didn’t listen to you about the WTC mosque. The Economist did a Lexington piece on the wrangle, the general line of which was that the US is proud of the fact that Muslims assimilate better into America than elsewhere and it should avoid the danger of creating a ‘them-and-us’ attitude that might lead to home grown terrs (you have already had a couple). It did a hatchet job on Gingrich thus:

The former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives may or may not have presidential pretensions, but he certainly has intellectual ones. That makes it impossible to excuse the mean spirit and scrambled logic of his assertion that “there should be no mosque near ground zero so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia”. Come again? Why hold the rights of Americans who happen to be Muslim hostage to the policy of a foreign country that happens also to be Muslim? To Mr Gingrich, it seems, an American Muslim is a Muslim first and an American second. Al-Qaeda would doubtless concur.

Mr Gingrich also objects to the centre’s name. Imam Feisal says he chose “Cordoba” in recollection of a time when the rest of Europe had sunk into the Dark Ages but Muslims, Jews and Christians created an oasis of art, culture and science. Mr Gingrich sees only a “deliberate insult”, a reminder of a period when Muslim conquerors ruled Spain. Like Mr bin Laden, Mr Gingrich is apparently still relitigating the victories and defeats of religious wars fought in Europe and the Middle East centuries ago. He should rejoin the modern world, before he does real harm.

I thought that O’s speech was equally lacking in logic. The general theme was the protection of the American right to freedom of religion. This ruckus has nothing to do with freedom of worship; it is about putting up a building, and there is no absolute freedom to do that. However, the First Amendment protects both religious freedom and bad taste. The entire proposal strikes me either as crassly insensitive, arrogant or seriously provocative – or all three. A report from the Big Bagel says that most New Yorkers are not particularly fazed by it all, especially as a mosque, it is said, already exists on the site and this is a rebuild (at $100 million a pretty big one). The Governor of NY State is said to have offered to find another site more remote from Ground Zero, but this was refused.

There was a recent proposal to erect the biggest mosque in Europe alongside the Olympic stadium in London. It would have accommodated thousands. There was an outcry; people took the scheme as a power-statement and an attempt to upstage the Olympics. Fortunately the proposal collapsed for funding reasons. I can well sympathise with Americans who object to this one. But Gingrich seems to have been indulging in the worst kind of rabble-rousing; he puts the US on all fours with Saudi, as if they had shared values. Not a smart argument.

O’s later ‘clarification’ - that he was only talking about the legal situation, not the merits of the case - was pretty weasly. More than ever he is coming across as all hat and no cattle, as you Texans say. He seems to have stirred up hostility on both sides, the Right accusing him of ‘pandering to radical Islam’ (Gingrich) and the Left of buggering-up their chances in November. The debate now seems to have reached rock-bottom, with Mayor Bloomberg calling anyone who disagrees with him ‘bigoted’ (have you noticed how lefties, greens, warmists, carbonatics (thank you ,Martin) and organicists always use abuse in place of debate?), red-necks against ‘liberals’, O against Palin; lots of heat, little light. The polls show 60% against the project. Stand by for more swallowing of tails.

(A footnote on the onwards march of Islam; when I first went to Malawi 50 years ago the Moslem religion was confined to the north. Twenty years ago it had crept down to the southern lake shore. There was a frenzied building programme, but every time a ‘moskew’ was built the Catholics built a church as close to it as possible. I met a young lad who told me that his name was Yussuf or Joseph, depending on which place he was attending at the time. He was paid for attending both. Ecumenical or what?).

There is a great deal of comment here, also, about O’s less than dazzling performance in the polls. One gets the impression that he is less popular than a fart in a space suit. . His latest disapproval rating is 50% - with Congress scarcely out of the starting gate with a disapproval rating of 72%. What is intriguing is that there does not appear to be a carpe diem moment amongst the Republicans. Who is the coming man – or woman? If you tell me Palin I shall check-in to the home for the old and bewildered.

Rather more worrying is the state of the US economy. If America is the world engine of growth, then it looks like ‘cash for clunkers’ time. You have falling house values, falling manufacturing output, rising inventories, increasing long-term unemployment, but no discernible long-term plan to tackle the deficit. The previous highest deficit in the last ten years was 3.5%; now it’s 10% of GDP. ‘Alka’ Stelzer in the ST talks of ‘hope for the Good Ship Robust Recovery’. Really? It strikes me that the US is deep in sierra hotel 1 tango.

In a traditionally slow news month, the meeja have returned to the Strange Death of Dr Kelly, the WMD expert who ‘committed suicide’ after being outed as the source of leaks about the government’s porkies. Some medical experts have called for the case to be reopened because they cast doubts on the robustness of the evidence as to the cause of death. The conspiracy theorists are having a field day. The suspicious circumstances include the impossibility of Kelly bleeding to death through a transverse arterial cut on his wrist, doubt as to whether the pain killers he took also were sufficient to kill him, the lack of blood in any quantity at the scene of the death, the establishment of a police incident room nine hours before he was reported missing, the lack of an inquest, the key documents being kept secret for 70 years, and so on. He was a guy who was used to stress and high pressure – he was a weapons inspector for Gawd’s sake. Hardly the sort likely to top himself because a bunch of MPs were beastly to him.

One commentator says that it is inconceivable that the government would conspire in the assassination of one of its officials. Hmmm. Andrew Gilligan, who ran the original ‘no wmd’ story for BBC and got fired for his pains, believes that it was a cry for help that went wrong. The fire had already passed over Kelly so what was the motivation for suicide? Because the Government had threatened to sack him and take his pension away, theorises another.

This is actually quite an old story, the call for a re-examination of the case being made several months ago. The solution is to have a proper inquest.

The Pakistan disaster is not getting as much attention as anticipated. The Torygraph ran a comment piece on the mystery of the paucity of donations to the aid effort. It says that over a given amount of time UK contributions were only 10% of those for Haiti. The British are the second most generous givers to charity per head, after the US, so why the closed wallets now? The piece comments

A more plausible excuse for withholding your money is the incompetence of many aid operations, and the corruption of the governments with which they have to work. In Afghanistan, the failure to monitor how aid money is spent has led to huge sums disappearing into the pockets of the powerful, rather than being used to build the roads, schools and hospitals that it was meant to. The corruption is so widespread that aid workers call the place "Afghaniscam". Something similar is likely to happen to a proportion of whatever is donated to the flood victims. The terrible earthquake in Kashmir in 2005 prompted Britons to hand over more than £20 million. A lot of that money was misappropriated – as was much of the cash given by the World Bank to the Pakistani government to build flood defenses which could have mitigated the current crisis.


One possibility is donor fatigue. However, posters to the piece made frequent reference to the amount of money that Pakistan spends on arms, including nuclear weapons, the fear of money finding its way to the Taliban, and some spiky remarks about the level of donations from wealthy Muslim countries (on which we have no information). Antagonism towards Pakistan might be a factor, but I suspect not a lot. The brutal truth is that there has been a dearth of shocking TV images; floods are not as telegenic as an earthquake. Donations depend on emotions, not on logic, otherwise many charities would have a tough time. The worst is yet to come, with cholera, measles, dysentery and malaria taking a bigger toll than the floods themselves. Here is the present tally:

The root of the problem is not money; it’s our old friend Institutional Capacity (or lack of it). The nature of disasters makes it very difficult to actually distribute aid, especially where the capacity and infrastructure has either been destroyed or because of corruption and institutional incompetence. And it doesn’t encourage donors when the government on the receiving end charges duty on imports of food aid and materials.


An amusing little story dredged up by Quest. An enterprising Indian businessman (is there any other sort?) has revived the East India Company that was formed in 1600 under Liz 1 and ceased trading in 1878. At its zenith it controlled 50% of the entire world trade. It also governed India and a big chunk of SE Asia until the Raj took over. The new owner acquired all the intellectual property of the company; this has lain dormant since it ceased trading. The business plan is to trade in a number of the goods that the EIC specialised in, such as highest quality tea. The old company logo is now appearing on the merchandise. Of course what he is really selling is nostalgia – amongst Indians at that. Maybe the Raj was not so bad after all.

It must be true; I read it in the papers.

• Daft headline of the week: ‘Unfaithful men twice as likely to be caught cheating’. (DT)

• Another daft headline: ‘Rare plants more difficult to find’. (DT)

• ‘Not many hurt’ headline: ‘Two builders made redundant’. (Isle of Man Examiner)

• Daft reporting; ‘The RAF is to be cut to its lowest size for 100 years’ (It was formed in 1918). (Economist)

• Daft reporter; I dipped into Glenn Beck’s slot the other night. After 10 minutes I was losing the will to live. A complete a**hole. Is the entire American right-wing meeja commentariat always this buffoonish? I know that if mountains were made of bull-sh** there would be skiing in Texas, but he is beyond belief. Or was I too hasty? I do not intend to find out.

• Amazing headline; ‘Blair gives book cash to charity’. The Beeb reports that the Rev. Blair is to give all the proceeds of his memoirs to the Royal British Legion to build a sports facility for wounded soldiers. Well, as a new convert to Rome, he will be familiar with the ancient practice of purchasing indulgences. £5 million plus royalties should get him past the Pearly Gates, but he won’t know anybody there.

‘May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpit’.

Well, this blog has garnered a couple of hundred hits in its first three weeks, but the curious thing is there has only been a single comment and not one reaction. Does this indicate acquiescence or indifference?

There was a brief mention in the meeja of the Forgotten Man of Politics; I refer, of course, to G. Broon who is busily writing his masterpiece on financial management ‘How I saved the World, the Universe and Everything’, or words to that effect. Can’t wait. I thought that the above Arab curse suited the situation. I would also commend to him the wise advice of Tom Lehrer:

Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please "research"

So farewell, then, Deepwater Disaster. Is this ‘egg-on-face’ time for O and the gobby Senators who unwisely tried to tie it into Lockerbie? The latter have returned to the fray, demanding the medical records of Mehgrabi and the identities of the doctors. They know well that the Scots will tell them to go forth and multiply, so it can only be grandstanding, n’est pas? I reckon O should have handled it the English way:-

1. Fix the problem;
2. Hold a public inquiry;
3. Cover with whitewash;
4. Ignore the claims of the victims;
5. Carry on as before, leaving the miscreants in their comfortable positions.

1 above is optional. 3, 4, and 5 are mandatory. 2 is OK as long as the report is written first.

I strongly forecast that the merde is about to hit the air-conditioning big time, and it will be trebles all round for m’ learned friends for the next 20 years. We read that BP commissioned a safety audit on Transocean’s performance seven months before the disaster, which revealed a lengthy maintenance backlog. It says that 390 tasks were more than a month overdue, safety policy was not communicated, safety records were substandard, and there was a dearth of senior managers. However, Transocean says that even if it is found to be grossly negligent it is immune from financial penalties under its contract with BP. We shall see.

The truth is that accidents are rarely caused by a single event; most often they are the culmination of a chain of events that are not individually disastrous but taken together create a catastrophe. It is going to take a long time to unravel all this, which, at the risk of repeating myself, points up the folly of O rushing in with his gung-ho stuff about fitting up BP. Apportioning blame amongst the many actors in this drama will keep the lawyers prosperous for years to come. And the Ineluctable Law of Sod will see a major oil-spill by one of the US majors somewhere in the world. Will that be pay-back time?

It seems to me that much of the problem is not the event but its handling. It was Big O, not Big Oil, wot done it. Once O had declared Deepwater to be the worst environmental disaster ever in America, the media let rip. The Governor of Mississippi himself said that the biggest negative impact was not oil spillage but media exaggeration that gave the impression that the whole of the Gulf coast from Florida to Texas was up to its ocksters in the sticky stuff. This was what caused damage to the tourist industry rather than the oil. And as for environmental damage, we learn that only about 350 acres of oiled wetland was found whereas Louisiana loses about 15,000 acres every year from other causes.

To address your point about the apparent contradiction between the Government’s need to tax and to stimulate the economy at the same time, we have to revisit our old friend the Laffer curve. I believe this was drawn on a napkin in a restaurant, but is no less revealing for all that. It shows the tax take from various levels of taxation, from zero when the tax take is 0% to zero when the tax take is 100%. Basically, as you raise taxes you increase revenue to a point at which it peaks. After that the revenue starts to decrease because of the disincentives to work; people would rather not earn extra money by overtime or working harder or whatever if the tax gatherer is going to purloin too much of it.

Another serious consequence in this mobile age is that both firms and individuals are tempted to decamp to a more business friendly tax regime. Both scenarios are possible under the recently-introduced 50% top tax rate in UK. The Isle of Man Government is having a wobbly at this time because of EU pressure to abolish the zero rate corporation tax (the Brussels bullies see no limit to their jurisdiction, even small islands outside the Fourth Reich). A survey indicates that if a tax of only 10% is imposed the bulk of the financial services industry will relocate elsewhere – Singapore, BVI, Hong Kong or wherever.



If you lighten the tax burden you allow people to spend more of their own money which increases consumption which encourages investment which expands the economy which leads to higher tax revenues. The experience of the Thatcher years shows that the theory works. Before Maggie, top tax rates were in excess of 80%, waste swathes of the economy was nationalised and under-invested, there was stringent exchange control and various other socialist impositions that stifled the economy. Maggie halved the highest rate of tax, swept away all sorts of financial restrictions and gave people their money back. The economy boomed and the UK had many years of amazing growth until the onset of the Broon Terror.

Of course you know all this, but I thought I would explain it for the benefit of the economically illiterate, like George Osborne.

O’s economic policy clearly isn’t working, if job creation and consumer confidence are anything to go by. The US companies that seem to be doing well are those that kept the Feds at arm’s length and have substantial foreign earnings, like Ford. It has been well said that you can’t spend your way out of a recession or borrow your way out of debt. It is also reported that there are now millions of Americans who are not only out of work but also out of time on benefit. What happens to them? I believe that the strong American attachment to small government is correct, to reduce the Federal budgets and spending, and staff numbers, and consequently tax levels. O is going in the opposite direction.

Back to the topic of tax havens, the local press report a bust by our FSC minders concerning two wealthy Texans, to wit, Charles and Sam Wyly. They have been working with the Feds since the 1990s on an insider-trading scam involving a sum not unadjacent to $550 million. Contributions to the Republican Party are now likely to be diminished. No Hiding Place when these Manxies get their teeth in. They have recently sent a wealthy old geezer on several years’ of a porridge diet for money laundering with an accomplice in New York. The silly old bugger had the stash in Switzerland where it was perfectly safe. For reasons not disclosed at the trial he transferred it to the Isle of Man where it was immediately pounced upon. I tell you, this is not a good place for tax dodgers and financial hanky-panky.

Here in La-La land, I predict a short life for the Brokeback Coalition.

Our Home Secretary, Kitten Heels May has managed to enrage her Tory chums twice in a few days. She has nodded through the European Investigative Order which enables foreign police to require UK cops to divulge information even in respect of matters which are not an offence in the UK. This information includes DNA records (the UK has 5 times as many as any other European country because of the activities of the NuLab stasi in the reign of terror, including the retention of DNA samples from people – the majority – who have never been charged, let alone convicted) bank transactions, etc. Previous examples of minor criminal offences already pursued around Europe include a carpenter who fitted wardrobe doors and then removed them when the client refused to pay him, and the Polish authorities requesting the extradition of a suspect for theft of a dessert.

She also activated the Equality Act of Mad Hattie which had an immediate application of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It was thuswise. A Tory MP declared that he would not hold a surgery with anyone wearing the niqab. The Equality Commission immediately threatened to prosecute him under the new Act for discrimination. Hopefully, he will say ‘see you in court’, they will go ahead, his defence will be that he would refuse to see anyone whose face is covered, and if the defence fails it will open up the most enormous can of worms e.g. how about banks that refuse to admit anyone wearing a motor cycle crash-helmet and visor for security reasons? I foresee an early bath for the lady.

‘Slasher’ Osborne is expecting massive cuts in the defence budget in the middle of a war, and promises to put the Minister ‘back in his box’. The Minister will resign. There will be a punch-up between Osborne and St Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, and Cable will resign also. The coalition is having an easy time right now because the Labour lot are lacking a leader. Come September Labour, either Tweedledum or Tweedledee Miliband will be driving wedges into all parts of the Government, exploiting the fact that the coalition is less than popular amongst the LibDem rank-and-file, especially since their poll ratings have been hurtling south since May.

I notice that Quest on CNN is now sporting the tie of Garrick Club, the exclusive London hangout for luvvies. Welcome to the Establishment, Richard. I was once taken to lunch there and it was like being in Central Casting. He did an ‘In Depth’ piece about the demise of the boss of HP. I have difficulty in following the logic. The apparent reasons for his removal were a piffling sum in expenses (nothing to compare with our Honourable Members who remain unscathed) and a spot of rumpy pumpy (ditto). Here is a man who turned around the company after Carly screwed up. In a short space of time he vastly increased shareholder value and profitability.

Ah, say the terminally self-righteous, it was a breach of ethics. Why is it unethical in an electronics business to have a bit on the side that merits dismissal when it is OK for a Deputy Prime Minister and other highly-placed people too numerous to name? Ethics is supposed to be indivisible, so why did not the Pope resign over kiddy-fiddling priests? (Private Eye said that boys used to go into the priesthood; now it’s the other way round). Do the same rules apply to major competitors in India, China and the rest of the world? I am clearly missing something here. Obiter dicta of that wise old bird Lord Justice Denning was that nobody’s sex life could withstand close scrutiny.

Are the stockholders and employees of HP ecstatic about this show of corporate morality?

In ‘Global Warming and Other Bollocks’, Stanley Feldman does a fine demolition job on the ‘ethics industry’. He says ‘The ethics industry has nationalised morality. An individual can no longer make a free choice as to what is right and what is wrong. It is a matter of ticking boxes. If sufficient ticks are in the right box it becomes ethical. It destroys the fundamental difference between man as an individual and man as an animal in a herd. He can no longer choose according to his own conscience but must conform at all times to the diktat of authority’.

Quite so. Why is it unethical for a barrister to advertise but not for a solicitor? Until a few years ago no lawyer of any stamp could advertise. So if it was unethical then, why not now? Can it be because authority says so? Is it unethical to buy from a sweatshop or unethical to put poor people out of work by refusing to do so? As an Aussie colleague was wont to say ‘Everything’s a racket – unless you’re in it!

Thought for the day; would Dr Spooner have described Broon as a shining wit?

‘Gravy trains are OK – as long as I’m on board’

The political right smells blood and as a result is ratcheting up its attack on O and his minions. The public is increasingly disenchanted with O's failure to muster the winds of change that people so desperately wanted. Instead, and like many before him, O seems to be living in a bubble totally oblivious to public opinion. One right wing commentator notes that no president in recent times has brought with him into office a political class that is reaping massive public entitlements and other rewards.

While the racial implications of this statement are staggering, major concessions have indeed been made to the poor and unemployed. Although there may be some social merit to the policies promoting such rewards, the growing numbers or chronically poor and unemployed suggest that an expanding number of our citizens are taking all they can get from a government willing to give all that we have. Like Toyota and BP, O seems to be putting profitability before quality in his desire to keep and expand votes for himself and the Democratic party. The unions have done extremely well by O, as has the automobile industry, the banks and just about everyone except America's onetime pristine backbone, the middle class.

The latest emotional issue to capture the hearts and minds of the public here is that of whether or not to construct an Islamic social and cultural center complete with mosque in the vicinity of 9/11's ground zero.

Reactions to this proposition are clearly and refreshingly bipartisan. Builders unions say they will refuse to work on the construction, the right say no way to construct a monument to Islamic victory in New York, and plain folk just shake their head in disbelief that the proposition could have gone as far as it has. What few proponents of the idea we have are largely individuals chained to a misguided interpretation of the Freedom of Worship clause in our Constitution.

The issue is not one of religious freedom, but common sense. The Muslims can build their monument somewhere else without hue and cry, but no, they are determined to build it near the World Trade Center Towers on the grounds that our Constitution gives them every right to do so. We are being impaled on our sword and many of us are so confused they don't know what to decide.

Some believe that the center, named the Cordoba Project, is a throwback to the Islamic historical pattern of constructing mosques on conquered land. The Project name supports this claim as, I have no doubt, so do millions of Muslims. Other Americans question the need for another Mosque in New York; after all there are already about 100 of them. When one hears about the resurgence of Islam, one does not think that includes America, but rather over there in some ambiguous place.

Also for expressed reasons of religious freedom, the Jewish mayor of NYC supports the application for building permission at the desired ground zero location. I say, it is time for a new mayor who can put things in perspective and who possesses the uncommon gift of common sense. We have too long been enchained by marginal and remote interpretations of our constitution that, when put in the mouths of our benighted lawyers, can justify anything.

The latest scam here has just recently been exposed. Remember when civil servants were on the lower end of the pay scale and behaved like it? Well, their behavior has not changed, but they are now well up on the pay scale with three digit salaries not uncommon. The scam, however, is not the big salaries, but the enormous pensions.

Somehow, particularly at state and local levels, civil servants have managed to manipulate the rules governing benefits and pensions whereby individual retirees are also issued pensions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Police and fire retirees also draw large pensions and only after 20 years of service. The public is up in arms over these revelations and I fully expect a lot more of them to come. Finally, we know what is done with taxpayer money.

'Don't just do something; stand there!

As for our prisons, there is little I can say in defense of these schools for scoundrels. I believe the entire problem needs further dissecting. To paraphrase an old English rhyme, the world has a long tradition of imprisoning the thief who steals the goose from off the common and ignoring the greater felon who steals the common from the goose. Our politicians appear to exemplify the latter. More certainly, our politicians are accelerating the pace of alienation from the voters and concerned citizens.

I enjoyed Fareed Zakaria's GPS program in which he interviewed two former Secretaries of the Treasury, Robert Rubin and Paul O'Neill. Democrat and Republican respectively, the two were reassuringly on the same track. They agreed that confidence in government is eroding and that current financial reforms miss the mark.

O'Neill was outspoken in his observation that our tax system is idiotic and should be reformed along the lines of a VAT or consumer tax. He noted that he had been preaching such reform in the early days of the Bush presidency. He also noted that he was fired for opposing the Bush tax cut for higher income bracket people and for denying the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Going strongly against the Republican talking points, he confirmed that tax cuts for the rich are not a good idea when the government needs money for such efforts as financing a war, reducing national debt, and rebuilding our social security and medicare systems. I personally have found it confounding that while the government needs tax revenues to operate, the economy is said to be stimulated by reducing them. It is not that I don't understand the economic arguments, but rather I find them contradictory.

Your comment that heads of state want to be their own foreign secretary reveals an insightful and well read mind. The veracity of this is well driven home when one considers the blunders of our past presidents going all the way back to the post Kennedy era. Nixon may have been an exception as he seemed to have relied heavily on Henry Kissinger to break our commitment to Vietnam and to open up China. In spite of his international upbringing, O appears to have little international savvy. As for the gaiety of nations about which you so fondly speak, there isn't any. The world is in the doldrums over failed globalization which, like socialism, appears to be more and more the equal distribution of poverty. I would like to back off that statement a bit as there is considerable wealth in the world, but it is intensively hoarded by a very few individuals and nations with phenomenal caches of sovereign funds at their disposal. Moreover, it may be premature to condemn globalization as it is only in its infancy.

Reports on theDeepwater Horizon venture continue to confuse everyone. Late news is the hole has finally been successfully plugged. Later news is that another relief well effort is now being made to plug it once and for all. This is just poor reporting by people who understand little or nothing about the oil industry.

The sluggish economy continues to have ill effects here in Central Texas. A pervasive grumpiness and prickliness prevails among many denizens who otherwise would be of high and hopeful spirits. The media adds to this public malaise by taunting O' for sending his wife and one daughter off to Spain at monumental public expense. Their reasoning; O should not preach tightening public purse strings on the one hand and partying like a billionaire on the other. My call is that the Presidents of the US and their families should take ample time off from the stress of their positions.

Meantime, the Fat Lady has submerged again, possibly holidaying herself after a long world tour and a costly wedding. Why do I get the impression that world leaders don't take her seriously? Her errant husband, her femininity, her liberalism? Surely it is not her physical stature, which seems to be overpowering the weight of her intellect.

‘America has the longest prison sentences in the West, yet the only condition long sentences demonstrably cure is heterosexuality’.

There was some coverage of the Royal Wedding but a lot of media speculation as to whether it cost millions or just hundreds of thousands. The whole event was so redolent of ‘High Society’ that one half expected Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong to make an appearance. The groom needed a shave. All done in the worst possible taste, maybe, but good luck to ‘em. We like a larrikin, so Bill the War Hero will always be liked here. At least he added to the gaiety of nations, which is more than can be said for any of his successors. But as I mentioned before, Hillary certainly needs a course with Weight Watchers. She has more chins than the Beijing telephone directory.

The good news this week is that scientists have proved (at least to their own satisfaction) that teetotalers are four times as likely to get rheumatoid arthritis as boozers. So trebles all round, just to keep those old joints a-working, coming on top of the Spanish study that says red-wine drinkers are less likely to suffer heart and circulation problems provided that they don’t imbibe more than 20 units a day. This is about 5 bottles. Ole! But I am certain that if I am cremated it will take two weeks to put out the fire.

Prison is in the news at this time, as the Government muses on what to do about the immediate prospect of waiting-lists for a cell. The Prison Service is getting like the National Health Service, except that you have a better chance of surviving your sentence.

In my simple way I had always thought that the measure of success in law enforcement was a reduction in crime, and that increased clear-up rates, convictions and prison populations were indicators of failure unless the crime rate falls at the same time. I have also misguidedly thought that the guidelines for imprisonment were that the crime is so serious that no other sentence would be appropriate; that the convicted person was likely to be a danger to the public; that he would be likely to re-offend; that he had a record of conviction for similar offences; that further charges were likely and the convict was likely to abscond or interfere with witnesses; that the convict was likely to seek retribution against the jury or witnesses; or some other good and substantial reason why there was no reasonable alternative to banging up the wrong ’un in the bridewell.

Both UK and US bang up people who don’t fall into any of those categories. For examples; a 73-year old widow with a clean driving licence pulls out of a side-turning, is hit by a motor-cyclist who dies; charged with causing death by careless driving (another new crime invented by the NuLab stasi); three years porridge. A hard working 24-year old, with no previous and in gainful employment since leaving school, has a party in his house, has a skinfull (surprise, surprise), thumps another male reveller, and gets 3 months. Whilst in the nick he is offered just about every Class A substance going, at reasonable prices. Was public safety improved?

Lord Chancellor Clarke would seem to be of a similar mind as he has called for a reduction in the numbers of people sent to jail at vast public expense. Needless to say, he has received a good kicking from the fascisti who believe that you should be put in the nick for cycling without lights.(I refuse to use the term ‘Ministry of Justice’ as if England were a banana republic without the bananas; whatever made Blair think that ‘justice’ and ‘law’ were the same?).

I began to reflect on this following The Economist commenting on the topic big-time. Here is an extract from the Leader:

‘IN 2000 four Americans were charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes, in violation of a Honduran regulation that Honduras no longer enforces. They had fallen foul of the Lacey Act, which bars Americans from breaking foreign rules when hunting or fishing. The original intent was to prevent Americans from, say, poaching elephants in Kenya. But it has been interpreted to mean that they must abide by every footling wildlife regulation on Earth. The lobstermen had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece. Two are still in jail’.

In the US you can get time for failing to prevent your employee from breaking regulations you have never heard of e.g. the railroad construction supervisor who got 6 months when one of the workers accidentally broke a pipe that allowed some oil to spill in a river.

The rate of imprisonment in the UK is high compared with other European countries, but in the US it is four times as high as ours. The gist of the two major pieces in The Economist is that in the US there is such a plethora of rules and regulations that it is impossible for anyone to avoid becoming a criminal, but politicians are unable to resist the ‘I’m tougher than you’ syndrome. The US has 748 inmates per 100,000 population; the next highest is Russia, trailing with 600,000, and Iran in 4th place can only manage 240.

One of the oddities about Deepwater is that the only evidence we have seen of environmental disaster is repeated pix of the same bedraggled pelican and people picking up pea-sized tar-balls off a beach. We are accustomed as a result of disasters in Europe to seeing beaches completely covered in sticky crude, thousands of dead or dying sea-birds, and bulldozers lifting tons of oil-soaked sand away for disposal. Why have we not been shown similar pix from Florida? CNN did quite a big piece on this; on affected Florida beaches the investigators had to use ultra-violet lamps to show up the oil deposits that were otherwise quite invisible to the naked eye. Chemical analysis show that oil pollution of the sand was 2.6 parts per million. (And hardly had I written this when the DT ran a piece calling into question the extent of environmental damage entitled ‘Was Tony Hayward right?’ - to play down the disaster assumptions).

I totally agree with your view of Tony Hayward; he is an oiler, not a PR spinner. He has a First in Geology, not in telling PR porkies, plus a Ph.D. He was dead man walking from his first utterance, but he should never have been put in that position. It was the duty of the useless Chairman, whose expertise is mobile phones and saunas, to have been upfront, aided and abetted by his remarkably silent Director of Spin, the invisible man from Lehman Bros. However, Tony has a pension of £600,000 a year plus a £1 million sweetener and a seat on the board of the Russian end of BP, so he is not going to be signing on for welfare any time soon.

I watched an interview on Randall with the new man at the helm of BP. Typical American courtesy, reasonable, very articulate, and nothing gung ho whatsoever. He also made a point that he and Tony were friends (the unspoken part of that being ‘don’t give me any sh** about Deepwater’). He struck me as a very likeable guy, and quite unflappable. (It is untrue that, because of the Deepwater brand damage, BP is reverting to its former name – the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company).

And according to Mark Mardell, the Beeb’s man in America, the media hysteria is in the UK, not the US. Or perhaps your media has more interesting stuff to report than the outpourings of a small group of self-important Senators about Lockerbie who may have been naive enough to think that UK politicians and senior officials would rush to their bidding or that Hayward would not spot the perjury trap a mile off, recognising it as November grandstanding.

I don’t think the Senators are that thick; my take is that they knew very well that Straw and co would tell them to get knotted, which would give them more column inches and Fox News time. In any event, they would have found Straw to be like a one-legged man at an arse-kicking party.

Meanwhile, Dave piles faux pas upon gaffe. His comments about Pakistan - in India, of all places - remind me of a meeting I attended with the Pakistan Chief Justice in Islamabad a while back. A German woman in the group started to tell him how much better they did things in India. Air conditioning was unnecessary in the atmosphere that followed.

This reminds me that you once asked what it was that I liked so much about Pakistan apart from the wonderful scenery.

Well, for starters, respect for an old geezer like me. During that same visit I had to meet the Election Commissioner, the Honourable Qureshi. When I reported to reception, the guy at the desk picked up the phone and said’ Sahib, here is Sahib Lord Robinson!’ Respect at last!

And humour. I was being taken around by the delightful Pakistani Information Attaché at the British High Commission. Passing the US Embassy, he told me that there had been recent trouble when a mob tried to burn it down. When I asked the reason, he replied ‘Because of Salman Rushdie and the ‘Satanic Verses’’. When I reminded him that Rushdie was a Brit, he said ‘We know; but it’s the Americans we don’t like!’ I recall being at dinner in Bangladesh with the Pakistani World Bank Resrep. This was just after India announced that it had the Bomb. Putting on a perfect Indian accent (quite different from Pakistani), he made the announcement. ‘We peace-loving Indians are proud to announce that we have made a peace-loving nuclear bomb. We are now making a peace-loving missile. When we have it we peace-loving people will bomb the sh** out of the Pakistanis!’

I have always found them to be hospitable, courteous, friendly and honest. I can only speak as I find.

The Pakistanis have had over 11,000 people killed by terrorists, so it ill-behoves Dave to talk about them exporting terrorism when (so far) all ours have been home grown. Prime Ministers always want to be their own Foreign Secretaries; Dave should leave it to Hague, a far more experienced and intelligent politician.

Your comments about sabre-rattling over Iran prompts me to say ‘next time you are on your own, maties’. I can’t believe for one moment that O would get involved in another round of hostilities in a Moslem country. Having said which, I distinctly recall before Gulf 2 rubbishing the views of those who thought that war was imminent. I could not accept the total madness of attacking a country that was the only secular bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism, that was the antithesis of Al Qaeda, and was far too weak to be a serious threat to anyone, after the pasting in Gulf 1. I thought it was all grandstanding by Dubya to show that he was tougher than Daddy. How wrong can you get?

And with an assassination attempt on Armadinajacket (or firework, depending on whether you believe the Iranian Government news service) being maybe an indication of further destabilisation of the regime, it seems to me that the right approach is to let the system implode with just a little help from the dirty tricks department.

A little light sabre-rattling

Two hot items are being discussed with growing frequency. One is the prospect that our economic recovery will be less fast and complete than earlier predicted. This comes with news that our recession was much worse than thought. Should I read 'much worse than we were told'? Credit remains scarce and as one commentator put it, the Obama administration is spending lavishly and in hope that it can do something corrective later on about our soaring debt. We are far from being out of the woods yet and are very much at risk of an economic aftershock that will at least protract recovery for months if not years.

The other item consists of statements here and there about the probability of our attacking Iran. The frequency of items on this subject is somewhat alarming. One observer recently warned that we are now at risk of opening two confrontations, one with North Korea and one with Iran. The latter very much involves our relationship with Israel and the historical need for a strong alliance to counter threats from other Middle Eastern powers such as Iran, Southern Lebanon, Palestine, and the list goes on. Part of the concern here is precipitated by the movement of US warships to the Arabian (Persian) Gulf and by Israel's having obtained permission for military aircraft to fly over a Saudi Arabian along a designated air corridor.

Much of the recent news is dedicated to Chelsea Clinton's wedding, especially the obscene amount of money that was spent on the event. I for one see no earthly reason for such extravagant spending. It can only stem from egos that are out of control. Such spending does not guarantee a flawless event, future happiness, high character, loyalty to one another, or even a good feeling the day after. If the parent's intention had been to better endear their only daughter to the public, a considerably more modest and low profile event would have been in order.

Tony agogo

You are absolutely correct about Tony Hayward. Our political right is going on along the lines that he was absolutely accurate in his statements about the BP oil spill and its aftermath. I cannot endure intelligent people asking a CEO, or head of state for that matter, details about events under their managerial scope and expecting detailed and accurate answers. Tony was not on the rig when all hell broke loose and Obama is incapable of plugging the hole, yet we badger and condemn both of these men over those very issues.

Tony does have a major enemy; himself. All of his brilliance, knowledge, success and accomplishments have failed to instruct him on when to talk and what to say. Yes, indeed, the spill was but a tiny drop in a great ocean. But, his reminding everyone of this fact was very poorly timed.

It was not well advised of Tony to remind the Cajuns of the smallness of the problem while their fishing fleets were at harbor floating in an oil slick.

A consensus is developing among level headed commentators here that he is not such a bad guy after all. The situation in which he found himself was volatile and emotional and was being made more so by the media, Washington and political figures in the Gulf states, particularly the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal. Palpable tension needed to be mitigated but no voice of reason could be heard above the din.

Tony Hayward's attempt to put the situation in perspective suffered dreadfully from the engineer syndrome, i.e. a serious inability to communicate with ordinary people. What Tony said was indeed true, but totally inappropriate. His engineering response in an emotionally charged environment irritated almost everyone by its lack of focus on those killed and injured and those directly and indirectly affected by the spill. His placing the spill in the perspective of a drop in the ocean and his appeal for getting his life back revealed a cold and selfish demeanor at a time when humility and empathy were required.

Nor did our public take well to Tony's sailing holiday on his yacht. Americans are very much anti-oil company and have nothing but contempt for owners and executives flaunting their wealth and power. What followed was even more annoying and confusing. He was said to have been fired. No, not fired, transferred to Siberia. Yes, fired, but first transferred to Siberia for two years with a multi-million payment for something or another; severance, loss of top job, ego mollification, who knows? None of the above acted to assuage public opinion here against Tony in particular and BP in general.



And, of course, the classic honest, heartfelt and entirely understandable observation about wanting 'my life back' was not what we would expect from a highly educated PhD from the UK. Reverting to the old Chinese adage that one does not speak of rope in the house where a man has hung himself, Tony could have been more tidy and diplomatic in concluding his remarks about the spill.