Posers and pretenders

Recent studies just revealed that liberalism is genetic. In other words, there is a bodily gene that aids in determining one's liberal or conservative tendencies. At least, this is what scientists from a joint Harvard and University of California, San Diego team learned. One commentator observed that we can now trace liberalism to a birth defect.

It was ironic to read that Russia is assisting NATO with its war efforts in Afghanistan by training Afghani Army forces and providing helicopters for the troops. One need not suspect that Russia knows more than we do on the subject of fighting in Afghanistan as its former leader, Gorbachev, is eager to confirm just than. Gorbi acknowledges the war is unwinnable and advises NATO to cease and desist which I suspect is Russian for go fourth and multiply or words to that effect. He always had a knack for speaking his mind. More important, we might well profit from studying and following his advice. After all, he continues, there was an agreement signed with Russia after they resigned from Afghanistan stating that all parties, including the USA, would recognize Afghanistan's neutrality. He could also not resist mentioning, with extreme schadenfreude, that the Afghani forces the US trained and armed are the very same ones fighting against us today. Pity we did not train the ones that are currently on our side as war stories from the front indicate the Afghani Army is just short of useless, can't read and cannot shoot straight.

Within the next week, we Americans will have elected another batch of posers and pretenders intent upon imposing their collective egos on the public at large. Judging from the rhetoric, there is not one iota of difference between this set of characters and the incumbents. One candidate is accused of being a banker to the Mafia while his opponent is accused of attributing to himself war medals that were never awarded. Yet another railed on about his service record in Vietnam although he never served there.

The papers are also full of stories about vote tampering. These are the same old stories that could be written anywhere and no doubt were. One difference might be that the new electronic machines could well prove easier to tamper with than the old fashioned ballot box. Commentators in Nevada reveal that people who voted for one party found the automated machine had ticked the other party. Officials reacted to this charge by citing the sensitivity of the buttons on the machines. Who is pushing whose buttons now?

The Democrats have their back to the wall. The hope and glory promises from O have not materialized. Nor are there any concrete signs of them materializing. His signature legislation was the Health Care bill which now seems to have all sorts of cracks, imperfections, contradictions and complexities hitherto unexamined. One result of all this is that insurance companies are beginning to increase their premiums to cover eventualities made possible by the bill. For example, individuals with pre-existing conditions may not be denied insurance. Their argument, and it looks like a valid one, is that the bill will in fact increase health care costs by a measurable amount. The interplay between the government, the drug companies, the health care administrators, the insurance companies and medical professionals would confound Euclid. One thing for sure is that costs will not go down.

It is these spiralling costs, along with a myriad of others, that are eroding middle class American bank accounts and savings. The overall cost of living in the US is out of control. Yet, for the past two years, our government has denied the existence of any cost of living inflation. To be sure, the rich are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer. I would also hazard to guess that larger and larger numbers of middle class families are falling into the 'poor' income category.

Germany calling.......

‘Sensationalist; hysterical; distorted; exaggerated’ – choose your word to describe the ludicrous meeja reaction to Little George’s ‘cuts’. The chatterati are foaming at the mouth about the withdrawal of child benefit for earners of over £44.000. ‘He doesn’t know what it’s like to try living on £44 grand’ they squeal. Well, neither does a farmer on an average income of £23,000 or a newly trained nurse, or an OAP for that matter.

And yet in opinion polls, over 80% of people thought that this was fair.

Cuts? Public expenditure will rise by billions over the next 5 years. The overseas aid budget is going up by no less than 37%!

George might care to consider the following:

 Restore the married person’s tax allowance;

• Restore the tax breaks on pension funds;

• Restore the children’s tax allowance;

• Restore the tax breaks on mortgages;

• Abolish all hand-outs to OAPs and add the savings to the basic pension (including the costs of hordes of civil servants administering all these add-ons);

• Abolish MPs’ allowances totally and simply pay the same daily subsistence allowance as the Civil Service for those who have to spend 4 nights a week away from home;

• Abolish the race relations industry whose raison d’etre is ensure that racial discrimination continues and which is essentially patronising of minorities;

• Restrict benefits for immigrants to those who have paid UK tax for not less than 5 years;

• Require bankers’ bonuses to be paid in shares in the bank which can’t be redeemed for at least 5 years;

• Get rid of overseas aid – that would just about take care of the deficit;

• Bring the troops back from Germany – the Cold War is over, Dave;

• And whilst you are about it, bring them out of Afghaniscam – that war is unwinnable (read your history, Dave).

Why don’t they listen to us?

But when I hear of firemen in California getting $180,000 a year and retiring on full pensions at 50 I realise that we are behind the curve when it comes to being generous with taxpayers’ money.

Since the Greek economy went tits-up, we have seen a fascinating shift in the tectonic plates in European politics. France and Germany are no longer the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of the EU. The Hausfrau and the Pocket Napoleon are distinctly at odds as France descends yet again into chaos and Germany emerges as the single big hitter in Europe. The Germans now seem to have had quite enough of bank-rolling the Club Med who keep getting their fingers caught in the till.

The strange dichotomy is that Germany is the biggest economy in Europe by far, but can’t punch its weight because it has no military clout whatsoever. Interesting, is it not, that the UK and France between them contribute no less than 70% of European military power, and Britain, despite the cuts, has the fourth largest military expenditure per GDP in the world. How long before Germany, which alone accounts for 80% of Europe’s manufactured exports starts putting a bit of stick about? It is already causing some real problems in ‘two-speed Europe) because if the ECB intervenes to cool Germany down, it will stuff Greece, Spain, and Ireland.

France and Germany are also involved in a punch-up with the nomenklatura in the European Commission over their ideas for yet another Treaty to follow Lisbon in order to clobber the Club Med.

The one thing the French and Germans agree on is keeping Turkey out of the EU. Lucky old Turkey, although why they would want to join this revival of the Holy Roman Empire is beyond me. Negotiations have been going on for 5 years. No country that began negotiations has ever been refused entry, so in come the corrupt, ramshackle third-world countries of Eastern Europe. But Turkey, the Brazil of the region, not likely! Romania, which has 25% of its people living below the poverty line, gets in, but not Turkey which has an almost identical GDPpp. And we all know why!

Turkey is the coming place. Its economy is booming and it is that rare thing, a Muslim democracy but a secular state. It is intolerant of criticism and minority rights but it also occupies an increasingly strategic position economically. They should forget the Fourth Reich and turn their attention to the east, to India, China, Thailand and other growth areas, not to the Club Dirigiste in Brussels. It’s already a member of OECD and the G20.

O seems to be due for an early bath, looking at his approval ratings. Question: is he automatically the candidate at the next presidential election, or can the Democrats ditch him for, say, Hillary? And a further thought – is Clinton the only ex-POTUS to have had political clout after his retirement?

And finally........

After all the efforts made to extradite Gary the Hacker, why has the US not issued arrest warrants for the Wikileaks boss?

The French are revolting.......

I have to confess to being completely baffled by the economy. We have the return of the soixante huitaires in France fighting on the streets of Paris so that they can continue to retire at 60 when for many of the mob that event is 40 years away, and strikes abounding over very modest financial reform proposals. Sarko is proposing to raise the retirement age to 62. Quelle fromage! Since 60 was introduced the life expectancy has risen by 12 years. Do the maths. The French are revolting, the Belgians are striking (one commentator remarked that nobody likes Belgium, not even the Belgians), the Eurostar is cancelled and France is running out of aviation fuel. Not all bad, then.

Meanwhile, across Le Manche the phlegmatic Rosbifs are facing an economic and social revolution with aplomb – at least do far. The Armed Forces face a cut of 8% in the middle of a war whilst the biggest money waster of all, foreign aid, is ring-fenced. Dave has decided to scrap our only fleet carrier, HMS Ark Royal. There will be no replacement for 10 years. The last Ark was scrapped just before the Falklands were invaded, sending a clear signal to the Argies. Truly ‘those who forget history will be doomed to repeat it’. Maybe the Brits are not phlegmatic; just plain stupid. And when Dave’s spokesman on TV news was asked whether the Yanks would think that the defence cuts meant we were poor relations, the reply was ‘Well, so we are!’ Politicians telling the truth – where will it all end?

And it reminds me of Miles Kington’s great French pun. The French Navy decided it needed a stirring motto, so they came up with ‘To the water; it is time!’, trans. ‘A l’eau, c’est l’heure!’

We have Jaguar announcing, at the same time, that it intends to double output from what it was before the crunch. We see that contrary to popular impression, the UK is, in fact, only 12th in the league table of indebted nations (the US is 9th; Japan is top, worse than Greece, but still the world’s 3rd biggest economy). The Big Mac index shows that the USD and the GB£ at their correct exchange rates. We must be suffering from economic schizophrenia, but then it is well-known that if you ask two economists you get three opinions.

Elections always seem to bring out the loony-toons, but the US mid-terms have not only produced a larger than usual crop but some of them actually seem to have a chance of getting elected. One, an unemployed veteran, has no manifesto except to reduce unemployment by one, yet he is an official party candidate. Another has seriously alleged that two districts are already living under Sharia. Of course, you only have to mention ‘Sharia’ and you immediately conjure up a vision of public beheadings (which in these degenerate times would probably fill the Houston Astradome),floggings and amputations.

The fact is that Sharia is already here in the West. If two people wish to settle a personal or commercial dispute under Islamic law, they are free to do so. In the Anglosphere we have a tradition of arbitration which allows, inter alia, religion-based disputes to be handled outside the formal legal system. This permits Jews, Catholics and Muslims a way of settling disputes that is simple, cheap and principled.

There are already many places in the UK where Muslim arbitration tribunals offer dispute resolution under Sharia. Obviously, the law of the land has supremacy and some decisions would not be either recognised or enforceable – e.g. marriage without a civil ceremony to legalise it and divorce without court sanction. And by the way, a fatwa is not a call to bump off unbelievers; it is a religious opinion by a scholar. And another thing. The chattering classes have been frothing at the mouth because a Muslim expressed the opinion that rape is not possible in marriage. Until a few years ago this was so in English law also. But from my experience in Muslim countries  the treatment of women is unspeakable, sure, but also madness because the talents of half the population are left unused and undeveloped. In Pakistan, over 80% of women are uneducated. What a waste! No surprise that the country has shown little progress since the Raj.

'Out of the frying pan..........'

The poor miners, out of the frying pan, into the fire. Now that they have been rescued, their troubles are only just beginning. To be sure, this will end in tears. I hope the Chilean President got his full measure of publicity out of the incident, because he will surely have to distance himself from downstream capers as the miners are introduced to publicity and fame.

As to the Hausfrau's observation on failed multicultural society in Germany, evidently there was some serious effort made to establish a multikulti society in which people of different cultures could live happily side by side.

Shades of Peter Pan and Tinkerbell in Lalaland? Not even the Germans live happily side by side. Throw in a million or so Turkish gastarbeiters and voila, instant disharmony. I do believe we could have told them that when they first opened their doors to foreign workers from the Middle East.

I take it the Turks made a bad impression. Perhaps their workmanship was not up to snuff. Immigrants must work harder, she continues, to learn to speak German so they could better integrate. Do you recall the last German effort to promote its language as a standard throughout Europe and the UK?

And the scandal in the Lords with three Asian peers charged with padding their expenses. Is Parliament taking lessons from these two Indians and a Bangladeshi, or are they taking lessons from the Brits? In either case, it does not look good for the peers. I am sure this lot is the tip of the iceberg, or should I say the camel's head in the proverbial tent?

Lest one might perceive these comments as coming from one holier than thou, we are in a mess over here as well. The media has taken control of American society. We seem to be in a perpetual state of electioneering.

The run-up to the mid-term elections in early November is becoming hotter and faster with more negative and hostile campaigning than I have ever witnessed. Media surveys 'prove' that negative campaigning is highly effective in winning votes. The public would rather hear something nasty about you, than something nice about me. Terms like thief, liar and whore have been noted along with a host of others both more and less colorful.

Anyone escaping the campaign who is not branded as misanthropic, sodomite, careless with the truth and light fingered would be the exception. This all gets a bit boring day after day, but the media is so consumed with affection for itself and its ability to attract viewers through conflict, hate, sensation and the like, we are only assured of more of the same. No wonder our society is going bonkers with road rage, school shootings, crime, homicide, and generally freaking out at the drop of a hat.

We are relieved that China has finally come out and flatly stated that our economic problems are not their fault. Thank you China, we were so worried that you had been the root of our prevailing economic mess. Perhaps you could also make it clear that you did not control the election of Obama as well.

‘An awful lot of praying in America………..’

The world seems to have stop rotating in testament to the drama and fine work of the miner’s rescue in Chile. Good news is the best antidote to the doom and gloom in the papers as of late.

The mood here is calm with a strong undercurrent of anxiety over our political and economic future. There is also an awful lot of praying going on. Michelle Obama is asking people to pray for her husband. Glenn Beck asks people to pray for his good health. Our churches are praying for the miners.

We have just been informed by our Dear Leader’s economic minions that social security payments will again, for the second year in a row, remain unaltered. There is no inflation in America and therefore our inflation indexed SS system need not be increased. I am OK with the lack of an increase thank you very much, but I despise the lies about inflation. Our cost of living is rising and, I believe, our government lacks the funds to meet the additional payments.

I note with interest that gobs of your quangos are about to get the axe. This looks like a sane move which immediately alerts me to look for the hidden agenda. Or is it just a case of saving money and eliminating dens in which public figures can hide from accountability? So far I would opine; keep up the good work David.

Concern is mounting over the anticipated mid-term election results and the prospect of a resurgence of Republicanism. Such resurgence would not be a bad thing, but I seriously doubt the capacity of the anticipated newly elected to make any difference at all. If elected as a majority in either the House or Senate, they will simply stymie action be it good or bad action until they have sufficient power to successfully enact their own legislation. At that point, the Democrats, as a minority, will do their level best to stymie Republic legislation.

I enjoyed a recent interview with former Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Conner, on the subject of Court impartiality. She made two good points. One was that the system of appointing Justices flaws the Court as it implies that successful nominees are to some extent politically indebted to the President and to the President’s party. Secondly, she continued, the election of Federal Circuit Judges is flawed because of the need for campaigns and campaign contributions. The latter tend to come from wealthy corporations that may well be before a Federal court in some criminal capacity or another. O’Conner was the champion of the liberal persuasion, but nevertheless maintained as fair and balanced an interpretation of the law as anyone else on the Court did.

Our friends in North Korea are enacting the stuff from which bestselling novels are created. Number three son is now the heir apparent and is being groomed by the loyal and dedicated military to rule as they dictate. Number one son, when not chasing women or gambling abroad, claims foul, but nobody listens to him because he is a playboy. North Korea’s worst enemy is North Korea

'Don't go down the mine, Daddy......'

And so let joy be unconfined at the Chile mining recue – not ‘miraculous’, as the cliché-driven media say but the outcome of determination, leadership, organisation, sound management, tremendous technical and engineering skills and plain old-fashioned guts. There will be many heroes in all this, not least the shift boss who was obviously the guy who kept it all together. We were amazed at the miners’ condition. We had expected filthy, ragged, half-starved wretches to come tumbling out of the ground. Instead, the ones whom we saw were freshly-shaved, clean and smart, and in boisterous good spirits.

Then O had to spoil it by bragging about the American contribution – to be fair, he may have spoken of Chile’s marvellous achievement, but if he did it was not broadcast, and perhaps he was not simply basking in reflected glory. By contrast, one of the true heroes, Jeff Hart, the American mining engineer who organised the drill, was too modest even to be seen when the men came out. No doubt the US made a tremendous contribution, but it would have been in better taste if Chile had been left to celebrate a great national achievement which seems to reflect on everyone involved from the President downwards.

I am indebted to James Delingpole in the Speccie for coining a new word – ‘localvore’, those smug, self-satisfied carbonatics who believe that they are saving the world from climate change by buying their grub in Farmers’ Markets. This, they say, reduces the carbon footprint (whatever that might be) involved in feeding ourselves.

Wrong!

No less than 48% of the energy demand in food production is from the shopping trips in the SUV or whatever. Only 4% is accounted for by surface transportation, and only 1% by air freight. Glass-raised fruit and veg from Holland have four times the carbon release of those grown in Kenya. The carbon ‘take’ of a leg of Welsh Lamb on the British dinner table is vastly greater than one from New Zealand. And I have still found no answer to my earlier question as to why the eco-warriors pray in aid science to support their views on climate change and deny it for GM foods.

University challenge.

The latest political blathering is about University fees and how the beastly coalition is going to make it impossible for bright young working-class people to get into college. I have two thoughts on this.

One – there are too many ‘universities’ turning out people with useless degrees (football studies, I ask you!). The eejit Major had polytechnics morphed into universities overnight to meet a target of 50% of school-leavers being able to get a place. The fact that only about 10% of people have the intellectual capacity to benefit from university was of no consequence. So scrap these useless spending-pots, and convert them back to technical colleges where 14 to 18 year olds can learn employable technical crafts and skills. Who needs a degree in basket weaving and religious knowledge?

Two. If someone graduates with a debt of £20,000 for fees, the answer is simple. Declare yourself bankrupt, and in three years you will be free of debt.

Now here’s a funny thing.

Last week-end, the Leicestershire Police banned a march by the English Defence League. As the media tells it, the EDL consists of a bunch of white thugs and racist skinheads intent on beating up the nice, anti-fascist, anti-racist, peace-loving demonstrators. The EDL said that it would defy the ban; their spokesman is – er – a Sikh.

And another.

Sir Phillip Green this week produced his report on Whitehall waste (no doubt written on his 200-ft yacht in the Med). I tell you, you couldn’t make it up. The level of management incompetence beggars belief, such as reducing payment terms from 30 days to 5 days without any compensating financial advantage for the cash-flow effect. Green’s report suggests that the mandarins simply don’t know what is going on.

The funny thing is that the report got a one-day page 2 coverage and then silence.

What a gwaan, man?

America is fed up.........



Thw Economist's view.



Americans are fed-up.

I believe I speak for the majority when I say we are fed up with political life at all levels. We are fed up with the corruption, the sense of entitlement, the lies, the slander, the sinecures, the rape of the middle class, the outrageous cost of legal, medical and other professional and non-professional services, the overweening greed of politicians and bankers, the absence of empathy for those torn asunder financially and emotionally by the recent economic crises, the hunger for power and money and the relinquishment of those values we hold so dear about the quality of life and the integrity of those who represent us. Moreover, I have special disregard for those many pundits, broadcasters, spokespersons and the like who make the above case against their political opposition while casting themselves and their party as next to God in holiness. To borrow your imaginative expression, we are going tits up and we are doing this to ourselves. We are political cannibals consuming the flesh of our enemies.

Testaments are emerging in the thousands of individuals who are suffering financial loss because of increasing costs and stagnant wages and salaries. Despair prevails as we witness foreclosure after foreclosure and to top that off, some banks are now placing a freeze on foreclosures because they cannot trace the paper trail leading to the actual owner of mortgage holders throughout the financial world. I should think the banks would by now have gotten their act together.

I am deeply intrigued by the change in party branding that is occurring under my very eyes. The political left was once thought to represent the people, the downtrodden, the underdog, the workers, the poor. This emerged straight out of Marx and the European Socialists and manifest itself in the massive changes brought about through political action by unions in particular as a counterbalance to the industrial revolution and all its inequities and inhumanities. The political right, on the other hand, represented the rich, the aristocratic, the entrepreneurial and the political and military institutions that supported them.

The task of the right was to control the masses so as not to destroy or even threaten the financial and political infrastructure that enabled the rich to retrain their power and wealth. Thousands of laws were enacted with this in mind and in the process, social control mechanisms were introduced to maintain public order and the status quo.

Recently, the political left has been branded as the faction most desirous of controlling, organizing, systematizing, counting, pigeon-holing, recording, and regimenting the public at large. It is the left that now seeks to maintain DNA records, insert implants and to monitor telecommunications and travel.

The right, meanwhile, is promoting social values including the right to be left alone, privacy, basic freedoms, fewer regulations. It is as if the right is now the oppressed class, and the left is the bete noir.

Opponents of the left use Hitler as an example of left wing politics gone wrong. This is indeed a point of dire confusion to me as I always regarded the totalitarian regimes of Germany and the USSR in particular as classic examples of right wing domination. The journey from leftist origins to right wing power regimes was short and bloody, but the end result was a coalition of political, economic and military power under a non-benevolent dictator who, to my thinking, was decidedly right wing. Hence, I viewed the political right as authoritarian, powerful, controlling, solidly aligned with economic and military institutions and very much involved in matters of state (and regime and personal) security.

Today, I find a blending of traditional right and left values in both parties and I continually want to cherry pick those values which best suit my understanding of what is good. Hence, my Independent status as a voter, even though Independents have been traditionally castigated as closet Democrats. Lately, however, Independents are emerging as converts to Tea Party and Libertarian values, whatever they are. It is not that I don't have any idea what these values are, but that those who espouse them seem radically different in their definitions.

'On yer bike'

The event of the week here on the Isle of Man was the passing of our uncrowned king, the comedian Sir Norman Wisdom. The meeja gave it big coverage. There will be a ‘state’ funeral with the cortege going the whole considerable length of the Promenade in Douglas followed by drinks at Sir Norman’s Bar at the swanky Sefton Hotel. That should ensure a big turn-out!

The Brokeback Coalition has launched its reform of welfare benefits and the general theme seems to be ‘Get on your bike and get a job’, as the ineffable Chingford Skinhead, Norman Tebbitt, so delicately put it, like the Victorian lady (left) who is dressed for cycling in the days before lycra. The cost of welfare is about 5 times the cost of the defence budget. The manuals of benefits rules run to 9,000 pages (nothing like the 30,000 pages of tax rules – the biggest in the world, even more than the US IRS - but quite enough, thank you). To do something about this plus the immigration problem, they might care to copy our Government’s practice; you don’t get benefit until you have lived and worked on the Island for 5 years. So no illegals and no dole bludgers! The chaterrati are going apes**t over the ‘unfairness’ of stopping child benefit to parents earning more than £44,000 (just under twice average earnings). They don’t mention that 50% of the population receives some kind of benefit that has to be paid for by 100% of the working population.

They have already made an almighty cock-up of immigration by putting a quota on non-EU immigrants. This means that a highly-skilled person from the US badly needed by Ford could be refused whilst thieving Romanies from Eastern Europe are unstoppable. The financial pages report of a company that, taking Cameron at his word that UK business must be much more proactive in seeking contracts in India, recruited a high-flying Indian lady to advise them on how to go about it. The Immigration authorities threw her out. One wonders what the quota is for high-flying Indian lady business advisors. Mind you, intelligent behaviour is not to be expected form an outfit that calls itself the ‘Border Agency’ when the UK, being an island, doesn’t have any borders.

Let us now see what Kittenheels intends to do about the frightful assault on civil liberties during the rule of the Blairbroon nomenklatura. She could start by making a bonfire of the thousands of new criminal offences they created. No wonder Mugabe was an admirer of Blair. He must of thought of him as a disciple. She could reinstate the double jeopardy rule that for centuries had prevented the authorities from pursuing people found not guilty by a jury of their peers until they got a result. She could revert to the old rule barring evidence of ‘previous’ in criminal trials; although Blair was a member of the Bar he must have skipped the lesson when it was taught that the function of the court is to try the offence not the person.

She could dump the outrageous Human Rights Act. Here is a contemporary comment:

The experience of the twelve years since the HRA passed into law is a troubling one, for it has seen the passing of perhaps the most illiberal body of legislation for two centuries. The DNA database expanded to all arrested, regardless of their guilt or the triviality of their alleged crime; hearsay evidence permitted as a matter of routine; bad character evidence routinely admitted; arrests permitted for any crime, even those that do not carry prison sentences; defendants facing accusations impossible to rebut through witness anonymity; and a marked increase in minimum sentences, hugely reducing judicial independence.

Instead, she has adopted Hattie Harperson’s disgraceful Equality Act that criminalises just about everybody. It was described by a commentator as the worst piece of legislation in English legal history.

She promises to introduce a Freedom Bill. How low have we fallen that such a thing should be necessary?

'It was the banana wot done it'

A good week for lovers of schadenfreude.

First, there was the publication of the accounts of The ONE Foundation, set up by Bono (no, that’s not a dog-food, Mavis – do try to keep up!) who competes with that other foul-mouthed Irish noise-maker, Gobby Bobby, to save the world from aids, starvation, malaria, war, pestilence and Strictly Come Dancing.

It raised £9.5 million. It spent £5.1 million on salaries. It gave £118,000 to worthy causes. This is the same Bono who reduced his own tax liability by moving his business to The Netherlands.

Then there was the election of Red Ed as Leader of TIGMOO*. So farewell, then, Millipede Major. It woz the banana wot done it. Call-me-Dave must be doing handstands. An interesting feature of the last election was not the narrow results but the fact that Labour polled its second lowest number of votes since 1945. It came third in the polls in about 200 constituencies, and only got a disproportionate number of seats because of the skewed constituency boundaries that favour urban areas. These will be changed in time for the next outing if the Brokeback Coalition manages to hold on until 2015. My guess is that they will, because the LibDems are tasting the sweetness of office after nearly 90 years on short commons and they love it. Much better than getting a proper job. And the Libs have always worked on the footing that ‘if you don’t like my principles, I have others’.

An intriguing aspect is that the three party leaders are all good looking, young, personable, educated and polished. And completely interchangeable.

And dear old Laura Norder is back in the ‘comment’ pages; it is beginning to look as if the upholders of the law in Europe are going to get a good thraping. It would seem that Kittenheels the Footwear Fashionista is really going to do something about the unspeakable European Arrest Warrant. The old music hall song could have been written for the European law enforcement authorities in their application of the EAW.

We're public guardians, bold but wary,

And of ourselves, we take good care,

To risk our precious lives, we're chary,

When danger looms, we're never there.

But when we meet some helpless woman,

Or little boys that do no harm

Chorus: We run them in, We run them in, etc

This is what the Economist has to say:-

'The combination of Britain’s tough regime and careless procedures creates mess and distress. Fair Trials International, a lobby group, has a dossier of startling cases including that of Deborah Dark, a British woman who has been hounded by an EAW. She was arrested in France in 1989 on drug charges, acquitted, but later convicted in absentia (and without knowing it) after prosecutors appealed. In 2005 France issued a warrant, leading to Ms Dark being repeatedly arrested on assorted holidays and in Britain'.

And we have the case of the young British student extradited to Greece three years ago on a manslaughter charge and still awaiting trial after 13 months in prison despite there being no credible evidence against him; and the London antiques dealer accused by the Greeks of committing an offence without producing any evidence to show that, if there was an offence, it was committed in Greece.

Typically it is only the British who follow the rules. Dr Daniel Urbani, the Afro-German doctor who killed a patient with a massive overdose on his first shift, was convicted in England of manslaughter; he did a deal with the German authorities and got probation and a fine, which the Germans said nullified the EAW.

So, Ms May, here are a few principles to help you with these pesky furriners.

No extradition should be granted unless the EAW can show prima facie evidence that:

1. A crime has been committed;

2. The crime was within the jurisdiction of the government issuing the EAW;

3. The crime is a crime under English law;

4. The person named in the warrant committed the crime;

5. The crime was committed after the enactment of the EAW laws (i.e. no retrospective application of the arrest powers).

6. The crime is an imprisonable offence in the UK.

That wasn’t so difficult, was it, Theresa? For starters you would avoid scandals like the incident when an Australian academic was arrested at Heathrow in transit between the US and Australia on an EAW issued by Austria, a country he had never visited, for holocaust denial, an offence unknown within the English jurisdiction.

Of course, there is still a body of opinion which supports the EAW, ID cards and the rest of the Stasi apparatus and say ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear’. Listen, your morons, it is when you have done nothing wrong that you have everything to fear. Like the retired Bristol Rotarian who spent weeks in a stinking cell in South Africa after being mistakenly arrested on a FBI warrant whilst on holiday in Durban.

Then there’s the outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease amongst the LibDems and the spectacle of them making complete assholes of themselves over ‘tax avoidance’. Latest to join the parade is Danny Alexander, the Celtic teenager who became Chief Secretary to the Treasury when his LibDem predecessor was caught up in the MPs’ expenses scandal and retired hurt after a couple of weeks. His view is that anyone who takes perfectly legal steps to pay no more tax than the state is entitled to is no better than a benefits cheat. This is the same Alexander who designated his London apartment as he second home, claiming £37,000 in expenses and then flipped it into his principal residence to avoid tax on its sale. This is the same Alexander who appointed a businessman as his ‘war on waste’ advisor who paid no tax on a dividend of £1.2 billion because it was all in the wife’s name and she lives in Monaco!

Pedants’ Corner.

These days ‘learners’ go to ‘uni’. I guess this is because they can’t spell ‘undergraduate’ or ‘university’.

*TIGMOO – This Great Movement of Ours.