That was the week, that was..........

Now that the Happy Couple have named the day it is time to invest in china mug futures. Kate appears to be very bright and has had 8 years to become familiar with celebrity life. Perhaps she will improve the IQ of the Windsor dynasty. Charles certainly seems to have come from the shallow end of the gene pool.

Back in la-la land there has been yet another change of heading on immigration. The cap on non-EU immigrants will be restated to those with jobs paying more than £40,000 a year i.e. middle management level. This, of course, will make almost no difference to total inflows. The Labour government let immigration rip, presumably in the belief that the newcomers, being heavily dependent on state hand-outs, would be natural Labour voters. From 1997 the graph goes off the clock.

Unless bold action is taken, it is estimated that the immigrant population will grow by 5 million in ten years – nearly 10% of the present total population. Extrapolations suggest that GB will cease to have a white majority by 2066. Of course, this may be a worst-case scenario (i.e. scare mongering) but it has certainly brought the topic back onto the front page. One sensible thing done belatedly by Labour was to introduce a points system according to worth to the economy, which is the Australian system. There you will get a work permit if you have a scarce skill but if you are a second-hand car salesman or estate agent, forget about it. The net effect of Dave’s measures is nil. The real problem lies with students who don’t go home from their phony colleges, marriages of convenience (I hear that the going-rate is £3,500) and the lax rules about family members.

TV gave big coverage of the melt-down in Dublin. Sinn Fein was interviewed on their demand for an immediate election. This will enable them to assume responsibility for the biggest mess in Irish history. Which just goes to show that the Paddies have retained their sense of humour. I am confused by the whole fiasco. Brussels and Berlin seem more motivated by bullying than sorting out the real problem. This will be solved by the economy not by bureaucrats. FDI is flooding into Ireland – the highest for 7 years – and there is a boom in business start-ups because of the 12.5% corporation tax limit. And yet this is the very thing that Merkel and co want Ireland to give up. Madness!

And finally......

We have discovered that an advantage of the short-term memory loss that comes with age is that you can watch TV repeats without remembering the plots.

The Yellow Peril.

I do recall our reaction against the Yellow Peril when Japanese products and capital began to flood the American markets. But there are differences. I wanted to emphasize that China as the undisputed superpower in Asia has an imposed leadership role that will largely determine the Asian personality in the decades ahead. Thus far, China has not performed well in this role. I am not talking about the childish currency devaluation game that the US and China are playing, but rather the manner in which China governs it people and its behavior regarding regional diplomacy.


China has not used its influence to reduce tensions with North Korea. Nor has it made any efforts to mollify age old antipathies between itself and South Korea. It has an ongoing stand off with Japan, that as I write is heating up, over some unoccupied islands that are geographically closer to Japan. Watch this space as the island story is just beginning.

When China's President Hu Jintau was recently interviewed by Fareed Zacharia, the former spoke eloquently and unhesitatingly about China's determination to allow and indeed foster freedom of speech among its citizens. Each time this interview was broadcast in China, Hu's statement about freedom of speech was edited out. There are much better ways of managing China's need for controlling its dissidents than ham fisted editing of the President's proclamations. It is this lack of finesse that compels me to think that Hu Jintau is behaving more like Chairman Mao than the future leader of East Asia.

How about simply stating that China's history of war lords and competing peoples needs to be respected while at the same time a central authority is needed to coordinate much needed human and physical infrastructure development. One byproduct of this effort is to gradually and resolutely open up political life to what the West calls freedom of speech. Allowing this to happen overnight has potential consequences that are best avoided at the present time.

Now for the troubled Euro. One proposal is to divide the Euro into two different geographically based units; the Northern Euro and the Southern Euro. What a smashing idea; a Euro for the rich and one for the poor. It could also be called the PE for Protestant Euro and the CE for Catholic Euro. One can easily imagine having the Industrial Euro and the Wanker Euro, or how about the Ritz Euro and the Club Med Euro. A European competition could be held to name the two Euros from the above possibilities to an endless number of others. What fun.

What Katie did next.........

Needless to say, the meeja is squeezing every drop of juice out of the Wedding. We are breathlessly informed that Katie went to Westminster Abbey so that’s where the nuptial will be started. Wow! We would never have guessed. And Wills and Katie sat down to start the wedding plans. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Er..............no! The plans will already have been well and truly in place for years, down to the finest detail. We Brits may no longer be terribly good at much, but we beat the world in setting up pageants, and this requires meticulous planning well in advance.

‘Let us pause to consider the English,

Who, when they pause to consider themselves they get all reticently thrilled and tinglish,

Because every Englishman is convinced of one thing; viz –

That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is;

A club to which benighted bounders of Frenchman and Germans and Italians cannot even aspire to belong,

Because they don’t speak English, and Americans are worst of all because they speak it wrong.

Englishman are distinguished by their traditions and ceremonials,

And also by their love for colonies and their contempt for colonials............’

All State occasions will have their plans – the funerals of Her Maj and the Duke will be already in salt, although hopefully both doleful events lie far in the future.

The DT published a 15-page supplement – and there’s months to go yet. Needless to say, it has not taken long for the Grub Street smelly-socks to start raking up dirt. They are now running with the story that the rough side of Kate’s mother’s family (she is famously working class by background) will not be invited. The truth, as I understand it, is that there was a rift in the maternal side in Kate’s grandma’s time. The parents may be millionaires but they are self-made from mostly working-class stock. That should put a bit of muscle into the Windsor line, as Diana put some height into them.

Presumably, when it is all over Katie will take up residence in Anglesey as an officer’s wife. That should liven up ladies’ nights in the Officers Mess, and also has the added benefit that the Old Bill will be able to stop the smelly socks on the Menai Bridge.

Peter Oborne did a cracking piece in the DT about Maggie’s resistance to the wretched Euro, and the treachery that went on in the Tory party. By A strange irony, the present crisis seems to be leading to the rehabilitation of G Brown, late of No 10. Keeping the UK out of the Euro probably suffices to make up for his manifest and manifold sins as PM. We are not told whether the other non-members, such as the Baltic States, are still itching to join. I guess the enthusiasm has wilted somewhat. But as we have a wedge of drinking vouchers in Irish banks, we are not gloating.

Reverting to the Blessed Margaret, a couple of anecdotes that might give a small insight into her character.

A colleague of mine who was in the Cabinet Office on the staff of No 10 told me that one afternoon she was at a meeting there. Partway through, a sepulchral figure arose from behind the sofa. Maggie looked round and simply said ‘Subside, Denis!’ Which he did.

Shortly after her demise, I was having dinner with George Thomas, the former Speaker. George was renowned for his wonderful speaking-voice, so it was a cruel tragedy when he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He went into hospital for an operation, and when he came round from the anaesthetic he was conscious of a women sitting by his bedside holding his hand. It was the Iron Lady herself. He said that there were two Maggies – one the tough, uncompromising politician; the other one who was extraordinarily kind. Needless to say, George, an ex-miner and a Welsh Labour Party man of the old school, would not hear a word against her.

Here is the latest in Dave’s defence cuts fiasco.

The Service Chiefs generally wanted to demobilise the Tornados because they are high-maintenance and limited in payload during the hot season in Afghaniscam; because there were already sufficient fighter-bombers in Afghaniscam, and because the RAF only needed one type of fast jet, the Typhoon. So what does Dave do? Why, he decided to keep the Tornados and decommission HMS Ark Royal, our only fleet carrier together with its Harriers so that there will be no top cover until HMS Prince of Wales gets its aircraft at some remote time in the future. Decommissioning the Tornados would have saved £5 billion. It would have cost £120 million to keep Ark Royal going. Bet they loved that in Buenos Aires. The previous Ark was decommissioned not long before the last punch-up with the Argies, only now there’s oil down there.

Nice one, Dave. La Luta continua!

I reckon that when Dave reads the obituary columns he can’t figure out how people die in alphabetical order! If his crazy immigration policy is any guide, he must have got his degree by outsourcing his exam papers to Bangalore. There is a cap on skilled people, but otherwise it seems monkey business as usual; the latest is that one of the kidnappers of the Chandlers says he is joining his wife and family in London because he owes £50,000 to his handlers as start-up money for the kidnapping. Don’t fret, Ali; Social Services will pay. The cap will have a minimal effect on immigrant numbers; stupid gesture politics.

As is the 50% top tax band. Labour’s policy, insofar as they have any, is to get rid of Alistair ‘call me’ Darling’s sop to the chattering classes about bank bonuses. George is silent, but it is estimated that the 50% rate will lose the Treasury about £800 million through tax avoidance, emigration and people simply working less. He is obviously a stranger to the Laffer Curve. Gesture politics are usually pointless; these do actual harm. He has just announced that he will hand over £7 billion to the mangy Celtic Tiger, about the same as the total cuts announced in his last budget, plus another £7 billion to the Brussels brigands for the ‘bail out’. That would have kept the Ark going for few years yet.

And POTUS is following the customary line for politicians who have lost it at home by going on ulendo around the globe (‘If it’s Thursday, it must be Paris’). Let’s hope he doesn’t follow that other well-worn route to distract attention from domestic failures by having another bloody war somewhere; there are those in American politics who follow Talleyrand – ‘you can use a bayonet for anything except sitting on’.

'Canute', King of clean power

Let me introduce ‘Canute’, harnessing tides to generate power.

The concept is beautifully simple. There is a humungous great cistern with a turbine inside. As the tide flows the turbine is driven by water entering the cistern. When the tide ebbs, the turbine is driven by the outflow. This means that it generates power 24 hours a day, unlike other tidal systems that are inert for two hours at high and low tides.

It has no adverse effects on marine life, river silt, salt marshes or mudflats

It is environmentally friendly. There is no noise, no pollution, no use of carbon fuels. The cistern can be used for fish farming or breeding. Built in linear fashion, several units along the coast could form a barrier for land reclamation.

There are no fuel costs because the entire ‘grunt’ is provided by Neptune for free, it has unlimited lifespan, the technology already exists, and traditional construction materials are used throughout. It would be prefabricated onshore, and sunk in its required location.

All the basic research has been done. What is now needed is development funding.

So if this is the solution for clean power, what’s the problem?

Could it be that there are now so many vested interests in the ugly, bird-macerating, inefficient, environmentally-unfriendly wind farms marching across the British countryside that they will fight tooth-and-nail against competition that might wipe them out?

I think we should be told!

Wind farms are a racket

The following is an extract from a learned paper on the wind farms that are disfiguring much of Europe. It makes disturbing reading. What is rarely mentioned is wind turbine interference with air traffic control radar. It tends to break up the radar 'paint' at speeds araound 200 m.p.h,more or less the approach speed of airliners and the cruising speed of general aviation planes

Wind Energy Favoured by conservationists and politicians alike, only recently has adverse publicity been observed, largely caused by high profile local pressure groups objecting to sites in their locations.  When on-shore they are visually intrusive, noisy and inefficient. When offshore they are a great deal more costly and unlikely to survive more than 10 years without major repair – and both need expensive re-cabling to bring into the National Grid, causing even more expense and visual impairment. The cost of overground pylons are about £1.6M/mile, underground about £20M/mile. Almost 3,000 wind turbines have been installed in the UK, with another 4,800 planned. UK consumers have not been informed of the huge subsidies needed, nor have the stealth taxes supporting these subsidies been revealed. A 3 Megawatt (MW) unit costs about £3-4M to build, will produce about 9,200 MW hours/a, with an annual value of £0.33M.  It also gains £0.442M through subsidy via ROCS (see EU Emissions Trading Scheme below). With the UK government providing a 20-year guaranteed subsidy, over its 25-year life the turbine attracts £20M of revenue.  This provides an explanation for the “rush-to-gold” by many entrepreneurs. If this is bad for the UK, other European countries are much worse; Germany provides a subsidy of four times cost of generation. The total cost of subsidies for wind power, producing 6.8% of the Germany’s electricity, is estimated at 20.5 billion Euros over the last decade.  This palls to irrelevance compared to the solar subsidy; 53.3 billion Euros to produce just 0.6%! Currently UK users pay an average of £12 (direct charge) + £31 (carbon permits) + £38 (carbon emissions reduction) per site. The total (£81/a) is the effective current total subsidy applying to renewable sources of power.  Further taxes are proposed up to 2020. But it gets worse. The UK government has announced 30GW of renewable-based power is to be built. Since wind generation is the only mature low carbon technology, ergo wind power becomes the only current source of renewable energy. But wind turbines are non-continuous sources, necessitating the building of 24GW of conventional power generators for backup. By coincidence the capital cost of building 30GW wind generators is approximately the same as building nuclear generators of the same capacity. Both are effectively carbon emission free. Consequently the taxpayer is paying twice as much as necessary to gain 30GW of carbon-free electricity, whilst blighting the landscape with unsightly windmills.  The simple question is: why?

Deja vu all over again............

The prospect of a Royal wedding next year will ensure that cheerfulness will break out all over; just what the economy needs, especially for those in the tourist industry. Needless to say, the meeja is wall-to-wall. When I went to ‘Jeff Randall Live’ did I get the business news? Nope. So I switched to ‘Quest means business’ on CNN. And what did I get? That’s right. It is all very good news for the UK. In the space of a year it will have the Wedding, HM’s Diamond Jubilee (that will be the biggest street party of all time), and the Olympics. This will be good both for business and for the country’s morale.

It is also very important constitutionally. Wills and Katie are a more glamorous couple than Charles and Diana ever were. He is tall, very good looking, has an amiable personality, a University degree, and a proper – if somewhat dangerous – job as a search-and-rescue chopper pilot. He also speaks like a normal person. She is beautiful, intelligent (Diana herself said that she was a thick as two short planks), middle-class and seems very sensible. If things go OK the future of the monarchy should be assured for another half-century. If not, I doubt that it will survive Charles. It would be good for the country if Chuck were to renounce the throne. His conduct during the Diana affair showed that he was not fit to be King, but in any case he is too old and too lacking in charisma. Neither is he very bright.

I now have a distinct sense of déjà vu all over again, only this time it’s China-bashing; seems like all America’s woes are down to the evil Mr Chin, who has ‘a carefully thought-out plan to take over America’, according to that well-known anti-masturbator, professional virgin, part-time-witch and no-time politician, Christine O’Donnell. The fact that China’s trade surplus as a percentage of GDP has been steadily reducing and that its current account surplus has halved in three years don’t enter into the Palinista thinking. Neither does the fact that the US has a huge export trade to China in agricultural products, particularly poultry and corn (a billion-plus population takes a lot of grub) or that General Motors has sold 2 million vehicles to China this year, more than in the US.

We are old enough to remember the recession about 30 years ago. As we know, it was all part of a Yellow Peril plot by Japan to take over the world with a politically-motivated economic strategy involving manipulating the yen and paying unfair subsidies to exporters. I remember scenes of laid-off American car-workers smashing-up Japanese cars in parking lots. Reagan was constantly vetoing congressional attempts to build trade-barriers against the evil Japs, proposed by politicians too young or too stupid to understand that it was protectionism that wrecked the world economy in the 1930s. That the Japanese worked harder, saved more and respected education, and built better cars and cameras was neither here nor there.

That the Chinese work harder, save more, and respect education (see what I mean about déjà vu?) and make better and cheaper consumer goods may well have something to do with their success, whilst European workers are not allowed to work more than 48 hours a week.

Still on déjà vu, when Deepwater hit the news months ago we commented on Obama’s foolishness in rushing to blame BP ‘profit before safety’ deficiencies before there was a scrap of evidence of the causes of the spill. We considered that he was in danger of looking a complete prat with his Brit-bashing, macho, gung-ho posturing in front of the cameras. And so it comes to pass. The joys of schadenfreude!

And the originator of our title phrase, the inimitable Dubya seems to have a runaway success with his apologia. At least he was able to have book-signings unlike the Smarmy Swami Blair.

With ‘students’ beating up Tory Party HQ in protest against Labour’s increases in fees, we should be grateful for the opportunities of University education offered to the new generation. They may fit themselves for top jobs in business, industry and the professions by studying ‘Football Culture’, ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Feel the force; how to train the Jedi way’, ‘Robin Hood Studies Pathway’ and ‘History of lace knitting in the Shetlands’, all of which are taught at various universities here. Meanwhile, Dave has decided to pay his ‘vanity’ photographer out of his own capacious bin, so perhaps he’s been reading Heffer’s caustic comments.

Obama: stirring up apathy!

Well, O is on his way home from stirring up apathy in Asia. Sources here indicate that he might just as well have stayed home for all the credit the US received from friends and opponents alike. I don't count the applause he received in Jakarta, after all, he spent 4 years of his youth there. Yet, protests against his visit continued outside the US embassy well after his departure.

While complaining about the futility of competitive currency devaluation, he commissioned Bernanke to print over a trillion dollars, i.e. instant devaluation. Mind you, I am not at all sympathetic with the Chinese who refuse to devalue their currency either. About all they offer internationally is sour grapes. They are at odds with South Korea, Japan and the US and are not at all liked in Southeast Asia. Then again, the US virtually handed China the technical hardware, software and training to manufacture what we had been happily producing for decades. We kept too little for ourselves and we are now paying the price.

I suspect O will also pay the price in the form of a single term president. He went from a bang to a whimper in record time and still seems incapable of capturing the hearts and minds of the public at large. Some say, and I agree, that he will be like Jimmy Carter and make too many wrong moves and bad decisions. His future to some extent depends on the gravity of the Republican candidate. He would beat Sarah Palin, but not Huckabee or even Romney. Too bad that the US does not punish candidates for telling porkies as in the UK. That would make short work of nearly all these scoundrels.

I like the term 'headcount creep' with respect to released civil servants returning to service. I am afraid that our US bureaucracy is, like the third world, populated by tens of thousands of individuals with political connections. As the largest employer in most countries, the civil service needs reducing across the board. I have always found that these people almost need to commit murder to be fired. The ministries and secretariats serve as employment agencies to repay political favors and for nepotistic purposes. Also, like the third world, if no places are available to place the minions, new ministries or departments are created. We have done a very good job of this with respect to our top heavy, and overpopulated security services.

The newly elected senators and representatives are arriving in DC. Monday, they will be scrambling for office space which is allocated on a seniority basis. In the meantime, senior Republicans are threatening to enact legislation to ban earmarks. Reminds me of O's first month in office. After that month, all was quiet on the earmark front as he took a scalding from old timers who must have threatened non-cooperation if he insisted on fighting against their pork barrel projects. I seriously doubt the Republican majority in the House will have any more success and if they do, it would be a major sign of political reform.

Our beloved governor, Rick Perry, looks like a matinee idol. He has longish flowing hair, a permanent tan and is always impeccably dressed. Everything about him is just that, a facade. Sadly, he just won another term against a Democrat who had served well for four years as the mayor of Houston. He, too, came to the table with multiple skeletons in his closet, but to my mind was the lesser of two evils. You may recall that Perry threatened to take Texas and cede from the union; which is a legal Texas right dating back to the time it joined the US. He is an idiot, spends lavishly, puffs up, blows smoke and eventually crawls back into his hole to lick his wounds. A loser.

The people have spoken......the bastards!

The people have spoken, so what are we to make of the mid-terms? In two previous elections the GOP got hammered for making a deficit worse with unaffordable tax cuts, letting Wall Street screw Main Street, two wars, stagnant wages and rising job insecurity. Now there is a jobless ‘recovery’, rising unemployment, even more job insecurity, and still war. So was this a vote for O’s opponents? My take is that it was more a howl of rage. If ‘none of the above’ had been an option, it may have been very attractive to many – I have long believed that people don’t vote governments in; they vote incumbents out.

Back in la-la land, Dave’s defence review beggars belief. The matchless Matt in the DT sums it up.

We will have a carrier with no aircraft for 8 years. When the aircraft arrive they will not be the VSTOL Joint Strike Fighter but the conventional carrier version that needs a longer deck and a stonking great catapult. What we are not told is that carriers also require a mini-fleet of escort ships and supply vessels. Not that this would matter for very long in real hostilities. Dave simultaneously cancelled the updated Nimrod. So HMS Prince of Wales will go to war with no planes, no protective escort, and no airborne early warning radar system. Should last about as long as the previous POW that the Japs made short work of in 1941. The hypersonic anti-ship Sizzler missile might see to that.

Never mind, Johnny Frog will help us out. At this point let me reprise the great pun by Miles Kington. The French Navy decided it needed a stirring battle cry, so they decided on ‘To the water; it is time’ (a l’eau; c’est l’heure). Vive l’entente cordiale.

Excellent news is that the former Minister for Immigration in the Broon tyranny, he who got handbagged by the gorgeous pouting Joanna Lumley, has been unseated and banned from Parliament for 3 years for electoral malpractice – in this case telling the most outrageous porkies against his opponent during the campaign. That’s right; what appears to be normal practice in US elections is actually an offence in the UK. This is the first case of its kind in 99 years, and demonstrates the depths to which political morality sank in the NuLab years.

There should now be a by-election and Labour will lose the seat, unless Mr Speaker, the small but beautifully formed Tory John Bercow so decides (he may delay it until any appeal has been heard or until his Socialist wife, who is much bigger than him, tells him what to do).

That last sentence was intended to be satirical. Scarcely had I written it when the DT announces that the by-election has been postponed by Mr Speaker after the intervention of his wife. Beyond satire!

As with so many things debauched by Blair, the voting system, in the words of the Judge on the enquiry into hanky-panky at elections in Birmingham, ‘would disgrace a banana republic’. It was all fitted up quite simply. In former times, you could only get a postal vote for good reason e.g you were in hospital or incapacitated. Very few were handed out – maybe a couple of hundred in a constituency of 80,000. Under Blair, postal votes were handed out to all and sundry. Result: party apparatchiks would go around collecting up as many as possible and – bingo – our man elected! The official responsible in Birmingham left the £130,000+ a year job under a cloud shortly afterwards and immediately got another public service job at £140,000+ a year. As Immigration commissar. You couldn’t make it up!

More mendacity over Dave’s ‘cuts’. Public expenditure will actually increase during the Brokeback Coalition’s 5-year Plan. ‘More’ is the new ‘less’.

Meanwhile, a member of the nomenklatura of UNITE, the portmanteau of trade unions, declares that ‘upwards of 1 million’ hard-working, deserving, devoted public servants will be thrown on the scrapheap. ‘Upwards’, comrades, means ‘more than’, not quite what you meant to say, I fancy. The Plan predicates a reduction of 800,000 over 5 years.

During that time a large number will be accounted for by natural wastage. There is the related prospect of savings through a recruitment moratorium. Many will take early retirement at age 50 (public service pensions provide for the full pension to be paid on a 40/80 basis so that once you have done 40 years you get a 50% index-linked pension, but there can be 10 added years meaning that you can retire on full pension at age 50 on completion of only 30 years, plus a lump sum). Still with me? Do try to keep up.

Others will take voluntary redundancy. Many staff in any event will be on fixed term contracts. Others will be temporary staff. Compulsory redundancy will certainly be nowhere near the figures quoted by the comrades. But I remember years ago when the Civil Service had to be slashed, a Government Department fired all its temps at the end of the financial year so that the reduction showed up in the statistics. Then they took them all back on again. Moral: never mind about job reductions. Let’s see establishment reductions, so that there is no headcount-creep later.

Scrapheap, anybody? The big loser, of course, will be UNITE as it watches whole swathes of its membership evaporate.

‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’. Er.......not quite. Whilst things are falling apart domestically, the ever-generous British taxpayer will be consoled by the thought that that the overseas aid budget, which was the fastest growing budget under the Blair/Broon reign of terror (by a factor of nearly 3-times the 1997 figure), is set to increase by a whopping 37%. Triples all round, then, in Kampala, Addis Ababa and other centres of political rectitude. And now we have revelations that Dave has a raft of ‘vanity’ staff, including his personal photographer, video cameraman, wife’s style advisor (a what?) and other drones on the public payroll; rather insensitive in these hard times, n’est pas?

Heffer gets Obama wrong

I am disappointed with Simon’s latest effort at O bashing. It is popular among the conservative media to refer to O as the anointed one, or the sainted one. Now, Simon is calling him Saint Barack. There is little in the public eye that supports this frivolous moniker. My call is that Simon spoke with some conservative nut during his recent visit to the US and swallowed every word that was said. Simon then put the regurgitated tripe into his Torygraph column today without plumbing the depths of what was said and ground-truthing the facts. Cheap journalism if I am correct. If Simon wants to beatify someone, he should focus on someone who merits the title; the Blessed Margaret?

Our notorious Rush Limbaugh has been arguing that the Democrats should gear up to put Hillary Clinton as their nominee for President in 2012. This is what Rush does for laughs and not one bit of it could happen and if Hillary has her way, will not happen. Rush’s humorous effort to divide the Democratic house failed miserably save for gullible Simon to pick it up, dust it off, and actually put it into his column.

Yes, O’s visit to India and the Orient is over the top, but it is not an escape from the line of fire as Simon argues. Moreover, Simon claims 34 US warships are to guard O during his trip; a rumor that the US military has categorically denied. Lazy and sensational journalism on Simon’s part and he should know better.

There are other examples of the type of commentary that comes from a quick visit to New York and Simon’s departing as if he were an expert on the country. Alexis de Tocqueville he is not. His puny efforts to denigrate O fall seriously short. O is not regarded here as capable of walking on water and is sadly aware of his shortcomings and, I suspect, the insurmountable difficulties he will have in overcoming them. I also doubt the O will have much success in his efforts to expand US exports to Asia, but this is not because of Simon’s call that Asia can probably manufacture whatever we have for sale more cheaply. We are not selling kewpie dolls, but rather big ticket defense items and high tech equipment that goes along with it. We continue to be competitive in this arena and I am sure that O will employ whatever political leverage he can while making his sales pitch. I expect more from Simon and am dismayed at his parroting the views of American pundits without adding his usually brilliant insights.

Republican hopefuls that remain in the forefront include Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and, can you believe it, Sarah Palin. I fail to place Sarah as anywhere near presidential material and continue to disdain her backwoods, 'hockey mom' image and her red neck promotion of Republican women as 'mother grizzlies'. Huckabee's take on O's Asia tour began with the observation that the political opposition is always critical of a president who leaves the country. In other words, the visit itself is no big deal. Many Americans believe, along with myself, that the presidential entourage is obscene in number of people and cost.

More airport security nonsense

Big Brother Watch has head from a supporter who wishes to remain anonymous but is, in her words, a lady "old enough to have her bus pass".


She tells us that she was subjected to a humiliating experience at Stansted. She has had both her hips replaced and when going security she was taken off to a room and made to undress to show her operation scars to prove that she had had the surgery claimed.

She said the whole experience was utterly humiliating. She questioned the need to put her through this and was just told that it was the law.

Big Brother Watch will be contacting the airport to ask them if that is in accordance with their policy and would love to hear from you if you have heard or seen anything similar, at Stansted or elsewhere.

Can't pay, won'tpay

Where will Dave end up with his battle in Europe? 40% of the budget goes on the hopelessly bent CAP and another 40% on pork aka Regional Funds. The new foreign department headed by the invisible ‘Lady’ Ashton already costs more than the entire F&CO, and it is scarcely up-and-running (and hopefully never will be). The snouts in the European Parliamentary trough are looking for bigger hand-outs. A touch of the Blessed Margaret needed here, Dave – you remember ‘No, no, NO!!’? I suggest yelling ‘can’t pay, won’t pay!’ The French would. And why didn’t he leave it all to Little Willie Hague? As the Blessed Margaret memorably said, ‘Every Prime Minister needs a Willie’. When did we last see Little Willie? He was with Dave in Brussels but not seen while Dave hailed his ‘victory’!

(To add insult to injury, the nomenklatura in Brussels have decreed that the UK must change its election law to enable prisoners to vote. They may have a problem or two getting to the polling stations, but presumably they will all qualify for postal votes under Blair’s vote-rigging legislation).

The Sunday Times continues to run a vendetta against the DFID Minister, this time for accepting a political donation in return for certain lobbying over coffee trading in Ghana. With his budget rising by 37% during this Parliament he is very vulnerable in defending the indefensible.

The politicians’ expenses scandal just won’t go away. Three ex-Labour MPs are still trying to get a High Court ruling that they have Parliamentary privilege. Lord Hanningfield failed in his attempt. This what Richard Ingrams says in the matchless Oldie magazine.

Indignation likewise should be felt in the case of two of the Labour peers suspended this week for claiming huge sums for bogus home allowances. Lord Bhatia is known to be a millionaire, while the Labour benefactor Lord Paul is described in press reports as a steel magnate and one of the richest men in England. In this week's House of Lords debate over the suspension, another Labour peer, Lord Alli, accused his fellow peers of racial bias against the three offenders - the third being the Bangladesh-born Lady Uddin. He might just as well have asked whether racial bias was not responsible for their being elevated to the House of Lords in the first place - all three political parties being keen to show their multicultural credentials by promoting coloured spokesmen whenever possible. The same argument could just as well be applied to Lord Alli himself, a relatively obscure but wealthy independent television entrepreneur befriended by Tony Blair.

The serious meeja here has started to give a lot of attention to the Tea Partyists, treating them as a legitimate political movement rather than as a rag-tag of simple-minded backwards-looking, flat earthists, red-necks, pro-lifers, and Palinistas. The Economist devoted a lengthy analysis to them in Lexington, and the general tone was extremely favourable, suggesting that the influence of the TP might well have the beneficial effect of forcing the Republicans back to their basic principles. It also revealed that research tends to show that the TP are rather better educated and well-off than the average. Now they have scented blood, will they become part of mainstream Republicanism or just fade away?

BBC had a whole hour at peak time fronted by Andrew ‘Brillo Pad’ Neil, beloved of Private Eye and former Fleet Street Editor. Glenn Beck feature prominently. I think that I now have his measure; he’s nuts! Mad as a box of frogs! He said that Palin is the reincarnation of Washington. A ranting demagogue, weeping and posturing for the cameras; here he would be a figure of ridicule, but then so was Goebbels.

Ms P has a very screechy voice and strikes me as thick as mince ‘n tatties.

The scenes at the TP gatherings were worrying. To them O is a Socialist, a Communist, a Kenyan, a Nazi, a Muslim. There was a big rally at the same spot and on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech with Beck once more foaming at the mouth. I was unsure of the symbolism of this, but it was noticeable that no blacks were present. There was a lot of blatant political pontificating from various pulpits; people should be very concerned about evangelistic preachers getting involved in right-wing (or any wing) politics, which also strikes me as against the spirit of the Constitution.

The President (I thought they were a spontaneous meeting of people, not an organisation – at least that’s what they tell us) has a hairy face resembling the orifice from which he was plainly speaking. There seems to be big money involved and there is an outfit called ‘Freedom Works’ pulling the strings. Shades of ‘The Family’. America should be worried if all this is accurate.

On the more positive side, it became clear that the US at large has diametrically opposite political values and ideology to Europe. Here there is a ‘gimme, gimme’ culture, one of ‘entitlement’ and ‘compensation’; a conviction that government should solve all problems with higher ‘tax and spend’ measures. In the US it is more about rolling back the frontiers of the state, less governance, lower taxes, less public spending. But O comes across as lacking in empathy and having neither understanding of business or much sympathy for it. Some of his public utterances give a worrying impression that he is wedded to the European dirigiste ‘social model’..

So Barack got a haircut. No surprise there, then. However, I suggest that those who see a victory for the Reps in the mid-terms as the end of O are forgetting their history e.g. the experience of Ronnie and Bill.

You couldn’t make it up.......

• We hear from Wall Street that bankers have been making a nice little earner by selling investment products and then betting against them. Although this is clearly fraud, it is not a crime.

• The Old Bill has just revealed that of over 100,000 stop-and-searches under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, there has not been a single arrest for a terrorist offence. Seems as if the police have used S. 44 to stealthily revive the old and discredited ‘sus’ law.

Roi Barack & Michelle Antoinette

It is difficult for me to wrap my head around the concept of the UK and France sharing a rapid deployment force, aircraft carriers and nuclear research efforts. It will all end in tears of frustration. It is impossible for the French to compromise on anything. Theirs is the French way and zat iz all, monsieur. There is simply no grounds for unity between the French and UK cultures. DeGaulle was not subordinate in his mind to anybody and I dare say his military successors are of much the same frame of mind. In the final analysis, the UK and France are better at fighting one another than fighting side by side and they certainly had more practice at it.

The interminable mid-term elections are finally over. As predicted, the Republicans won big and are busily committing hubris over that event even though the wiser pundits are cautioning that the vote contained a strong anti incumbent element. Some of the Republicans main targets managed to get reelected. Namely, the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Ried, Senator Barbara Boxer of California and, by a larger margin owing to a safe seat, Nancy Polosi the former Speaker of the House. O will have a nationally broadcast speech tonight in which he is likely to pledge his, and ask for their, non-partisan cooperation. Fat chance.

Regardless of their motives, the public has largely sealed the fate of O's campaign for change. Not that it ever took off in the first place. The campaign foundered on O's inability to manage the legislative process needed for success in orchestrating change. He made too many compromises and offered to many deals to legislators seeking quid pro quos in spite of his promise to maintain an open and transparent administration. Even more important in the public eye, was O's failure to markedly reduce unemployment. Not that he could have done so, but rather he could have been much more proactive in educating the public as to the difficulties of this task and the time needed to make it happen. Big failure here as seen in the voting.

While it is clear that America has spoken, it is not at all clear what they said. As a result, the Republicans are now busy putting words in the public mouth and praising the public for having said them. Before long, crow will be regularly served at Senate and House dinners. The new Speaker of the House, John Boener (pronounced Bayner) lacks spark and is not an inspiring speaker. Add to this the growing rift between common everyday Republicans and the further right wing Conservatives and their Tea Party acolytes and party solidarity becomes more of an aspiration than a reality. Janet Daley puts the dilemma quite well in her Telegraph column today:

'The truth comes now: can a party that tapped grass roots anger remain in active touch with the grass roots?'

We live in interesting times and if the Republicans fail to internalize the message that the public is fed up with self-serving politicians, there will be hell to pay.

Meanwhile, O is will soon tour in India. It remains rather unclear as to why, but he booked 750 rooms in the Taj hotel to accommodate some of his entourage of about 7,000 people stuffed into 40 aircraft led by Air Force 1. Roi Barack and Michelle Antoinette are way over the top in their excesses which is no way to make much needed contact with struggling poor and middle class Americans. It is absolutely unbelievable that they are so adamant about cutting their own throats. He who campaigned as a man of the people has succumbed to the good life and is eating their cake in the process.