'Don't reign on my parade.........'

Yanks are camping out at Westminster Abbey to get a good view of the Big Day (as long as they don’t camp out at Westminster Cathedral instead). At the moment the rain appears to be holding off, an estimated 600,000 tourists have flocked into London alone, which should keep the cash tills ringing. The financial gurus reckon the Wedding is worth £1.2 billion to the economy. The unlikely figure of 2 billion TV viewers is being touted. There will be the usual suspects whingeing about ‘Who’s paying for all this?’ ; the Queen contributes more than four times the upkeep of the Crown through the revenues of the Crown Estates which are paid over to the Exchequer in return for the Civil List, but never let the facts get in the way of a good moan.

So may we now get back to reality?

The dreadful European Arrest Warrant is back in the news. Those blockheads who say ‘if you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear’ should consider the case of Ian Bailey.

He is an eccentric English journalist living in a village in Ireland. He adopted an Irish name and is much given to going around reciting poetry. He might be thought fair game on all these counts.

Fourteen years ago he was arrested on a charge of murdering a French visitor outside her holiday cottage. The Director of Public Prosecutions fund that there was no credible evidence against him and he was released without trial.

Despite reports that the woman was found clutching hair, there was no forensic evidence – blood, DNA footprints – linking Bailey to the crime, but there was evidence that he was put in the frame by corrupt local police. The main witness issued no less than 8 contradictory statements and subsequently withdrew all of them. She said that she had been pressured and coached by the police. She said that she had seen a man near the cottage on the night in question who was around 5ft 8in and wearing a long dark coat. Bailey is a big man at 6ft 4in and does not have such a coat. But a man answering that description was traced to a guest house in Cork, with what outcome we are not told.

Enter the French.

Despite the absence of any credible evidence, they have issued an EAW for Bailey to stand trial in France. This has some absolutely fundamental implications.

Witnesses can’t be compelled to attend a French court, but the court can rely on witness statements, thus denying the accused the opportunity to cross-examine. And the effluxion of time means that memories will have faded and there will be problems tracing witnesses and experts. But there are wider issues.

If the warrant is granted, it opens the door for suspects to be repeatedly investigated and tried in another country with different rules and laws.

The EAW was intended to make it easy to detain fugitives from justice and return them to the country where the crime was committed. Bailey is not a fugitive; he co-operated fully with the police, including forensic samples. And the French are purporting to try a crime that was committed in another country, which begs the question of whether we are now seeing the extension of criminal jurisdiction against one of the basic precepts of international law. It would be possible to arrest a person who had never even visited the country of trial.

A further point is that I was under the impression that the EAW could only be invoked for crimes committed after its introduction (I recall that there was a Polish case thrown out because it related to war crimes from WW2).

The Brits contribute £9 billion a year to be ruled from Brussels and get this kind of oppression. And nobody gives a flying &*?!.

But it’s not all bad. The Economist Intelligence Unit gives the euro a 15% chance of going tits-up – quite short odds.

And what have Dave Snooty and his fag Nick Clanger done to date to rollback the Orwellian state created by Blair? What have they done about civil liberties? Nothing. Zero. Zilch . Bugger-all. Perhaps this is shortage of Parliamentary time when the Government is having to engage with such pressing topics as the rule of primogeniture and the Royal Succession, since a decision will be needed in as little as 50 years time. Of course, this could be a little tricky as it would need the concurrence of 15 other countries of which Her Maj is also Queen plus the disestablishment of the Church of England.

Obama is no ogre.........

‘The Democrats are the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it’.

Fareed had another riveting show on Sunday. Of particular interest was his interview with former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Paul O'Neill. Although representing different political factions, these two men agreed on all major points and on 90% of how to achieve them. Very interestingly, O'Neill seriously put forward the notion that a form of VAT should replace our current tax system. Some refer to this as the Fair Tax which is a tax on consumption rather than income. It has phenomenal potential including the capacity to dramatically aid in correcting our current budget deficit.

The down side is that there are far too many vested interests in our current tax system to allow the Fair Tax to be legislated into law. Such legislation would mean the redundancy of thousands of Internal Revenue Service workers, tax lawyers, income tax filing assistance firms, and tax preparation software designers. It would also work against companies that, because of current tax loopholes, pay little or no personal or corporate taxes. The collective power of these would-be victims is far too great to expect any common sense relief from our burdensome and incomprehensible tax system.

The ultimate victims of the tax code and the incapacity of Washington to take sensible corrective measures are the American people. The prevailing moribund political atmosphere offers no hope for change albeit hope and change loomed large in O's campaign priorities. I doubt, however, that O is for Ogre. The man is complex, introspective and concerned, but at the same time vain, remote and vindictive.

Neither he, nor any of his current line-up of republican competitors have sufficient power to do much of anything constructive. So, we the people continue to watch petrol prices climb, to remain anxious over the future of health care costs, and to be both confused and perplexed over the falling dollar, rising inflation, lagging growth and serious joblessness.

Learning diplomacy the hard way...

Fareed had another riveting show on Sunday. Of particular interest was his interview with former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Paul O'Neill. Although representing different political factions, these two men agreed on all major points and on 90% of how to achieve them. Very interestingly, O'Neill seriously put forward the notion that a form of VAT should replace our current tax system. Some refer to this as the Fair Tax which is a tax on consumption rather than income. It has phenomenal potential including the capacity to dramatically aid in correcting our current budget deficit.

The down side is that there are far too many vested interests in our current tax system to allow the Fair Tax to be legislated into law. Such legislation would mean the redundancy of thousands of Internal Revenue Service workers, tax lawyers, income tax filing assistance firms, and tax preparation software designers. It would also work against companies that, because of current tax loopholes, pay little or no personal or corporate taxes. The collective power of these would-be victims is far too great to expect any common sense relief from our burdensome and incomprehensible tax system.

The ultimate victims of the tax code and the incapacity of Washington to take sensible corrective measures are the American people. The prevailing moribund political atmosphere offers no hope for change albeit hope and change loomed large in O's campaign priorities. I doubt, however, that O is for Ogre. The man is complex, introspective and concerned, but at the same time vain, remote and vindictive. Neither he, nor any of his current lineup of republican competitors have sufficient power to do much of anything constructive.

So, we the people continue to watch petrol prices climb, to remain anxious over the future of health care costs, and to be both confused and perplexed over the falling dollar, rising inflation, lagging growth and serious joblessness.

The situation is Syria is not looking good. I am sure we will not intervene and for the same reasons why we did not intervene in Egypt. After having taken on Iraq, we hopefully learned that a liberation effort on our part will most probably be viewed as an invasion by the Syrians.

I see Syria, Egypt and Iraq as the most formidable Arab countries owing to their long history in forming and ruling the Muslim world. Saudi is a latecomer and Yemen is too remote from the Levant to be of much consequence, even though it has considerable historical significance. Libya and the rest of the Maghreb are too tribal in nature and too mixed with non-Arab blood to be of major consequence.

We, of course, have no coherent policy regarding the Middle East and as such, we remain free to do, or not do, whatever pleases us. It certainly does not please us to take on Syria, although we would be ecstatic to see the back of Bashar al-Asad. He and his Alawites are unpopular among other Arab countries, especially Sunni-dominated states. I mention this because the vast majority of Americans are totally unaware of the divisions within Islam and their significance with respect to internal Arab relations. Moreover, I seriously doubt that even our esteemed leaders understand these differences and their implications.

The Brits were far superior to the Yanks in playing Arab diplomatic games, at least in the past. I would hope that Dave has the good sense to take advice from those seniors who know the countries involved, their religious differences, their tribes and their idiosyncrasies. It would appear to me that O and Lady Hillary have not had such good sense and are having to learn diplomacy the hard way.

EU Foreign Aid wasted...quelle surprise!

We watched Fareed on CNN International last Sunday. He touched upon the budget cuts at the BBC World Service from which, he said, he learnt his English. I had previously thought that the funding for this would be transferred to DFID from the Foreign Office as a piece of creative accounting that would show an F&CO budget reduction and help to justify the ring fencing of the DFID budget. Wrong! Fareed told us that until now the BBC WS has broadcast to the world in 69 different languages. And now? The British Council, which is one of the few aid agencies that can show measurable results, is going the same way.

But Dave persists with his ring fencing of the DFID budget.

At last overseas aid is reaching the front pages, with even the tabloids taking an interest. This time it’s the EU getting a caning – and what few people realise is that £1.4 million of UK aid is channelled through Brussels as ‘multi-lateral’ aid i.e. they can spend it as they wish.

The performance is appalling, something we have known for years. Only 46% of EU aid reaches lower income countries compared with 74% of UK aid. EU aid is also subject to unnecessary administration and transaction costs, with money being recycled between national governments, the EU and other international bodies (such as the United Nations or World Bank) up to three times before it reaches those in need.

I get a daily bulletin from Open Europe, a think-tank that scrutinises the antics of the Fourth Reich. Here is their latest:

“While development aid can have a real impact, the EU’s aid budget suffers from poor accountability, unnecessary bureaucracy and, most critically, less than half the money spent actually goes to the world’s poorest people. Old colonial links and regional proximity, rather than fighting global poverty, continue to determine the destination of most EU aid.”

“There’s no conclusive evidence that the EU adds value to national aid programmes that are already performing relatively well, such as the UK’s aid spending. National contributions to the EU aid budget should be made voluntary with the Commission primarily playing a coordinating role, encouraging best practice and coherent policies among member states.”

“At a time when funds are tight it is vital that national governments get value for money from their aid spending. Unfortunately, when it comes to accountability, money spent via Brussels too often falls into a black hole between member states and the European Commission.”

UK currently contributes £1,424m to EU external aid spending, around 18% of the UK’s £7,767m total aid budget. - Money spent as EU aid continues to be poorly targeted at tackling poverty. Only 46% of EU aid reached lower income countries in 2009, compared with 74% of UK aid and 58% of EU member state governments’ aid.

From 2000-2009, developing European countries received $10.49 per capita, while Sub-Saharan Africa received only $3.94 per capita. Turkey was the top recipient of EU aid in 2009 which is unbelievable; Turkey is a middle income country with a booming economy. Danegeld, perhaps?

EU aid, which is managed by the European Commission, currently has administration costs of 5.4%, which are higher than the UK’s Department for International Development’s (DFID) costs of 4%, and the UK Government’s target of reducing these to 2% by 2014-15. Some EU aid streams, such as the programme for African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, have administration costs as high as 8.6% - above the ceiling the UK imposes when giving grants to NGOs.

€1.4bn or 10% of EU aid is needlessly passed on to other multilateral donors every year, such as the UN and World Bank. This money is simply being recycled between donors – up to three times in some cases – before it reaches a recipient country and is subject to unnecessary administration and transaction costs. In 2009, the Commission also agreed to ‘delegate’ €242.7m worth of aid spending back to the EU’s national governments, which begs the question why the money was ever given to the EU by member states in the first place.

EU aid is too often not aligned with other EU policies. For example, in 2008, the Commission established a migration centre in Mali to provide support to migrants seeking temporary jobs in the EU. However, with only Spain having signed a migration agreement with Mali, the €10m centre has helped only six Malians find work in Europe.

The EU’s current drive to transfer up to 50% of its aid directly to recipient governments’ treasuries, through ‘budget support’, rather than pre-agreed projects means that the EU risks donating money directly to discredited or illegitimate regimes. I have not been able to discern any audit trail for ‘DBS’ funding; I did suggest to Andrew Mitchell, the DFID Minister, that the donor agency should have its own auditor in situ whenever DBS is granted. We shall see – or not.

Some aid funding does not even leave the EU, or even Brussels. In 2009 alone, the EU granted a Brussels-based communications agency nearly €500,000 to produce various promotional brochures and campaigns. This included €90,000 to co-ordinate an “I fight poverty” music contest amongst young people in Europe, to increase “development awareness”.

It was ever thus.

The Report seems to have kicked up the perfect storm in Europe and a debate has been set down in the Dutch Parliament. It will be another case of plus ca change.

‘

Israel, the Argies & the Falklands War.....

A story that didn’t make the front page is the publication of a book that says Israel supplied weapons to Argentina during the Falkland’s War. They included missiles, radar, and long range fuel tanks for Argie bombers that enabled them to attack RN ships with great loss of life. Begin hated the British. He was a terrorist during the British Mandate, and hated the British, especially because we topped one of his terrorist mates.

We should not forget that it was the Irgun and the Stern Gang who perfected terrorism as an effective political weapon. Small wonder, then, that the F&CO has never shared America’s affection for Israel, and that the Camel Corps at the F&CO has always been very influential – and extremely expert (or was).

We note also that Dave, our interchangeable Dear Leader, has put British ‘military advisors’ into Libya. Just like the US in the 1960s for Vietnam. Ten years later this had led to the deaths of more than 50,000 ‘military advisors’. Watch my lips, Dave: ‘Mission creep’. Goddit?

It isn’t easy being green.....

Did you know that

• Imported Kenyan roses have a carbon footprint six times smaller than Dutch roses?

• Imported New Zealand lamb uses only a quarter of the energy of Welsh?

• If we switched entirely to ‘green’ food production we have to cut down the world’s entire forest cover?

No, neither did I!

Gaddafi in exile?

When the old villain finally legs it, who is going to take him in? Simple. It is said that his mother was Jewish. If this is true, then he has ‘the right of return’ to Israel.

The saviour of the EU?

It is being seriously reported that Arnie Schwarzenegger is being touted as the next President of the EU, he being an Austrian. Perfect; it needs a Terminator.

The Fenians are back......

‘The Wedding’ moves closer, stirring up general apathy. On the last occasion, we took our little plane to Le Touquet for a splendid lunch at the Hotel Westminster. The skies were empty, there was nobody on the streets, and it was lovely flying weather. But we now have a more world-weary public than 30 years ago.

Overshadowing the event are the promises made by various groups of nutcases to cause mayhem. Muslim extremists are threatening to mob the big day and the English Defence League is threatening the Muslims. More serious is a potential threat from revived Irish Republican terrorism.

The Fenians are back.

A new campaign of violence started in 2009 which has been rather under-reported here. There have been murders of soldiers and policemen. There have been bombings, attempted assassinations, failed ambushes and daily grenade attacks. When the report of the inquiry into the ‘Bloody Sunday’ violence was reported, Sinn Fein celebrated it as a victory and the start of a new peaceful era. The Oglaigh na hEirann (Soldiers of Ireland) responded with a 300 lb bomb outside a police station. A police station was destroyed during the last Tory Party conference.

MI5 has raised the threat level to substantial. There is known to be at least 700 activists. And the OnH knows that after the defence cuts the British Army no longer has the capacity to deploy the large numbers of troops need to combat a sustained terrorist campaign. Nice one, Dave!

And we have the wedding close to Easter, a landmark each year for violent Republicans.

By a strange irony, the Royal Duties Regiment at the wedding will be the Irish Guards, newly returned from Afghanistan so skinny that they are having to be kitted out with new ceremonial uniforms.

I am certain of one thing; the police will confront troublemakers very robustly, and we will not take too much notice of claims of ‘police brutality’.

Obama plays 'King Lear'...

I am not so sure that the prophets of doom in the US are not right. The financial press here is giving some pretty dire indicators – debt 100% of GDP. That puts you guys up there with Ireland and Portugal. S&P have just downgraded the US debt-forecast and there are rumours that its AAA rating is in danger of being downgraded too.

The Republicans seem to be in a mood to make swingeing cuts. Like PBS grants. That should do the trick, and have the added advantage that all TV will be crap not just most of it. O is reported to be promising huge cuts but we have no reports of where they will fall. He is beginning to sound like King Lear

'I will do such things --What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be The terrors of the earth!

Never mind. It’s déjà vu time again.

BP is back on the front pages.

Quote of the week from Bob Dudley (I wrote it down as he said it). ‘BP has been deeply impacted by the deaths.....’.

The AGM was mobbed by impoverished protesters who had flown in from America for the occasion. There were no reports of Gulf protesters demonstrating against Halliburton. But it doesn’t appear as if Bob has got the golden bullet after all. I had a peep at BP shares afterwards. They have dropped from a year high of 655 to 458, about 40% by my simple arithmetic. Of course, the conventional view is that BP, like so many others, is too big to fail. Just like ICI, PAN Am, TWA, perhaps?

Brussels justice. Out of 54,689 arrest warrants issued so far the commission can only quote a handful against serious criminal or terrorist suspects. These people could have been extradited under national systems that protected the entire population who are now unprotected from unjust extradition”.

Conservative backbench MPs are putting pressure on David Cameron to resist the European Court of Human Rights’ demands to lift the ban on prisoners’ right to vote. They claim that an estimated 8,000 ECHR rulings have not been implemented by other countries in the past. The article quotes a leaked Government document confirming that “the direct sanctions for failure to comply with [ECHR] judgment are political rather than judicial. We are not aware of any country that has been expelled from the Council [of Europe] for non-execution of a judgment.”

The Entitlement Society US-style

We continue to enjoy watching Fareed Zacharia's GPS program each Sunday. Last week he featured an engaging interview with former Secretary of State James Baker. The man is brilliant and speaks with clarity, logic and to the point. His concepts convey a common sense that is both rare and compelling. Would that he could influence the current lot of politicians in Washington. The fighting and biting of the latter is becoming boring, boring, boring. America deserves better and I fear for our future. There is no hope on the horizon, in my mind, of improving politicians behavior short of a great civil or natural disaster.

Politics is just now preoccupied with the national budget, the national debt and the national trade deficit. Spending is out of control and political leaders uniformly seek dramatic spending cuts; in projects supported by the opposition of course. A major target is the multitude of social programs instituted over the years, often without foresight regarding sustainability, and the dependencies these programs have created. Time was in America when a sick person would have to be taken care of by himself, family or friends. In like manner, Americans used to blame themselves if they tripped and fell and sustained an injury as a result. Today, growing masses of people not only rely on, but insist that the state care for them and should they sustain an injury through carelessness, they want to immediately sue someone.

We are now ensconced in what is known here as entitlements. To the political right, such entitlements mean social security, health care programs, emergency care and a host of other programs aimed at minority or impoverished groups who are collectively supported by the Nanny State. I extend the concept of entitlement to include professionals who insist on increasing their fees, to entrepreneurs who insist on the right to place productivity over quality and to unions who feel entitled to protect there members at the expense of their quality of service. Entitlements are not a one way street, but are enjoyed and defended by rich and poor, educated and ignorant, bright and less bright and white and blue collar workers. And entitlements are fraught with inequities. Nobody in the USA is entitled to an astronomic salary, to free health care, to immigrate without documentation, to stand for office interminably. Yet, all of these practices are protected either by law or convention. To be sure it is illegal to immigrate without documentation, but once illegally here, one benefits by free health care, free education, free police protection, and even the right to produce a child who, by virtue of being born here, is an automatic citizen.

On top of all this, we are engaged in another war in Libya. The manner in which we are fighting this war, our role in its implementation, and asset commitments are all back burner issues just now owing to the budget crisis. The cost of fighting in Libya, however, is not a back burner issue. Nor is the prospect that we may be in for a much longer engagement than was previously thought. Will we ever learn our lesson? Remember when it was believed that the boys will be home by Christmas. Nobody expected Korea, Vietnam and Iraq to last for more than a few months. We even put a limit on our engagement in Afghanistan, but with conditions and those conditions are likely to extend our commitments for a much longer period of time. Now we enter Libya for a few weeks just to clean up a bit of untidiness regarding a corrupt and decaying dictator who cannot endure our military might. Right.

I have not been slack in my attention to current events in the UK. I quite agree with you that Dave is a hollow man. You said this, or words to that effect, from the beginning along with almost all the other pundits that I read in the Daily Telegraph. He screwed up on Pakistan, he screwed up in his statements about the failure of multiculturalism, he screwed up on his strategy for economic recovery and the list goes on. The evidence is strong that Dave, O , the Hausfrau and the Dwarf are, like other Western leaders, far less powerful than we believe. They are driven by events to be sure, but in a more sinister context, they are driven by their ideological and financial supporters and lobbyists representing big business. We know this, of course, yet why does the world press continue to dote on the personality and commentary of our leaders and ignore the forces behind them in day to day reporting?

I am very much afraid that our democracy is failing us. The institutions for governance that we have created have been transformed into vehicles for the plunder of the masses while feeding them on concepts of individual importance and promises of a brighter future that will not materialize. Not that the masses have a monopoly on right thinking, kindness, generosity, understanding or any other positive attribute. Perhaps they should be treated like sheep after all.

The Italian Job RAF-style

The Coalition’s Near East adventures wobble between tragedy and farce. The bombing campaign is costing the MoD a fortune in hotel charges. How so? Because we have no aircraft carrier. It was decommissioned in the same week that Libya went tits-up, so the raids are carried out by RAF pilots based in Italy instead of Navy pilots based off-shore.

The Yanks have retired to the substitute’s bench, the rest of NATO doesn’t want to know, so it’s Dave and the Poisoned Dwarf saving the fedayeen in Shawadi Wadi.

It also exposes NATO as a farce. Where is this ‘all for one, one for all’ stuff that is supposed to be the core justification? The Rosbifs and the Frogs are the only European countries that are able to tackle any type of warlike engagement.

The Germans just get under foot. In Afghanistan 80% never leave barracks; they are not allowed out at night; and they can’t open fire unless shot at first. As for the Italians – well, you know the old jibe that the difference between Italians and a slice of toast is that you can make soldiers out of toast.

Drop the dead donkey.....

Cameron is all gong and no dinner! Dave’s policies seem to be like Boris’s buses; there’ll be another one along in a minute. He seems eminently qualified to take the title role in ’Drop the Dead Donkey’.

Having returned in triumph from his brown-nosing expedition to Pakistan, he went straight in, boots and all, with another cracker, this time slagging-off Oxford University for not having enough Afro-Caribbeans amongst its intake. I fear that this chap is not the accomplished politician that we have been led to believe. He had clearly not thought out this latest asinine remark before he made it otherwise he should have realised that it would involve him in another senseless political furore. Secondly, he must have known that he would be torn to shreds by left and right. Thirdly, he didn’t check his facts.

First let me give my own take on this.

When I was working in Jamaica I asked my counterpart the lovely and elegant Mrs K why it was that in the Jamaican public service the top management seemed to have an extraordinarily high proportion of women. For example, 8 of the 10 Executive Agencies had female CEOs (and very good they were, too). The Secretary for Justice, whom I got to know well, was a very dynamic and somewhat intimidating lady. During my second stint the PM was a woman.

She told me that it was part of the Jamaican culture that boys tended to goof off school in their early teens for the pleasures of the beach, reggae, and Red Stripe. Meanwhile the girls beavered away at school, got good results, went on to University – often in the US- and started their careers while the boys were still into Bob Marley. By the time the boys had started to come to their senses, the girls were already well up the greasy pole.

Another aspect of Jamaican life is that there is a high proportion of single parents; fathers are somewhat deficient in the responsibility department. Sounds familiar.

On the assumption that these cultural characteristics are carried over to the British environment with the Caribbean diaspora the partial explanation is obvious. Perhaps a more important aspect is that a disproportionate number go to poor schools on sink estates. And on a slightly wider note there is no doubt in my mind or the minds of many others that the main reason why pupils from state schools are under-represented in Oxbridge is nothing to do with privilege. It is everything to do with the lousy educational standards in too many state schools. In former days, the grammar school was the route to Oxbridge for youngsters from ordinary backgrounds – Simon Heffer himself was a grammar school oik, as were Michael Howard, William Hague (who transferred to a comp) and many others who later found fame and fortune.

One interesting piece of information to come out of this furore is that Oxford has a very high proportion of what are euphemistically called ‘ethnic minorities’ i.e. persons of colour. It is no surprise that Chinese and Indians are strongly represented. Another titbit that I picked up is that in schools that have a high percentage of pupils of Chinese background the standards of the school overall are raised because the intelligence and industriousness of Chinese pupils has a salutary impact on the whole body.

The duty of the best universities is the pursuit of excellence not social engineering or some latter-day version of America’s disastrous affirmative action policies.

Dave redeemed himself up to a point with a speech on immigration that was about 20 years overdue. The topic has been taboo since the ‘rivers of blood’ speech that Enoch never made. But the fundamental problem in English politics is that Conservatives have nowhere to go. Dave and Millie are interchangeable – public school and Oxbridge boys from privileged backgrounds who know virtually nothing about real life. They are interchangeable, and many of Dave’s effusions could come from Millie without being able to tell the difference. Today’s choice is between a red lefty toff and a blue lefty toff.



America goes chicken...........

Raising chickens seems to have become a fad. We thought we were the only ones, but recent articles and news broadcasts reveal that more chicken coops are being built now than at any other time since the end of WWII. I believe there is a psychological fear going about that additional and affordable food may well be needed to sustain our population during predicted future crises. This belief is also encouraged by the growing number of domestic vegetable gardens being planted. Ours is growing nicely.

These fears should not be underestimated. While I doubt we are in trouble, I do not doubt for a moment that growing numbers of Americans believe we are in trouble.

There has been a huge rush on the purchase of guns and ammunition over the past few years. Profits of doom abound on radio and TV telling tales about imminent economic, agricultural and natural disasters that will result in urban chaos across America. Populations of private and voluntary militia groups are expanding. Self defense training, including the use of handguns, is becoming increasingly popular. Scenarios of urban gangs of minority groups, bikers, and yobs ranging the countryside in search of fuel and food are beginning to take hold in peoples minds.

The public is being warned by bazaar fear merchants that O and his minions are ruining America due to excessive spending, increased entitlements, expanding government and entry into wars which we cannot afford. Our banks will crash, our currency will become almost valueless, we will not be able to afford to import oil and our house will come tumbling down as a result.

This fringe movement is expanding and people are becoming worried over America's future. Little is being done in Washington to allay these fears. Hence the victory gardens, chicken coops, and self-preservation plans. To be sure, our leaders are out of touch with the public. O has just announced his intention to run for re-election and is looking for a campaign war chest of a billion dollars while people like myself get $35 an acre to move and operate heavy agricultural equipment which, at the end of the day, nets them just a few dollars after expenses.

Our national debt is in the trillions and our minimum wage is around seven or eight dollars an hour. These disparities play heavily on people's minds and they wonder how our economic and political leaders can be so wealthy while the population at large cannot seem to make ends meet. Troubling times, indeed.

We are beginning to look like England in many ways.

MPs in Wonderland..........

Today’s politics remind me of the immortal words of Grouch Marx:

‘The secret of life is honesty and plain dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made!’

Having stalked the corridors of power for many years, I reckon that MPs can and do so many things in the House - sleep, eat, drink copulate - without going outside into the street it becomes a world of its own, and they become increasingly detached from reality. Politicians often have very little real life experience of the problems about which they pontificate so freely, especially if they don’t belong to the ‘class’ that they claim to represent.

Let us take that tribune of the proletariat, the Rt.Hon. Harriet Harman QC, MP.

She is from upper middle class stock. Her father was a Harley Street Doctor, her mother a solicitor. She is related to Lady Longford, Lady Antonia Fraser, and Lady Billington. She went to St Paul’s School for Girls, one of London’s poshest fee-paying establishments. She studied law at York University and was a barrister. Nothing wrong with any of that, but it hardly suggests that she has any concept of what life is like for people on low incomes or living on a sink estate. There was, of course, the famous picture of her going walk-about in her constituency complete with police escort and stab vest.

Her most recent contribution was the Equality Act which made it lawful to discriminate against white men in employment matters.

Admittedly, she does have some ‘previous’ to give her street-cred; a conviction for perjury (later overturned by the ECHR) and an impressive string of motoring convictions.

There are many like her. Since the advent of the professional politician the House is now stuffed with people who have been little else but politicians, including Dave and George. I had great respect for Labour politicians of the old school, who had come up the hard way, like that real gentleman George Thomas. With the exception of the Beast of Bolsover, there are not many left. Most of the conviction politicians also seem to have departed, people like Tam Daziel, life-member of the Awkward squad and a genuine toff, one with convictions and courage. There are some with genuinely working-class credentials on both sides of the House, but few on the Front Bench of either side. David Davis and Alan Johnson spring to mind, both top men but now relegated to the back-benches.

‘’Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You who were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Depart immediately out of this place! Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves, be gone! In the name of God, go!’

Ah , Cromwell, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

Mugabe: my part in his victory..........

Just by way of a change from our penetrating analyses of current affairs, how about a bit more literary criticism? I had started to write up my diary from 1980 when I was overseeing the elections in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Here is an extract. Does anyone want to know this stuff anymore?

‘Every Saturday morning one of each of the Provincial supervisors had to report to Government House in Salisbury for ‘morning prayers’ to brief Lord Soames on the situation.

These sessions were attended by representatives of all the UK participants – election staff, F&CO people, the military and the UK police.

Soames would ask each person to report by Province.

When it got to the Midlands Province, both the military and the police reported ‘All quiet’.

I differed somewhat.

I told the gathering that there was a substantial force of Rhodesian African Rifles manning an ambush position at Gokwe, way out in the Zambezi valley. There had been a skirmish action between the Greys Scouts and terrs in the vicinity of Belingwe, and there was a substantial (and highly illegal) presence of South African troops.

The senior British officer present poured buckets of scorn on this.

‘The troops you saw at Gokwe were Royal Rhodesia Regiment reservists’ he told me, so what made me think they were RAR?

‘Because they were black’ I replied, ‘RRR is an all-white regiment. My colleague was an officer in the RAR so he knows what they look like, and I was Intelligence Officer in 5 RRR, so I know what they look like!’

Not to be put down, he went on ‘Well, the troops you saw at Belingwe must have been RRR. What makes you think they were SA?’ Clearly his Staff College course had never taught him not to ask a question unless he already knows the answer.

‘Because they were dressed in South African army camo, speaking Afrikaans, had SA vehicle registrations, and were spending Rands’.

‘Well, we have heard nothing about a skirmish near Belingwe. How do you know what happened – or if?’

‘Because we saw the Scouts moving, we heard gunfire, and when we asked what this was about we were told!’

The following week I had another story to tell about the RAR in Gokwe.

I had been allocated a Jet Ranger helicopter to get around the province quickly during the election proper. After landing at Gokwe, I called on the RRR position.

The (white) officer in charge greeted me with ‘I’m glad to see you , and I will be even more glad when you go away’. When I asked him why, he said ‘This is the only war we’ve got and we’re looking after it!’

I took off on a lengthy trip around bush out-stations. When I got back our flight engineer, who had stayed behind, was in a state of great excitement. The weekly supply convoy from Gwelo was due to arrive that day. A group of renegade terrs, who preferred a life of banditry to honest toil, had set up an ambush position. The RRR set up an ambush position immediately behind them.

When the convoy arrived the terrs took up firing positions. So did the RR and promptly wiped out the lot of them. The corpses were piled up in the police cells.

This Report was not questioned by either the police or the military. They had clearly bonded with their Rhodesian counterparts and were quite happy with such tales of derring-do.

**********

The unsung hero was John Barratt, the very capable Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council.

Intimidation and violence was rife on all sides, and the Governor had to decide whether it was possible to have an election that could possibly be called ‘free and fair’ in those conditions.

The UK security forces, both military and police, were vociferous in their opposition to the elections going ahead. They were all for a lengthy postponement, although they were less clear on how this would reduce the levels of intimidation.

They were highly prejudiced against Mugabe, and their sympathies seemed to lay wholly with Smith, so their objectivity in advising their Governor was very dubious.

John let the argument play itself out and then simply said ‘Governor, unless we get this election out of the way on schedule and then leave this miserable country there will be a bloodbath’.

Soames looked around the room, put his chin in his hand and said ‘Well, gentlemen, just pity the poor bugger who has to make this decision!’

Ex Afica aliquid semper nasty...

Libya has certainly driven other African atrocities off the front pages.

A few days ago I watched on Aljazeera just about the most appalling scenes I have ever witnessed on TV. A large crowd had taken a group of prisoners. They then poured petrol over them and set them on fire. The sight of naked men writhing in agony while their bodies gradually turned to shrivelling lumps of burning flesh as the skin disappeared was almost unbearable. Thank God there was no sound.

There will be no repercussions, of course. And nothing of this appeared anywhere else in the media as far as I can judge.

Meanwhile Mugabe continues on his murderous way without a peep from the ‘international community’ (whatever that is). In the run-up to his next phony election (which the African Union will immediately declare to be ‘free and fair’) his thugs are randomly killing those thought to be MDC supporters, beating-up almost anyone they choose and generally intimidating the population by systematic brutality in the urban areas as well as in the bush – a relatively new development which shows the total contempt for ‘world opinion’ (whatever that is).

MDC Cabinet ministers have been arrested, jailed in one of Mugabe’s stinking prisons, beaten up and charged with ludicrous offences. Poor old Morgan Tsvangirai is powerless and must go in daily fear of the same fate as befell his wife.

And what has the UN, the liberal media, the world collective of bleeding hearts got to say about all this?

That’s right!

Cameron knows diddlysquat about history.

Back in la-la land, Dave caused the merde to hit the air-conditioning with his asinine remarks during his recent visit to Pakistan. It was all the fault of the Brits and our beastly Raj, says he. Then he handed over megabucks for ‘education’.

Cameron knows diddlysquat about history. The two greatest incorporeal legacies of the Raj to the sub-continent were the English language and the English Common Law.

Until 1947, India was a concept rather than a nation. Prior to that, much of India consisted of Princely states under the Raj. Kashmir was ceded to India by the Maharajah after Independence. Hostilities broke out between India and Pakistan almost immediately. The UN called for a withdrawal of forces on both sides and for a plebiscite of the Kashmiris. Pakistan did not comply and the rest is history. (Why India wishes to hang on to a largely Muslim state that has been trouble since Day 1 has never been explained; perhaps because it dare not set a precedent for fear of engendering other separatist movements).

It is worth remembering also that Pakistan was set up as a Muslim state, not Islamic. Jinnah’s concept was tolerance of other religions and this was generally the position until Zia ruined things. (Mind you, if you are on the top floor of the Marriot in Islamabad you can just about see the Murree Brewery and Distillery which makes a pretty good single malt; who drinks it all is not explained)

Pakistan’s problems are mostly self-induced. Pakistan is rated as 143rd in the corruption league table, a fiercely fought over position with such competition as Nigeria, Somalia, Bangladesh and other star performers. It has a dysfunctional polity. It has appalling socio-economic inequalities. Nothing seems to work properly except the army and the railways, both legacies of the Raj. Like much of Islam, it squanders a huge proportion of its human resource by its discrimination against women, although it has to be said that many have risen to the top despite this, including Benazir, although this might not be a particularly happy example.

I’m afraid that the government is ‘in office but not in power’. The men-with-the-beards seem to have taken over and Pakistan is increasingly becoming a Taliban sanctuary, potentially disastrous when you consider that Pakistan has 120 nuclear warheads. It spends 8 times as much on defence as on education, the exact opposite of Indonesia. And it suits the army nicely to keep the Kashmir dispute going since this justifies their enormous budgets.

As for recent times, Dave seems unaware that, after the US (where charitable donations are tax-deductible) the British public gave by far the greatest amount of money to the flood relief. Not much came from the rest of Europe or from the Pakistanis’ wealthy co-religionists.

Where the hell are you?

Now here's a funny thing.

Since we started publication of this blog a few months ago it has attracted about 1700 hits but only 12 comments, whereas we get this number for each blog we post on My T.

Is it because the 'comment' facility is not user friendly?

Or what?

Is anyone out there?

It's all about money...

There are two outstanding articles in the DT today, one by Peter Oborne and the other by Jeff Randall. Both deal with UK and European money and banking issues and both possess a clarity of writing that I find highly appealing. Which is to say, I can understand the dynamics involved in bailing out Portugal, after Greed and Ireland and quite possibly before Spain. I was also taken by the insights offered into the European Central Bank which in turn inspired questions about the stability of large Western banking institutions. They are not too big to fail, but they may be too costly to save.

What a dilemma.

Debate is intense in Washington over the remaining fiscal year budget while contestants are playing political dodge ball like spoiled children intent on having their way at whatever cost to others. I have dropped out as best I can, but there is hardly a news item or serious conversation around that is not focused on to what extent spending cuts should be imposed.

Meanwhile, and undoubtedly in a move to take some pressure off the Presidency, O announced the inauguration of his re-election campaign this week. Bloody hell, not another one. It is anticipated that O will raise a billion dollars for his 2012 campaign. One highly politicized Fox news pundit commented that money is not the critical factor in winning an election, but rather a candidates public image and, in the case of an incumbent, his ratings, are more important.

Charles Krauthammer, speaking on the same cable news channel set the record straight. Money does win elections and he then proceeded to explain why and how. Pity Charles is not responsible for resolving the debate over this year's budget.

Money does win elections and nobody knows that as well as the Washington elite, including incumbents, lawmakers, lobbyists and big business. We have so many ways of evading, or should I say avoiding, the dictates of our American democracy that only lip service need be paid to this institution.

People are still complaining over the manner in which GW Bush stole the election from Al Gore through vote counting mechanisms in Florida. I believe that incident would have created a much greater public outcry had the public not been so tepid over the prospect of Gore as President. He rather tended to put people to sleep.

Today is what we call a come to Jesus moment. Talk will be inflammatory, viciously ad hominem, and very petty as Republicans and Democrats meet to forge an acceptable compromise before the 12:00 PM deadline for our government to shut down. Feelings are raw in Washington. Politicians have taken to the trenches and dug in their heels as they lob mega lies and distortions at one another from their respective bunkers.

Not only is the public confused, they are also fed up with our leaders and lawmakers. There is also a certain feeling of helplessness as the issues are not so grave as to generate serious civil unrest, but they are hitting our pocketbooks big time and they do engender questions about the need for major reform in government, law and the economy.

'The Land of Lost Content.....'

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

The dilemma of English politics is that conservatives are unable to vote Conservative as long as Cameron is there. The role of the Conservative Party, as the adolescent William Hague memorably said in his speech to the Tory Part conference all those years ago is ‘to roll back the frontiers of the State’. If the Tory Party is not the party of small government and libertarianism then it’s nothing.

Voters were under the impression that the Tories would get Government off their backs. They have been disillusioned very quickly.

One of the first acts of the Coalition was to adopt Labour’s dreadful Equality Act. It promised to dump Labour’s plans to empower the Police to keep records of all e-mails, phone calls etc. It hasn’t. Instead it is planning to slip these proposals through quietly. The latest dottiness coming from Kitten Heels is to give grandparents right of access to the children of divorced parents. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ you may say. Well, for starters I’m not aware that grandparents of children whose parents are not divorced have any legal right of access to them, so what’s it all about? Secondly, I can think of many good reasons why grandparents should not have legal access to their grandchildren. Interestingly, this particular piece of coat-trailing was rapidly denied ‘We were misreported’. Yeah, right!

Why do Tories of all people believe that they have the right to intrude on family life?

Labour rode roughshod over Magna Carta, especially by adopting the dreadful European Arrest Warrant. ‘To none shall we deny, nor delay, justice’. Tell that to the young lad who has spent a year in prison and two on remand awaiting trial in Greece on an EWA. It abolished the double jeopardy rule that had been in place for centuries to prevent the authorities from constantly prosecuting for the same crime. The effect is to enable the Old Bill to keep coming back until they get a result. It abolished the rule preventing evidence of ‘previous’ being given before conviction, ignoring the simple logic that the function of the court is to try the crime not the ‘criminal’ (who is not, until there is a guilty verdict).

Blair’s outrageously one-sided extradition treaty with the US, which does not require even prima facie evidence that an offence has been committed, has been used hundreds of times, but not once for its purpose of catching terrorists. Britain is reputed to have more CCTV cameras than the whole of Europe. And so it goes on.

More than 3,600 new offences were created under New Labour. There are 1,036 that are imprisonable.

It is now an imprisonable offence to allow an unlicensed concert to take place in a church hall. You can go to prison if your child fails to attend school, or if you smoke in a public place, or if you fail to obtain a passport for your pet donkey or if you are a child caught in possession of a firework at any time other than on or around November 5 or New Year's Day. Fishermen who do not ask for permission before fishing on the Lower Esk in Scotland can also be jailed, as can anyone caught importing "an unauthorised veterinary product".

Among the offences created in the past five years, though not necessarily imprisonable ones, are disturbing a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer; offering for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day; attaching an ear tag to an animal when it has previously been used to identify another animal; landing a catch which includes unsorted fish at a harbour without permission; selling types of flora and fauna not native to the UK, such as the grey squirrel, ruddy duck or Japanese knotweed.

What have the Tories done about these frightening attacks on civil liberties? Well, they dumped the ID card and.......er, that’s it.

The most worrying aspect is that nobody seems to care, as the lack of response to this piece will show.

There are fools who say ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about’. Believe me, it’s when you have done nothing wrong you have everything to worry about.

And once AV has been nodded through the same old clique will be firmly perched on the Magic Roundabout and there will be nothing the people can do about it.

Then it will be fixed-term Parliaments so that if the Government fails you will not be able to throw the rascals out. On the old philosophy that ‘if you don’t like my principles I have others’, one lot of political shysters will do deals with another lot and continue more or less as before, never mind that this produces a government that the majority never voted for.

This will bring UK into line with the continentals; there they refer to ‘liberty’ as something granted by governments. The English regard ‘freedom’ as their right.

Not for much longer. It is sleep-walking into ‘1984’. Who cares?

Barmy Britain.

In the House of Commons last week a Jewish MP was forced to apologise for referring to another Jewish MP as a Jew.

The Queen’s English.

A media report tells us that the Libyan army has been ‘attrited’.

Libya: deja vu all over again!

The O administration is becoming more and more like the W administration every day. O's recent speech re why we are confronting Libya employs words and phrases almost identical to those of W when he explained why we were confronting Iraq. Plus the ambiguity. Will we take out Gadaffi or won't we? Will we put American boots on the ground or not? Will we lead the coalition directly or via NATO or not at all? Are we fighting for regime change or not?

Plus the secrecy. O entered Libya without consulting more than a handful of Congressmen. Congress, of course, is irate. Hillary's star is rising and O's is falling; but these short term polls are highly mercurial.

As noted earlier, I am not in favor of this engagement. It will end in tears (ours). It will resolve nothing as we are not even sure who the rebels are. I read that O just issued a secret order commanding a group of CIA spooks to go into Libya, mix with the rebels and find out who they are. Odd, I thought that our embassy in Tripoli would have had that type of intelligence long ago.

Nor do I favor arming the rebels, unless our generals are intent on having these very weapons used against us in future. As for the rebels being trained by the USA in the use of our ordinance, no way. Let them continue to expend their firepower in the air.

Yet, the debate over arming and training continues. One retired ultra right general commenting on Fox news touched upon something I too was concerned about. Namely, the seemingly random and pointless firing of ammunition by the rebels. He noted that almost every news image he had seen of the fighting in Libya featured rebels firing their weapons into the air. He observed rocket launchers being fired at random, without proper anchoring and without targeting objects. He also mentioned men in 'technicals' wildly firing machine guns into oblivion.

His point was twofold. First, we must arm the rebels and second, we must train the rebels how to use the ordinance we supply. According to the NY Times, Defense Secretary Gates agrees with me and does not want to arm the rebels. So does Hillary who as our leading hawk is now reportedly having doubts about our efforts “because of the unknowns” about who the rebels are.

Now you guys have Moussa Koussa and according to some media he is having a long chat with MI6 at some unknown location. Breaking news indicates Moussa will not be given amnesty and that he has 'electrifying' information about the Lockerbie incident. We are not told, of course, what this electrifying news is, as the reporter claims not to know, although the same reporter does know it is electrifying, or perhaps could possibly be electrifying.

This type of journalism is tantamount to a news presenter advising the audience that the latest terrorism warning will be issued after the commercial break.