MI6 and me.........

Some people are mighty curious about what I actually do. They can’t quite make out how come I disappear off to all corners of the earth at a couple of days’ notice for a few days, weeks, months and years. I first met my next-door neighbour 2 years after moving into our present quarters. She said that she had assumed that I was a myth.

 

 

Many accuse me of being a spook. If I say ‘Yeah, right’, I get ‘I knew it all the time!’, and if I deny it they reply ‘Well, you would say that!’.

 

 

But a sequence of events started when I went to the Srpska Republic. There were two ex-military on the team. I met one, a retired Lt. Commander helicopter pilot who was hoovering down a large beer at 6.a.m. so I knew he was my kind of guy. The other was a retired army officer who eschewed the dubious pleasures of hotel life in Banja Luka (there are few enough) and preferred sleeping rough. As they knew nothing about the assignment I got the idea that they were not quite as they seemed.

 

 

As short while after returning home, I was taken out to lunch by two very polished gentlemen who were quite open about being from MI6 and that they were running the rule over me, so to speak. I heard nothing more.

 

 

Later that year I went on a long assignment to South Africa.

The hot story at the time was of a rogue MI6 operative called, from memory, David Shayler. He announced to the world that he had blown the cover of every MI6 agent in the world. The Johannesburg Sunday Times ran the story that they knew the identity of 2 of the 3 MI6 guys at the British High Commission but not the ‘third man’.

 

 

Later, at a diplomatic cocktail party one of the guests whom I knew well, especially for his awesome consumption of Irish whiskey – announced to the entire company that he knew the identity of the ‘Third Man’, and pointed at me! Big joke.

 

 

A few days later many of the same company joined us for dinner at which I introduced the consultant, an old friend, who was doing the interim report on my assignment. During the course of the meal she said by way of conversation that her daughter, who was a Captain in the Intelligence Corps, was leaving the army to join MI6. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Shortly afterwards we went on home leave. We were greeted on arrival by our neighbour who said that he thought the house had been burgled. Sure enough a lounge window had been forced and the intruder had then left by a study window. Nothing was missing but it seemed that my filing cabinet had been thoroughly inspected! It was certainly a pretty professional job.

 

 

When we arrived back at our house in SA, we found that we couldn’t unlock the front door. A locksmith also failed. My office manager and general factotum turned up, went around o the front of the house and minutes later opened the door. It turned out that the intruders had carefully removed the lounge window, shot the bolts on the door to avoid being disturbed, and had then equally carefully replaced the window. My colleague was able to remove it again very quickly because he spotted the fresh putty.

So we have some curious aspects.

 

 

First, burglars don’t go to all that trouble. Why bother to replace the window when you want to be away with the swag?

 

 

Nothing was taken except an ancient and worthless top-loading video machine to make it look like a burglary.

 

 

But my computer had been interrogated; I knew this because the phone bill showed that there had been a lot of traffic on the dial-up account during my two months absence.

 

 

So whoever carried out these two jobs in a remarkably coincident sequence were not burglars.

Who might they have been? It was certainly ‘joke over’!

Clegg to rescue the banks........

In a Government that seems bent on creating a record of crackpot notions, Nick Glegg’s brilliant scheme to ‘reward’ the taxpayers of the UK by giving them shares in the bailed-out banks is the apogee of sheer dottiness. He is clearly incapable of simple arithmetic and can’t envisage what a bonus issue of around 46 million shares would do to the market price and the banks’ values. Once we have all finished falling about, we might reflect that this person is Deputy Prime Minister.

Osborne came up with a very sound idea before the election. He proposed that the Government’s holding in RBS and Lloyds should be sold as a restricted IPO, as was the case with Maggie’s privatisations of gas, phones etc, when the shares were originally offered in small packets so that ordinary people could get a slice of the action.

But that was then, and now is now.

Greece: tragedy or farce?

The Greek tragedy is becoming farce. Another bail-out? A default? What’s the plan?

There are three possible outcomes.

First, more bail-outs. It was Einstein who averred that the sure sign of madness was when you kept doing the same thing but expecting a different result each time.          

Second, a default and Greece goes bust and leaves the Euro. The doom-mongers are telling us that this would lead to economic devastation throughout the entire universe. So let’s try to get that into perspective. The total Greek economy is about the combined size of Lancashire and Yorkshire. It is about 2.5% of EU GDP. British banks exposure is pretty low, as they have wisely been dumping Greek bonds for quite some time.

Third, a restructuring whereby the due date for Greek bonds is shoved several years into the future at the same rate of interest, which at least reduces the size of the haircut. But French and German banks have heavy exposure, and I suspect that the Germans are worried that this might expose serious weaknesses in their Landesbanks.

The commentators and Brussels noise-makers are telling the Greeks that they must improve their productivity and exports and reduce their public sector. For a country that is rooted in corruption,  bribery, tax-dodging, fiddling the books and telling porkies on a monumental scale to get into the Eurozone in the first place,  this is massive self-delusion.

Meanwhile the Irish are getting seriously pissed-off with the EU for screwing them over the terms of their bail-out, with a very nasty interest burden. Part of the plan in this case is obvious – to get the Irish to cease their favourable corporation tax rates to bring them into line with Germany and France, thus removing at a stroke Ireland’s main hope of economic recovery.

But the Master Plan is political rather than financial. Further bail-outs will mean further control from Brussels. This will be a great leap forward in creating a political Europe. Next – Portugal, Spain, the whole of the Club Med? Once there is a critical mass full political union would be a walk-over.

This is a great opportunity for the Federalists to forward the onwards-march towards the Fourth Reich.

American dottiness.....

America is getting soft both physically and mentally. As a patriot of some 70 years, I am distressed at the deterioration of our people and our institutions. A recent encounter at a Wal-Mart store in Giddings, Texas illustrates this point.

A Wal-Mart cashier asked for identification the other day when I was purchasing some wine and beer. “Why, do I not look over 40 to you” I asked? For some reason, Wal-Mart here has a policy of verifying the age of all customers under 40 years old. This policy is recorded in a notice posted in store lobbies.

“Sorry sir”, came the reply, “but we have a policy”.

I asked to see a supervisor. She explained that carding all customers, and not only those under 40, was now store policy in the Wal-Mart region which includes the Giddings store.  She continued to explain that such policy was necessary for two reasons, one to make absolutely sure a customer buying alcohol was over 21 and also to determine that the customer’s driver’s license was not out of date.

Both explanations fractured my sense of reason. The physical act of showing an ID is not at issue here, but rather it is the insanity of the policy and what it says about contemporary life in America.

There are few institutions that better represent America than the chain of Wal-Mart stores that stretch from coast to coast and beyond. Their hard fought success in marketing and merchandizing over a very short period of time resulted in well-deserved accolades. The process also generated biting criticism. Nevertheless, Wal-Mart is America and as such is a reflection of its people, politics and economy. Thus, when Wal-Mart issues a policy, however regional, for all customers, or even those who look to be under 40, in order to buy wine or beer, it is America speaking.

What is it that motivates management to take such a drastic decision? Most probably it is the fear of litigation stemming from a cashier having sold alcohol to a minor who subsequently drinks, drives and becomes involved in an accident. Snooping lawyers tracing the alcohol purchase back to Wal-Mart can make a strong liability case against the company and its insurers.

So, this is what America has come to. Fear of the law, law suits, lawyers and even the public at large. Is the answer tort reform, or simply re-introducing some logic and common sense into the Wal-Mart’s management decisions? Could it be that in their wisdom, Wal-Mart is actually trying to keep prices down by aggressively combating grounds for law suits? Or is there another explanation?

In any case, America is looking pretty silly as the good folks down in Giddings, Texas are forced to show proof of age whenever they buy wine or beer. These sons and daughters of the pioneers who trade in agriculture, cattle and oil, are treated like errant children at the local Wal-Mart store.

American dottiness...

America is getting soft both physically and mentally. As a patriot of some 70 years, I am distressed at the deterioration of our people and our institutions. A recent encounter at a Wal-Mart store in Giddings, Texas illustrates this point.

A Wal-Mart cashier asked for identification the other day when I was purchasing some wine and beer. “Why, do I not look over 40 to you” I asked? For some reason, Wal-Mart here has a policy of verifying the age of all customers under 40 years old. This policy is recorded in a notice posted in store lobbies.

“Sorry sir”, came the reply, “but we have a policy”.

I asked to see a supervisor. She explained that carding all customers, and not only those under 40, was now store policy in the Wal-Mart region which includes the Giddings store.  She continued to explain that such policy was necessary for two reasons, one to make absolutely sure a customer buying alcohol was over 21 and also to determine that the customer’s driver’s license was not out of date.

Both explanations fractured my sense of reason. The physical act of showing an ID is not at issue here, but rather it is the insanity of the policy and what it says about contemporary life in America.

There are few institutions that better represent America than the chain of Wal-Mart stores that stretch from coast to coast and beyond. Their hard fought success in marketing and merchandizing over a very short period of time resulted in well-deserved accolades. The process also generated biting criticism. Nevertheless, Wal-Mart is America and as such is a reflection of its people, politics and economy. Thus, when Wal-Mart issues a policy, however regional, for all customers, or even those who look to be under 40, in order to buy wine or beer, it is America speaking.

What is it that motivates management to take such a drastic decision? Most probably it is the fear of litigation stemming from a cashier having sold alcohol to a minor who subsequently drinks, drives and becomes involved in an accident. Snooping lawyers tracing the alcohol purchase back to Wal-Mart can make a strong liability case against the company and its insurers.

So, this is what America has come to. Fear of the law, law suits, lawyers and even the public at large. Is the answer tort reform, or simply re-introducing some logic and common sense into the Wal-Mart’s management decisions? Could it be that in their wisdom, Wal-Mart is actually trying to keep prices down by aggressively combating grounds for law suits? Or is there another explanation?

In any case, America is looking pretty silly as the good folks down in Giddings, Texas are forced to show proof of age whenever they buy wine or beer. These sons and daughters of the pioneers who trade in agriculture, cattle and oil, are treated like errant children at the local Wal-Mart store.

It's Balls...again!

We are waiting for the promised wave of public service strikes to hit the UK with a pronounced feeling of déjà vu.

Ed Balls is right. It is a trap set by the Tories. Handled properly it could be a case of ‘With one bound Dave was free’. Maybe I am over-optimistic about the Government’s backbone and cunning but if they play it right they could do for the public service unions what Maggie did to the miners. In retrospect it is perfectly obvious that the Tories had long-laid plans to smash the NUM. They had stockpiled huge quantities of coal to ensure that there was no repetition of the 3-day week. And a consequence of joining the EEC was that cheap coal from Europe was readily available. Scargill fell straight into the trap.

The NUM dared not have a ballot because it was obvious that a majority of miners wanted to work and negotiate. This time there was a ballot; a majority of those voting are in favour of strike action but only a minority voted. Solidarity seems to be missing so far.

Some of the issues appear to verge on absurdity.

Of course the retirement age must be raised. When state pensions were introduced in Edwardian times the life expectancy of a male was about 48. It is now 78. And public service pensions are inflation-proofed. Like the miners, the Unions are asking for the impossible; the money simply isn’t there. There are too many Golden Oldies like us around and more of us every year.

Their pensions are based on 80ths, so that a full half-pay pension is available after 40 years service. There is also a provision for up to ten added years in appropriate cases such as redundancy or forced early retirement. This means that it would be possible to take a deferred pension at age 46, although the pension could not be drawn until age 50. In the 80s and 90s it was very common practice for public servants to retire well before 65. Pension schemes were very well funded. Mine required a contribution from the employee of 8.5% whereas the employers’ contribution was tiny because the funds were very well managed. And they enjoyed very good tax breaks.  Gordon Brown put paid to that and neither the pension funds nor the Stock Market have ever recovered.

Of course, the politicians might be more credible were it not for the fact that their pension benefits are exactly double; they are calculated on 40ths, not 80ths.

Ed Milliband is between the upper and nether millstone. Because of the eccentricities of the Labour Party’s voting  system, David Milliband won the first ballot but Ed won when the union vote was added. So he is hostage to the unions, leaving Ed Balls, his great rival and possible successor to make all the running. Ed Balls can play the sagacious statesman and advise the unions not to take the bait, and reap his reward when the unions ignore him and come to grief. If the unions win because Dave loses his nerve, Ed Balls wins again.

It’s all Balls right now.

Britain waives the rules.........

The British must be in despair over the governance of the country. They voted for change last year and what do they get? More of the same – worse, if anything. Conservatives now have no-one to vote for. Cameron described himself as ‘heir to Blair’, as if any rational person would want that accolade. Well, that was perhaps the first and only time he has told the truth. We now have the same total lack of principle or any discernable political convictions, the same mixture of spin and deceit, the same old porkies.

At least Blair seemed to be steering the ship of state, if only up the creek. This government’s all over the place. It has u-turned so often it’s no longer sure in which direction it’s facing. It backed down on privatisation of the nation’s forests. Its NHS reforms are a shambles and have set the clock back 30 years. We can be pretty sure that education and social welfare will also turn to porridge. We have the obscenity of the massive foreign aid budget increase at a time of financial crisis. People expected Dave to stand up to Brussels. Instead he sucks up.

The primary purposes of government are the defence of the realm and the preservation of the currency.

The SDR has made Britain incapable of defending itself. It is said that the SDR was rushed, hence the problems. No it wasn’t. Dave must have been a long time in the planning of the destruction of Britain’s defence capability, but he wasn’t about to put that in his election manifesto. Our armed forces used to be one of the few things that we could be proud of. Not any more. It is reported that morale is so low that the elite are rushing for the exits.

Well might the President of Argentina start rattling on about the Falklands. She knows very well that if they had another pop the UK could not mount another expedition. Even 30 years ago it stretched resources to the limit with passenger liners and container ships being pressed into action. But at least we had carriers and Harriers. No more. The Ark has gone, the Harriers have been sold to the US at bargain-basement prices, and the Nimrods have had their wings ripped off just to make sure any future government can’t change direction.

It is said that childish spite comes into it; the Harriers were dumped to punish the Admiral for saying truthfully that the Libya adventure needs them, and the Nimrods vandalised to stop any further argument by the military.

As for the fiscus, it very much looks as if the UK taxpayer will have to dig deep yet again to bail out the bunch of crooks who run Greece.

Heffer sacked from the DT!

I must be very slow on the up-take. I have only just learnt that the Ginger Whinger, Simon Heffer, has been sacked from the DT – some 5 weeks ago! Wondering why I hadn’t seen him for a while, I found the story on Guido Fawkes blog.

Neither have I seen the other member of the Essex Two, Jeff Randall, for some time.

Heffer is far and away the best polemical journalist in the business, but I guess that it was trebles all round in Downing Street when that news came through. Dave would have been doing handstands.

The DT is hardly worth opening anymore and the print version is appalling – banner headlines like a Red Top, columns of guff on selebs, et al. I gave up buying the hard copy years ago, and I guess many more will now follow. When I last looked, the DT was loosing circulation fast, and it is hardly surprising.

So we are left with Peter Oborne, who is tops about one in every three columns, but otherwise it is the totally unreadable leftie Mary Riddell, who is married to a writer on the Grauniad, I believe, and others of that ilk. I guess that we will now see Heff re-emerge on the Daily Wail or the Express, both of which have larger circulations than the DT.

Private Eye always refers to the Express as the Daily Getsmuchworse.

This accolade must now go to the DT.

The BBC and the 'c' word............

‘We know of no sight more ridiculous than the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality’.

The meeja, especially the Daily Wail, has been making a huge ruckus because, as they put it, ‘the most offensive word in the English language is acceptable for broadcast’. Yup, the awful ‘c’ word. There has been much handwringing amongst the chattering classes (and the bloggertariat) about ‘further evidence of decline in BBC standards’. The way the Wail expressed it ‘the BBC was at the centre of a new row last night blah, blah’. The clear implication was that the Beeb had broadcast an offensive swear word the previous day.

 

 

So what was the truth of it all?

              
                                                                                                                                                  

According to Private Eye, none of the above.

 

 

For starters, the alleged offence took place 8 months ago.

 

 

It was a joke by Sandy Tostvig – ‘It was the Tories who put the ‘n’ into ‘cuts’.

 

 

The ‘c’ word was never used, it was not cleared for daytime broadcasting as the Wail alleged, and there was only one listener complaint.

 

 

The editor of the Wail is reputed to be one of the most foul-mouthed men in British journalism. Which must be saying a lot.

 

 

This may put the immediate record straight but if truth be told the BBC has brought this sort of vituperation down on its own head. Standards of propriety have been heading south for years. The use of foul language has become commonplace, along with gratuitous violence and sex. A consequence of this is that nothing is funny anymore. ‘comedians’ are filthy not funny.

The competing channels are no better. A couple of years ago I had a 7 hour wait in the appalling airport in Antigua (don’t go there). To while away the time, I watched TV in the lounge. It was showing one of Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant programmes. All the foul language was beeped out. The result was that the dialogue was mostly beeps!

Why is the Arab world so backward?

For quite a while I have been mulling over the backwardness of the Arab world. Why is it that the Arab nations have achieved absolutely diddlysquat over hundreds of years? A report suggested that it produces fewer books in a year than Greece, which itself is not noted for any form of creativity except creative accounting. Buried somewhere in this phenomenon is a clue to the way we are now.

When most of Europe was going through the Dark Ages, the Ottomans were the keepers of ancient science and technology and foremost in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, navigation et al. But during the great scientific revolution in Western Europe between the early 16^th century and the dawn of the 19^th Ottoman  scientific progress was non-existent.

So what went wrong?

Needless to say the answer was all the time right under my schnozz.

Islam.

That is not so blindingly obvious as it seems. There appeared to be no problems for the first 600 years of Islam. If you were a bright young man in 1100 you would not go to Oxbridge; they were just coming out of the egg. You took yourself off to Baghdad, or Damascus (the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world) or Aleppo or wherever.  Islam and learning co-habited happily, and thrived by attracting scholars from elsewhere (and by exploiting the brilliance of the Jews, whom they regarded as people of the Book’ as administrators , bankers and so on).

 

 

But towards the end of the 11^th century the Men with Beards began to decree that the study of Greek philosophy was incompatible with the Koran, and that it was blasphemous for science to attempt to explain the mysteries of the world which were the sole province of God. Books were burned, scholars persecuted, printing banned and the only observatory was demolished 5 years after its completion, in 1580. There was not to be another until 1864. Astronomy was blasphemy and the most famous astronomer was beheaded for his sins.

 

 

The Muslim clergy snuffed out all scientific study. Progress was non-existent for the next 400 years. In the 19^th century the earth as centre of the universe around which revolved the sun, moon and stars was still the accepted wisdom.

 

 

It is possible that a major handicap is that Islam has experienced no Reformation; and it has no episcopate to govern the Islamic religion and to give an authorised interpretation of the Koran. The upshot is that Islam is driven by a text written 1300 years ago for a primitive desert people and it has not been re-interpreted in the context of modern times because, as the Word of God, it cannot be. The fundamentalists would have us all return to medieval times.

 

 

Meanwhile Europe had Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, Lavoisier, Herschel, and many more geniuses who led Europe into the Age of Enlightenment and consequently the Industrial Revolution.

 

 

And here we are!

                                                                                                                       

The war of words over Weiner's willy.

Congressman  Weiner is adding to the gaiety of nations and causing a media war over his little willy. I note that O is suggesting that he resign for obscenity.

I feel that he should resign over his inadequacy, having seen the pic of the offending member. Not exactly hung like a grandfather clock.

Perhaps he should be hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee. It is surely un-American not to be bigger and better than everyone else. ‘Are you now or have you ever been associated with a member?’ Or maybe nature’s endowments should be a qualification for office, and all women candidates required to be built like Dolly Parton.

Anything better than what we have.

Who is the Republican who can beat O?

We are heavily into the presidential election campaign some 18 months in the future. The field of Republican candidates expands and contracts weekly.

The next to enter may well be our dear state governor Rick Perry. The successor to Governor George W. Bush, sporting a vanity haircut and having brought the state of Texas into billions of dollars in debt, the good man has decided to favor us with his candidacy. His declaration of a day of prayer to deliver Texas from the drought found millions on their knees.

His plan to develop a Texas infrastructure corridor supplying a vastly wide infrastructure corridor across the state to convey road, rail, pipeline and power traffic was met with hostility and alarm; especially when financing was considered. it was alleged by some that Rick had personal interests in the project.

Others feared their property might be lost to the project. As one local conservative put it, the Governor seeks to take our land away from us and then charge us for using it.

No way Governor Perry can be elected on his merits. I am told he is a nice person and I know he has sufficient support from wealthy business people to make a good stand.

The field as it exists today is not alluring. Romney leads according to most polls, but he has so little charisma and is, well, boring. Sarah Palin is anything but boring, but suffers from lack of intellectual credibility and high doses of grizzly motherhood.

One bright spark, but nothing else, is Newt Gingrich who announced his candidacy, then went off on holiday for a week or so, and returned to find his key campaign staff had resigned in his absence. Newt is book smart but street stupid.

The cast of characters goes on to include stalwarts like Texas' own Ron Paul, newcomers like Minnesota conservatives Tim Pawlenty who has announced and Michelle Bachmann who has not. Homespun former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee backed out; wisely in my opinion although he had a moderate following.

There are more, but then it is early days, isn't it?

O appears to be totally oblivious to the unemployment situation. While his rhetoric highlights the need for positive, focused and definitive action, his attention to duty seems to be directed elsewhere.

More than anything else, the lack of employment is damaging America and its citizens. Economists offer umteen reasons why unemployment is so high, but nobody appears to be doing anything to improve the situation.

Indeed, unemployment has been politicized to the extent that it is the dominant issue across America. It is destroying lives, devastating the economy and causing a general and untypical malaise characterized by helplessness and hopelessness.

We cannot seem to get out of this financial rut and nobody has the power and influence to make that happen. We blame the bankers, the Chinese, the President, Congress, businessmen, Wall Street, Labor Unions, the EU and anybody else who comes to mind for the lack of jobs.

Yet if the election were to be held today, O would win.

Should 'God' be taught in schools? Texas view!

Yes, the school prayer issue continues to induce strong emotions here as well as in the UK. Those most offended are not, however, members of the great monotheistic religions, nor indeed Buddhists or animists or Hindus.  They are atheists and agnostics, but mostly the former.

Atheists can be a royal pain as they tend to be aggressive in their denial of deity which, I am taught, is logically tantamount to belief in same. This diminutive minority can be highly vocal and articulate and has confounded heads of public institutions in their proclamation that talk of God is prejudicial to their own beliefs.

It has long been my conviction that like it or not, the US, the UK and Europe are Christian nations with Christian values. I have no problem with this and am pleased to extend the concept to Judeo-Christian values and even to Judeo-Christian-Islam values and thus incorporate all the people of the Book.

A further extension of this logic would require the addition of crescents and stars of David to the religious symbols that adorn many public places. I doubt this will happen and suspect we shall continue to wallow in the self righteousness of our multiple sects of believers and non-believers.

Everybody knows the rules of social behavior and this bickering over whose rules are more holy and which group has the most influence with God is boring and absurd.

Should 'god' be taught in schools?

With all the debate that is going on in UK about education, I began to wonder whether religion is taught in schools elsewhere (other than faith schools). When I was at school long ago and far away ‘religious instruction’ was a compulsory subject. It was given by the local vicar, a nice old boy who had seen service as a Padre in the trenches in WW1, but he was no teacher. The one Catholic in the school was not excused; she had to go to the Catholic college nearby. Presumably we had no practising Jews and we had never seen a Muslim.

I suppose that it is forbidden in France as a strictly secular state, but I guess there must be some ambivalence in the US.

It strikes me that there is much to be said for making comparative religion a compulsory subject in UK secondary schools, so that all pupils get to know the basic tenets of the three great monotheistic religions (but not taught by preachers so as to avoid proselytising and as a social science not as a belief).

Maybe then future adults would not pontificate about Muslims or Jews or Christians from a position of complete ignorance (I was reading an article this week by a teacher who said that the level of ignorance amongst young teenagers was appalling – they didn’t even know the significance of Christmas or Easter).

Brussels: more snouts, bigger troughs........

The excellent Open Europe pressure group (www.openeurope.org.uk) reports that MEPs have voted overwhelmingly for a 5% rise in the EU's budget for 2014-2020, an end to national rebates, and the introduction of EU taxes. The Telegraph notes that, under the plans, Britain will have to pay an extra £5.2bn in contributions to the EU between 2014 and 2020. Open Europe’s Research Director Stephen Booth is quoted saying, “Until the EU budget is spent in a rational and sensible way, there cannot be any increases. Radically reducing the amount of money spent on the European Parliament and its 736 MEPs would be an excellent place to start.”

The UK has called for a budget freeze, while France and Germany have called for any increases to be limited in line with inflation. Guy Verhofstadt MEP, the former Belgian Prime Minister and leader of the European Liberal Democrats, said that if “Her Majesty’s Government wants to make savings in the British public sector, it can do so by increasing the role of the EU…If the British government wants to make savings it can join the euro.”

 

 

Obnoxious squirt; Belgium doesn’t even have a Government. (It was General de Gaulle who famously said that Belgium was invented by the British to annoy the French. Which was historically correct!

 

 

A comment piece in Handelsblatt by EU correspondent Thomas Ludwig criticises MEPs’ demands for a 5% increase in the next long-term EU budget, noting: "It's like a reflex of Pavlov: when it comes to money, only the word ‘more’ can be heard from the mouth of the MEPs.” Carla Joosten writes in Elsevier that “the wasteful mentality of the European Parliament is feeding euroscepticism.”

 

 

Meanwhile, a separate article in the Telegraph reports that the European Parliament still refuses to release the internal ‘Galvin report, number 06/02’, despite Tuesday’s ruling by the EU’s General Court that that there is "overriding public interest in disclosure". The report, written by Robert Galvin the European Parliament’s chief internal auditor, uncovered abuse of £185m in MEP staffing allowances and general expenses, paid without receipts.

'Lock 'em up' says Dave.....

Back in Cameroon’s Brave New World poor old Ken Clarke, ‘Minister’ of Justice (a post that pre-Blair only existed in regimes where there is very little of it) and last of the Thatcherite generation got himself into trouble for making a statement of the bleedin’ obvious that there are different degrees of severity in rape, as if a misunderstanding between two teenagers deserves the same punishment as a violent assault by a couple of brutes on a lady walking home across the park. And the news that the Libyan Lunatic has been using Viagra-fuelled rape as a deliberate weapon of terrorism against his own womenfolk is just about as low as it gets. Let’s hope that the Apaches, rather than the ICC, do the business.

He escaped from this when he again rose in public estimation by sleeping all through Obama’s address to the high and mighty in Westminster Hall. (As an aside I have been in Westminster Hall many times. It is the most extraordinary place and you do feel that you are walking with history. It was built in 1094. It is one of the cradles of western civilisation, and quite awe-inspiring. I hope O was duly impressed).

Now his entirely sensible plans to reduce the prison population have been rubbished by Cameron in response to the Daily Wail claque. It is abundantly obvious that our magistrates send people to prison who ought not to be there (and fail to send those who should be).

Example; old lady of 73 with an unblemished driving record who draws out of a side road, is struck by a motor cyclist who is killed, is charged with causing death by careless driving (a new offence created by the Blair reign of terror) and is given three years. What possible public purpose was served by this?

Example; 24 year-old hard working man, never in trouble, never lost a day’s work since leaving school has a party. A gatecrasher causes trouble’. Young man thumps him and gets six months where he is daily offered (but doesn’t accept) class A drugs.

A different example: Muslim agitator publicly burns poppies on Remembrance Sunday, a clear hate crime and public disorder offence. Fine: £50 – less than a fixed penalty notice for dropping a sweet wrapper in the street.

These are not untypical. Every day there is a new scandal of undeserving people being sent to the nick and professional criminals being given community service or counselling – or nothing. There is definitely a problem with the judiciary. My take is that they are from the ‘60s generation who addled their brains with wacky-backy and too much nookie.

Why send people to prison, a hugely expensive form of punishment? Well, it seems to me that there are certain commonsensical criteria – that the crime is so serious imprisonment is the only appropriate punishment (and I don’t mean not paying your council tax, like the old lady who was dragged away in handcuffs a while back), that the accused has ‘previous’ for imprisonable offences, that the accused is likely to reoffend, that the accused is likely to seek vengeance, to name just a few.

Cameron must have a care that he keeps Ken onside. Ken is a bruiser, as tough as teak who has been an MP since before Cameron was born. He would be real trouble if he joined the disaffected heavyweights who occupy the backbenches, such as David Davies.

Cameron confirms that he operates on the basis of ‘If you don’t like  my principles, I have others’ - so slippery that he could crawl under a snakes belly wearing a top hat.

Here’s a piece of Barmy Britain for you.

A local hotel is employing a very pretty German catering student on work emplacement for a few months. She rides a motor bike. She was riding into town when she came to the 20 mph school speed restriction. So she slowed to 20 mph, Germans being punctilious at obeying regulations. Immediately there were flashing blue lights and wailing sirens, and she was pulled over by the Old Bill who demanded to know why she was going so slowly. They told her that the 20 mph only applied when the 20 mph sign was flashing and ordered her to produce her papers.

She didn’t have them with her, so when she got back to the hotel she asked her boss what she should do. He told her to do nothing. Sure enough in due course Plod arrives demanding to see the girl. The boss tells him to get lost and send the Inspector. Out comes a Sergeant. Same response. So the Inspector duly arrives; is given a stern lecture (probably in Anglo-Saxon) on the topic of abuse of authority, and sent on his way empty handed. There has been no further word from the Constabulary.

In the same week, we hear of two detectives who, having recovered a headless corpse from a river, insisted on the attendance of a doctor to say that it was dead.

Who's a Pommie bastard?

Current affairs seem not to be current. There has been nothing of interest in the last week. The political situation amongst the Yanks appears to be beyond parody. Which led me to wonder in particular whether Americans take offense at being thus called, and in general what is this PC demonization of slang or diminutives for nationalities?  I have no problem about being called limey, and I am probably one of a minority of Limeys who knows the derivation.

I am uncomfortable about ‘Brit’ mainly because this was the diminutive of choice for the IRA (‘Brits out of Ireland’ and all that garbage). Taffy, Jock and Paddy all have an affectionate ring.

When I was in Australia I had occasion to complain that nobody had called me a pommie bastard. Didn’t they like me? They soon corrected themselves. There is the famous story of the time when the captain of the English Test cricket team, Douglas Jardine, was called a ‘pommie bastard’ by an Aussie player’. The Aussie captain threw open the dressing door and demanded ‘Which of you bastards called this pommie bastard a pommie bastard?’

                                   

And then we have the naughty ‘n’ word, the ultimate no-no unless used between consenting black adults. When I was working in Kingston I met an old Jamaican who had been a pilot in the RAF during WW2. The Jamaican contingent went to Canada for their training and once they had achieved their wings they went to New York for some fun. They walked into a diner which had the usual sign in those days ‘No colored’. The owner stopped them and said can’t you guys read and what are those fancy uniforms? Maurice told him that they were RAF pilots. The owner turned to his customers and yelled ‘Hey fellas, these ain’t niggers; they’re Spitfire pilots’ and waived the bill.

As they say in Yorkshire ‘There’s nowt as queer as folk!’

Afrikaners are not too keen on being called ‘Jaapies’, never mind what they call blacks. The French call us ‘rosbifs’ and we call them ‘frogs’ but in the spirit of good-natured banter. ‘Paki’ is a simple diminutive of Pakistani and I have a feeling that it means ‘pure’, so how has it become pejorative?

The Case of the Contaminated Cucumber.

The Case of the Contaminated Cucumber is mystifying the meeja. It has had mega-coverage and natch the usual attention-seeking drama for the chattering classes, calling for all veg from Germany to be banned and  other draconian measures (Russia has already imposed a ban but of course this has naff-all to do with public health).

What has not had much mention is the connection between e-coli and faeces. We travellers in foreign parts never ate salad because of the possibility that the veg had been irrigated with sewage, a common practice in the tropics (maybe in Spain also).

I always obeyed the old doggerel

‘What will you have?’ said the waiter, calmly picking his nose.

‘Two hard boiled eggs, you old bastard. You can’t get your fingers in those’.

 On Sunday it is reported that the source was a restaurant. Having wrecked that business, the authorities now blame bean sprouts, so that should put the kybosh on the local Chinese take-away.

 It is obvious that they are clueless and like so many public officials are rushing around to cover their arses.

 The most likely cause is not a rogue vegetable having its revenge on vegans but poor food hygiene somewhere down the supply chain – a kitchen drudge not washing his hands after poo.

Civil liberties? So what!

As if anybody cared about civil liberties these days; the majority seem content with sleepwalking into a stasi state where everybody is a potential grass. Here is Dave’s record to date.

·         The promise to reduce the 28-day detention limit to 14 days has been kept

·         The promise to abolish ID cards has been kept, although they remain in place for foreign nationals

·         ContactPoint, the database that held information on all children under 18 was turned off in August last year

·         However, the Coalition has retained biometric identity cards for non-EU citizens

·         The Protection of Freedoms Bill, published in February made some progress towards deleting the DNA of people arrest for a crime but never charged.

·         The Protection of Freedoms Bill contained plans to remove stop and search powers granted by the Terrorism Act 2000, but further progress needs to be made

·         Control Orders have been replaced with Terrorism  Prevention and Investigation Measures, which are only a mild, incremental improvement

·         The government kept its promise to ban the use of powers given by the Investigation of Regulatory Powers Act, the law that gives council officers the ability to arbitrarily demand entry into private homes

·         The government has continued the Intercept Modernisation Programme, which allows the government to crack phones and store emails

·         The Summary Care Record, the NHS record database, is being continued by the government, despite both Coalition parties pledging to scrap it

·         CCTV usage has grown, despite research showing it has no effect on crime.

2000 not out.....

We have now had more than 2000 hits over 10 months since we started this blog. Is that good or bad?

Our audience in descending order is US, UK, Isle of Man, Thailand, Russia, Germany, Singapore, South Africa, France, Belgium, Romania, India and Holland, although we also get occasional visits from China, Iran, Slovenia, South America etc. A pretty good spread! May saw the highest number of views since last December.

The main site www.whydonttheylistentous.blogspot.com attracts virtually no comment, from which I can only assume that the comment facility is not intuitive enough. The My Telegraph site is of a different nature, as all the current blogs come up on the home page and you can spool through them and comment easily on anything that provokes it. They are also different in terms of content. My Telegraph is broadly about life in this uncertain and turbulent age. Blogspot is impenetrable drivel; fancy pages full of pix and graphics but moronic content. For example, the last time I looked at ‘top Blogs’ they were about hand-made greetings cards and making cup cakes!

My T reminds me of the old News of the World slogan ‘all of human life is here’.

At one end of the spectrum we have the religiosi who are definitely in need of counselling, the anti-Semites who use the defects of Israel (and Lord knows there are enough of them) as a flimsy cloak for Jew-baiting, the anti-Islamists who believe that because all terrorists are Muslims (not having heard of the IRA, the Provos, ETA, the Tamil Tigers et al) all Muslims are terrorists. We have the sniggering Tory youth who pretends to be an illiterate supporter of the SWP. We have what Bernard Levin called SIFs – single issue fanatics.

Moving through we have the Grumpy Old Men who get my vote much of the time. We have the self-loathing ex-pats who have nothing good to say about their native land. We have the wind-up merchants and their victims who can’t resist the temptation to rise to the bait. We have people of astonishing expertise and scholarship who have the gift of explaining complex matters in language that even I can understand. We have the practising barrister who makes eloquent and surprisingly cutting attacks on Judges (clearly he has no ambition to join the Bench). We have the lady who is ring-fenced against the more vicious comments that some of the rude trade here dishes out and who has a gift for going to the heart of relationships.

There are blogs that are on my ‘must read’ agenda and those that I never, ever open, especially those that don’t carry an avatar (silly name; I thought this was a Hindu deity in bodily shape). The avatar gives a clue to the personality of the writer; no avatar, no personality. We have Enoch Powell, Alistair Sim (or his reincarnation, judging by the blogs), Terry Thomas, Joan of Arc, and animals galore. Mine is Angular Merckel denoting a kind of stolid grumpiness.

Our blog attracts very few comments. It may well be that what we think are carefully crafted pieces with sound argument and proper regard to sources are just boring to the outside world, that because we are writing for ourselves as weekly e-mails rather than composing specially written blogs they come across as distant and tedious. One oddity is that my piece on gagging orders got a record number of hits on blogspot but was almost entirely ignored on My T, although this has been very hot and widely misunderstood. Maybe My T readers are more discriminating. But I sometimes feel like a voice crying in the wilderness.