The world's gorn bloody mad.....

My neighbour Ken, an old soldier with a strict routine, used to march into ‘The Compasses’ (Heffer’s favourite pub) at precisely 1230 every day. He would take his pint, sit in the corner, open the Daily Express, skim through it and exclaim ‘The world’s gorn bloody mad!’

How right he was.

At 6 pm I turned to Sky News to see the latest on the travails of the world. And what did I get? The opening statement in the trail of Michael Jackson’s doctor. Instead of taking a few minutes this went on for precisely 43 minutes. We then had 15 seconds on Milliband’s speech to the Labour Party conference, followed by sport and the weather.

Believing in the conspiracy theory of politics, I assumed this was a Murdoch ploy to wipe out Ed.

This should have been followed by an hour  of ‘Jeff Randall Live’, but was it?

Nope!

Another hour of the trial. So I switched to ‘Quest means  Business’ on CCN. And what did I get? More of the same. So I switched to BBC News, and – that’s right – the same.

So I went to Al Jazeera, the best news service by a long chalk, and eventually got real news.

What an insult to the viewing public that we should be treated so contemptuously.

Daft DT headline of the week:

‘Satellite crashes over Canada and the Indian Ocean’. Must have been a bloody big satellite! Perhaps they meant ‘Satellite debris......’

What's the point of education?

I am unconvinced that all the criticism about education in the UK is totally justified. Sure, the records show that there is a lot of bad teaching in sink schools, but a lot of it must be down to bad parenting and little monsters who won’t learn and can’t be disciplined. As my old dad used to say ‘You can’t educate pork’.

I read a piece that compared GCE maths in 1970 to a present-day exam question. The 1970 question was incomprehensible to me, it was that difficult. The current question quoted was ‘Write 50,000 in words’. To check this I looked at a book of specimen questions for today’s maths GCSE. They were too damn difficult for me!

Some of the commentariat seem to think that there was a Golden Age when discipline was strict, teachers were competent, and bright little boys and girls went on to Grammar School, fame, and fortune.

My experience 60 years ago is that certainly discipline was far stricter than now, with corporal punishment, and the ultimate sanction of expulsion at the sole discretion of the Headmaster. Teaching ranged from mediocre to inspired.  One afternoon per week was compulsory and competitive games, and another afternoon was set aside for more cultural pursuits, such as chess and amateur dramatics. None of my set achieved much in the way of fame, but many went  on from working-class backgrounds to university, the services, and the professions.

In my own case, it was a mixed bag. For some reason I was taken out of the 4th Form and put in the 6^th. I thought I was Jackthe Lad amongst 18 – 19 year old men who were awaiting National Service before University or whatever, and went to the pub at lunchtime. Educationally it was all a bit much because at one and the same time I was taking ‘O’ levels which were not taught in the 6^th Form, so that was self-study, together with ‘A’ levels. I scraped through everything, but I still believe that I left school only half-educated.

The one big advantage is that in those days you were educated for education’s sake (whereas at the secondary moderns you were factory fodder), the Aristotelian concept of knowledge being in itself inherently satisfying, and not just the busy acquisition of facts to get a good job but the cultivation of knowledge for its own sake.

Now education is directed at the work-place where it has manifestly failed; it is now widely recognised that the main cause of youth unemployment is not the shortage of jobs but the mismatch between what the employer needs and what the schools offer.

Letter from America...

The best TV in years is being shown here in the US in the form of the Republican presidential nomination debates. Mitt Romney is holding his own while Rick Perry is squirming like a beached eel in his efforts to wiggle out of accusations of dubious political intent thrown at him by almost all of the contenders. Mr. Nice Guy, Herman Kane, won the Florida Straw Poll which is only significant to the 3,000 participants who voted, and for the fact that Romney and Perry trailed far behind.

Bachman has fallen way south in the ratings after having won her straw poll in her birth state of Iowa. Rumors persist that Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey, is reconsidering his position about running. Pundits are unanimous in their praise of Christie.

Fareed Zakaria conducted a riveting interview with Tayyip Erdogan this past Sunday on CNN. It was revealing, but one critical question as to why Turkey is treating its Kurdish minority so harshly was never asked. I see a parallel between Turkeys' Kurds and Israel's Palestinians. Erdogan is not exactly pro Israel and still smarting from having been refused entry into the EU on ethnic grounds, Turkey is ready for a fight. Erdogan said he expects to send a Turkish naval escort along with the next relief armada to Gaza. That could be nasty.

Abbas was true to his word in requesting UN recognition for Palestine as a state. This of course will expose the US and Israel and a few other powers as a tiny minority when the US blocks the request when it is presented to the Security Council.

In a sense, O is correct in stating that a solution to the Palestinian issues must be found between them and Israel. Problem is, the two remain light years apart and Israel will not budge an inch on the West Bank settlements. The cat is among the pigeons and  Abbas did what was necessary from his perspective.

The pleasures of air-travel.......

I guess that the badderation we get just trying to board the plane has a negative impact on tourism. We know quite a few people who no longer take foreign holidays because of the hassle at airports.

Most of the ‘security’ is a very unfunny pantomime.

At our regional airport (no international flights) the passengers mainly consist of ‘suits’, kids travelling to and from our public school, and oldies, of which we have a larger than usual number. Hardly terrorist material. And yet it’s belts off, shoes off – the full Monty and more stringent than either Gatwick or Heathrow. To the best of my knowledge not a single terrorist has been detained in what must have been hundreds of millions of searches world-wide since 9/11. (Of course, the jobsworths will say that this proves the system is an effective deterrent).

Then there’s the nonsense of having to take the lap-top out of its bag. Now, a lap-top is quite a good place for a bomb, as there is space in the spare battery compartment and a ready source of power. But if I was a suicide bomber I would put the lap-top in my hold-baggage.

The system doesn’t work either. Time and again we hear of breaches by investigative reporters, the latest being a guy who travelled the length of the US wearing a .38 automatic. He told security that he was a war-vet with a load of shrapnel in his insides and asked not to be patted down because he was wearing an incontinence bag. That was enough to get him through.

I am not suggesting less security. What we need is more common sense.  Almost every day we hear of cruel idiocies, like the old lady who was required to remove her breast prosthesis and the man whose colostomy bag was burst by an over-heavy pat down. Rick Perry tried to legislate against feeling genitals and breasts but the security lobby threatened to boycott Texas. At Southampton Airport recently, an elderly lady had a gift-wrapped box of acrylic paints in her hand-baggage, a present for her grandson. Security made her cut off the wrapping. The box was shrink-wrapped and clearly stated the contents ‘24 tubes of acrylic paint’. Security made her break open the box and proceeded to carefully examine each tube. They were then placed in a sealed plastic bag. Crazy!

My answer is to out-source it to the Israelis; El Al is the most threatened of all airlines, but a friend who flies with them regularly says security is a breeze because they have no hang-ups about racial profiling, they have very efficient scanning mechanisms, and they use their commonsense.

Then there’s the airports themselves. Their managements seem to regard passengers as getting in the way of the smooth running of the business.

Gatwick is a nightmare for arthritics like me, as you have to stagger up a steep walk-way from the ground floor to departures on the first floor. The signage is appalling; for example, the business class lounges are scattered over three floors but there is nothing to tell you which lounge is where. And I had to try all three before getting the right one. It is all being ‘improved’, but the woman in charge of this has been in her job for 27 years, so I am not holding my breath.

Luton has no ‘drop-off’ at departures, so you have to go to a ‘drop-off’ car park at least 200 yards away where for £1 you are allowed 10 minutes on pain of a penalty of £80!

Antigua is a nightmare of inadequacy, built in the ‘60s and now handling several jumbos at once so there is nowhere to sit. Terminal 3 at Heathrow is falling down.

And check-in? Don’t get me started!

At business class check-in at T3, the cold-eyed Eastern European clerk rudely asked if I had a visa. Apart from the fact that you don’t need a visa to enter my destination, she had my passport in her hand which was open at the visa page showing a 60 days entry permit.  She failed to provide a wheelchair even though my booking was marked ‘special assistance’, and didn’t bother either to give us an invitation to the lounge or even tell us where to find it.

We were bumped off our connecting flight even though we had our boarding cards and seat reservations and were at the boarding gate, and put on the next flight two weary hours later. On arrival we discovered that our luggage has travelled on the first flight contrary to all security rules, and had been searched in our absence. (This is worrying because there is a racket there of planting contraband and then ‘fining’ you anything up to £2000 to avoid arrest).

To be fair, I remonstrated with the BA check-in at Kingston, on my return from Jamaica, that I had reserved seat  24 A not 1A and it was only when he gave  me a big Jamaican smile that I realised he had upgraded me!

Grumpy old git..........

As I get older I guess I am getting grumpier.

What I find particularly annoying is the amount of pish and tosh, garbage and rubbish, balderdash and piffle that we have to endure daily from the chattering classes. Ignorance mixed with arrogance topped with indolence.

By way of example, there was this young spark on Radio 3 telling us that ‘today, September 15^th, is the anniversary of the Battle of Britain when the RAF defeated the Luftwaffe; over 300 of their planes were shot down, and the RAF only lost 31’, as if the BoB all took place on a single day.

Wrong, sonny. It lasted all summer. September 15^th was the day that the RAF knew they had won because nobody came. And nobody got shot down.

And I didn’t see any commemoration on TV or in the media.

I know it is easy for my generation to be critical of the lack of knowledge of our history by a younger generation. After all, the BoB is as remote from today’s 20-year old as the Battle of Omdurman was when I was 20. But the Battle of Britain film has been showing almost continuously for more than 40 years, so surely most people would have seen it by now.

Then we had the numpty on TV telling us that water was flowing down a Scottish river ‘at 20 knots per hour’. And a performance of ‘HMS Pinafore’ (admittedly Aussie) with the Captain sporting a moustache. Give me strength!

There was a TV show this week about the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. The commentator referred to ‘enlisted men’. Only the Yanks have ‘enlisted men’, matey. We have ‘other ranks’ or, more generally ‘squaddies’. Incidentally, I was also appalled by the foul language used by the instructors. When I was an officer cadet, this was an absolute no-no. The instructors were there to train young men from all sorts of back grounds to be ‘officers and gentlemen’, not yobs with posh accents. Shortly after I was commissioned, I used the word ‘bloody’ when dressing down a scruffy squaddie. I got a roasting from the Company Commander who happened to overhear me. I never did it again.

The DT carried a ‘humorous’ piece about the Battle of Dale Farm. The writer said the land on which the ‘travellers’ had built their illegal dwellings was not an unspoilt piece of greenbelt but a former scrap-yard. It wasn’t. It was woodland and open farm-land.

All these incidents were scripted, not off-the-cuff. The perpetrators had not bothered to follow the elementary rule of journalism – check your facts. It’s not only the ignorance that gets up my nose. It’s the sheer laziness.

To add to my grumpiness, we had a red-haired youth by the name of Danny Alexander, who is Treasury Secretary or something (Lib-Dim, of course) who seriously told Jeff Randall on TV that the UK ‘should join the euro when the time is right!’ No wonder the government is in the merde if he is in charge of the books.

On a lighter note, the recent death of the great actress Googie Withers, reminded me of the announcer on a BBC comedy show years ago who said ‘And now your very own Googie Withers - and what to do if it does!’  Auntie has always been a bit naughty.

And all this talk of ‘productivity’ reminds of an official trip to Germany many years ago. A member of the party was a Yorkshire coal miner in his day job, by the splendid name of Jim Hawkins. One of the German hosts politely asked him ‘Und how many men vork in your mine, Jim?’

‘About two of the booggers’ he replied. The German stood there, eyes revolving.

Arab spring.....or winter?

Now that the euphoria of the Arab Spring is waning, the realities that we should have recognized from the start are beginning to materialize, the most significant of which is the prospect that we have created a monster. Dr Frankenstein has been outdone by what the new world order must contend with in the Middle East. The USA has long been criticized for supporting and subsidizing dictators. Bush the younger changed this perception with the extremely clumsy ouster of Saddam Hussein. This act was followed by O's heavy political, economic and military support for the demise of Ghadaffi and Mubarak.

Having topped the devils we know, new demons are waiting in the wings with wider public support, enhanced religious fanaticism and hostility toward the West. Following my theory that the Arabs will remain friendly until we stop feeding them, our time is limited. This is because the spawn of the Arab Spring is highly unlikely to be palatable to the West.

It will expose Israel to the unchecked ill-will of the Arab masses. It will reinforce the spread of Islam and with it radical Islam. It may well end up supporting Turkey's bid for soft domination in the Middle East which may not be all that bad provided Turkey harbors no ill will toward the West for not allowing EU membership. Of course, the opposite is true and Turkey is already planning its revenge, threatening to freeze relations with the EU should Cyprus be granted its rotation for the EU presidency.

We in the West will be forced to check the new Arab leaders and this will involve penalties for non-compliance with our wishes. As they are largely under 30 years of age and possess the emotional mentality of adolescents, they will rebel rather than compromise. The implications of this scenario are horrifying and even though they may not come to pass, the threat is real and as such it challenges the capacity of Western statesmen to employ their most profound diplomacy.

Sadly, the idea of statesmen has been replaced with politicians. I cannot think of a single Western leader capable of handling the situation. Moreover, the American public is becoming fed up with concessions to the Middle East. This spells volatility among the governing and the governed. The Israel lobby in Washington must be very hard at work swaying legislative opinion back toward Israel.

 

The Indians are coming.........

With attention focused on the woes of the euro (and as Confucius said ‘Few things in life are more agreeable than seeing your neighbour fall off his roof), little has been paid to a major trend in Britain, which has been stealthily attracting foreign direct investment from where it counts for the future – the emerging markets, particularly India.

Last year the UK was the recipient of around £80 billion in foreign direct investment by way of acquisitions by the emerging markets. This is proportionately 4 times FDI in the US.

TATA, the Indian conglomerate, has, over the last 10 years, acquired Jaguar- Land Rover which is now having record sales and profits, and expanding its work-force when nobody else could make a go of it. It has Tetley Tea, Corus, the rump of ICI and goodness knows what else. It is Britain’s largest manufacturer, bigger even than British Aerospace, with around 40,000 employees. TATA Consultancy also employs nearly 5000. And they are not newcomers. They opened their first operation in UK in 1907.

Of course, Britain has a particular attraction for Indian investment. There is a multitude of historical, economic, social, sporting and other ties. In essence, India and Britain are joined at hip and thigh, as the saying goes. The enduring gifts of the Raj were the English language and the English common law – and cricket! There are over 5000 words in the OED which are of Indian origin – bungalow, khaki, askari, char etc. There is a large population of Indian origin. London has one of the largest Hindu temples outside India. Indians integrate well into UK society and intermarriage is not infrequent as it is with other races. They are law-abiding, industrious and enterprising. They also feature prominently in the Sunday Times ‘Rich List’ including No 1!

An Indian woman features in the list almost as a parable of individual enterprise. She came to England as the wife of a doctor. She tried a ready-made Indian dish in a supermarket and pronounced it to be rubbish. When she told the supermarket bosses, they said if she could do better they would sell it. So she did. And they did. And now she’s in the Sunday Times ‘Rich List’ of women.

Cemex (Mexico) now owns Ready-Mix Concrete. Thais have reopened a steel-works up North. The Japanese own Pilkington Glass. General Electric have Amersham Life Sciences, Telefonica has O2, and so it goes on.

The fact that foreign-owned factories tend to be much more efficient (Honda, Toyota, Nissan) leads to the inevitable conclusion that British industry was ruined in the 70’s by a toxic combination of megalomaniac union bosses and weak management. British workers, properly led, are as good as any.

Europe tends to be avoided. They have ‘national champions’ that their governments prefer to subsidise rather than be acquired by beastly foreigners. France, for example, declared yoghurt to be ‘strategically important’ when there was a bid for Danone. Long may it continue.

And the Chinese are coming, too.

Britain has just signed a double-taxation agreement with China. This will help British investment in China.

But it will also entrench the UK as the world’s biggest tax haven by the creation of ‘special purpose vehicles’ for vast amounts of Chinese money-laundering.

Europe: 'the end is nigh' says Janet Daley......

Janet Daley wrote another blockbuster article last week, although it has its problems. She predicts the definitive end of the euro as we know it, but should be cautioned not to take a final body count until the war is over.

She also opines that European actors have little or no regard for democratic principles when dealing with common currency issues while at the same time states that leaders are powerless to take the necessary corrective monetary actions because their electorates will not allow it.

My own feeling is that she wants to set her record straight in order to say 'I told you so' when all hell breaks loose.

My opinion has long been that Germany would be preoccupied with reunification for about 20 years for stabilization purposes; afterwards look out!

The future of Germany is heavier on my mind than it has been for some time.

As the theory goes, Germany will eventually revert to norm. The norm being some form of European domination precipitated by the Hanseatic elite with the hoards of Huns following behind.

Germany is already responsible for seriously pissing off the Turks for decades of promises for membership in the EU and then slamming the door on the day.

Meanwhile in Paris, The Tree Frog must be at his wits end for want of silver bullets to not only save the Union but to be a visible part of the solution.

Greece and the Euro: after hubris........nemesis!

‘So they go on in a strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift., solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. And so we go on preparing more months and years for the locusts to eat..........’

Winston accurately sums up the state of European leadership.

We are looking at the possibility of a financial and economic tsunami that will sweep over the Eurozone and affect the whole world economy.

And what do Merckel and Sarkozy do? Diddlysquat! They have meetings. They give reassurances. And have hissy fits when others, like Tim Geithner, attempts to give advice.

What needs to be done about the euro-mess has been obvious for weeks, but Europe’s Big Two are more concerned with their election prospects.

Greece’s debts must be rescheduled, meaning that the creditors will just have to wait for their money. The Greeks have no intention of honouring their promises to reduce the public sector, to privatise hopelessly inefficient state enterprises, to cut expenditure, to reduce the debt burden. If they don’t get their next tranche of bail-out they will go broke at the end of October, but they are gambling – probably correctly – on the EU stumping up on yet another load of ECB wonga. Lack of probity in Greek financial politics is a tradition as old as the modern state of Greece.

The central banks must recapitalise the commercial banks because a liquidity problem is gathering momentum that led to the crash of 2008, when banks were unable to borrow from one another. French banks are particularly exposed and the situation for the Germans is not pretty, which goes to show that the Masters of the Universe are numpties. Who on earth would lend billions to the Greeks?

The chatterati maintain that there are only two alternatives – for Greece to leave the Eurozone, which is financially unacceptable, or to have full monetary and political union, which is politically unacceptable. Oh dear!

And after Greece, the sharks already smell blood around France, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Will it be a case of ‘the hour findeth the man’? If so, will it be a Winston, FDR or Maggie? Or will it be an Adolf?

And how appropriate in a Greek context that nemesis now follows hubris!

What the papers say..............

I might have got that elusive knighthood if I had taken life more seriously but I could rarely resist the temptation to exploit the funny side of things.

When I was assisting Mugabe to start his reign of terror in Zimbabwe in 1980, I had to visit remote polling stations by light aircraft or helicopter. On one trip up to the Zambezi valley, we took with us a couple of Commonwealth Monitoring Force officers from Papua New Guinea. They were squat, fat ugly little blokes whom we dubbed ‘Fred and Barney’.

We flew for a long time on a single fuel tank so that we could run it dry and fill it completely at our next stop at a bush airstrip. As we got to the last drop the pilot winked at me, said nothing to the passengers, and let the donkey stop. There was a pregnant silence and then some agitated chattering behind us, before we re-started the engine. But we were not finished with our cruel deception. I flew the aircraft most of the way back to base, and as I started the approach to land the pilot folded his arms, turned around in his seat and engaged the couple in conversation. As it appeared that nobody was landing the plane, to say that this caused consternation would be a massive understatement. But as they were senior officers, we thought that some mild-Mickey taking would be in order!

Sorting out my archives the other day I went to a 30-year old Filofax (remember those? Very 1980s but the word is not now even in the spellchecker). I used to note down stuff from the papers that had escaped the sub-editor. Here are some samples.

‘The most frightening factor about AIDS is that it can be spread by normal sex between men and women. This is still rare in Scotland’.

Scottish Sunday Mail.

The above came when the government and the media were predicting that we were all doomed and that there would be an HIV death in every fourth family by the end of the 80’s. How they love to worry us the better to control us.

‘A Wales vs. England drinking contest was called off when the Welsh team turned up drunk and were forced to withdraw’.

Western Daily Mail.

‘Gommes dismissed four men for boiling their underpants in the tea urn.

Wycombe Midweek.

‘A sheep wearing a hat was one of four occupants taken into custody by the Narcotics Bureau near Port Elisabeth’.

The Citizen.

‘Wanted: four drivers immediately. Zimbabwean passports essential but not necessary’.

Zimbabwe Herald.

‘Labour Councillors believe that including formal qualifications in adverts discriminates against job applicants what done badly at school’.

Reading Chronicle. (I reckon the sub was having a larf on that one!).

‘The Court of Appeal has overturned Raymond Mohl’s drunk driving conviction on the grounds that he was too drunk to understand when the police told him he had a right to a lawyer’.

Ottawa Citizen.

The Strange Death of Dr Kelly.....

Do you remember the strange case of Dr Kelly?

He was outed as the whistleblower on WMD, possibly by No 10.

He is the only person to have died in suspicious circumstances for over 100 years who has been denied a coroner’s inquest. Instead, the then Lord Chancellor, Blair’s mate Lord Falconer, invoked an obscure law to appoint an inquiry under Lord Hutton. This found that on 17^th July 2003 Dr Kelly went for a walk in the woods near his home where he overdosed on pain killers and cut an artery in his wrist with a pruning knife.

So what do we know about the case?

For starters, he had just been cleared by a Commons Committee of Inquiry; only that morning he had booked a return flight to Baghdad;  and he had arranged to meet his daughter that evening. He left an answer-phone message for a friend arranging to meet him 6 days later. Hardly the actions of a man intent on taking his own life, you might think.

We know from ‘The Strange Death of Dr Kelly’ by Norman Baker MP that the knife had no fingerprints on it even though Kelly wore no gloves. The items found with his body – his glasses, watch, two packets of pills and a water bottle – were also clean. It is highly doubtful whether the cut could have killed him; to kill yourself this way you must cut lengthways. If you cut across, it is most likely that the artery will self-seal unless you use a very sharp blade (not a pruning knife) and do it in the bath to prevent clotting.  There is also doubt as to whether the overdose was sufficient to cause death.

There some other disturbing features to the case.

There is strong suspicion that the body was moved. The Hutton report says that there was a photograph of the body showing most of it lying on the ground but with his head slumped against a tree. But the pathologist commissioned by the present Attorney General to review the case said that the photographs shown the feet pointing away from the tree and a considerable gap between the head and the tree. There was a third person present with the policeman who stayed with the body but he did not mention this.

This is not the only example of the police witnesses being disingenuous. Dr Kelly’s dental records disappeared mysteriously only to be found again two days after the death. The Assistant Chief Constable stated in his evidence to Hutton that no ‘extraneous’ finger-prints were found on the documents after their alleged theft. We now know there were 6 unidentified prints on the records.

It is alleged that an incident room was set up before the Dr was reported missing.

The Chief Inspector who led the investigation was not even called to give evidence to Hutton, incredible though this may seem.

The place of death, which is always included on death certificates, was not stated. It merely said ‘found dead at Harrowdown Hill’. The certificate was registered 5 weeks before the completion of the Hutton inquiry.

So what difference did it make, having an inquiry instead of an inquest? Surely this would be a more authoritative forum conducted by a distinguished judge than a mere inquest by a local coroner?

Er, no!

None of the witnesses gave evidence on oath. They could mislead the inquiry and get away with it. Two of the police witnesses did, at the least. At inquests evidence is always given on oath – with criminal penalties for lying.

The coroner’s duty is to establish how and where and when a person died. In a case of suicide he must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the deceased intended to kill himself and did so.

All this is in the public domain. But when Hutton published his report he secretly proposed that all the evidence and photographs should be classified for 70 years. Why?

There was so much public disquiet over the inadequacy of the inquiry and the suspicion that it was a whitewash that a group of distinguished medical and forensic experts lobbied for a proper inquest. When Dominic Grieve, who had previously expressed ‘serious misgivings’ about the findings of the inquiry, was made Attorney General there were high hopes that an inquest would be granted.

Not so.

In another decision taken behind closed doors, Grieve upheld Hutton. On the point about evidence on oath he said that it was not logical to quibble over the difference between swearing an oath and not doing so, which does not say much either for his knowledge of the law or for his moral sense. He said in Parliament that there is no possibility that at an inquest a verdict other than suicide would be returned.

How could he know what a coroner might have decided? An open verdict would have been a distinct possibility.

There may now be a judicial review.

So if there was an unlawful killing, whose fingerprints were on it? Mossad? They would have made a proper job of it. CIA? The blunders would suggest so, but for what possible reason? MI6? They don’t do this stuff otherwise Martin McGuiness would not still be walking around.

Cui bono?

We will probably never know!

Perry for POTUS? I don't think so!

The looming fiscal crisis in Europe and continuing high unemployment at home combine to shape economic and financial practices in government and on Wall Street. We are deep in the doldrums and grasp at the slightest whiff of good news only to be further tortured by additional reports of job stagnation and sovereign debt.

Our Governor, Rick Perry, is now running second to Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. This past week, he joined a spirited televised debate among leading contenders.

Oddly, the debate was sponsored by NBC News and Politico prompting many observers to wonder why the candidates agreed to answer questions from such staunchly democratic organizations. But they did and at one point Newt Gingrich chastised the NBC and Politico presenters for posing questions intentionally designed to generate internal fighting among the candidates.

Rick managed to alienate a large section of America by attacking our Social Security system. He referred to it as a Ponzi Scheme constructed on lies. He was making a valid point, but it was sensationalized and poorly articulated to the point where working Americans reacted against Rick instead of his criticism.

He will spend the remainder of his candidacy regretting and attempting to rectify this statement.

Immediately after his remarks, Romney cooly remarked that our SS system is important to America and does not need to be suspended, but rather improved. Social Security is one of the few government programs that sits well with the American people.

The flagrant abuse of SS funds collected by Government and then pilfered to finance this and that bill is a very sore issue. So are the large increases in the percentage taken from salaries.

When SS first began, deductions amounted to 2% of salaries or wages with 1% being paid by the employer. Today it is 12.4% of salary with both employee and employer still paying half. There is a limit, however, and annual earnings over $106,000 are no longer subect to the payroll deduction.

The viability of the system is projected to last until the early 2030's at which time there will be insufficient funding to finance payouts to retirees.

Obama the Eloquent

America is stuck on remembering 9/11 just now and both written and filmed accounts have taken possession of the media. This typical habit of overkill needs review along with its flaunting hyperbole and nauseous repetition. Concurrently, a massive hunt is going on for some mystery terrorists who reputedly  intent to celebrate the 9/11 anniversary their own way.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our governor has just leased an enormous DC10 that was converted to a tanker capable of dousing some 12,000 US gallons of water and retardants on our prairie fires at a single go. It is bloody unlikely that we will get any help from mother nature in the form of precipitation, so we need to take drastic measures, including cloud seeding. Thus far, no success possible due to a lack of clouds.

Obama delivered another rhetorical masterpiece this week at an address to both Houses in which he introduced his newly concocted American Jobs Act. On such occasions, the Vice President and Speaker of the House are seated directly behind the President. It was one of those speeches in which the audience feels compelled to applaud after every third sentence and in this instance also stand up when doing so.

The division between our two parties was fully documented by the reactions of VP Biden and Speaker Boehner. Biden must have overheated hands as he bobbed up and down clapping wildly with a huge smile across his face. In contrast, Boehner sat mostly still looking grumpy and somewhat tentative. I could not determine if his reactions were genuinely inspired by policy differences, or by Boehner's fear that his applause may not be taken kindly by Congressional Conservatives and Tea Party members.

I dare say our prairie fires and tenacious drought will be ancient history by the time anything is legislated by way of the Jobs Act. Congress remains moribund. The slightest sign of compromise by a Senator or Representative is immediately punished by party whips, caucus leaders and members of extreme coalitions. More than once, poor John Boehner has been flogged into line by the Tea Party.

Even O's enemies concede he is a gifted orator. I would also render tribute to his speech writers. I believe the constant criticism about his using teleprompters is more indicative of envy than anything else. O's timing, seamless delivery, tone and body language combine to make him an effective figure. The opposition cannot abide such presence and works extremely hard to discredit everything about him.

The scum rises to the top......

I started to read Peter Oborne’s piece in the DT about Hague’s revival of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, but by the time I got to the bit about dumping the F&CO library I was in such a fury that I had to stop before I burst something.

What an incredible act of mindless vandalism!

This contained all the treaties and key documents since Tudor times. As an historical treasure trove it was beyond price, a unique record that Harvard or Yale would kill for. How much more Labour crime is going to come out in future years? Plenty is now emerging after the fall off Gadaffi. ( Matt’s cartoon in the DT the other day was a corker showing G dashing across the desert in his jeep with the caption ‘I’ve been asked to appear in ‘Celebrity Big Brother!’).

I suspect all this was the work of the right-on Permanent Secretary at the F&CO, who got a peerage as a reward for his destructive term. Another smart move was to abolish the language school, as well as kicking out the precision of written and spoken English that was perfected there and substitute it with jargon and Birt-speak so that nobody outside can understand what the hell they are talking about.

And why has all this only just come out? Where were the historians from telly, the conservationists, the protectors of the national heritage and all the other self-appointed noise-makers who would be marching on Whitehall for less?

And now we have Ken Clarke, who seems to be getting increasingly dotty, seriously proposing that TV cameras should be allowed into trials. At this time the suggestion is televising the Judge’s summing up only (that should make for riveting viewing), but we all know how adept are our masters at the ‘thin end of the wedge’ treatment.

So are we to see trials turned into a version of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’; ‘I’m a villain; get me out of here’?

This government seems to match in incompetence what the last lot had in sheer wickedness.

I suppose it all goes to show that the scum always rises to the top.

Did I really mean that?

On a lighter note, when I had a day-job I used to collect complaints letters that did not exactly express their true meanings. Here are some examples:

‘Our kitchen floor is damp. We have 2 children. We would like to have a third. Please send a man around to do something about it’

‘The toilet seat is cracked. Where do I stand?’

‘It's the dogs’ mess that I find hard to swallow.

‘I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off’.

‘I wish to complain that my father twisted his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage’.

‘I am writing on behalf of the sink, which is running away from the wall’.

‘The sink is blocked and we can’t bath the children until it is fixed’.

‘Please send someone to mend our broken path. Yesterday my wife tripped over it and now she is pregnant’.

‘This is to let you know that our lavatory is broken and we can’t get BBC 2 TV’.