Politics of the absurd..

I scan the news like a good soldier every morning and evening and find more and more trash and less and less journalism. We may be suffering a downturn in interesting news, but I suspect the reason is that we may have a case of news fatigue. Often, when I begin to read an article I don't finish it because I feel that I already know the middle and the end; it is as if I could have written the item myself. And unlike a great novel, old and repetitive news is never worth reading again.  

In another vein, it may well be that we are living in such comfortable times that there is no need for a great leader to come fourth. If this 'give me the times and I will give you the man' scenario is correct, then we have been cheated out of some great leadership figures.

Further to the above, my take is that leaders with the potential of a Churchill are shunning political life because of how filthy it has become. In the West, politics is only about power. The opposition will do anything and everything to get power and the incumbents will do likewise to keep it. Hence, respected leaders like, for example, Colin Powell, will not agree to be put forth as candidates. They are far to intelligent to fall for that scam.

The power theory of contemporary politics as applied to the USA has another facet. The leader him or herself has little power but rather is a puppet of what Eisenhower called the 'military industrial complex'. This complex is composed of super rich and super powerful individuals who 'own' politicians and who are capable of creating and perpetuating public institutions to feed their needs. Such organizations have titles that contain key words that appear again and again in the myriad of institutions created and recreated by Washington. Examples are: energy, security, defense, atomic, American and so on.

The super rich are highly controlling individuals who have amassed fortunes through industry, oil, finance or commerce and who inevitably adhere to right and extreme right wing politics. Examples include Ross Perot, some of the Rockafellers, T. Boone Pickens, members of the John Birch Society. The military side of this equation is represented less by leaders and more by doers. Generals and sometimes colonels are required to promote ideas that conform to the interests of financiers. For example, a general that wants to nuke Iran is of more value to this group than one who wants to talk peace. A general who believes our best line of defense is to have massive armaments at hand is of more interest than one promoting arms control.

The amount of money this power group has to test, foster and finance political candidates is of major concern. Donating through anonymous Political Acton Committees, they can double, triple and even quadruple the millions of dollars amassed in a candidate's campaign chest. There is no question that the candidate with the biggest war chest has the best chance of winning an election. 

My worry is that the above take borders on conspiracy theory and should therefore be thrown out with the bathwater. I have no doubt, however, that these big money, far right people have a consuming financial and political influence on American life. Recall it was T. Boone Pickens who financed the ant-John Kerry ads about his being a poor and cowardly leader as captain of a fast boat in Vietnam. That alone is credited with swinging the public vote to W.

 

'I've got a little list..........'

‘As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,

I’ve got a little list,

I’ve got a little list,

Of society offenders who might well be underground,

And who never would be missed’

Trawling the media for something stimulating turned my thoughts to what or who is most disliked these days, and I came to the conclusion that the list is likely to be long.

News International would be high on the list. We are heartily sick of Murdoch, Leveson and all the coverage giving to the hacking scandal. But with prosecutions imminent this will run and run. The Murdoch press has started attacking Dave at every turn. Not a good move. Revenge beckons. And I predict a diet of porridge for the accused hacks, especially the one with hair like an explosion in a mattress factory.

Foreign courts must be current hate-targets with a succession of farcical decisions that bring them into ridicule and contempt, the latest being the deportation case which all turns on the meaning of ‘three months’. The ECHR says that the appeal was properly lodged with one day to spare. The deportation notice was issued on the 90^th day. Is this three months? Or is it three calendar months? And does time start to run from the date of the judgement or the following day? And does it run according to the time at the place of judgement – one hour ahead of GMT – or the place of domicile of the original jurisdiction (it was issued at midnight on the 90th day)?  What a load of nonsense! We have rules in English law about the computation of time.

‘Health and safety’ is a prime candidate. The poor old HSE gets most of the flak, but there are many villains – jobsworths who love inventing a little bit of power for themselves, such as telling parents that it is illegal to take photos of their kids’ Nativity Play’ when it is not – but ambulance-chasing lawyers and insurance companies are the main culprits.

PC is loathed by all except the Libdems. They say it is designed to ensure decent speech and conduct. It isn’t. It is to propagate the perversion of language and the suppression of free speech, the better to control us.

The EU is a favourite Aunt Sally, and justifiably so. It has destroyed the sovereignty of Parliament and left us to the untender mercies of a corrupt and unelected bureaucracy based in a foreign country. We were tricked into joining by persistent lying by Ted Heath, who told us that we were going into a ‘common market’. What the chatterati cannot fathom is that we English are by nature suspicious of foreigners (I can’t speak for the Celtic fringe). It is part of our race memory. In most of our history the arrival of foreigners has signalled invasion. As an island race we are, well, insular. Apart from the Irish, we have little in common with the members of the EU by way of tradition, constitution, politics,  law, outlook, even culture. And we are a maritime people; most of the others are not.

Now a Common Market of the Netherlands, Germany and the Nordics would make a lot of sense, but the present set-up is a rag-bag. Some of the far-flung members which have joined in recent years are not much more than third-world countries.

And finally, there’s the whole of the political class. In both the UK and the US politicians seem to be almost universally despised, with a few honourable exceptions, but worse for the US where governance depends on compromise of which little is to be seen right now.

A personal hate of mine is selfish and obsessive dog-owners (and if it comes to that the whole of the animal rights lobby; they don’t love animals, they just hate people).  Where I live it is quite common to see people taking walkies as many as six variegated mutts. Their passage is marked by piles of steaming poo. The owners will scream blue murder at attempts to bar them for children’s’ play-grounds. We have a nature reserve near us which is one of the few breeding grounds for terns. Every year between April and August signs go up saying that dogs must be kept on leads so as not to disturb the nests. Do the owners respect this? Nope. They even tear down the signs. The terns have not nested for about 4 years.

New broom at the World Bank..

I was delighted to hear about support Ngozi Okonjo-Iwaela as a candidate for the presidency of the World Bank. Somebody should. She is brilliant. Judging from her name, I thought she was a Youruba, but after checking I learned she is Ibo. Definitely not from the north and, checking further, brilliant with her Harvard and MIT degrees.

I remain skeptical of Nigerians, however, as they has an exceedingly bad reputation here in the USA for activities decidedly criminal.

Their financial scams are legendary. They migrate freely and have acquired the enmity of many other African populations by their competitive commercial disposition. They move in and take over. When I was last in Johannesburg, I listened to a lady curio seller complain of how the Nigerians have moved into the city and threatened small enterprises like her own with their aggressive sales and marketing. Ironically, she was not even South African, but Kenyan.

The eventual appointment does not displease me. I view Jim Yong Kim as a transitional appointment from a traditional US post to one open to people from other countries. Born in South Korea, Kim has a stunning record, albeit not in the area of development economics.

My call is that Kim will do a good job. He is a leader and will undoubtedly get all sorts of good (and bad) advice and will use his experience with people to forge ahead on the correct path.

We all know the Bank is somewhat of a sham anyway as it has poured billions into the coffers of Third World leaders and their minions while allowing so called beneficiaries to do without, or with precious little. I would like to see Kim shake up the Bank a bit, although I have no illusions about his, or anyone else's getting rid of Third World corruption.

Is Prince Charles fit to be King?

Soon we shall be revving up to celebrate the 60^th of Her Maj.

I reckon this will be the high water-mark for the Monarchy. By common consent she has never put a foot wrong, but inevitably people will be reflecting on how much longer she can go on. Hopefully, she will have a longevity that matches her mother’s. If so, Chuck will be pushing 80 before he gets his chance, and he may decide (but almost certainly won’t) to hand the baton to Wills.

I reckon there are widespread misgivings about Charles as King. Part of this must be the post-Diana effect, as Camilla seems to have some difficulty in gaining acceptability. The debate about whether she should be called ‘Queen’ is, of course, totally sterile because if Charles becomes King she automatically becomes Queen, just as she would automatically have become ‘Mrs’ if she had married a commoner.

I am sure that she is a very nice and worthy person, and appeals to me if only because she is clearly no stranger to the odd ciggie and double G&T. But to the public she just ain’t Diana. She will never be accepted as a true Queen simply because of the ‘Diana effect’. People will see that her way to the title was thoroughly besmirched.

The question in my mind is whether Charles is actually fit to be King.

On the plus side he has a remarkable record of public service. He did his time in the RN on small ships, hardly the most comfortable way of spending your days.

He has founded no less than 16 charities, many of them devoted to young people, which raise c. £110 million annually. He is patron of 350 other charities.

He has been very influential in what could be generally called the built environment, and it was really he who launched organic farming. He was much laughed at when he began. They aren’t laughing now. It’s a mega-million business.

He is exceptionally well-thought of in the world of Islam, and the significance of this can’t be overstated – he was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Oxfords Centre for Islamic Studies.

And yet……

Monarchy rests on a tacit understanding, a silent compact between monarch and people that, in return for wealth and privilege, monarchy will represent certain national standards and virtues, such as trust, dedication, probity, integrity and fidelity. We expect the monarch to set an example to the whole nation of good behaviour.

At the time, the wedding of Charles and Diana seemed like a marriage made in heaven that would ensure the continuance of the Crown for another generation.

There was Charles, as future head of the Church of England, making solemn vows before God that he clearly had no intention of keeping. He committed adultery over a long period with Mrs Parker-Bowles and cuckolded the worthy Brigadier Parker-Bowles. Is it any wonder that when Diana realised that her sole function was as brood-mare to preserve the Windsor line that she went completely off the rails and dedicated the remainder of her tragically short life to embarrassing the Royal family at every turn?

Even if Charles discovered too late they he and Diana were irredeemably incompatible, it was his duty, as heir to the throne, to stick it out, to put a brave face on it, to abide by his vows and to set the example expected of Royalty.

Instead, he brought the institution of monarchy into disrepute and triggered a wave of media hostility and mockery that lasted for many years and badly damaged the Queen herself. And made matters worse by marrying the source of the marriage break-down.

So should Chuck chuck it?

Will America ever grow up?

We learned today that several of O's bodyguards from our Secret Service were relieved of their duties in Columbia for visiting prostitutes and heavy drinking. Will America ever lose the puritan ethic inherited from our forefathers? The lads in Cartagena risk their lives to protect our dear leader and are trained to take a bullet for him. That, plus the boredom of standing around for hours on end requires respite. America needs to at least show some signs of growing up, maturing and accepting human nature as it is.

We should also go south. Our fixation on east-west relations is so embedded in us that we tend to neglect Latin America except in emergencies. Then we overreact. The new land of milk and honey is in South America. Land, minerals, labor, energy, ambition and a new frontier awaits those who dare. An daring is no big deal. Our cattle industry has been going south to Argentina and Brazil for years, but we continue to speak of the American west as if we have a monopoly on beef.

It seems to me that after alienating many and isolating other Latin American countries, we simply ignore those that remain. Overstatement aside, an energetic policy toward moving ahead with the Latins would be in order and would prove a strong sting in the bow of either of our presidential contenders. Our attention and cooperation would go far in dislodging the US from its current economic doldrums.

Although Latin American investments are about one third of those in Europe, $1,976 billion in Europe versus $680 billion in Latin America in 2009, little is spoken or written about American investment there. Oil and gas certainly accounts for a great deal as does equipment assembly including automobiles. Sadly, we are often accused of skirting American environmental laws by setting up factories in Latin America. Mexico accounts for the lion's share of such plants as well as manufacturing that employs toxic materials.

Margaret Thatcher once opined that investment follows degrees. Judging from the foreign students studying here in 2009, we will be investing heavily in Asia as those countries accounted for 60% of foreign student enrollment. Next was Europe with 13% followed by Latin America with 10%. Thatcher's statement is highly credible, although a new trend is developing whereby foreign students come to the US to study and work for a spell before repatriating themselves and their new-found technologies back to their homeland; namely  Asia and particularly China.

Obama & the race card......

The Republican primary race is finally down to one man; Mitt Romney. The dogma driven Rick Santorum bailed. Take you pick of the reasons why: family reasons relating to an ill and mentally challenged young daughter,  a seriously dwindling campaign chest, high  probability Rick would lose to Romney in Rick's home state of Pennsylvania.

Ron Paul remains in the race. The reasons for his staying on are about as vague as his political philosophy and chances of winning more than 10% of the vote.

The historical revisionist with all four feet in his mouth, Newton Leroy Gingrich, also remains. He is happy as a pig in a hog wallow and is already counting future primary votes for himself that would have otherwise gone to Santorum. Newt has one big enemy that, try as he might, he cannot defeat. Namely, himself. Claiming the title of the 'last remaining Conservative" with a rhetoric more befitting to the "Last of the Mohicans" our steadfast lad is so cocooned in himself that he knows not whether it is sunny or raining. Romney will be the nominee failing any major disaster and, as you well know, disasters in politics are as frequent as drought in Texas.

The sad truth for the Republicans is they are disunited, suffering a schismatic rift between their moderates and far right Tea Party Conservatives and have failed to produce a candidate capable of capturing the allegiance of the American public. Sadder still, were the presidential vote held today, Obama would win.

Predictions are that this presidential race will be down and dirty. I take that to mean vicious attacks by anonymous backers such as Political Action Committees against the vulnerable underbelly of each candidate. In Mitts case it is his religion and in O's case it is his race. O got a racial pass when he was elected the first time, but I doubt he will get another given his silence over growing racial incidents and issues.

One glaring example is the offer of a $10,000 reward  by the Black Panther Party for George Zimmerman dead or alive. George, a Hispanic American, is accused of murdering a young black person. The vigilante character of this offer is not consistent with our dedication to rule of law, yet has not been challenged by the President or his Attorney General. There are numerous other examples of black inspired crime, discontent and threats that have transpired without White House comment.

There is also a growing feeling that minorities, including black people, are taking advantage of expanding welfare benefits to the point where we now have large segments of society dependent upon entitlements. The media is playing this up big time as are right wing talk show hosts and political commentators. One could write a compelling sociological thesis on this subject and its antecedents. Bookstores are full of previous efforts in this direction and generally play on white guilt over slavery and abuses against blacks during and after that period and continuing up to the present day.

In short, many blacks in America believe they have a good excuse to live off of society. Efforts by other black and white citizens to inspire socially-dependent blacks to become employed, be responsible, and become part of mainstream American society have largely failed. My call is that this issue will be placed in O's lap during the campaign and it may get out of hand as blacks could well take umbrage for a variety of reasons.

Let's hope not.

Crisis.......what crisis?

I have been trawling the financial pages to try to make sense of it all. Not easy!

In the US there has been something approaching euphoria (especially in the O camp) that the economy is showing fresh buds. But we must remember that ‘rough winds do shake the darling buds of May’. The fact that only 121,000 private sector jobs were added in March puts a bit of a dampener on it. And I guess that the unemployment figures of c.8% are only job-seekers, not the unemployed who have given up. The true figure of those out of work must be much higher.

What’s going on?

Well, according to Irwin ‘Alka’ Stelzer, there are some very good signs.

One is ‘on-shoring’ – bringing back jobs that had been off-shored  to lower-cost areas especially China. GE, for example, is repatriating its appliance manufacturing operations. As I have previously predicted, China’s rocketing labour costs have brought them more into line with US costs, and foreign firms are also getting increasingly fed-up with intellectual property theft which is rife in China. One reason for the increase in labour costs is that the regime is desperate to avoid civil unrest, although I suspect that the genie is already out of the bottle.

Another is that retailing is doing better than expected.

New car sales are doing very well. In March they were the highest for 5 years. Accustomed as we are to believing that Americans swop their cars almost as quickly as they change their socks, I was amazed that the average age is 10 years. Petrol at $4 a gallon (less than half the UK price) is encouraging Americans to trade-in their old bangers for smaller and more fuel efficient transport. Low interest rates make HP more affordable.

More (very) good news is that the housing market is now stirring. The main reason for this is that whereas historically rental costs were about 10% lower than to buy. Now the ratios have swopped places, with renting about 15% more expensive than buying, plus the fact that low interest rates make mortgages cheaper.

Another factor is that there has been an influx of foreign buyers of holiday homes or as investment. There has also been capital flight from Europe in the wake of the euro-crisis. Truly it’s an ill wind…….! And there has been substantial investment buying as groups snap up as many as 1000 houses in a single deal at fire-sale prices.

So what’s the problem? Well, it’s the usual one – the wretched politicians who insanely refuse to make the required compromises over tax cuts, payroll relief, and spending cuts.

Back in the UK, it’s difficult to make head or tail of it all.

Depending on which set of figures you believe, we are either in recession, stagnation, or growth. The OECD, the ONS and private surveys all tell a different story. The overall picture is that there has been modest growth over the past 3 years.

If things are as bad as Ed Balls claims, how come the UK has added 700,000 private sector jobs in the last 2 years?

And finally…………what to make of the disgraceful farce surrounding the appointment of a new boss for the World Bank?

The obvious candidate is the ex-Finance Minister of Nigeria. She is widely respected for her financial acumen, has the right experience as a former deputy at the World Bank, and is thoroughly acceptable especially to the emerging economies.

However, O is sticking to the convention that the World Bank is an American fief. He has nominated a candidate who does not appear to have a single qualification apart from working on AIDS in the WHO.

An observer has described it as ‘shameful and self-destructive’.

Lockerbie: a perversion of justice............

I have just been reading a review by Jim Swire of a new book about Megrahi (‘Megrahi: You are my Jury; the Lockerbie Evidence’), and the miscarriage of justice at his trial. Dr Swire’s daughter was killed in the crash, and he has since devoted his life to devilling out the truth, including interviewing Gaddafi.

The initial suspect was a Syrian-Iranian terrorist group employed by Iran for revenge after the shooting-down of an Iranian airliner. But along came the Gulf war and it was necessary to keep Syria onside and Iran neutral, so Bush pressed Maggie to drop it.

Suspicion was heaped upon Libya. The US drew up indictments against 2 Libyans on the basis of evidence by  a defector highly paid by the CIA. This evidence was described as ‘a farrago of lies and fantasy’, and was thrown out by the judge.

The prosecution case rested on obfuscation and lies. The claim was that Megrahi placed a bomb on an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt. It allegedly had a long-running timer that allowed it to traverse Frankfurt, be loaded onto 103, and timed to explode 38 minutes after leaving London.

The key piece of evidence was a circuit board for a bomb timer. But there was no forensic evidence that it had been involved in an explosion and there is deep suspicion that it was planted. The boss of the firm that made the board stated that he had been offered $4 million by the FBI to verify that it had been sold to Libya. An employee confessed at a Swiss enquiry that he had stolen a board and given it to a Lockerbie investigator. The two Maltese witnesses were paid $3 million by the US authorities (a very serious criminal offence).

Evidence of a break-in at Heathrow close to an Iranair office and the shed where the baggage for PanAm 103 was assembled, 17 hours before 103 departed, was withheld from the defence. The bomb had a pressure detonator set to go off at a certain altitude and therefore it must have been put on board at Heathrow, not Malta, as the prosecution claimed. Evidence to support this view showed that all baggage on the Air Malta flight had been accounted for.

Other prosecution evidence was fabricated.

The UN observer at the trial said that the only way ‘this incomprehensible verdict’ could have been reached was through ‘deliberate malpractice’ by the Scottish Crown Office and that ‘it was a consistent pattern during the whole trial that, as an apparent result of political interest and considerations, efforts were undertaken to withhold substantial information from the Court………Virtually all people presented by the prosecution as key witnesses were proven to lack credibility to a very high extent, in certain cases even having openly lied to the court’.  

Because of all this, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found evidence of a potential miscarriage of justice sufficient to grant a second appeal. The prospect of all the dirt coming out in the appeal hearing was enough to get Mehgrahi out of the country as quickly as possible.

So it does look as if Mehgrahi was stitched up like a kipper.

'It's the Euro, stoopid!.........

The US economy seems to have turned the corner except in housing. I see that the Dow is roaring away and all the economic indicators (except housing) are showing an up-tick. Very good for O. You will see little improvement in employment. Experience tells us that there is a time-lag of 5 years before employment catches up post-recession.

Europe is looking distinctly dodgy.  The sooth-sayers are telling us that France is next for nasties. They have not had a balanced budget since 1974, they are excessively dirigiste which stifles the economy, Sarko and Hollande are making the most ridiculous election pledges which they cannot possibly keep. Hollande is proposing a top rate of tax of 75% which, with social charges, makes it 90%. Britain will get another influx of the brightest and best. There are already signs of French business relocating to lower cost, more business friendly, countries.

Spain, meanwhile, has unemployment running at around 25%; youth unemployment is a staggering 50%. Stand by for the emergence of more nationalistic politics. I have little sympathy there. The Spanish had a ridiculous boom in housing off the back of cheap Euro-money, and then ruined the expat market through corruption and dishonesty.  When they began dispossessing expats – mainly Dutch, German, and British – without compensation they buggered it up for all time.

The conventional view is that Club Med is responsible entirely for the present chaos, through their profligacy and dishonesty, over-borrowing of cheap money and generally leading the good life at someone else’s expense. Others castigate Germany for being over-competitive and concentrating on supply-side economics which forced Club Med into a hopeless demand-side position. They squeezed wages and costs, improved efficiency and pursued an aggressive export policy.

What’s wrong with that?

Well, if Germany still had the Dm its rate against other currencies would have strengthened to reflect relative values. Instead the German economy was able to forge ahead on a cheap currency because of the ‘one size fits all’ system. It was beggar thy neighbour’.

The root cause of the crisis is not the Club Med or the selfish Germans.

It’s the Euro, stoopid!

Obamacare.........hitting the buffers?

President Obama's Health Bill, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, is under scrutiny by the US Supreme Court. Seldom do the mechanics of our governmental system reveal so much about our system of checks and balances than during debates like this. In the process of such scrutiny, the character of the Court is laid bare while efforts to influence decisions by both the President and the Legislature are stripped of their shrouds.

The President is actively and unashamedly seeking a favorable decision with respect to the constitutionality of the Act which is popularly called Obamacare. He argues that the Court is bordering on Judicial Activism by even suggesting the Act might be illegal. At the heart of the matter is whether obligating citizens to purchase health care insurance is in violation of the Constitution. Most Americans agree that the government does not have the power to obligate people to enter into any commercial contract and that Obamacare does just that. Indeed, the political right further argues that the Act as written is but another example of government's expanding efforts to create a welfare state and to impinge upon individual rights.

The Court's current review of the Act leads directly to a link between judicial review and judicial activism. The Act is the signature event of O's first four years in office. His record is slim save for Obamacare. If that is thrown out as unconstitutional, O will have to struggle to not only defend his record, but to mount a credible campaign for   reelection. Any negative action against the Act, or parts of the Act, exposes the Court to charges of playing politics. This of course is an ever present threat to any sitting court. You will recall the last incident of this nature when the Court decided that George Bush won the Florida primary and thereby gave him the popular votes to win the state and the election.

In a finer point of law than the above, if one aspect of the Act is declared unconstitutional the entire Act can be scrapped. This is partly because the Act was written without an exclusivity clause stating that in effect if any part of the Act is declared illegal, the remaining parts shall remain valid. This leads to another aspect of the Act that has not been much discussed.

Namely, Obamacare as a piece of legislation is one of the worst on record. It is too long, to complex, to quickly written and has too many authors. It is a piece of junk legislation that has many redeeming qualities, but needs to be revised, edited, shortened, made consistent, properly costed and above all made clear. Government economists have recently put a price to Obamacare concluding that it is considerably more expensive to implement than originally thought. Yet, O is hanging on to the Act as if it were a life jacket in a stormy sea.

More than all of the above, Obamacare frightens the daylights out of everyone who fears that the US is becoming a welfare state. Its political philosophy is strongly leftist and strongly favors giving more assistance to not only America's poor, but to America's professionally poor. To those who follow a life style characterized by living on handouts and public funds without being gainfully employed. This expanding class of American citizens is becoming increasingly worrisome.

Mitt Zombie to win by default

With a bit of luck, the Republican primaries will soon produce a winner. The climate of opinion is that even though he is not everyone's first choice, Mitt Romney is best suited to defeat Obama come November. As a result, there is considerable pressure on both Gingrich and Santorum to back off, accept their fate and possibly even cut a deal in which they would have meaningful appointments in a Romney administration.

I should think we could create positions for them. Newt Gingrich would make an excellent Secretary of Rewriting History while Rick Santorum could be our Secretary of Christianity and Divine Revelations. It is not yet clear whether the second tier runners will comply as they still have stars in their eyes and visions in their heads of somehow pulling off a victory.

We have another open microphone event that is attracting considerable attention. You are surely aware of O's statements to Dimitry Medvedev about telling Putin to give some slack on arms reductions until after O wins the election. This is an object lesson in realpolitik.

It also reveals two facts.

One is that Putin is in control in Russia and the other is that O is certain he will win the election.

Just now, I am inclined to agree with him about winning. I doubt that all four of the remaining Republican candidates could come up with a platform that could threaten Obama. The Republican party should be ashamed of itself for not having fostered a stronger, more charismatic and electable aspirants than these three. Meantime, O will get away with his faux pas without serious dents in his popularity. This is largely because what he said in confidence is what anyone would say under similar circumstances.

It does, however, betray a disturbing lack of respect for the American public. Like mushrooms, we are kept in the dark and fed on bulls---.

Democratic deficiency........another voice

A commentator presents a rather dystopian view of politics, with a political caste which is totally disengaged from an increasingly alienated electorate who are bereft of choices in throwing the rascal out. This is not just in the UK. One of the worrying aspects of European politics is the growth of extreme nationalist parties and their growing success in elections, supported by the cosy consensus politics of coalition governance.

Is there no answer.

Well, yes. Here is my five-point plan.

1.   Candidates should be selected in primary elections open to all registered members of the constituency party. The Tories ran a prototype in one of their West Country constituencies. The locals gave the boot to the outsiders parachuted in by Central Office and selected a well-known, well-liked lady doctor. She walked it! The method would ensure that there were no carpet-baggers and that the MP represented their interests rather than his own.

2.   It should be a condition that the MP’s principal residence is situated within the constituency. The reasons for this are blindingly obvious.

3.   Late-night sittings, abolished at the behest of Blair’s babes, should be reinstated, enabling MPs to have proper jobs as in the past. The invention of politics as a profession instead of a calling is a principal reason for  a supine Commons, the power of the Whips, and general corruption.

4.   MPs (and peers) should get the standard rate of daily subsistence and travel costs at the standard civil service rate. This would stop expenses fraud in its tracks. MPs caught fiddling could simply be prosecuted as would be a civil servant instead of being white-washed by their buddies in the Houses of Parliament.

5.   It should be a requirement that MPs spend at least one full day each month at their ‘surgeries’.

What is the prospect of all this happening? About the same as turkeys voting for Christmas.

And apropos European politics, you would think that the epicentre of the EU, Belgium, would be squeaky clean. So here is a piece from European Voice.

‘Belgium was the naughtiest EU member state of last year, with the ECJ ruling against the country for failing to implement EU law no less than nine times. Various southern European countries were pretty naughty too: Italy and Portugal were slapped with eight rulings each, and Spain seven. France and Germany were both pretty naughty Europeans as well, losing six and five cases respectively, while Greece lost four.

Taking the longer view, the picture looks worryingly similar. Between 2007 and 2011, the UK lost 14 court cases for failing to implement EU law, while Germany lost 25, France 36, Spain 56 and Italy 66’.