Rant........!

A thought has been exercising my mind. Which badly needs it.

Our leaders have had the benefit of the best education that money can buy. They have MENSA IQs.

So why are they so utterly, incredibly, irremediably, incurably ******g stupid?

A few horribly depressing examples.

I was working in Jamaica in the lead-up to Gulf2. I assured my cronies that it was all a game of bluff. No way would the West make war on Saddam. His regime was the only non-Islamic one in the Middle East. Saddam was opposed to everything  that  Al Qaeda stood for. A war would leave anarchy and a power vacuum in its wake.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

It was not a matter of Dubya wanting revenge and doing better than his dad. Other countries without  even that motivation went along with it.

We have a lot of breast beating about forced marriage and honour killings following a particularly vile murder of a 17-year old girl. The simple answer is not to recognise marriages abroad for immigration purposes. Just don’t give visas to  spouses who would not otherwise qualify. Simple, innit?

Why are we conducting the longest war since Napoleon, in Afghanistan, to combat Al Qaeda when they gapped it years ago?

Why are we increasing foreign aid by 37% when we can’t pay our own bills?

We have the Masters of the Universe telling us that a Greek default on its debts will bring the end of civilisation as we know it to an end in the biggest collapse since the Fall of the Roman Empire. It won’t.

Argentina and Russia both defaulted, with economies far larger than the relatively tiny economy of Greece. When (not if) Greece leaves the Euro, the markets will set their own value on the drachma which will cure the root of the problem, lack of competitiveness. Agricultural products and tourism will be priced at their proper cost, not the inflated costs imposed by German supply-side economics. Greece should bounce back in a few years whilst the North enjoys cheaper holidays (of which they have many).

But ‘they’ are telling us that what is needed is ‘more Europe’, a fiscal and political union. It is beyond peradventure that (as I have written before) the whole euro thingy was a gross deceit, designed to fail so that ‘they’ could create a federal Europe - the Fourth Reich. Which planet are they on?

However, it’s not all bad for all of us. Brussels is giving itself a €2.4 billion pay rise and €1.4 increase in pensions and allowances.

And another thing.

Why all the kerfuffle over phone hacking? Everybody thought it a bit of a giggle when the mobiles of Prince Chuck and his squeeze were hacked all those years ago. Why is it now a matter of national importance, far more so than mere trivia like the state of the economy, now that politicians are involved?

And there’s the experts.

A few weeks back, they told us that statins were worse than useless because they were ineffective but had bad side effects.

Today they are telling us that not only do they reduce the risk of circulatory diseases but also reduce prostate cancer by 57% (always beware of those precise percentages).

We have the ONS telling us that we are in a double-dip recession at a time when we have just achieved our first balance of payments for motors for donkeys years i.e. the value of exports exceeding the value of imports;  and the Institute of Purchasing Managers saying that we are on the up in both building and manufacturing.

But we know that statisticians will torture the figures so that they will tell you anything you want.

We have economists daily telling us conflicting stories about how bad things are and why (ask  2 economists a question and you will get 3 different answers).

And finally……

It must be true……….I read it in the papers

No less an authority than The Grauniad tells us that of the 52 suspects charged in the Rochdale sex abuse case, 43.16 were Pakistani. Perhaps one just had a Pakistani leg.

How about this as a slogan from Save the Children.

‘No child born to die!’

I thought they all were, but what do I know?