That Olympic opening show.........

We are supposed to be world champs at ceremonies.

I suffered an hour of the opening.

Silly. Pointless. Vulgar. Meaningless to foreigners. And blindingly boring.

I thought at least this bit might be worth watching, even though I had been warned by reports of cows, sheep and Maypole dancing.

Well, it seems that the world was happy with it. Even AA Gill thought it wonderful and that professional grouch takes a lot of pleasing.

Here is the take from Hay Texas:

Your Olympic opening ceremony performance was spectacular. It enjoyed rave reviews all over America. I only saw half an hour’s worth while dining by myself in Houston at a pub near our house. What a performance. It outdid Beijing’s ceremonies by far but, it also raised the bar to seriously challenge the imagination and pocketbook of the next sponsor.

Snaps I saw of the Queen’s prescence at the ceremony were most disconcerting as she looked very old, tired and somewhat out of it. The Daily Mail said her expressions were ‘business like’ but I suspect she was not herself that evening.

And trust the authorities to give us a laugh.

We have the Old Bill losing the keys to the stadium (perhaps they were nicked by G4S).

After the tickets racket we now have 12,000 empty because the fat-cats for whom they were reserved can’t be bothered to turn up.

We have the butcher threatened with prosecution for displaying his sausages as Olympic rings. And a baker for doing the same with his bagels.

Let’s hope they choose to go to court, before Mr Justice Cocklecarrot (Haddock QC, defending).

But not so funny for a London businessman. He bought a shop and stock. Some of the stock carried the Olympic symbol. He was prosecuted by Westminster Council and fined £4,000 plus £8,500 costs

Cameron: 'in office but not in power?'..........

The whisperers in the Tory Party are now briefing against Dave’s understrapper, little George Osborne, whose principal qualification to be Chancellor is that he was Dave’s Bullingdon chum. This is obviously a feint, a flanking attack on Dave himself. Wee George himself is beginning to be like a one-legged man at an arse-kicking party.

But don’t expect any surprises in the reshuffle. This is a Cabinet that has exalted cronyism to a virtue. And both Dave and George are getting unsavoury reputations for the dreadful upper-class public school arrogance that delights in putting people down, dropping them without apparent reason in the most wounding way. I had plenty of this in my young days as a Grammar School oik. ‘And what does your father do?’ with a sneer, looking down the nose.

The word in the street is that Dave’s clique of people like himself are the real opinion formers in politics, and he has little time for people outside the magic circle and who are not beneficiaries of Dave’s charm and polished manners. This is a sure way of stoking up resentments that will be put in play the instant Dave is in a risky position.

I have no problems about Dave’s insulting manner in Parliament. Politics is a blood-sport and PMQs is nothing if not gladiatorial. And criticising him for calling the Beast of Bolsover a ‘dinosaur’ may be inaccurate, because the old villain is not yet extinct, but Skinner has made a career out of being rude.

But Dave seems to embody  the Wildean definition of a gentleman as one who is never rude unintentionally. He comes across as a smooth salesman for a firm of West End estate agents; ‘Member for Strutt & Parker’.

In a short space of time, he has gained an unenviable reputation for poor judgment. The appointment of Andy Coulson was the first. With a dodgy track-record from his time at the NoW he should have never been  considered. We are told that Dave made the choice against advice. The original choice was Trevor Kavanagh of the Sun, but he wisely turned it down. And both Murdoch bag-carriers. What a surprise!. Then the hob-nobbing with Rebecca Wade and the rather louche Chipping Norton Set – Jezza Clarkson et al.

On policy, the armed services cuts while increasing the foreign aid budget is incomprehensible; surely a major vote-loser. The amount of aid is almost identical with the defence budget deficit. When budgets are being slashed to the detriment of the elderly, the sick and the poor, foreign aid has not only been increased by 38% but the percentage of GDP for aid has been enshrined in law so no future Chancellor can touch it without further legislation.

Then there are the broken promises; the EU referendum; dumping the ludicrous ban on fox hunting that is unenforceable and brings the law into contempt; relaxation of the draconian ban on smoking; and so on. He has not done a single thing to rid the statute book of the mass of repressive legislation introduced by Blair under the guise of ‘security’. What happened to the promised bonfire of quangos and agencies?

Our problem is trying to get a handle on what Dave stands for. He is clearly not a Conservative. Is he the heir-to-Blair as he himself boasted? If so we can look forward to government by focus group; to obfuscation; to on-the-hoof policy-making; to lies and spin; to debauching yet further the institutions of state such as the civil service. A social democrat? A ‘one nation’ Tory? Just where does he stand on the EU? On immigration? On any of the key issues of the day?

What are his principles? We all had a very clear idea as to what Thatcherism was all about? There seems to be no such thing as Cameronism.

The Tory Party is ruthless with leaders who fail to cut the mustard. Dave failed to get an absolute majority against the most loathed Government in memory. Now he is behind against a Labour Party with a leader so lightweight he could double as the fairy on the Christmas tree. If he fails to get a majority in 2015 he will be instant history. If the party risks facing a landslide defeat, he will be due for an early bath.

He might already have had his ‘John Major’ moment -  in office but not in power.

Failing upwards.........

It’s been a funny old week!

Unable to stand the pain of England’s wretched performance against the Jaapies on ‘Today at the Test’,  I went straight to Randall. And I was flabbergasted. Why?

Step forward Lin Homer.

‘Who she?’, you might ask. She is the newish boss of HM Revenue & Customs. But she is famous for her time as CEO of Birmingham City Council.

In 2005, there was an election petition alleging widespread malpractice and fraud in the council elections. The first Election Commission since Victorian times investigated.

The Commissioner found that fraud had been committed on an industrial scale, with Pakistani Labour supporters going so far as to threaten postmen with having their throats cut if they refused to hand over the postal votes. More than that, the conduct of the count was a complete shambles. The count was begun before all the ballot boxes were in. Ballot boxes turned up too late to be counted or were simply lost. Two Tesco carrier bags full of votes were discovered in a senior official’s office.

The Election Commissioner said that it was worse than a banana republic. He reserved a special comment for  the Chief Returning Officer responsible for all this outrage. She had ‘thrown the rulebook out of the window’.

And who was this unfortunate person? Why, none other than our Lin.

She quickly resigned. Did she return to well-deserved obscurity? Nope.

She was appointed head of the Borders Agency, I kid you not!

There she presided over the well-known opening of the flood gates of mass immigration. She threw the rulebook away there, too.

Did this lead to her departure? Yes: to become Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Transport.

One would have thought that with a Tory PM she would have been due for an early bath. However, we don’t have one such; only Dave. So now this serial failure is at the top of one of the most crucial Departments in these troubled times.

You couldn’t make it up!

Then we have a moronic Junior Minister (no, not Jeremy Hunt; another moron) telling us that it is ‘immoral’ to pay the plumber in cash! Eh?

Listen, matey. VAT is the responsibility of the tradesman, not the customer. How we choose to pay is naff-all to do with you.

And another thing. We have no intention of being lectured on morals from any one of the expenses-cheating rabble that are today’s denizens at in House of Commons.

OK?

'So farewell, then, The Grauniad?'

For quite a while Eye has been trailing all sorts of problems at the Guardian – the dictatorship of the Editor in Chief, Alan Rusbridger, sackings,  redundancies, and all kinds of woes.

Now the financial media has it in their sights.

At bottom is the continuing fall in circulation. It is now a measly 211,000, probably about the same as ‘The Muckshifter’.

This has been accompanied by a big fall in advertising revenue, especially from the public sector which is spending far less on staff recruitment. This fact alone is an indictment – a small circulation daily being medium of choice; small wonder, then, that government departments and local councils are stuffed with trendy lefties.

At the same time it has been burning through cash. It spent a fortune on buying printing presses for its conversion into a tabloid (or whatever fancy name they choose to give it) whilst at the same time bigging-up on its internet service that was shifting readers from print to screen. It has fancy new offices in London complete with essential gizmos like video studios. It spent a packet opening offices in New York, staffed with about 40 pricey hacks.

Rusbridger has concentrated on creating one of the biggest web-sites. It has been a remarkable success. But the reader switch has caused a big fall in advertising rates, which, of course, are priced on circulation, but the website has not compensated for this.

It has lost £150,000,000 in the last four years; Guardian Media Group made a pre-tax loss of about £77,000,000 in the year to April.

Needless to say, it has embarked on a brutal cost-cutting exercise, including the possible loss of 100 editorial jobs.

The Guardian has a somewhat curious supervisory regime. Rusbridger sits on the Board of CMG which means he combines editorial with commercial power, but he is also a member of the Scott Trust, the owner, which is supposed to supervise him.

Now there is talk of scrapping the print edition altogether and becoming a web-site outlet only.

I remember the great days of the Manchester Guardian when a couple of hundred miles separated it from the corrupting influence of Fleet Street. Now the readership is giving its verdict.

Zimbabwe: time to lift sanctions?

You may have seen the piece by Peter Oborne in the Torygraph singing the praises of William Hague as one of the great Foreign Secretaries who has restored the old values to foreign policy and diplomacy.

A recent initiative has been to call for the removal of sanctions against Zimbabwe. Is he right?

Economic sanctions are a very uncertain means of bringing pressure to bear  on distasteful regimes, partly because they are an opportunity for sanctions-breaking by the unscrupulous, partly because they do in fact create an economic stimulus by export-substitution, and partly because they bear hardest on ordinary people whilst the leaders continue to live high on the hog. They are also largely ineffective.

I worked in Zimbabwe when sanctions were still in force.

Previously its economy had been largely agriculture and commodities – copper, asbestos, gold, coal, chrome etc. Sanctions created a vigorous manufacturing industry. Sanctions- busting was big business. The assembly plant for British cars had been closed down by sanctions; new vehicles were readily available but they were all foreign brands, many assembled in South Africa. The only thing in limited supply was Scotch whisky; one brand only (Hundred Pipers).

One rather amusing aspect was that when RAF fighters patrolled the Zambian border, they came under Rhodesian air traffic control!

Economic sanctions have little chance of working when there are open borders, and, of course, Rhodesia leaked like a sieve through South Africa and Mozambique.

The Smith regime collapsed when Botha, the SA PM, cut off the supply of ammunition – a big mistake on his part because it brought the war to his border because he forgot the military rule of ‘always fight forward’.

They were not tried to any degree against South Africa. They could not possibly have worked. There are so many huge Western investments there we would have been shooting ourselves in both feet.

The US gave the South Africans a once-in-a-lifetime gift with their programme of disinvestment. This enabled the jaapies to buy up US companies at fire-sale prices. One enterprising Greek café owner in the Cape registered ‘MacDonalds’ as his own brand!

Sporting and cultural sanctions hurt more, but there were plenty of breaches. The apartheid regime collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions; the country had become almost ungovernable. But I was there during the dying days and it was certainly much safer than now.

In short, they don’t work.

Hague sees that sanctions against Zimbabwe were gesture-politics. If anything they have strengthened the regime because it has enabled it to claim victim-status and to successfully sell the idea to its own people that all its problems are caused by ‘white colonialists’.

After its self-inflicted economic meltdown, the Zimbabwean economy is thriving, thanks largely to adopting the US$ as its currency and eager exploitation of its mineral resources by the Chinese.

Travel bans on Mugabe and his henchmen have scarcely discommoded them. Bob gets his medical treatment in Singapore and Hong Kong, where he has undoubtedly stashed his retirement fund and where Mrs M does her luxury shopping, putting Imelda Marcos in the shade.

So what’s the point? As ever the only people to suffer are the already long-suffering ordinary people.

If Morgan Tsvangarai  wants sanctions lifted what good reason is there to continue them?

There is an election in sight. Hague might insert the message that sanctions will be lifted at Morgan’s request; that might be good for some votes!

'Get it off, Lardbutt.......

Strolling along the seafront in glorious sunshine I passed a young mother; about 23, I guess.

And, boy, was she big – not just fat but huge, mountainous. I guess she got her knickers on prescription.

This reminded me of the health warning of the day (there’s one every day, often contradicting what has gone before). We are told that 5,000,000 die every year from being over-weight. We are told to get it off, to take more exercise blah, blah.

OK, there is undoubtedly an obesity problem mainly in the younger generation. It is a reasonable prediction that many will die before their parents in their 40’s or even late 30’s. The wowsers blame junk food, sugary drinks, chocolate and on and on. This is nonsense. There is only one cause of obesity and that is greed. They just eat too much.

This preoccupation with weight is very much a cultural thing. The Duchess of Windsor memorably said ‘You can never be too rich or too thin’. In the West, it is the young girl’s ambition to be 7 stone wringing wet. The ideal is to look like today’s fashion models who are built like laths on a diet of lettuce and coke. But in Africa a lady might be somewhat disconcerted by being told ‘Oh Madam! You are too mafuta (fat)’ because fatness is akin to prosperity and beauty.

This is where the cynic in me kicks in. Cui bono?

There is bound to be money involved, so who stands to gain from this story?

Well, for starters there’s the health food industry which, like organic food, is a ploy to separate the gullible from their money. The only thing it makes lighter is your wallet.

Then there’s the weight-loss industry. Weightwatchers is a hugely successful brand because its adherents always put the weight back on again until they wake up to the rather disagreeable fact that once on a diet you are on it for the rest of your life.

And most visible of all is the keep-fit industry.

I have always followed the precept that all my leisure activities can be taken in at least the sitting position. Yet everywhere you go these days you see some grey-haired old fool in shorts, singlet and Nikes jogging red-faced, sweating and in deep pain along the footpath, or encased in lycra pedalling furiously on a racing-bike, doing press-ups in the park or otherwise indulging in something silly and undignified. Worst of all are the cycling groups. Every Sunday morning we are presented with 20 buttocks and 40 pumping legs riding two-abreast and gesticulating and cursing if you try to pass. Last week I followed one such mob who were doing 40 m.p.h. downhill. When I slowed for the 30 m.p.h. limit they passed me!

Not forgetting the pharma industry that promises that you will lose 5 stone in a month without dieting, which is a bit worrying if you only weigh 7 stone.

Finally, there’s the ‘scientists’ and ‘researchers’ whose grants depend on writing the sort of garbage that claims 5 million deaths a year from obesity.

Now, where did I put the After Eights?

Five good reasons to be cheerful!

Aided and abetted by this endless monsoon season the media, politicians and other doomsayers are determined to keep us down in the dumps, so here are 5 pieces of largely unreported good news.

Oil prices are falling rapidly (although both Brent Crude and West Texas have spiked in the last month largely because of international security problems, not supply) and will continue to drop in the longer term. Our petrol has gone down 9p. per litre in the past 3 weeks. Exploitable reserves have increased enormously in recent years, especially in the US, the Caribbean, and Brazil. The US is now within sight of eliminating its dependency on Gulf oil. The political implications are vast. The US now has so much gas that it is about to become a net exporter, although some idiot politician is pressing for an export ban.

The effect on our stagnant economies of cheaper energy is significant.

We are constantly being told about the dire state of British education. And yet recent studies – again, largely unreported – have shown that out of 30 top countries we rank as #9. Not so bad after all, then. And, of course, we are home to 2 of the top 3 universities in the world.

The left-wing noise-makes are constantly harping on that social mobility in Britain has been lost; if you are born poor, that’s where you will stay. But the true figure is that 84% of people will move up the socio-economic ladder during their lifetimes. This is just about the best in the world.

The Greens and other assorted  tree-huggers keep telling us that we are concreting-over Britain. An yet a recent aerial probe has shown that over 90% of the land-mass is open countryside, lakes and rivers.

And finally, Uncle Sam is donning his work-boots once again.

The US is growing rapidly in its export markets of goods and, particularly, services. As a percentage of GDP, the export sector has pretty-well doubled in the last 10 years and growing. Sales to the ‘rich’ world have grown 20% in 4 years, but 51% to Latin America and 53% to China. China is now America’s third largest market. Please note, you Tea Party morons who would like to start a trade war against Mr Chin.

Car sales are rising quickly, and GM, from being the sick man of industry, is now tops, ahead of Toyota. Even house sales are creeping up. Rising rents should boost this trend.

The relatively weaker dollar and pay-restraint has made industry more competitive against rapidly rising wages in China. Manufacturing employment has been rising steadily for the past 2 years.

As a major commodity-producer, America is benefitting hugely from the ‘emerging markets’ effect. Grain farmers are seeing record prices, and there are huge exports of pig-meat and chickens to China as rising standards of living demand a better diet.

And back to energy.

America is the world’s third largest oil producer. Its imports are the lowest for nearly 20 years. At this time they amount to 9 million barrels/day but domestic production alone is likely to reduce this to a mere 2m/b/d, and probably all of this could be met from non-Gulf producers. America is now a net exporter of refined oil products.

As the engine of the world economy America could pull us all out of the mire; provided, of course, that the EU shambles doesn’t get much worse.

So smile please!

Shangri-la beckons...........

I have just collected my Winter Escape flight tickets; Thai Airways LHR to Chiang Mai business class and in a new(ish) Airbus 340, not the clapped-out 747.

And then to a 3-month idyll from December to February at our Golden Cupids boutique hotel. So what’s so special that we spend all that time year on year?

First, the people.

The Cupids is an all-female establishment apart from the old gardener, Mr Si, and the owner’s son, Tom, who helps out at peak times.

First up is the owner, Peppe. She runs on high-octane adrenaline. She is kindness itself. She cooks marvellously; if you like Thai food this is to die for. If you fancy a change, how about a fillet steak imported from Australia? Or water-buffalo tongue and mash? Spagbog, which one young guest had for every meal including breakfast? Good old fish ‘n chips? And breakfast – comes with the room; full English, tropical fruit, or  rice soup anyone? She drives, organises cookery classes, picks you up at the airport (complementary) and generally fixes anything that needs fixing. Husband Peter is getting on a bit, but still keeps a beady eye on maintenance. After all, he owns (with Peppe), designed and built the whole place

Jan

Then there’s Jan who does all the admin, cooks, drives, gardens, arranges your tours, books the masseuses, operates the herbal steam bath, arranges the flowers, gathers the fresh veg from the garden for your tucker (which she herself has grown), cleans the pool and goodness knows what else. For the total eclipse of the sun, she lent us her welding goggles (the mind boggles!).

Tuum, Peppe’s daughter,  is super-chef. Her husband, Toon, is a top cop so don’t complain about the chilli. Then there’s Lala, Took and Ben who multi-skill.



The Cupids family

Our stay covers Xmas, New Year, and the Chinese New Year plus the fantastic Chiang Mai Flower Show. The Xmas party is an event in itself; American turkey, apple pie – the full Monty, plus spectacular entertainment.

And what about the hotel itself ?

Huge rooms with a king size and queen size bed in each; flat-screen TV; mini-bar; free wi-fi. Our room has a balcony overlooking the pool and gardens so that I can watch  the prolific bird-life without stirring from my armchair. Nice pool plus massage and steam bath; one of life’s sybaritic experiences is to have an hour massage (about £6), another hour in the steamer and then a splash in the pool to cool off.

About 20 minutes from down-town Chiang Mai, away from the heat and pollution, it adjoins the Mae Jo Agricultural University, so there are plenty of little restaurants and bars within walking distance that mainly cater for the students. If you feel energetic, the hotel will lend you a bike to explore the surrounding countryside

If you don’t believe me go to ‘Golden Cupids Sansai’ on Tripadvisor and see the reviews. It ranks #4 out of over 300 hotels in Chiang Mai province at this time. It is up there with the Mandarin Oriental that has a tariff 10 times higher. It is in the top 10 ‘best value’ for the whole of Thailand

You can get a virtual tour on www.goldencupids.com.

As that notorious Aussie Tourist Board advert said, ‘So where the bloody hell are you?

'You're barred, you bastards..............!'

An amusing piece in the DT about rude landlords being one of the pleasures of the English pub made me reflect that they are now an endangered species.

The doyen was Norman Balon of the ‘Coach & Horses’ in Soho, home of the Private Eye lunches, which to my eternal regret I never visited, although I have done most Soho pubs over the years.

The title of this piece is also the title of his autobiography which, amazingly, is still in print. Norman retired in 2006 after 53 years in the pub. His clientele included Peter O’Toole, Jeffrey Barnard, John Hurt, and of course, the Eye mob. None was immune from being barred by the fame and fortune. He would tell you to ‘Fack orf’ if he didn’t like the look of you.

I have known many publicans in my misspent career, some unforgettable characters amongst them.

One such was old Dick Weston at the ‘Stock Bear’.

Dick had been a soldier in the Royal Horse Artillery, or, as he used to call it , the Royal Arse Hortillery. His call for time went ‘Time , gennelmen, purleez. Kindly pick up your monkeys and parrots and fall in facing the boat. Kindly disport yourselves in the stable yard. See you all in Church tomorrow morning. I shall be reading the first lesson’. (Fat chance).

This came from his service in India when the tour was 7 years. During the years  the squaddies had often acquired an array of exotic pets which they had with them when embarking on the troopship for home. Hence the command.

God help you if you rapped on the bar for service – ‘This ain’t no knocking shop’ would be the riposte.

When he left school at 12 or 13 he became a carter. One of his weekly tasks was to take an old lady’s urine sample to the doctor’s surgery. One icy day, the horse slipped and the bottle fell over and emptied. Dick said ‘So I whistled up the hoss and got him to pee in the bottle. Next week I passed the old lady’s cottage, and she called out ‘Don’t need you no more, Dick. I’m cured!’

I never saw Dick pull a pint. He left that to his ancient barman while he regaled his customers with such tales.

My old friend Tom Davis kept pubs in Suffolk.

He had a fine disregard for licensing hours. The custom was for the last man in at closing time to lock the front door. One night we were still carousing at 3 a.m. when a police Sergeant marched into the bar. There was a silence, especially as one of the party was Alderman Poole of the Police Committee. Then the copper said ‘Mr Davis, do you know your front door’s unlocked?’ and left.

He was the complete opposite of Norman. He had the manner of a retired Brigadier with a military moustache, and was always impeccably polite – his rudeness was of the subtle variety. If a customer came in whom he didn’t like the look of he would say ‘I think, sir, that you would be better suited in the Woolpack opposite’, a rough boozer. In fact, he was the son of an East End Jewish fishmonger, and far from being a Brigadier he had seen out the war as a constable in the Met. He reckoned he had a good war as there were few men on his beat, so amorous dalliances on nightshift were a regular occurrence.

The wife of one customer  was a frustrated stripper. She needed little excuse. Her old farmer husband had merely to say ‘Make me larf, gal’, and she would gyrate around the saloon bar completely starkers.

Tom was unique; he always bought his round. He would serve himself a double scotch by going up to the optic behind his head while continuing his conversation. His catch-phrase was ‘I’ll just have another; it could be my last’.

Alas, one day it was.

Plus ca change at the BBC..........

The appointment of George Entwhistle (sounds like a Yorkshire comedian) as DG of the BBC has caused raised eyebrows but little surprise. There were three front runners (all Lefties, natch), and Lord Patten, the Chairman of the Beeb, finessed it so that the apparently least lefty got the job.

In the commercial world, there would have been intense competition for one of the world’s most important media jobs. Instead it went to  BBC insider who has never been anywhere else. No surprise there, then.

So let’s see if there is the overdue culture change with a new skipper on the bridge. But don’t hold your breath. This is the munchkin who was in charge of the Jubilee celebrations that were mostly a disaster for the Beeb.

The needed changes are blindingly obvious but what are seen as faults by the license-payers are seen as virtues by the inhabitants of that other planet, Broadcasting House.

Time was when the BBC’s world-wide reputation was tops. People listened to news broadcasts, for example, because they were relied upon as being impartial and unbiased. The TV output was famous everywhere.

Not anymore, and for a long time. The BBC is constantly bombarded with complains about leftist bias and lack of objectivity. I would add triviality, celeb stuff, and poor news selection. We gave up on BBC news a long time ago, but we were forced back last week when Sky-news, Aljazeera, and CNN were disrupted by weather conditions. Nothing had changed.

It is an oddity that there are no business or current affairs programmes in primetime to match CNN’s ‘Quest means Business’ or the must-watch ‘Jeff Randall Live’ on Sky, when once they had Peter Jay’s excellent ‘Money Programme’, ‘The Week in Westminster’ and ‘What the papers say’, all informative, educational and entertaining in the best Reithian tradition.

Programme content? They have a gift for devising a popular format and then messing it up. And over-using the same ‘personalities’, like Allan Titchmarsh, their sniveller-in-chief. They had an unexpected winner in ‘Spring Watch’. Then they brought in a woman with hair like an explosion in a mattress factory who thought we wanted to listen to her not look at wildlife. In a one-hour programme I recorded 38 minutes of yak-yak. It is now ‘Spring Unwatchable’.

‘Countryfile’ used to be excellent, dealing with country matters as the title suggested. They decided it needed more appeal for yoof, so they got rid of the mature women who knew what they were talking about and replaced them with young ones who don’t.

Last week their fit young blonde was visiting an exhibition of Churchill’s paintings at Chartwell.

Her opening was ‘I never knew Churchill was a painter!’ You couldn’t make it up!

In one week, BBC2 screened 165 repeats. BBC3 managed 73 in a shorter period. How many highly-paid BBC jobsworths does it take to change a tape?

And it has an obsession with yoof. Has nobody thought to tell them that the young don’t watch telly? But then the BBC glitterati are detached from the world that the rest of us inhabit.

So here’s a few suggestions, George.

Go back to Reithian principles in the newsroom.

Stop broadcasting endless sport on BBC1 and 2.

Convert BBC3 into a sport-only channel. It only appeals to the feebleminded as it is at present.

Put BBC World on BBC4. Its quality is so superior one would think that it came from a different organisation – excellent news coverage, discussions like the ‘Doha Debate’, ‘Hard Talk’ except when it is being presented by Sakur who fancies himself as another Paxman and ain’t, current affairs and documentaries.

And remember, George: there’s no more money!

Gingering up Mitt Zombie....

One common theme in our election rhetoric is that Mitt should be more aggressive, less defensive and much more masculine in dealing with O. The political right desperately wants to win this election and return the US to economic sanity.

They know they are saddled with Mitt and are doing everything in their power to ginger him up.

As for Mitt, not much sign of a change. He makes mistake after mistake and in so doing appears politically clueless. His idea of a media event over the July 4th holiday was to issue photos of he and his wife enjoying a ride in their water jet. The public, predictably, interpreted his fun as a rich man's sport and as a result the chasm between Mitt and the people became wider.

He does little else than manufacture and deliver political ammunition to the enemy.

Back in the O camp, it has become clear that the nation's poor are being wooed with promises of more benefits. His latest contribution to the welfare state is renewed efforts to limit the so called Bush tax credits to people earning under $250 thousand a year. Evidently, O does not need the middle class in his corner. The growing number of poor people are sufficient to get him elected. And the poor are growing as unemployment rises, new job creation falls and record numbers are entering the disabilities roster.

The latter is curious as the sudden increase leads some to suspect that going easy on passing applicants for disabilities has a direct impact on reducing unemployment statistics. Once disabled, one is permanantly off the unemployment roster.

It is too easy just now to conjure up all sorts of conspiracy theories regarding O's questionable methods for aggregating votes. His recent effort toprovide sanctuary for a section of young Mexicans who were brought to the USA at a young age by their parents looks very much like a case in point. Such pandering to the Mexican population could be interpreted as self interest.

Some argue, and I agree, that any solution to our hemorrhaging southern borders should not include incentives or rewards for continued immigration. O certainly won a lot of Hispanic support for his proposal, however, and that was enough as far as expanding his political base is concerned. 

Obamacare...O wins, sort of!

The Supreme Court decision regarding Obama Care was a giant surprise to one and all. Our beloved pundits had so much egg on their faces they required showers.

Chief Justice Roberts executed a brilliant move by skirting the legality of the issue by declaring the imposition of health insurance a tax rather than a commercial transaction. In so doing, he gave both political parties part of what they wanted. Obama Care is legal, with some small qualifications, and the opposition can now legitimately claim that the Obama administration has acted to create the largest tax increase in US history.

The Democrats are doing their level best to deny that Obama Care is a tax, but they are not very convincing.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are citing the Administration as not only spending too much, but also taxing too much. All in all, the decision will be a boost for Romney. The question is, will the boost be sufficient to win the election for him.

I doubt it.

Most people do not understand the issues involved in Obama Care and vast amounts of people are pleased to have access to health insurance. Small businessmen, however, are not very happy as they will have to come up with additional resources to fund costs allocated to employers. There is talk of small businesses closing down as a result, but this talk comes from politicians and political commentators with an agenda and cannot therefore be taken seriously.

For his part, Romney continues to hack away at Obama without much impact. That the Democrats cast Romney as super rich without sympathy or understanding of the common man does not help his image or his popularity.

It's all Balls!

The squeaky noise you hear of-stage left is Mr Ed Millibean MP (Wallis & Grommit – Lab) calling for a judge-led public inquiry into the Libor scam.

Why should he want this?

Well, first up he sees this as an opportunity to tar his supposed enemy, Dave Camshaft MP (Silly Party) with association with greedy banksters who donate humungous sums of other peoples’ money to the Tory Party in return for undisclosed favours. He is not at all interested in the actual outcome of a judicial inquiry. Leveson, dealing with much less complex issues, is heading for its first anniversary, so we can expect that the findings of an inquiry into the financial sector and its many and complex misdeeds would take so long that everyone would have lost all interest much earlier. And we will have moved on to the next deluge of unremitting bad news, such as the economic fall-out from the inevitable collapse of the Euro.

In any case, Barclays is the tip of the iceberg. It now seems that at least 20 global banks worldwide have been at it, so an inquiry would be both premature and limited.

But his actual target is his real enemy.

Step forward Ed Balls.

The biggest threat to Millibean’s somewhat shaky position as Leader of the Labour Party is a takeover bid by Mr and Mrs Balls. They would make a formidable combination and be very likely to send Dave off for an early bath if he doesn’t get his act together by 2015. Yvette Cooper is one of the best brains in the Commons and has top-level experience plus that unusual attribute in a politician, an attractive personality.

All this banking hanky-panky started on Broon’s watch when Balls was his understrapper-in-chief. If Millibean can taint Balls with the whole scandal, then Balls is yesterday.

All this is bad news for we mere mortals. Banker-bashing may be the present national sport, but  the Financial Services industry is of critical importance to the UK economy. You can be pretty certain that continuing assaults on it by grandstanding politicians concerned only with re-election will not be good for the economy. London is currently the world’s leading centre for international financial services. It employs thousands. It is probably the largest single tax-payer. And London subsides the rest of Britain to a huge extent.

If the politicians regulate financial services out of sight, which is what has tended to happen by over-reaction in the US to the Lehman fiasco, expect an  exodus to Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and other jurisdictions that are totally indifferent to the views of anyone anywhere else.

There will be no judicial inquiry.