The Euro's long 'Goodbye'!

The general opinion amongst the chattering classes is that the new Greek PM, Alexis Tsipras, has got himself into a lose-lose situation. If he does a deal with the hated Troika, the IMF, ECB and EU, he is dead meat. His political support will evaporate overnight. If he doesn’t, the Greek economy will collapse and Greece will have no option but to default and exit the Eurozone.

 

Both views are wrong. To demonstrate this does not need the expertise of a Nobel economics laureate.

 

The measures imposed by the Troika were badly conceived and disastrously implemented.

 

There was an assumption that harsh austerity measures would solve the Greek problem without much effect on growth and employment even though Greece was already in recession. There would be a modest contraction in 2011 and a return to growth the following year. Unemployment would rise to 15% but then reduce quickly.

 

This was la-la land economics.

 

The recession quickly gathered momentum, as it was bound to do. It is now a fully-fledged depression. Unemployment rose to 28%, hardly surprising when cuts in public service spending dictated by the Troika shoved 500,000 people, 10% of the total workforce, onto the dole queues. Youth unemployment is touching 60%; that is the way to civil unrest.

 

The debt situation is worse than at the beginning of the crisis, partly because Government revenues have fallen as the tax base has shrunk. Cuts have removed a huge block of spending-power from the economy, so the anticipated surge in the private sector has not happened. The only way out of this mess is debt-relief and inflation, neither of which fits the Troika’s grand plan. Or Grexit, which the Greeks don’t want (yet)

 

Here is what Roger Bootle had to say a couple of years ago

 

In 2010 and 2011, Greece implemented fiscal cutbacks worth almost 17pc of GDP. But because this caused GDP to wilt, each euro of fiscal tightening reduced the deficit by only 50 cents. . . . Attempts to cut back on the debt by austerity alone will deliver misery alone.

 

Things have got much worse since.

 

 

Germany now finds itself exactly where it does not want to be. The original post-war concept was a European Germany. Now it is a German Europe. It is overwhelmingly the dominant power, cast as the big bully-boy.  It never wanted to give up the mighty DM, but joining the Euro gave it access to artificially cheap money which has boosted its overly-favourable balance of trade. In doing so it has ruined the Club Med.

 

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore says:

 

‘the single currency has made Germany by far the most powerful country in Europe. It has made it more competitive by giving it a relatively cheap currency. But the euro also threatens to debauch Germany’s unimpeachable post-war achievement, financial soundness. Mr Draghi’s attempts to create a genuine monetary union make the zone’s most important nation terrified that it will lose what it sees as its money to the beggars. The suffering south is trying to take the money of the oppressive north. This is a recipe for strife. So each step towards completion of the euro-dream makes its ultimate break-up both more likely and more explosive’.

 

The plain truth is that this is not about saving Greece; it’s about saving the Eurozone. Brussels is terrified that Grexit might start a Club Med stampede for the exit. Monetary union has been a catastrophic failure. Greece’s new Finance Minister gives it two years. The big question is what can be salvaged from the wreckage

 

What we are seeing is the death-agonies of the Euro. It will be prolonged and nasty but the single currency must eventually collapse under the weight of its fundamental contradiction, that it cannot work without fiscal union and the member countries surrendering complete sovereignty over their financial affairs, as Delors told us years ago; that is never going to happen.

 

That’s a win-win situation in anybody’s  money.

 

Provided it is not Euros.

 

 

 

Another British institution bites the dust........

An unpleasant piece in the Torygraph by a teenage scribbler gloating over the demise of Simpsons-in-the –Strand, that gastronomic icon of Britishness.

 

Here is how he describes it.

 

 

‘Simpson’s was an unventilated backwater, stale and dispiriting, whose only tics of animation were the energetic repetition of lazy clichés.

One of its reputation-making customers was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but this was in the period when he had submerged himself into an especially loopy version of Spiritualism. Conan Doyle thought the dead were speaking to him. Any visitor to Simpson’s knows this to be true. And today the dead are tipping us the wink, saying: “I’d go somewhere else, if I were you”. Will we be losing a great institution when the patinated silver-plated cloches and creaking butlers’ trolleys are consigned to the antiques trade and the pompous chandeliers to architectural salvage dealers? Maybe, but most traditions are, like Simpson’s itself, inventions of the 19th century. And there are some traditions we can do very well without.

 

Apart from Conan Doyle, Dickens and PG Wodehouse were regulars.

 

And me, in those halcyon days when Maggie was putting a bit of stick about, the City was awash with loadsamoney, and three-course lunches accompanied by a bottle or two of Chateau Collapso were the way of doing business until replaced by the modern generation’s preference for rabbit-food and cocaine.

 

It had its own culture. Dress code was jacket, collar and tie in the days before Dave made scruff-order fashionable. It was noted for its roast beef Yorkshire pud and ‘bubble’. The huge baron of beef came round on  a trolley, and you could have it any way you liked, from rare to well-done. The trick was to tip the carver, when there would be so much beef on the plate that there was scarcely room for the veg. Otherwise you got a couple of slices!

 

The writer goes on

 

‘An exhausted Simpson’s could never compete in a new London food culture where foraging, sourcing, cooking and tending bar have a youth appeal which working in television or music once had. Simpson’s is dying not because it became very old, but because it became irrelevant’.

 

What that particular piece of verbal ordure means is almost beyond me by I think he is saying ‘Yoof don’t dig it, know what I mean!’ Personally,  I would rather go on a starvation diet than be seen in his kind of right-on nosherie.

 

The paper is a bit kinder in a separate short piece. It says

 

Simpson’s-in-the-Strand has been delighting patrons since 1828, when it opened as a coffee house and chess club. With its richly reassuring fare illuminated by chandeliers, and wood panelling interrupted only by the odd monarch in oils, it is perhaps a quintessence of Britishness. Not that it has failed to move with the times. Women have been allowed in since 1984. It is sad, then, that the Savoy hotel, which owns Simpson’s, feels further update is required. It is seeking a chef or, worse, brand, to run the restaurant, which may even lose its name. An update of the Bateman cartoon on Simpson’s menus may be required, with the red-faced chap hurling his knife in outrage at “the gentleman who suggested Simpson’s needed 'revitalising’”.

 

Not entirely accurate. Women have always been allowed in but before 1984 only in the upstairs restaurant.

 

This is sure to be a case of Hutber’s Law: ‘all improvement is deterioration’.

 

At least it answers the question ‘Is nothing sacred?’ It is ‘No!’

 

After Ed; is this the man to watch?

One of the most depressing  features of modern politics is  the rise over the last twenty years of the political clone, educated expensively, top university, never employed outside politics, no other experience, always moving in  the same circles, resident in the Westminster village, a member of an establishment elite. The outcome has been an increasing contempt for  MP’s, distrust of politicians generally, and the general feeling that ‘they don’t understand us. They are not like us’ (perfectly justified).

 

Thus applies par excellence to the leaders of the three major parties – all public school Oxbridge alumni who have hardly ever earned a penny that was not paid out of the public purse.

 

The country is crying out for a different sort of politician and especially for a different sort of leader. It craves for a PM of principle; a conviction  politician who is not led by the focus groups or the Red Tops’ headlines. Maggie was the last, and now careerism rules. ‘If you don’t like my principles I have others!’

 

Is there one amongst the present dismal crop in the Commons capable of delivering a bit of clout to the country’s governance?

 

Step forward, Major D.O.W Jarvis MBE, MP.

 

He was largely unknown outside the Westminster village and his Yorkshire constituency until last week when the Daily Telegraph trailed him as a future successor to Ed Miliband.

 

His CV is quite at odds with those of our political clones.

 

He has a BA  in International Relations and an MA in Conflict, Security and Development, not a bad academic background for a political career.

 

He served 15 years in the Parachute Regiment, which has perfectly trained him for currently yomping 15 miles a day  when out canvassing.

 

He did a tour in Kosovo where he was on General Mike Jackson’s staff, Sierra Leone where our gallant lads were sent to sort out the arm-choppers, Iraq, Afghanistan twice and Northern Ireland.

 

He clearly has outstanding leadership qualities. The Parachute Regiment is no place for wimps or ditherers. He is unusually respected on all sides of the House, and that’s also unusual in that snake-pit.

 

His blunt approach to managing affairs is the old 6 p’s military maxim ‘perfect planning prevents piss-poor performance’.

 

He would make the current crop of Party leaders look like (in the immortal words of Captain Mainwaring) ‘a bunch of nancy boys’.

 

With his background he would surely attract the disillusioned voter who is tired of the old gang and is looking for a leader who can put a bit of stick about.

 

It’s early days. Ed is going nowhere yet (in both senses) and Major Jarvis has only been in the House for less than 5 years.

 

But he could be the one to watch!

After Charlie, a reality check.

The strategy of Islamic Jihad is entirely transparent, except possibly to our political elite and the Daily Mail. The war-plan is to replace a free society with a controlled caliphate. Crazy, of course.

 

By small scale terrorist acts like Charlie, they want to drive a backlash against moderate, decent, hard-working Muslims, remove a possible source of information and create a marginalised community who, if not actively supporting them, will not co-operate in bringing them down. Alienating  the Muslim community will be a major achievement, even better if they can provoke boycotts of Mr Patel’s corner shop and other Muslim enterprises.

 

They are aided and abetted in this by the ranting Islamofoamers  who spittle-flecked outpourings defile the letters columns of the press and blog-sites incessantly to the point of obsession.

 

They have already succeeded in provoking serious retaliation, such as the 77 murders by a Norwegian fanatic, the Swedish mosque that has been attacked about 300 times. This all helps to create a Muslim Fifth Column which the jihadis would hope to be a source of cover and surreptitious help, including ‘safe houses’.

 

The present goal is to gather more recruits , and to do this they must force peaceful and law-abiding Muslims not to integrate with the secular societies in which they live. Their targets are symbolic – 9/9, 7/7, Charlie.

 

The over-the-top reaction of politicians the media and the French people generally was a major success for jihad. It showed the Muslim world how a handful of jihadis can shake an entire nation to its core, whereas after 7/7 it was ‘Keep calm and carry on’.

 

There is another dimension to the ‘Charlie’ affair. To portray the Prophet naked or with a bomb in his turban is not funny’ It’s incitement. The Nazis used similar grotesque cartoons to demonise Jews.

 

It was blasphemy- pure and simple. And we must remember that this was only decriminalised in England in 2008, in case anyone thinks it archaic.

 

The Biblical injunction is ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:  Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;  And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments’.

 

This is part of the Abrahamic law. It refers to idolatry, not to representations of God, Allah, Mohammed, Jesus Christ. So it seems that prohibition of pictorial representations of Mohamed is a relatively modern interpretation of the Koran. Early Islamic art seems not to have had any such inhibition

 

Nevertheless God was not represented on the English stage for 500 hundred years, between the mid16^th Century and 1951.

 

The cartoons deliberately set out to outrage and offend. They succeeded beyond the editor’s worst nightmares. But to defend them on the grounds of ‘free speech’ is laughable.

 

A democratic and civilised society assumes that there is tacit agreement to tolerate religious or cultural differences without deliberately insulting or abusing people who do not share identical values. Violence to impose alien views – political or religious – is an enemy of democracy. Those who go down this path must be shown with the utmost vigour that tolerance is not weakness.

 

We must understand that there is no ’war’ between Islam and the West. If we do not, the jihadis will have won a major victory.

 

 

Free speech? You're avin a larf!

After the wave of outrage over Paris comes the outrage over the attack on ‘free speech’. So we now have a new wave of hypocrisy. Everyone is fulminating against an horrendous attack on free speech. Our masters are loudest whilst simultaneously proposing more draconian ‘snooping laws. They have been telling us for years that being rude, abusive, insulting or just plain nasty about other peoples’  colour, religion, sexual orientation or what-have-you is unacceptable – and passing ‘hate speech’ legislation to make sure we get the message. The response of the French Government has been to arrest an obscure comedian.

 

Now it’s quite OK. Or not.

 

When did ‘free speech’ ever happen? The truth is we haven’t got it and have never had it fully.

 

‘Free speech’ is what our masters allow us, and what they, not us, define as ‘free’.

 

Until the libertarian sixties changed almost everything, we had precious little.  

 

The Lord Chamberlain’s Office censored the theatre (although hardly anyone knew who the Lord Chancellor was). Publications were covered by a whole range of censorship legislation, including the Obscene Publications Act intended to protect us against anything that might tend ‘to corrupt and deprave’ (that is, anyone except the censors  who were immune to such).

 

Films were censored by the British Board of Film Control, whose ‘X’ certificate was eagerly sought by the film industry because it signified that it might be a bit more naughty than the average Ealing Comedy.

 

But it didn’t end with the BBFC. Local Authority Watch Committees could still ban films approved by the Board if they thought it might offend the sensibilities of the local residents.

 

The Chairman of the Southend Borough Council Watch Committee got an unsought headline in the Sunday Times over ‘Deep Throat', starring Marlon Brando, in which there was an allusion to oral sex. ‘We will not swallow oral sex in Southend’, he thundered, thus assuring his small footnote in a ‘Did I really say that?’ dictionary of quotations.

 

Now we have the non-Governmental extra-legal censors.

 

TV is at the forefront. Almost all of their output is repeats. They go back years to some of the most toe-curling programmes ever made. How do you fancy ‘On the Buses Christmas Special’? In July.

 

But you will never see the brilliant ‘Ain’t ‘alf ‘ot. Mum’. Why? Because we can’t possibly offend the sensibilities of the ‘gay’ community by re-running a series in which one of the leading characters is an outrageous and hilariously funny homo and the Sergeant Major’s favourite bellow is ‘You is a bunch of poofters; what is you?’

 

Or ‘Love thy neighbour’ although it was a parody of racial attitudes.

 

Bernard Manning would never have got a booking, and we would have been denied Jim Davison’s hilarious Jamaican, Chalky - (Traffic cop: ‘Chalky, you are driving drunk’. Chalky; ‘Tank God man; me tink me steering ad gaan!’).

 

Today’s ‘comics’ exist solely on foul language, which is perfectly acceptable to the TV . It is too dangerous to venture an actual ‘joke’.

 

And we must not forget our very own censor moderators. A short time ago I posted blog about the silly furore of Madonna appearing topless, and reproduced the picture that was published world-wide. The blog was taken down very quickly. I have a photograph of a young Debby Harry topless. Would that be taken down? After all, I downloaded it from the DT itself

 

But of course in the past the Government has been at the forefront, wearing its ‘ anti-racism’ cloak. It is now replaced with one against immigration and another on Muslim terrorism. You have to hand it to these guys. They can shed  their principles and their political clothing faster than a strip-tease artiste can shed her g-string.

 

It is they who have driven censorship of just about everything ever since the Blair/Brown reign of terror, all of which remain untouched by a supposedly libertarian Tory party.  In the last few years we have seen a sustained attack on free speech by politicians, the PC fraternity, and a whole range of  outfits like the BBC

 

You can be done under hate speech laws because the person at the receiving end says it is, not because any reasonable person (or jury) would share that view. How’s that for perversion of the rules of evidence?

 

And then there was the episode involving the egregious Alibhai-Brown, Guardianista and BBC  poster girl. She wrote a piece supporting the stoning of women. A small-time politician tweeted that maybe we should stone her instead. He was taken into custody.

 

An old age pensioner, on being told to remove the garden gnomes from hsi council house garden by some jobsworth, replied ‘ Can’t I even do my f*****g garden the way I want?’ and was promptly given an £80 ticket.

 

An effect of the censorship on porn (which today we would laugh at as being ridiculously ‘soft’ porn) was huge corruption in the Met. The Commissioner, Sir Robert Mark, said that a good police force was that employed  fewer crooks than it arrested. He demolished the ’dirty squad’, the 'Obscenity Unit', not being able to find a single honest cop within it.

 

But there is a line not to be crossed. ‘Freedom’ and ‘Licence’ are two quite different things. ‘Charlie’ was licence.

 

Of course there must be limits. The English law of defamation (one of the most draconian anywhere) defines it as ‘tending to bring a person into hatred ridicule or contempt’. Uniquely, the burden of proof is upon the defendant. And this protection is only available to the wealthy; it is ineligible for legal aid.

 

The Pope has just spoken out about the wickedness of abusing or vilificating a person because of religious belief. Freedom does not mean licence. What is acceptable should be governed by tolerance, good manners, and good taste. ‘ Charlie’ was totally reprehensible if for no other reason than that it was excruciatingly unfunny. It was deliberately, gratuitously and purposely offensive without any redeeming feature.

 

Of course, that in no way mitigates the appalling consequences. Repetition can only be  prevented through ruthless extermination of people who are of the ilk of those who committed this atrocity.

 

The big lesson to be learned is that when Governments try to regulate human behaviour, the results will always be disastrous and sometimes tragic.

 

 

 

 

America and the Paris march..........

 Yes, O or Kerry or Biden should have been there to hold hands with the fantastic 40 who did show up. But the US was a bit confused by it all. We are not quite sure what all the fuss is about. Besides, the short notice was not appreciated, especially now that it is American professional football playoff time. Most of us are glued to our telly and don't feel guilty at all over watching what has become our national sport.

 

Europe is currently engaged in a broad debate over immigration. To them, this means Muslim immigration. When we hear the term we think Mexican and Hispanic and ask 'so what's the big deal?'  Also, America is not a tribal society, but rather are the product of huge melting pots that result in, as Europe would have everyone believe, a largely cultureless and lo-bred society. European countries and the UK have the delightful baggage of ethnic, cultural and linguistic history to preserve and protect. Threats to this heritage are anathema to the integrity of their social structure.

 

Confusion is also precipitated over our having politicized the event in Paris. These days we seem to be politicizing just about everything. The political right pretends to be shocked by O's failure to properly address the Paris protocols. They think of O as more than half Muslim anyway and many are still convinced he is foreign born. It is difficult for ordinary Americans to understand why we should be called to rally to this particular event and not over other equally misogynistic acts of terror.

 

That the Charlie Hebdo slaughter has morphed into a debate on the status of French Jews adds another layer of complexity to the mix. Reading the European press over the past several months leads one to believe that anti-Semitism is very much on the rise again. We read of Jewish citizens forsaking their country for a better life elsewhere such as the UK, the USA or Israel. Given this context it is somewhat non sequitur for public rallies for Jewishness as evidenced by people carrying 'je suis juif' placards. Are we now to understand that anti-Semitism has seriously faded in France, or is the equation one of the French favoring Jews over Muslims?

 

Not coincidentally I am sure, are the rallies in Germany which condemn contemporary waves of immigration as both overly Islamic and insufficiently German. The rhetoric of German participants shown in the American media are uncomfortably reminiscent of attitudes prevailing in the Third Reich. They berate immigrants for not speaking German and not being in touch with the fatherland and its people and values.

 

It would  appear that Europe has just experienced a massive injection of anti-Muslim sentiments. The question Americans are asking is where will Europe go from here. Clearly, France and Germany have had enough and the UK is right behind them. Will this movement wane or will there be specific actions taken to curtail immigration into Europe from outside the EU. Or will the reaction to the Charlie Hebdo assault be another sizable brick added to an already overladen camel's back.

 

Those useless Russian sanctions.......

The problem with sanctions against Russia is that they will not work. They never do. They usually penalise the blameless and have little impact on the ruling classes.

 

I was a member of Lord Soames’ team that monitored the 1980 elections in  Rhodesia. Sanctions had been in force for 15 years. The effects had been largely beneficial. True the only Scotch to be had was ‘Hundred Pipers’ but the overall outcome had been to stimulate manufacturing industry in a country previously dependent on agriculture and mining. All paper was recycled. A new wine industry grew up, although the taste of the end-product was sufficient reason for capitulation.Any make of European car was available except British, which illustrates another possible outcome of sanctions. Other countries will take advantage to snatch business for themselves.

 

The Smith rule collapsed because John Vorster cut off its arms supply, believing that a settlement in Rhodesia would take the heat off South Africa. Vorster did not understand that in war you ‘fight forward’.

 

It is claimed that sanctions brought about the demise of apartheid. They did not. Apartheid ended because the country had become ungovernable. The sporting ban had an effect on morale where the national religion is rugby but there was little  sign of economic damage. And the US ‘disinvestment’ strategy whereby American companies had to get out of South Africa merely led to their disposal locally at fire-sale prices. One cheeky Cape Town restaurateur actually registered ‘McDonalds’ as his brand name!

 

The US constantly used sanctions against Hispanic regimes that it disapproved of, not necessarily because they were ‘undemocratic’ but because they were seen as ‘communist’-inclined. They simply made the US even more unpopular throughout the whole region.

 

Sanctions against Serbia in the ‘90s did not prevent the invasion of Bosnia. I saw some of the results of the subsequent policy of ethnic cleansing.

 

The Russian situation is unusual. Sanctions are used more frequently against small countries by big ones. The most notorious modern failure is the continuing sanctions by the US against Cuba, which are still in force despite the recent diplomatic rapprochement. They were useless in destabilising the regime, but they did give Castro a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cast himself as the Hispanic hero facing down the big Yanqui bully. He was very successful in this role.

 

North Korea is the most loathsome regime of modern times against some pretty fierce competition. It has long been subject to Western sanctions that have had no discernible effect, not even in preventing the acquisition of nukes. China ensures that Kim Jong-un stays in place as a barrier against a West-leaning government on  its northern border.

 

Russia is in increasingly dire straits economically but it is abundantly plain that this is overwhelmingly due to the collapse of the oil price. Incredibly, its response has been to increase production even further to garner more dollars as the rouble heads south at breakneck speed.

 

Those who believe that sanctions are an alternative to armed conflict should reflect that when  Pericles imposed sanctions against a neighbour for abducting a number of women, it led to the Peloponnesian  War.

 

And that was in 432 BC.

 

 

2015: Old Haymaker's Almanac.

Once again it’s the time of year when the chattering classes give us the benefit of their predictions for the next twelve months. Most will be in the ‘to hell in a handcart’ variety so as not to encourage  an unacceptable outbreak of cheerfulness.

 

So what’s my best guess on how the new year will turn out?

 

First up, Russia.

 

Vlad the Invader will be advised to fasten his seatbelt; he’s in for a bumpy ride. He gives a whole new meaning to the old cliché ‘between a rock and a hard place’.

 

The rock is economic. The rouble is crashing. There is double digit inflation. People with money are getting out of the banks fast. Capital flight is huge (much of it to London, thanks Vlad).The banks are facing ‘the crunch’; already one has had to be bailed out. Bonds are looking at ‘junk’ status. Food prices are soaring partly because of the rouble’s troubles and partly because of Putin’s crackpot counter sanctions against EU food exports. Industry is winding down and car production has been all but scrubbed, making it difficult for the ordinary Russian to buy a new car.

 

Putin reckons the Russian people will tighten their belts until they cut themselves in half, as they did in 1940.

 

Dream on, Vlad. This is not 1940 and it’s not Stalingrad. It is not Communist; it is bourgeois. A huge number of Russians have got accustomed to Western living standards, cars, luxury goods, foreign travel. Do you really think that they will give that up just to massage your ego?

 

His major asset, oil, is now trading at less about half  Russia’s break-even price which means that repayment of short-term foreign debt is at risk and the budget has been decimated. If there is a default Russia could be back to 1998 with financial collapse and hyper-inflation.

 

The hard-place is the Ukraine.

 

If Putin doesn’t back off he is facing an economic crisis of humungous proportions. If he does his prestige will collapse along with his standing amongst the Russian people. That could be the             occasion for a putsch. If you are naïve enough to believe the polls, he has an 85% popular approval rating. But when life for ordinary Russians becomes exceptionally hard, as is possible during the ferocious Russian winter we can anticipate a rapid rise in discontent leading to street demos such as we have just seen in Moscow.

 

His main props, the oligarchs, must surely be getting uneasy. Some who were previously close to Putin have fallen out of favour and been either jailed or bankrupted.

 

His Stalinesque approach to political opposition is illustrated by the case of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s main political opponent. He has been given a suspended sentence (possibly much to Putin’s annoyance) for defrauding two firms. There appears to be a total lack of evidence, not that this is of particular importance in the Russian judicial system. One of the firms, a French cosmetics company, said that it was entirely unaware of any fraud. His brother got three and a half years; intimidation of the whole family is part of the game.         

 

Vladimir Yevtushenkov was once one of Russia’s richest men, one of the inner cabal. Then he was falsely accused of money-laundering. The case was dropped      ; even Putin acknowledged that there was no case to answer. That didn’t stop him from stripping Yevtushenkov of his huge interest in the Bashneft oil company which was promptly given to Rosneft which is headed by one of Putin’s cronies.

A

nd what of the oil price which is so critical to Russia’s economic welfare?

T

he last time a fall of this magnitude happened was between 1986 and 1999. It had dramatic  geopolitical fall-out. The Soviet Union collapsed. Iraq invaded Kuwait. Yasser Arafat, deprived of his Soviet ally and Arab money, agreed to recognise Israel.

 

Now there may be an element of history repeating itself. One of the factors in the rapprochement between the US and Cuba maybe due to Castro’s fear that he is about to lose his 100,000 bpd of subsidised oil from Venezuela, which itself is a basket-case. Algeria, Iran, and the Gulf States need high oil prices to grub-stake their own populations sothat they don’t get silly ideas about ‘democracy’. Egypt needs Arab oil money to prop it up during its present mess.

 

And on the brighter side, ISIS will lose a large chunk of its oil-smuggling money.

 

The ‘experts’, are predicting that Brent crude will fall to below $50 or rise to something like former prices. Don’t bet the farm on either.

 

An easier prediction is that we will continue to see the growth of far-right and far-left parties in Europe, especially where there is strong opposition to the euro -  which is most of them.

 

In France the National Front is gaining strength quickly. 2014 was its best year yet and Le Pen is front-runner for the 2017 Presidential elections. The Swedish Democrat party, which has been accused of neo-Nazism, holds the balance of power, and the far-right Jobbik party in Hungary is Hungary’s third-largest party, winning 20% of the vote at the last election. In Austria the far-right Freedom party had its best year in the EU elections since 1999. The Marxist Podemos movement in Spain is rapidly gaining strength against a background of 54% youth unemployment. Russia is backing nationalist parties in Europe including funding the NF in France; its own ideology is extreme nationalism.       

 

The prediction for the USA is rather mundane. Obama’s hand on the tiller, if it was ever there, will become ever more palsied. Meanwhile the American economy will continue to       surge despite the best efforts of Congress which has little interest outside Washington and the endless manoeuvring for power, influence and dollars.

 

The UK scenario will be much more interesting.

I

t is entering one of the most turbulent political situation since WW2. Forget the opinion polls.  The only one that counts takes place in May. On present showing I would put my money on a small but workable majority for the Tories, obliteration for the Lid-Dems, single-figure seats for UKIP, a loss of at least 40 seats by Labour, and a similar gain by SNP, although the Scottish bloodbath predicted by the Fat Boys of Peckham is hype, not serious politics.

 

The nightmare outcome will be SNP holding the balance of power and forming a coalition with Labour as the Government, notwithstanding its rejection by the English. Already the Scots have registered their arrogant demands such as the closure of Faslane and the removal of all nukes from Scottish soil – the defence and security policy for the whole of the United Kingdom being dictated by a gang of Scotch nats. And they have made it plain that if Cameron introduces a Bill to re-legalise fox hunting they will oppose it. That there is no fox hunting in Scotland gives a vivid insight into their mind-set.

 

If this comes to pass, listen out for the sound of breaking glass.