After Germanwings, what next?

Predictably in the aftermath of the German-wings tragedy, the media chorus is ‘Something must be done!’. They say that the airlines  must do more about their aircrew’s fitness to fly, and especially psychiatric issues that might affect flight safety.

 

Easier said than done, for these reasons.

 

Although the best airlines will undoubtedly have proper welfare systems to protect aircrew health as far as possible, medical examinations are not their responsibility. This lies with the Civil Aviation Authority  (in the UK) which carries out all medical examinations with specially trained doctors. The examination is, as to be expected, pretty stringent and a medical certificate can be refused for common problems, such as high blood pressure. It is required every six months for all commercial pilots.

 

The media pressure, in the light of the astonishing revelation that  the German-wings co-pilot was having treatment for suicidal tendencies, is for greater attention to psychiatric issues.

 

This highlights another problem.

 

The effectiveness of any medical examination depends on the patient being fully frank with the doctor. If he conceals the fact that he is taking medication for some unrevealed health problem it is extremely difficult to get at the truth. This is particularly so with mental problems which don’t often have  physical symptoms that would be revealed by a routine examination.

 

Interestingly, the FAA has lifted its ban on pilots taking anti-depressants as this merely encourages them to conceal the fact.

 

One possible solution is to require all doctors treating aircrew patients to notify the CAA if they discover a problem that might affect a pilot’s performance and flight safety.

 

But this raises immediate issues of medical ethics and patient confidentiality. Perhaps these ought not to be regarded as sacrosanct when public protection is paramount.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obama, Bibi & MENA...........

Iran, Israel and the USA dominate the world news scene here with the personal spat between Bibi Netanyahu and Obama monopolizing media reports. Interestingly, Netanyahu is a conservative who relies on the political right and extreme right to form a government in Israel. This puts him at odds with the vast majority of American Jews who reside much more to the political left and center than Bibi.

 

 Never have American Jews been so conflicted with respect to their ties with Israel. Their traditional liberalism goes back into American immigration history and its imported legacy of anti-Semitism. Only the liberals welcomed, or at least accepted, the Jewish immigrants. As a result, the offspring of these immigrants continue to support the liberals.

 

Such supporters are often wealthy professionals, businessmen, retailers, landlords and artists who could easily be counted among our conservative population. Many of our American 'champagne socialists' come from this type of background. It would not surprise me at all to begin witnessing a slow but gradual move to the right on the part of Jewish Americans.

 

As for Iran, our Dear Leader and senior diplomats are still sucking the dry and bitter fruit of negotiations that are going nowhere. It would be more realistic to expect world peace than a viable deal with the successors to the Persian empire. The Ayatollahs will have their nuclear weapons no matter what and will continue to promote Shiite regimes throughout the Middle East because it is their nature to do so.

 

Persia has long dominated all aspects of social, cultural, martial and economic life in the area in spite of the long-gone Golden Age of the Arabs. Americans are so fixated on the Saudis and Egyptians that we fail to examine what is going on among the Shiites and their prime movers in Iran. Bibi is correct in his desire to control the Iranian regime, but few people are listening to him and chief among them is O himself.

 

For his part, O seems to hold the opinion that his own personal goodwill, charm and vision will miraculously generate a calmer and more Amerophyle Middle East.  (You are right, Ameophyle is not a word, nor is Amerophobia, but they work for me and perhaps, some day, they will gain popularity.)

 

As for the Saudis, they are a third class alai. They are pathetically soft militarily and their so called air force is peopled by a bunch of playboy princes who have no stomach for conflict. The ruling elite are scared to death of the Wahabi religious leaders and of their being outed for their decadence and corruption. The bottom line is the Saudis are a very small, easily intimidated and disunited people who are totally dependent on the good will of the USA for their survival.

 

Egypt is and has long been an underachieving country with unrealized potential. Like the Saudis, they rely heavily upon American political and economic support. For the USA's part, these two countries provide a buffer between the Arab world at large and Israel. Just now, Egypt has its own social and economic problems to contend with and has again reverted to military rule to maintain order.

 

This country is the theological, intellectual and cultural head of the Muslim world, but has done little to parley this role into one of regional equilibrium.

 

Complicating it all are the ISIL fanatics and their extreme Sunni Muslim beliefs. Suddenly, the USA's biggest worry in the Arab world is this spawn of Saudi Arabia and allied Sunni Arab countries who detest the West as well as their own national leaders.

 

One light at the end of the tunnel is the prospect that the fanatical Sunnis will war with the fanatical Shias and thereby substantially neutralize their respective threats. Evidence of this happening is widening in places like Nigeria, Libya and even Tunisia. A deeper probe would undoubtedly explore more such examples. Who knows where this conflict will leave the Assad regime in Syria, but little by little Assad is looking more and more reasonable.

 

By way of conclusion, it should be noted that the American man in the street has little understanding or interest in the Middle East. Unlike the liberal Northeast, the population of Texas and the Southwest follows conservative gut feelings inculcated through a history of immigration from Northern Europe.

 

The Southwestern work ethic remains intact and foreigners are defined as anyone not from here. Middle Easterners from wherever fall into this category and are accordingly treated circumspectly at best. Politically, there is much more intrinsic support for Netanyahu's views toward the Arab world than Obama's even though few people here have any affection for either.

 

 

 

 

This Election: 'How long, o Lord, how long?'

We have never had an election campaign like this before, because we have never had fixed-term Parliament. This unnecessary and foolish law, which has Clegg’s fingerprints all over it, took away the Prime Minister’s privilege of deciding the date. The subsequent campaign would last no more than six weeks.

 

Now the campaign drags on for months. And this one is particularly vacuous. It is policy-lite. We have been fed sound-bites, platitudes, clichés and Nuspeak.

 

The first duty of government is the defence of the realm. So what’s the defence policy of the three main parties? They are not telling us. It has not been mentioned.

 

Yet the world is becoming  increasingly dangerous. The Russian bear is prowling around the Baltic and taunting the RAF just outside UK airspace. ISIS has now spread to the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Cameron’s response has been to slash the military capacity of the UK to perilous levels.

 

The army is only a quarter of its size in the 1980s. The navy is at its smallest since the days of Henry VIII. The RAF admits that it does not have sufficient capacity to properly defend the country. The UK no longer conducts maritime surveillance because Nimrod  early warning aircraft was scrapped, so we can no longer track Russian submarines. It could be replaced by an American equivalent. The cost would be almost identical to the amount of foreign aid given to India.

 

But then we don’t have wars any longer; just ‘conflicts’ and ‘insurgencies’.

 

Only Farage seems to want to mention immigration despite the fact that it is near the top of the electorate’s agenda. Perhaps this is because Cameron is still being taunted with his 2010 promise to cut it to ‘tens of thousands’ when the latest figures show a gross increase of 500,000. The OBR predicts 300,000 over the next term. The plain fact is that the free movement of people within the EU means that control is impossible so long as Britain stays in the Club.

 

The Tories have a Long Term Economic Plan. Nobody is quite sure what is in it. Labour appears to have no economic policy at all apart from its usual tax-and-spend approach.

 

None of the parties seems to want to confront the real problem of governing Britain.

 

It is that the UK is over-centralised; the government is in too many places where it has no business to be, and all power is concentrated in Whitehall. The solution is to shift power to the lowest possible level. True, Osborne is moving in this direction with his plans to further empower Manchester, which brings us to ‘our’ NHS with Manchester being given a bigger role and large budget for health care.

 

The over-riding posture of the parties is ‘chuck more money at it’ which ignores the basic fact that the problems of the NHS are structural; a service that is ‘free at the point of delivery’ creates bottomless and unaffordable demand. The NHS is the world’s second largest employer. It is an unwieldy monolith. The solutions lie in charging for some services; shifting most care services elsewhere, such as to major local authorities where Manchester seems to be setting a precedent; and leaving the NHS to concentrate on hospital provision.

 

 

'So they  go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent'.

 

 

 

Americs: the state we're in!

One thing that struck me about O's prayer breakfast speech was that he need not have gone back into medieval history to find examples of Christian atrocities against mankind. The Germans did it, the Russians did it, the French did it, the Croats did it, and the list goes on well into the tribal manifestations of European nations and not to mention what our pioneers did to the native Americans.

 

My point here is why bother? Misanthropy prevails in the history of mankind and is committed sooner or later by just about everyone. So what's new? Civilization is about two minutes thick when measured in the time it takes for a torturer to reduce a victim to an animal state.

 

Obama is frequently out of his depth. He is confused and is best advised to not address matters theological at all. Indeed, he is equally well advised to not address anything that is the least bit complicated. His own words are enough to have condemned him on several occasions and it is perhaps overly kind to simply write these issues off as wishful thinking on his part.

 

The American political scene is on hold until a new president is elected. And even then, it may remain on hold should the current forerunner, Democrat Hillary Clinton, become our Potus. The next year and a half will be a difficult period.

 

O will do everything in his power to round out his legacy with monumental efforts to make or rewrite history in his favor. This effort will be directed toward social welfare legislation, immigration reform sympathetic to Hispanics and the normalization of relations with certain discredited nations.

 

He will not tackle tax reform, education, agriculture and trade because he is unable to resolve them in a manner consistent with his own liberal mind set. He will use Presidential Decrees to establish and hopefully enforce his legacy. He will encounter adversity in Congress, in the conservative media and in the courts.

 

For their part, O and Hillary's political adversaries will most likely continue to rant and rave while unsuccessfully addressing the serious  rifts in the Republican Party. There is a long list of candidates willing to contest the Republican primaries. The list ranges from RINOS (Republicans in Name Only) to establishment moderates and on to the extreme right wing.

 

At present, forerunners are Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who is to the right of center, anti-union and pro-life.

 

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is also out front. He represents the soft side of Republicanism and is often cited as too liberal for the party. His Mexican born wife, Columba, will attract Hispanics as will Jeb's sympathetic view toward border and immigration issues. One big question is will he suffer at the polls from "Bush fatigue".

 

Marco Rubio is also towards the head of the pack with his cultured style, articulate ways and possessing the vigor of youth. He is to the right of Jeb and to the left of Scott. One factor about Marco is his largely single issue posture. As a descendant of Cuban immigrants, he is resolved to fight the recognition of Castro's Cuba.

 

Were the primaries to be held today, also-rans would include Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Gov. of Texas Rick Perry, former Senator Rick Santorum, and former Gov. of Arkansas Mike Huckabee, Senators Ted Cruz from Texas and Lindsey Graham from South Carolina and several others.

 

The institutionalized ripping apart of these candidates in the debates and speeches leading up to the primaries will contribute significantly to the gaiety of nations. Tune in for a revealing and no-holds-barred show.

 

Wear protective gear as much mud will be slung.

 

Who wants to ban e-cigs?

It would seem that the antis campaigning against e-cigarettes are working their way through the entire Liars Lexicon.

 

‘They’ torture statistics so that they will say anything the antis want.

 

‘They’ cherry-pick scientific information to fit their case.

 

‘They’ present opinion as fact.

 

‘They’ pervert logic to assert ‘proofs’ or actually non-proofs.

 

‘They’ say that there is no proof that e-liquid, which consists of an inert oil and a tiny amount of nicotine (or not; you can order the nicotine-free version)  plus a whole range of flavours from Havana cigar and Jack Daniels to bubble-gum, is harmless.

 

Try applying that ‘logic’ to all human activity. It will not get you far. You can’t prove a negative! But turn it around. What ‘they’ are really saying is that there is no proof that it is harmful. There is not a scrap of scientific evidence that the vapour given off by the liquid is harmful in any way. Nothing is burned. The liquid is simply heated; it has no similarity with tobacco smoke and all its harmful outcomes; it leaves no odour on your clothes; no tacky deposits on your furnishings and TV screen; no dirty ash trays; no eye-watering smell of smoke.

 

The UK Government’s own tobacco tsar has described e-cigs as the greatest breakthrough in public health this century, with the potential to save millions of lives in being.

 

‘They’ say that it is a ‘gateway’ product that will encourage people, especially the young, to take up tobacco.

 

The logic of this is impenetrable.

 

What possible reason could there be for someone who has never smoked to take up e-cigs? If ‘they’ can produce one example out of the entire population of the planet it would be as much a surprise as the Second Coming’.

 

‘They’ say that e-cigs don’t stop people smoking tobacco. Tell that to the 2 million+ people in UK who have switched. Until two years ago I was a two-pack a day man. Not anymore. I don’t have the slightest craving for a cigarette, and when out of curiosity I have tried one I find them devoid of any flavour or satisfaction whatsoever. Apart from which I am saving at least £3000 a year.

 

So who are ‘they’?

 

This piece by an American scientist may give a clue.

 

‘Big Pharma — notably Pfizer, GSK, Johnson and Johnson — sell multi-millions worth of near-useless NRT products and drugs each year. Not coincidentally, these same companies subsidise the public-health non-profits and academic centres very generously. Yet when these groups attack e-cigs and warn smokers to stick with the pharma products, they never disclose that funding. Similarly, the pervasive hyper-regulation of e-cigs at the state and local level has a lot to do with cigarette excise taxes propping up local budgets — as of now, e-cigs are largely untaxed’.

                                         

People are simply no longer buying nicotine patches and other modern versions of snake oil because they are expensive and don’t work.

 

And naturally there is Big Tobacco who will readily provide funding to any scientist who is ready to produce ‘evidence’ that will support the required conclusion.

 

It is now looking as if Big Tobacco will now adopt ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ as a future strategy. There are already signs that they are buying into the market.

 

So why are politicians so eager to join the banning brigade?

 

Because they can! ‘Banning’ is what politicians do.

 

 

 

 

 

EU v.s Russia: game, set, and .............?

Ukraine ‘is a far away country of which we know nothing’; Minsk has an eerie resonance in 2015 with Munich in 1937, and the so-called peace agreement is of the same worth as Chamberlain’s ‘piece of paper’.

 

If this was a  ploy  by Merckel to expose Putin as a double-crossing two-faced liar it was pointless. The world already knew this.

 

When this imbroglio first started I maintained it was all due to meddling by the EU in its attempts to bring the Ukraine within the Brussels orbit, and, by implication, eventually into NATO. Others, including John Redwood MP, have since endorsed my view.

 

The prospect of parking Western tanks on Putin’s front lawn, was bound to be taken as a provocation which played completely into Putin’s hands to give a pretext for all subsequent events, beginning with the annexation of the Crimea.

 

Everyone knows that the Minsk peace deal is a very bad joke. Putin will simply ensure that the Ukraine continues to be destabilised.

 

But it goes deeper.

 

Since the early 90s the West has been gloating over ‘winning’ the Cold War. The problem is that it has not moved on. The intelligent policy  would have been to have brought Russia in from the cold. Instead it treated Russia with a degree of disdain, a gangster state with a mockery of democracy, run by corrupt oligarchs who are Putin’s friends and backers. Very true, as it is true of many Western allies.

 

EU policy was to push up to the borders of Russia by signing on new members who possessed very few of the essential qualifications, which include sound democratic institutions, economic stability, good governance, free courts and judicial system, and financial and fiscal integrity. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria possess scarcely any of these. Their economies are almost ‘third world’ and none is in the top 50 countries for GDP per capita. (The quasi-criminal Balkan states are in the queue. Russia regards them as within an exclusively Slav sphere of influence, so Vlad is not going to like the idea one bit. Just for the record Bosnia has a GDP per capita ranking of 105, just shy of Jamaica).

 

Meanwhile, Vlad has been schmoozing around potential friends all over the place. He has given loans to the half-country Cyprus in  return for military facilities. This could be interesting. The street of Akrotiri of a Saturday night could be quite exciting as British squaddies from the British base there do battle with  their Russky equivalents. ‘Professionals against amateurs’ nights!

 

He has been cosying-up to Iran. You can be sure he will be making mischief in Greece. He had a hero’s reception in Egypt, which pre-Obama was Yankee territory.

 

The EU has no clue as to what to do next. Their hopes that Russia’s economy would collapse under the weight of sanctions are absurd. The impact so far has been minor with only 6% of companies being badly affected. Oil revenues have held up through the simple expedient of devaluing the rouble against the US dollar. It is true that Russian standards of living have fallen for the first time in 15 years, but if Brussels thought that rising unpopularity would sweep Putin from power they were much mistaken. His popularity rating has risen.

 

Maybe the latest political assassination, of leading politician Boris Nemtov, will be Putin’s tipping point.

 

Don’t hold your breath.