The TTIP? What's that?

What is this ugly acronym ‘TTIP’ that is getting the chattering classes into such a lather? The great unwashed remnants of the anti-globalisation campaigners  are already mobilising.

 

Well, it is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Who cares?

 

We all should. It will be the largest free-trade agreement ever. It will account for about 60% of world GDP. It is estimated that it will increase EU GDP by around 5%; there is already a substantial  balance of EU/US trade surplus in favour of the EU. It would be a market of 820 million people.

 

Its overarching aim will be the reduction of trade barriers between the two signatories.

 

If it comes to pass, that is. Unsurprisingly, the French are being typically obstructive. Anything that might threaten their bloated farmers and feather-bedded industries is anathema to them.

 

The sectors to be included are textiles^,  chemicals^], pharmaceuticals^, cosmetics, medical devices cars, electronics and information technology, machinery and engineering, pesticides, sanitary  measures and  barriers to trade in food and agricultural products.

 

The main exports from the US to the EU are aircraft, machinery, and fuel oils, together worth $471 bn. The top US imports are  machinery, vehicles and pharmaceuticals, in all,  worth $535 bn.

 

There are some basic issues to be sorted.

 

There are concerns that Big Business could sue governments, such as an American tobacco company suing the UK for introducing plain packaging cigarettes. This could be seen as an attack on democratic sovereignty.

 

The Greens are choking on their organic muesli at the thought of having to admit GM foods and hormone-treated beef although the Americans have been consuming large quantities of both for years without dropping dead in the street.

 

There are worries that the NHS could face legal action if it tried to de-privatise any of its contracted-out services.

 

The financial services industry is worried that the draconian regime regulating American banks could be enforced here.

 

Many people are concerned that it will all lead to even larger crony-capitalism, with gargantuan enterprises able to get governments to do their bidding, never mind ‘the people’, because of its huge clout.

 

At this time we only know what is being negotiated. We don’t know what is being decided.

 

There is everything to play for.

 

 

Vaping? Not in Wales, bach!

For want of anything useful to do, the Welsh Assembly is planning to ban e-cigarettes in public places. In the absence of any shred of scientific evidence that they are harmful the proponents are falling back on two completely spurious arguments.

 

The first is that they are a ‘gateway’ product that will encourage people to take up tobacco. This is so totally daft it scarcely deserves comment. What on earth would impel a non-smoker to take up vaping? If the Labour politician leading on this can produce a single person who fits this category this should be categorised as a rare and endangered species.

 

The plain fact is that over 2 million people in the UK have given up smoking by converting to e-cigarettes. The Government’s own tobacco guru has described it as ‘the greatest public health breakthrough this century that will save 5 million lives in being today’.  ASH is in favour of vaping as just about the most effective and permanent way to quit tobacco.

 

Unsurprisingly, the main antis are Big Pharma which is suffering because smokers are no longer buying  their useless and expensive nicotine patches, and, of course, Big Tobacco (although they are beginning to take the ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ option).

 

America is in the process of falsely classifying e-cigs  as a tobacco product, driven, no doubt, by the prospect of losing tax revenue from falling tobacco sales and getting  financial support from the industry (at the same time  it is increasingly legalising cannabis).

 

The second is that vaping will ‘re-normalise’ tobacco smoking, whatever that is supposed to mean. Roughly a fifth of the population are smokers, so tobacco has scarcely been ‘de-normalised’. The argument is so devoid of the slightest trace of logic as to lack any meaning whatsoever, not an unusual trait amongst bossy politicians.

 

Needless to say, the EU plans a ban next year, but they would, wouldn’t they! After all, in the past five years they have produced 4,700 new regulations such as tackling global warming by reducing the power of vacuum cleaners.

 

Back in Wales, politicians might be better employed in sorting out the problems of their appalling  NHS. Banning vaping won’t help! But politicians have an insatiable urge to ban things. Why?

 

Because they can!

 

 

'British atrocities in Africa': now we must cough-up!

In addition to misappropriating foreign aid, Africa has hit on another scam - screwing reparations from the UK government for the atrocities committed by the beastly colonials. William Hague opened the floodgates when he shelled out £20million of taxpayers money as compensation to the victims of British abuse during the Mau Mau uprising notwithstanding that after the passage of more than sixty years most ‘victims’ are almost certainly dead. (We are not told whether Obama got a pay-off because his grandpappy was beaten up by the Brits – or so he says!).

 

Now lawsuits are being filed by the relatives of ‘ 33 peaceful protesters who were massacred by British troops in Malawi in 1959’.

 

There is, however, a slight weakness in their case.

 

None of it is true.     

 

In the first place, these were not peaceful protesters. They were a very large and violent mob armed with pangas, clubs and spears who were trying to liberate some political detainees who were confined in a ship lying in the harbour at Nkata Bay on the northerly shores of Lake Malawi.

 

Secondly, there were no British troops in Nyasaland/Malawi then or ever. Defence was the responsibility of the Federal Government of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

 

The detainees were being guarded by a handful of part-time troops from the 1^st Battalion Royal Rhodesia Regiment which was composed entirely of reservists.

 

They were under the command of Sgt Hugh van Oppen, an Englishman despite his Afrikaner-sounding name.. They were guarding the jetty behind locked gates, so there was no action.

 

Then the gates were burst open. The soldiers had no option but to open fire to save their own lives. They only fired a few rounds but the crowd was so close and so packed that a single bullet from a .303 Lee Enfield rifle would go through more than one body.

 

I had this account first-hand from Sgt van Oppen  a short time after the event. He was my brother-in-law and comrade-in-arms; I was Intelligence Office in 5^th Bn Royal Rhodesia Regiment.

 

But HMG will pay-up anyway.

 

Epilogue: Captain van Oppen as he then was, died in action in 1965 whilst serving with 5 Commando in Katanga.

 

 

 

What a load of Bills!

The Queen’s Speech? A curates egg laid by an ostrich and within a week it is showing signs of being scrambled. There are twenty-one proposed new laws.

What a load of Bills!

When it looked as though the wretched Human Rights Act, the sanctuary of terrorists, illegal immigrants and crooks, was first up on the agenda, with Cameron’s Rottweiler in charge of its defenestration, it must have been doubles all round. Now it’s being kicked into the long grass and Dave has Gove and May at his throat.

The pretext is that the two rebels want to abrogate the European Convention on Human Rights. This makes little sense. The Convention (largely drafted by the UK) has been around since 1951. The problem lies with the Human Rights Act which gave the European Court of Human Rights jurisdiction over the UK which it never had before. Until then, its judgements were merely persuasive. British judges could take them or leave them.

The ECHR has aggressively expanded its concept of jurisdiction. It is scarcely ever out of the media, with dotty judgments such as that that enabled a criminal to escape deportation because of his human right to a ‘family life’; he owned a cat.

The President of the Court has never held a judicial post previously. Other judges come from such upholders of human rights as Azerbaijan and the hopelessly corrupt Ukraine where courts will rule in favour of whichever litigant pays the largest bribe.

So what’s the problem? Why not simply revert to the status quo ante? The objective is to get rid of the ECHR, and restore the primacy of the British courts to the pre-1998 position. Proposing to abrogate the European Convention would then bring the EU into play (members are expected to be signatories to the Convention). That would be the kiss of death.

Then we have the Psychoactive Substances Bill: the DT gave this a good rubbishing for an absurdly-drafted piece of nonsense that could criminalize perfume, hop pillows, tea or any substance that has the effect of giving pleasure. So now you know: pleasure is out under this ‘Conservative’ government. Much more sinister is that it looks as though the burden of proof will be the balance of probabilities, not ‘beyond reasonable’ doubt.

But modern Tories have never been very big on civil liberties.  They have done nothing to rid the statute book of the 3,500 new offences created by Blair which criminalises us all, neither will they, even without the encumbrance of the LibDems.

No doubt there will be cheers from the ‘right’ about the new Immigration Bill                                                                                                      that  belatedly allows  ‘deport first, appeal later’ in all immigration cases. But it also allows the police to purloin the wages of anyone working without the right papers.

Cameron intends to honour his pre-election bribe to double free child care for three- and four-year-olds. This is estimated to cost £25 billion. There is no word as to where the money is coming from. The foreign aid budget could contribute about half that sum, but a further raid on the defence budget is more likely.

The Full Employment and Welfare Bill will lower the benefit ‘cap’ to £23,000. With the minimum wage at about £16.000 this does not appear to be a convincing ‘back to work’ incentive.

The Extremism Bill will make OFCOM the censor of TV and radio broadcasts

There is, of course, the Referendum Bill. The ballot paper will be biased towards ‘Yes’, the full weight of the Establishment will be put behind it, and Cameron will present the cosmetic gloss of his ‘reforms’ as a victory over Brussels, so Britain will vote for no change on the principle ‘Always keep a hold of  nurse, for fear of getting something worse’.

It’s not all bad.

Strikes will require a majority in favour by 40% of the membership instead of 40% of members voting. The unions can be relied upon to help push through the Trade Unions Bill by staging a few public sector strikes in the run-up.

The police will no longer be able to hold a person on bail without charge for years; they will be limited to 28 days in the first instance and only the courts will be able to extend this beyond three months.

And finally, the Government proposes to answer the West Lothian question.

Now that should prove really fascinating since it is actually unanswerable.

 We live in interesting times!