the great russian spy scandal

Here we call July and August the ‘silly season’ because for some reason there is always a shortage of hard news so the meeja outdo each other in producing stories of complete dottiness. Sure enough we have The Great Russian Spy Scandal. You couldn’t make it up. The beautilicious woman whose ex-father-in-law was an MI5 spook, the househusband, the release on bail of one of the prime suspects and the consequent amazement when he gapped it. Needless to say the Fleet Street smelly-socks once again demonstrated their originality and command of the English language by vying with each other in the frequency of writing about the ‘Mata Hari’ – not that anyone under the age of 103 would have any idea who this was.

Scene 2: the Russkies will now round up any passing American, preferably photogenic females, and put exactly the same number on trial. Scene 3: all will be quietly exchanged. Meanwhile, Hollywood, the press, Max Clifford and other attention-seekers will announce that they have offered squillions to put Mrs Chapman under contract. The emerging details are hilarious. When British spooks were caught out in something equally inept in Russia, Putin said that they could stay in case MI5 replaced them with people who knew what they were doing. The KGB won’t like being laughed at. Perhaps the ‘spies’ were actually sent by Central Casting to make ‘Carry On up the Kremlin’.

The meeja are also harping on about James Bond, but it is more John le Carre than Ian Fleming, and no doubt we shall soon be treated to spook argot, like ‘sleeper’, ‘plumber, ‘safe house’, ‘night watchman’ and all the rest of the Cold War stuff.

Now here’s a funny thing. If you read ‘Gideon’s Spies’ you will be aware that Israeli sleepers have infiltrated every aspect of American life; that Robert Maxwell was a Mossad agent who stole the Daily Mirror pensions to fund Mossad; that the Israelis stole the enriched uranium needed for their nuclear weapons from the US. The usual outcome of this would be a suspension of diplomatic relations and US aid. Did anything happen? Noooooo.

It certainly seems to have knocked BP off the front pages. O has also gone quiet on the subject, presumably with the revelations that everybody has been by-passing the environmental reviews required by the regulators, 210 of them on O’s watch. Glass houses, anybody? It is reported that Gaddaffi is sniffing around BP, and the Arabs generally are looking for a bargain, hence the rise in BP’s share price. How do you like them apples, O?

Kuwait already owns a big slice through its sovereign wealth fund. The Chinese are said to be interested after their failure to get a US firm a while back. No chance of Shell or Exxon; the anti-trust regulators in US and EU would can that idea. There is also speculation that a quiet deal has been done with O for the $20 billion to be the limit of liability. This would cause a credit crunch in the legal profession. Shame! Meanwhile it seems that Louisiana is not jumping with joy over the drilling embargo.

And still in Libya, it is one year since the release of the Lockerbie Bomber who had 3 months to live, and he may go on for another 10 years. Ah well, not even medics are perfect.

Irwin ‘Alka’ Selzer in the ST returned to his theme of bashing O’s hostility to business, and points up the fact that many US companies are awash with cash because of their fear of O’s fiscal policies. This is a major obstacle to economic growth. In a separate piece, the ST business news does a big job on the take-over of UK companies by Americans, partly as a result of needing somewhere to invest their cash mountains. The latest is Tate and Lyle’s sugar business which has been in the same refinery in Woolwich since 1857, and other targets include British Aerospace (which would give the Yanks a slice of Airbus). I reckon our masters in Brussels would veto that one. What the article fails to mention is that the UK is and always has been the biggest single investor in the US, and we own swathes of the US economy.

In the same issue, Andrew Sullivan does a splendid hatchet-job on the US poodle-press, accusing papers like the NYT of conspiring to suppress news likely to be embarrassing to the Government. He says that the shenanigans in General McChrystal’s HQ were widely known by the meeja, but it took a magazine to run the story. The others were more concerned about ‘access’ and worried that if they printed anything the Government didn’t like they would be shut out. If this is true, it wouldn’t seem as if the concept of investigative journalism has very deep roots in the US.

I have no doubt that the same thing happens here. The Great Expenses scandal, probably the biggest-ever peace-time scoop, was offered to The Times which turned it down. The TORYGRAPH, house-journal of the Tory Party, is still running it, and has seen its circulation leap. The biggest cover-up ever was the Fleet Street conspiracy of silence over King Edward VIII’s affair with Mrs Simpson. The eventual denouement had the fortunate outcome of saving us from being ruled by a Nazi-sympathiser and a tart.

However, our press is largely of the Rottweiler persuasion, and media competition is so fierce that they will gnaw at a story like dogs on a bone. Also we have bolshie journals like Private Eye that thrive on exposing the wickedness of our masters. Presumably the National Enquirer and Rolling Stone have a similar role. The flight from subservience and deference began in the 1960’s with Peter Cook (who founded Eye) and Dudley Moore, David Frost, Monty Python etc. Now it’s no-holds barred.

An interesting take from Quest on the economic situation in Thailand; according to him, the economy is holding up extraordinarily well, with a growth rate not unadjacent to 6%. Manufacturing is booming, with ready access to the growth markets of Asia, and the whorist trade is rapidly recovering from the troubles. The view from ground zero in Bangkok is that Thais are aghast at what they have done, and have no desire whatsoever to repeat it. Insh’allah.

Meanwhile back in la-la land, Kitten Heels May has just announced that the Equality Act which was the last measure to be steered through the Commons by Mad Hattie Harperson is to be implemented. Amongst many other PC abuses, it requires employers to submit details of pay rates for men and women to ensure that they are the same, but where real trouble is brewing is the implication that Churches will be required to conduct homosexual ‘marriages’. Plus ca change!

In almost the same breath Cleggikins announces that there will be a referendum on the voting system on the local elections day next May. This means the merde hitting the fan at a time when all the Government’s efforts should be going into sorting out the fiscal crisis, not buggering about with the franchise.

Even worse is the proposal to have 5-year fixed term Parliaments.

One of the great advantages of the present system is that if the Government fails to keep a majority the people can throw the rascals out. Under the fixed term arrangement you will simply get the squalid party deals that characterise most Continental assemblies, which apart from the open invitation to corruption that is another of their characteristics, public spending increases because of the need to give lashings of pork to minorities who hold the balance of power. It is also proposed to reduce the number of MPs to 600, a nice round number that means if the Tories get 299 and Labour the same, the Government is controlled by the 2 minority MPs.

No good will come of it.

And as MPs have little to do, now that UK is governed by the Fourth Reich, they could reduce the numbers to about six.