Can't pay, won'tpay

Where will Dave end up with his battle in Europe? 40% of the budget goes on the hopelessly bent CAP and another 40% on pork aka Regional Funds. The new foreign department headed by the invisible ‘Lady’ Ashton already costs more than the entire F&CO, and it is scarcely up-and-running (and hopefully never will be). The snouts in the European Parliamentary trough are looking for bigger hand-outs. A touch of the Blessed Margaret needed here, Dave – you remember ‘No, no, NO!!’? I suggest yelling ‘can’t pay, won’t pay!’ The French would. And why didn’t he leave it all to Little Willie Hague? As the Blessed Margaret memorably said, ‘Every Prime Minister needs a Willie’. When did we last see Little Willie? He was with Dave in Brussels but not seen while Dave hailed his ‘victory’!

(To add insult to injury, the nomenklatura in Brussels have decreed that the UK must change its election law to enable prisoners to vote. They may have a problem or two getting to the polling stations, but presumably they will all qualify for postal votes under Blair’s vote-rigging legislation).

The Sunday Times continues to run a vendetta against the DFID Minister, this time for accepting a political donation in return for certain lobbying over coffee trading in Ghana. With his budget rising by 37% during this Parliament he is very vulnerable in defending the indefensible.

The politicians’ expenses scandal just won’t go away. Three ex-Labour MPs are still trying to get a High Court ruling that they have Parliamentary privilege. Lord Hanningfield failed in his attempt. This what Richard Ingrams says in the matchless Oldie magazine.

Indignation likewise should be felt in the case of two of the Labour peers suspended this week for claiming huge sums for bogus home allowances. Lord Bhatia is known to be a millionaire, while the Labour benefactor Lord Paul is described in press reports as a steel magnate and one of the richest men in England. In this week's House of Lords debate over the suspension, another Labour peer, Lord Alli, accused his fellow peers of racial bias against the three offenders - the third being the Bangladesh-born Lady Uddin. He might just as well have asked whether racial bias was not responsible for their being elevated to the House of Lords in the first place - all three political parties being keen to show their multicultural credentials by promoting coloured spokesmen whenever possible. The same argument could just as well be applied to Lord Alli himself, a relatively obscure but wealthy independent television entrepreneur befriended by Tony Blair.

The serious meeja here has started to give a lot of attention to the Tea Partyists, treating them as a legitimate political movement rather than as a rag-tag of simple-minded backwards-looking, flat earthists, red-necks, pro-lifers, and Palinistas. The Economist devoted a lengthy analysis to them in Lexington, and the general tone was extremely favourable, suggesting that the influence of the TP might well have the beneficial effect of forcing the Republicans back to their basic principles. It also revealed that research tends to show that the TP are rather better educated and well-off than the average. Now they have scented blood, will they become part of mainstream Republicanism or just fade away?

BBC had a whole hour at peak time fronted by Andrew ‘Brillo Pad’ Neil, beloved of Private Eye and former Fleet Street Editor. Glenn Beck feature prominently. I think that I now have his measure; he’s nuts! Mad as a box of frogs! He said that Palin is the reincarnation of Washington. A ranting demagogue, weeping and posturing for the cameras; here he would be a figure of ridicule, but then so was Goebbels.

Ms P has a very screechy voice and strikes me as thick as mince ‘n tatties.

The scenes at the TP gatherings were worrying. To them O is a Socialist, a Communist, a Kenyan, a Nazi, a Muslim. There was a big rally at the same spot and on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech with Beck once more foaming at the mouth. I was unsure of the symbolism of this, but it was noticeable that no blacks were present. There was a lot of blatant political pontificating from various pulpits; people should be very concerned about evangelistic preachers getting involved in right-wing (or any wing) politics, which also strikes me as against the spirit of the Constitution.

The President (I thought they were a spontaneous meeting of people, not an organisation – at least that’s what they tell us) has a hairy face resembling the orifice from which he was plainly speaking. There seems to be big money involved and there is an outfit called ‘Freedom Works’ pulling the strings. Shades of ‘The Family’. America should be worried if all this is accurate.

On the more positive side, it became clear that the US at large has diametrically opposite political values and ideology to Europe. Here there is a ‘gimme, gimme’ culture, one of ‘entitlement’ and ‘compensation’; a conviction that government should solve all problems with higher ‘tax and spend’ measures. In the US it is more about rolling back the frontiers of the state, less governance, lower taxes, less public spending. But O comes across as lacking in empathy and having neither understanding of business or much sympathy for it. Some of his public utterances give a worrying impression that he is wedded to the European dirigiste ‘social model’..

So Barack got a haircut. No surprise there, then. However, I suggest that those who see a victory for the Reps in the mid-terms as the end of O are forgetting their history e.g. the experience of Ronnie and Bill.

You couldn’t make it up.......

• We hear from Wall Street that bankers have been making a nice little earner by selling investment products and then betting against them. Although this is clearly fraud, it is not a crime.

• The Old Bill has just revealed that of over 100,000 stop-and-searches under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, there has not been a single arrest for a terrorist offence. Seems as if the police have used S. 44 to stealthily revive the old and discredited ‘sus’ law.