‘Assanje’ – a farce in multiple acts.

Free at last! After three attempts Assanje is out of the slammer and is now comfortably ensconced in rural Suffolk. He is tagged and has to report to the turnip-tops every eight hours. Presumably the village booby will trundle down to the country mansion on his bike three times a day at 8 a.m, 4 p.m, and midnight. He has had to put up humungous bail, and when I read that Ken Loach and Bianca Jagger were amongst other lefty pond-life who had stumped up, I had a vision of him scarpering back to Oz, leaving them bereft of large quantities of drinking vouchers.

There was his brief outside the court, wearing a suit that transgressed the Obscene Publications Act and a tie that looked like the TV test card, complaining that his poor client had been held in conditions that were ‘Dickensian’. Funny; I thought that Newgate and the Bridewell had been closed years ago.

On BBC World News we had a phlegmatic Swede (good on phlegmatic, these Nordics) telling us without even a hint of a smile that the Swedes had nothing to do with the three extradition hearings. It was all down to the intellectually constipated Crown Prosecution Service. The Swedish prosecutor had no locus in the bail hearings. Yeah....right! The CPS went through no less than three bail hearings entirely off its own bat. So that’s all right then.

What he failed to explain was why the Swedes are going to so much trouble to extradite poor Julian on charges that they have not served on him. We don’t know for a fact what they are, except that they are sexual offences. Neither does he, which is an outrage and a denial of natural justice. It is said that the rape charge rests on the allegation that he had sexual intercourse without a condom whilst the woman was asleep. That must have been an exciting lay; he should ask for his money back! But then under the EAW the strength of the case is irrelevant. Welcome to Brave New World.

So the extradition hearings have nothing to do with Wikileaks, either; we must all be relieved to know that.

No wonder the figure of justice is blindfolded!

It seems that the US lawyers are now drafting charges under the Espionage Act 1917, so if A stays in Britain long enough they will get him under the extradition treaty. But since A was the procurer not the publisher we can then await warrants to be served on the New York Times, the Daily Telegraph, and all the rest of the meeja which have published the leaks. Could be a long wait.

The main casualty of this affair will be transparency. Politicians and diplomats will be far more circumspect about what they commit to writing. The shredders will be working overtime. Files will be deleted big-time. Security will be tightened up, and there will be a tendency to revert back to the departmental secrecy which does not share information between agencies, the main failure of 9/11 in the first place. The plus-side of all this is the plain fact that, with the internet, blogging, social networking and the rest –facebook, twitter etc – our masters no longer have a stranglehold on information about what they get up to. We are the masters now – or will be.

Religion in US politics

It is sometimes annoying to me to learn what the Economist is saying about American society. Its report about religion in the US is not consistent with my observations. Correct, Yanks are religious, incorrect, they don't care much about a persons religious affiliation. Society in small town America is largely dictated by which church residents attend. Yes, Islam is very disliked, but Jews are not off the hook. There is a considerable amount of anti-Semitism here fostered by a lingering allegiance to the old stereotypes.

The religious preference of high society is arguably Episcopalian which accounts for much of the confession of our wealthy WASPs, (white, Anglo-Saxon, protestants). Here in Central Texas, Lutherans, Catholics and Baptists dominate while the small elite are mainly Episcopalians. Catholics came here from Czechoslovakia about the same time as the German Lutherans. Prior to their arrival, there were the Baptists which can be readily and strictly divided into white and black congregations. Yes, the most segregated time of American life remains Sunday morning. We have a smattering of Methodists and Presbyterians, but they bear little resemblance to those of the UK. Much of the dourness is missing here. It did not travel well I guess.

Jewish families in our area can be counted on one hand and are almost entirely immigrants from outside the US. All are professionals and are subject to mild types of prejudice emanating from locals who think that the word Jew is a verb. Gross ignorance among our relatively isolated and underexposed population is predominant. It accounts for blaming the Jews for economic ills including high oil prices. Most of the locals would not, and do not, recognize a Jewish person when they meet or see one.

As a person's religious affiliation is strongly linked to his or her ethnic heritage, the tendency to intermingle is constrained. It is still difficult, for example, for a WASP Episcopalian to develop strong social ties with an American Catholic of Italian or Irish origin. Catholics and Lutherans get along fine, but Czechs and Germans do not and seldom do they intermarry. Mind you, these observations are anecdotal, but nevertheless representative of the majority opinion.

Politically speaking, the Protestants here are largely Republican while Catholics are inclined to be democrats, as are Jewish people. This tendency may be applicable throughout the US, although political labels are in a state of flux just now and many Americans are shunning them altogether. The right is divided between Republicans and Conservatives while the left is divided between Liberals and Democrats. The number of Independents is growing which gives credence to the tendency to shun labels; being an Independent is often a refuge for those who want to decide allegiances on issues rather than party affiliations. Some believe that Independents are Democrats who don't want to admit it, but I think that is not entirely accurate. As for Libertarians, they have largely gravitated to the Conservative camp.

Assanje’s bail refusal

The Swedes seem to have shot themselves in both feet over the Wikileaks affair. Assanje is in the slammer, on a trumped up charge of a sexual nature that is as transparent as cling-film. If the Swedes had stayed out of it and abided by the decision of the English court, there would have been time to draw up proper charges against him under English law. Espionage has been trailed. We hear that US lawyers are rushing around like blue-arsed flies to find something they can charge him with. In that event they could have applied for extradition without producing any evidence to support the charge or indeed that an offence had been committed that was an offence in English law, under Blair’s odious extradition treaty (which is one-sided per se because the American Constitution would probably forbid extradition on those terms). So off goes A to the pen.

Instead, by refusing to accept the umpire’s decision, they have swung popular opinion back to A.

I firmly believe that the whole of this gang of cyber terrorists have to be rounded-up before someone gets hurt. I read in the Bangkok Post that the latest is the release of communications between the US Ambassador in Zimbabwe and Morgan Tsvangirai suggesting that the PM did not support the continuation of sanctions against the ruling party, contrary to official policy. The barbarians who run ZANU(PF) are yelling treason. Tsvangirai’s life is put at risk yet again.

I knew the whole situation was tainted when the obnoxious Aussie uber-leftie, Guardian-scribbler, Form 3 noisemaker John Pilger, was putting up bail money, along with a gaggle of rich celebs. When A threatened to bring down another major bank, my sympathy for the underdog disappeared with the realisation that the guy is a megalomaniac who wants to recast world order according to his personal beliefs

Is Obama anti-British? The Limey view.

Dan Hannan is a rising star of the right, an MEP who wreaks havoc amongst the Brussels politicos because he is just too smart and articulate for them to keep up with him. He came to wider attention when he slaughtered Broon when that article addressed the European parliament. The video on u-tube registered gazillions of hits. His piece was about O’s attitude to UK, not about the so-called ‘special relationship’. This exists at the ‘people’ level, not the political. Lord Palmerston summed it up:

Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

Kissinger pinched it as ‘America has no friends only interests’; not quite so eloquent.

I very much doubt whether O’s dad was either in the Mau Mau or detained by the beastly Brits. My recollection (and it was a long time ago) is that Mau Mau was exclusive to the Kikuyu. Only 32 whites were killed by the Mau Mau, the huge number of others being Africans, including Kikuyu. The hard core was ex-soldiers from the Kings African Rifles who had served in Burma and were therefore highly experienced in jungle warfare.

But as we both know, come independence and everyone was suddenly an ex-freedom fighter.

If O returned the bust of Winnie because of his role in suppressing the Mau Mau, this shows that O doesn’t know his history. The uprising was from 1952 to 1960. Winnie resigned in 1953. The villain of the piece was an idiot Colonial Secretary called, if I remember rightly, James Griffiths. He enraged the indigenous populations by giving the minority Asians, who then as now were heartily disliked by Africans, far more seats on the Legislative Council, than to African politicians. In doing so he instantly converted a barbarous Kikuyu terrorist insurgency into a national freedom movement. Perhaps this is where O’s grandpappy came in.

Although nobody cared a toss about O’s humiliation of Broon, we did care about his behaviour to the Prime Minister of Great Britain. And we thought that the presents fiasco was simply demeaning to our American buddies.

Like you I thought that O’s approach on foreign policy was more mature than his predecessor’s, and has been competently handled by Hillary. As for him failing to mention the British presence in Afghanistan, Dubya never once mentioned that more Brits were killed on 9/11 than in any other single terrorist attack, despite 30 years of the IRA.

Although we are joined at hip and thigh by legal tradition, language (after a fashion), multiparty democratic governance, and many other matters, one huge difference is the impact of religion on politics and on society. In England (I speak not for the Celtic fringe) it has no significance whatsoever. We are not necessarily unbelievers as non-worshippers.

A recent survey summarised by the Economist reveals that in American politics religion is of the highest importance, often in a deleterious way. In society it is the glue that holds the nation together. Interestingly, Americans are not bothered about denomination or whether they are Christian or Jew, provided that you are God-fearing. Unsurprisingly, this does not apply to Islam, but Americans also dislike Buddhists. What on earth have the most gentle and peace-loving of people done to get up your noses?

Anti-Americanism is an essential qualification for Guardianistas, especially for those who have never visited the US and know little about it. Of course there are stereotypes, but the essence of stereotypes is that they are broadly true. For example the Yanks and the Aussies believe that Brits are largely unacquainted with the bathtub; get a whiff of bouquet Anglais on an early morning commuter train and you will have physical proof. The Aussies reckon that in England the safest place to keep your money is under the bath soap. The Yanks believe that we have terrible teeth. Mostly very true. The English have always had a reputation for drunkenness, lascivious women, and a love of fighting. Plus ca change.

Otherwise, the Brits visit America in humungous numbers, and the holiday home market in Florida is heavily UK-orientated.

I firmly believe that we Brits regard the ‘special relationship’ as a somewhat dysfunctional family that have their differences but will turn on any third party that meddles. We have distrust of Europeans that is in our DNA because over the last 2,000 years they have arrived on these shores – or tried – as invaders. Contemporary history suggests to me that the French in particular are still bent on wrecking the Anglosphere, for example, by shackling hedge funds through EU restrictions despite the fact that almost all hedge-fund business is in the UK.

Flanders and Swan put it this way:

It's not that they're wicked or naturally bad

It's just that they're foreign that makes them so mad

The English are all that a nation should be

And the pride of the English are Chipper and me

The English the English the English are best

I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest

.

Australian Prime Minister does it again!!

It took a lot of courage for this man to speak what he had to say for the world to hear. The retribution could be phenomenal, but at least he was willing to take a stand on his and Australia 's beliefs.

Whole world needs a leader like this!

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd - Australia

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia , as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks..

Separately, Rudd angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques. Quote:

'IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT.. Take It Or Leave It.

I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians. '

'This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom'

'We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society . Learn the language!'

'Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.'

'We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.'

'This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, 'THE RIGHT TO LEAVE'.'

'If you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.'

Norwegian Nobel Numtpties.

As I write the BBC World News has been showing for what seems 2 years an address by an astoundingly ugly and mind-numbingly boring old bat called Liv summat who once appeared in a film 200 years ago banging on about human rights in China.

This is the Nobel Peace Prize that we all remember was awarded to Obama within a few minutes of assuming office, presumably on the grounds that he had not started a war in that time (and had not done anything else then – or since).

The BBC has reverted to its role of institutional uselessness by taking the whole of its news time to report this Norwegian farce, when the lead story in the rest of the meeja is the astounding breach of security anent the Prince of Wales which could have seen old Chuck taken out by a lefty loony.

We are at a loss to understand how the internal affairs of China are anything to do with Norway or the Nobelistas.

If Assanje gets the cheque next year when he is in an American pen, will the Numpties criticise the Yanks for human rights abuses?

I think we should be told!

Dewani does Lord Lucan.

Having been granted bail (an extraordinary decision – more later) how long before Dewani ‘takes the gap’? Scarpers. Absconds. Buggers off.

This is how it will be done.

As soon as he is out of the bridewell he dons a burka and niqab, Hindu or not. He will then have total protection from every law enforcement and anti-terrorist authority in the UK. If John Simpson can do it and fool the Taliban, the Old Bill stands no chance.

He then gets a false passport. Easy peasy. The racket is dominated by Asians (Pakistanis have just been arrested in Thailand for passport theft and forgery for terrorist purposes).

He is then passed down the Asian escape route, never to be heard of again.

The bail decision beggars belief.

Time was when the criteria for refusing bail were at minimum.

• The seriousness of the offence, which meant that any felony carrying a long prison sentence meant ‘no chance’.

• The likelihood of the accused absconding – inevitable in this case, I predict.

• Possible interference with witnesses or jurors.

• The likelihood of a repeat offence.

At the same time, Assanje is refused bail on a lesser and trumped-up charge although his mug shot is known throughout the world and two of the three options available to Dewani don’t apply here.

They should both do porridge until trial.

The world has gone mad.

Is Obama anti-British?

Dan Hanna’s polemic in the DT this week asks whether Obama is antiBritish, and opens...


‘Let’s review the evidence. President Obama received from Gordon Brown a pen-holder made from the timbers of a Royal Navy anti-slavery vessel, and reciprocated with DVDs. He silkily downgraded the UK from “our closest ally” to “one of our allies”. He gave the Queen an iPod full of his own speeches. He used the Louisiana oil spill to attack an imaginary company called “British Petroleum” (it has been BP for the past decade, ever since the merger with Amoco gave it as many American as British shareholders). He sent a bust of Winston Churchill back to the British Embassy. He managed, on his visit to West Africa, to refer to the struggle for independence, but not to the Royal Navy’s campaign against slavery. He has refused to acknowledge our presence in Afghanistan in any major speech. He has even come dangerously close to backing Peronist Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands. There’s no getting away from it: Barack Obama doesn’t much like Limeys.


What has he got against us? The conventional answer is that he is bitter about the way his grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was interned during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya........'


This is the take by Texas Haymaker.

I did not know that O's grandfather was imprisoned during the Mau Mau uprising. There must be more to the story seeing as how Mau Mau was a Kikuyu age cult that had nothing to do with the Onyangas, Obamas and other Luo people.

No apologies for the faux pas committed by O with respect to gifting your dignitaries with undignified presents. As for his anti-colonialism, so what? The vast majority of Americans are anti-colonial and this vast majority most likely understands colonial dynamics as poorly as O does.

Perhaps naively, but I found O's approach to foreign policy refreshing. Yet his efforts to promote discourse and understanding were vilified by his predecessors who treated North Korean, Iranian and Venezuelan leaders to name a few as lepers. Is it sophomoric to deliver the message that Americans are not the bad guys that people might think? Hannan takes umbrage with this approach and in his article rapidly chronicles who and where we bombed since our independence.

These are small points that do not focus on the main issue; America's relationship with the UK. Believe me , it is healthy and we continue to look kindly on your lot over there. Anyone who speaks with an English accent (and to us that includes South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders) has immediate respect and credibility. Don't ask me why. Our TV and radio commercials are chuck full of promoters of this product and that speaking at us in accents ranging from posh to Cockney. We love it. I often wonder what the impact would be if an American-accented person were to attempt flogging the latest brand of tooth paste in the UK.

O and other Yanks criticized British strategies in Iraq and Iran. If I recall, so did Ike and his general staff during WWII and I could go back further. Your bright red uniforms with white straps across the chest and lines of soldiers made easy targets for our colonial lads in the bush. A lesson, I might add, that we have forgotten when it comes to guerilla warfare. Yes, we have different styles of warfare. We also have different health care and education systems. Any one of these systems, I have learned the hard way, should be off-limits for intercultural discussion as they are pregnant with emotion.

I am confident that when Daniel Hannan matures a bit, his views will moderate and he will cease and desist promoting the rumor that the UK and USA are at serious odds with one another. If he has any doubts about the relationship, ask him to count the number of American TV viewers intently following the forthcoming royal wedding. Ask him why the UK is the prime area of interest to US tourists going to Europe and to US businessmen seeking investments and partnerships. No doubt Hannan would have preferred that our umbilical cord to the UK had never been severed, but, as the saying goes, the acorn never falls far from the tree. It is not how different we are that distracts me, but how much the same we are that I find so intriguing. We're all right ,Jack, and the affection still swells in our collective breasts when we hear the words of Winston Churchill and refrains from God Save the Queen.

Wikileaks: cock-up or conspiracy?

Which might it be? I tend to favour the cock-up theory because recent history is incontrovertible proof that our leaders arrived from Planet Looney. Who would have thought that rational leaders would have gone to war against the only non-Islamic state in the Gulf that had already been monstered once and posed no military threat to the West? Who would have thought that we would be waging a bloody conflict against the Taliban in Afghaniscam when the casus belli was to destroy Al Qaeda which has since decamped to Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia?

Now I am inclined towards the conspiracy theory because it beggars belief that this flood of documents could be easily extracted from US security. What strengthens my belief is that when Gary the Hacker got into the Pentagon with apparent ease and told them what he had done and how, so that they could put it right, they immediately issued a warrant for his arrest and an extradition notice under Blair’s odious extradition treaty which requires no evidence that an offence has been committed. No such warrant or extradition notice was issued against Asanje although he is known to be in the UK.

Some of the leaks certainly add to the gaiety of nations, such as the following press extract

"The disclosures in the cable, posted online by the British newspaper The Guardian, will complicate Rudd's already testy personal links with China after his reported reference to Chinese negotiators as ''rat f***ers'' during the Copenhagen climate change conference."

Some are a cause of great anger, such as the comments by US authorities that the British forces in Afghaniscam were not up to the job – this from a military that ‘rescued’ a British hostage from the Taliban by chucking a fragmentation grenade at her instead of a stun grenade. Maybe some good will come of this if it strengthens the campaign to get out of this ridiculous, pointless and unwinnable conflict. British casualties are approximately at the same level on a per capita basis as WW2, and would be higher if it were not for the extraordinary skill and courage of the medical teams (Our Dear Leaders should read ‘The Great Game’ to understand that you cannot win in Afghanistan). When I was a young Army officer we had in our mess an ageing Major who wore the medal of the Waziristan Campaign which was fought on the Afghan border in the 1920s. Plus ca change

Some are more than a little worrying. One from the US Ambassador to Germany about the Passenger Name Recognition Initiative for exchanging data about travellers is a clear example of bureaucratic stupidity and latent authoritarianism. Included in the information requested by the US, and so far rejected by Germany, are ethnic origin, political opinion, religion, trade union membership and sexual orientation. Political opinion in Germany is that the data transfer agreement would collect pointless information about travellers that would be of dubious value to law enforcement agencies, and that German commercial interests could be damaged by leaks of information about German business travellers to US competitors (a near certainty, I would think) .

Can anybody explain how it would be actually possible to collect such information from travellers? Would we have to fill in a form when applying for a visa? ‘Are you now or have you ever been a serial suicide bomber?’ Do you now have or have you ever had carnal relations with a camel?’ ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of militaristic organisations such as the Salvation Army or the St John’s Ambulance Brigade?’ And if this is collected can anybody explain what earthly use it would be in catching a terrorist?

Be that as it may, Asanje has put his hands up and is now a guest in the bridewell. So what happens next?

The arrest is under the odious EWA which enables you to have your collar felt at the whim of a corrupt court in Eastern Europe on trumped-up charges for something that is not a crime in the English jurisdiction, a theme to which I will return. The case stated against A is alleged to fail to specify either the precise charges or the prima facie evidence, according to his brief. In the event that the lower court finds against him he is setting up the grounds for appeal. This will go to the Court of Appeal, and if he loses there, he will take it to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords (as the Supreme Court is properly titled). If he loses there he will take it to the ludicrous kangaroo court known as the ECJ on human rights grounds.

The sex charges strike me as trumped up. In the good old days complaints of rape had to be made within a very short time of the offence before the medical evidence was lost. Not anymore, so it is one person’s word against the other’s, so quite simple to set up a spurious charge. The obvious intention is to get him in the collar so that the US can ‘rendition’ him.

I will have shuffled off this mortal coil before there is result.

So what is the conspiracy?

It has all the hallmarks of the sinister, shadowy group known as ‘The Family’. This is a secret consortium of extreme Evangelical Christians of extreme right-wing views who have infiltrated the very highest echelons of US politics, public service and business (and before some numpty calls me paranoid, read the book of the same name). The conspiracy is to destabilise O and Hillary and the whole Democratic Administration – and it’s working because it exposes O as being long on rhetoric but very short on leadership. It has Cheney’s fingerprints all over it.

Conclusion?

Having threatened to release information that would create another Lehman Bros bank melt down, he exposes himself as an arrogant megalomaniac who is prepared to use cyber-terrorism to remould the world to his liking regardless of the effects on millions of decent ordinary people.

I hope they throw the key away.

Wikileaks: a Yankee view

I note the Anglo-American relationship is back in the news along with a zillion other diplomatic red herrings thanks to Wikileaks. Richard LeBaron, the US deputy chief of mission, mirrored my views when he stated that the UK's obsession with the Anglo-America alliance would “be humorous, if it were not so corrosive”. Corrosive, I assume, because it was self inflicted and betrays a totally unnecessary paranoia. The UK is our daddy.

But this item is but the tip of this edition of the Wikileak iceberg. We are being delightfully entertained by all sorts of catty back-stabbing real politik snippits and revelations that most of us already knew or at least strongly suspected. Conspiracy theorists must be having a ball with all the confirmations of what the Yemeni's are claiming, and the Chinese are wrangling the French are screwing up and the Germans are wallowing in apathy.

The Wikileak issues and implications have already been dissected and digested by the pundits with the conclusion that this round is but a tempest in a teapot. It speaks ill of the US' inability to manage its confidential and secret files. As I understand the situation, no top secret documents were released, if indeed Adrian Assange has any at all. He neatly encrypted another 'doomsday' batch for immediate release should anything happen to him. Historians are having a field day, albeit short-lived as they fear future original resource data will be much more difficult to obtain and considerably more circumspect and politically correct. Few scalps have been taken as a result and even Hillary turned around her initial bitter reaction by joking about what the victims might have said about her.

The big question for me is whether Assange is an angel or a demon. On the demon side he has stripped naked major world figures revealing, in my view, rather impoverished tackle. He has certainly endangered lives, both physical and political, but to far less an extent than was initially reported. The Turk minister with a Swiss Bank account has some explaining to do, but such revelation is hardly considered demonic, unless of course you are the account holder. He has broken diplomatic rules and flouted national pride. More seriously, he claims to have additional information about banking for example, that could be seriously damaging.

As an angel, he has exposed the lies, the posturing and the inflated egos of bright but unwise people. He has also made the democratic process a bit more transparent. Shrouded in secrecy as the US is, there is much to explain in terms of our constant references to being the world's leading democracy. What we can now share equally among our leaders and their minions is the shame of sham. We now have confirmation that in diplomatic circles, yes means no and compliments are reserved for our detractors. We more resemble the court of Louis the Fourteenth than the traditions of parliamentary process inherited from our English ancestors.

I do not endorse hanging Assange as a traitor. Nor do I seek to deify him. We need to tighten our information security; but we also need to dramatically and drastically reduce our efforts in petty spying. It is totally unreasonable and unconscionable that we know the sexual behavior of a UK backbencher while at the same time we cannot locate Osama bin-Laden. We are snooping in the wrong holes and coming up only with dirt on our faces.

We should be grateful to Assange for having exposed our hypocrisies and we should study the attendant lessons to be learned. Let Adrian float into history as a hero and not a villain and for heaven's sake, pull up our socks and man-up for the difficulties ahead by speaking truth and catering to sound principles.

Down with shortism

The joke that Dave made about the Speaker was as follows:

Someone reversed into Bercow’s car. He got out, looked at the damage and said ‘I’m not happy’. The other driver said ‘Well, which one are you?’ Boom, boom. This is similar to the Aussie cricket joke which they tell constantly. After the 7 dwarfs started their shift a load explosion was heard. Snow White rushed to the pit head. ‘Is anybody hurt down there?’ she called. A voice came back ‘England is going to beat Australia’. ‘Well, at least Dopey’s alright’ she said.

There has been an interesting development here with the NHS. Our son’s local hospital, the Hinchingbroke in Cambridge, has been handed over to the private sector in its entirety to function as an NHS hospital but with the NHS having no management role. I guess that this is experimental, but if it succeeds we may well see the NHS become a funding institution instead a service provider. The NHS is unmanageable if only on account of its size. It is reputed to be the largest employer in the world after Indian Railways and the largest state monopoly outside China. Could this be a way to go in the US?

Still on the NHS, a friend has just returned from hospital in Liverpool where he had a stent inserted. The menu in the cardiac unit offered two choices – chicken and vegetables or burger and fries!

I see that the vultures are now circling over Spain In anticipation that its economy is next in the game of Euro-dominos. The problem is rooted in housing. Ireland has some 300,000 new-build houses unsold. Spain has 1.5 million.

Ireland’s problem was caused by over-exuberance in the building industry which was able to borrow cheap money at a time of rising inflation on account of the Government being unable to raise interest rates to cool down the economy – the price of the ‘one size fits all’ idiocy of the single currency and ECB.

Spain effectively destroyed confidence in its housing market through hanky-panky. It is reported that in Andalusia alone 300,000 expats have had their homes sequestrated and in many cases demolished by the authorities without any compensation. This is said to affect around 900,000 people. The reason is that in the boom years, thousands of homes were built without proper formalities – planning permissions, security of title etc – as a result of criminal conspiracies by crooked politicians, lawyers, estate agents, public officials etc. The scale of fraud appears to be so huge that it must have been common knowledge. We hear stories of OAPs living in their garages without any services because the wrecking ball has visited them. It is estimated that the value of the property is €60 billion.

So farewell, then, to the expat market forever.

A puzzle; we were watching a TV documentary about Israel. There was an interview with young American Jewish immigrants with small children who had built a house less that 1 kilometre from the Gaza security fence, surely one of the more dangerous places on earth. What kind of parents would put their kids at this risk? The immigrants from US seem to be the most fanatical, but then if you choose to leave the comforts and safety of the US to live in a war zone I suppose you must be.

That was the week, that was..........

Now that the Happy Couple have named the day it is time to invest in china mug futures. Kate appears to be very bright and has had 8 years to become familiar with celebrity life. Perhaps she will improve the IQ of the Windsor dynasty. Charles certainly seems to have come from the shallow end of the gene pool.

Back in la-la land there has been yet another change of heading on immigration. The cap on non-EU immigrants will be restated to those with jobs paying more than £40,000 a year i.e. middle management level. This, of course, will make almost no difference to total inflows. The Labour government let immigration rip, presumably in the belief that the newcomers, being heavily dependent on state hand-outs, would be natural Labour voters. From 1997 the graph goes off the clock.

Unless bold action is taken, it is estimated that the immigrant population will grow by 5 million in ten years – nearly 10% of the present total population. Extrapolations suggest that GB will cease to have a white majority by 2066. Of course, this may be a worst-case scenario (i.e. scare mongering) but it has certainly brought the topic back onto the front page. One sensible thing done belatedly by Labour was to introduce a points system according to worth to the economy, which is the Australian system. There you will get a work permit if you have a scarce skill but if you are a second-hand car salesman or estate agent, forget about it. The net effect of Dave’s measures is nil. The real problem lies with students who don’t go home from their phony colleges, marriages of convenience (I hear that the going-rate is £3,500) and the lax rules about family members.

TV gave big coverage of the melt-down in Dublin. Sinn Fein was interviewed on their demand for an immediate election. This will enable them to assume responsibility for the biggest mess in Irish history. Which just goes to show that the Paddies have retained their sense of humour. I am confused by the whole fiasco. Brussels and Berlin seem more motivated by bullying than sorting out the real problem. This will be solved by the economy not by bureaucrats. FDI is flooding into Ireland – the highest for 7 years – and there is a boom in business start-ups because of the 12.5% corporation tax limit. And yet this is the very thing that Merkel and co want Ireland to give up. Madness!

And finally......

We have discovered that an advantage of the short-term memory loss that comes with age is that you can watch TV repeats without remembering the plots.

The Yellow Peril.

I do recall our reaction against the Yellow Peril when Japanese products and capital began to flood the American markets. But there are differences. I wanted to emphasize that China as the undisputed superpower in Asia has an imposed leadership role that will largely determine the Asian personality in the decades ahead. Thus far, China has not performed well in this role. I am not talking about the childish currency devaluation game that the US and China are playing, but rather the manner in which China governs it people and its behavior regarding regional diplomacy.


China has not used its influence to reduce tensions with North Korea. Nor has it made any efforts to mollify age old antipathies between itself and South Korea. It has an ongoing stand off with Japan, that as I write is heating up, over some unoccupied islands that are geographically closer to Japan. Watch this space as the island story is just beginning.

When China's President Hu Jintau was recently interviewed by Fareed Zacharia, the former spoke eloquently and unhesitatingly about China's determination to allow and indeed foster freedom of speech among its citizens. Each time this interview was broadcast in China, Hu's statement about freedom of speech was edited out. There are much better ways of managing China's need for controlling its dissidents than ham fisted editing of the President's proclamations. It is this lack of finesse that compels me to think that Hu Jintau is behaving more like Chairman Mao than the future leader of East Asia.

How about simply stating that China's history of war lords and competing peoples needs to be respected while at the same time a central authority is needed to coordinate much needed human and physical infrastructure development. One byproduct of this effort is to gradually and resolutely open up political life to what the West calls freedom of speech. Allowing this to happen overnight has potential consequences that are best avoided at the present time.

Now for the troubled Euro. One proposal is to divide the Euro into two different geographically based units; the Northern Euro and the Southern Euro. What a smashing idea; a Euro for the rich and one for the poor. It could also be called the PE for Protestant Euro and the CE for Catholic Euro. One can easily imagine having the Industrial Euro and the Wanker Euro, or how about the Ritz Euro and the Club Med Euro. A European competition could be held to name the two Euros from the above possibilities to an endless number of others. What fun.

What Katie did next.........

Needless to say, the meeja is squeezing every drop of juice out of the Wedding. We are breathlessly informed that Katie went to Westminster Abbey so that’s where the nuptial will be started. Wow! We would never have guessed. And Wills and Katie sat down to start the wedding plans. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Er..............no! The plans will already have been well and truly in place for years, down to the finest detail. We Brits may no longer be terribly good at much, but we beat the world in setting up pageants, and this requires meticulous planning well in advance.

‘Let us pause to consider the English,

Who, when they pause to consider themselves they get all reticently thrilled and tinglish,

Because every Englishman is convinced of one thing; viz –

That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is;

A club to which benighted bounders of Frenchman and Germans and Italians cannot even aspire to belong,

Because they don’t speak English, and Americans are worst of all because they speak it wrong.

Englishman are distinguished by their traditions and ceremonials,

And also by their love for colonies and their contempt for colonials............’

All State occasions will have their plans – the funerals of Her Maj and the Duke will be already in salt, although hopefully both doleful events lie far in the future.

The DT published a 15-page supplement – and there’s months to go yet. Needless to say, it has not taken long for the Grub Street smelly-socks to start raking up dirt. They are now running with the story that the rough side of Kate’s mother’s family (she is famously working class by background) will not be invited. The truth, as I understand it, is that there was a rift in the maternal side in Kate’s grandma’s time. The parents may be millionaires but they are self-made from mostly working-class stock. That should put a bit of muscle into the Windsor line, as Diana put some height into them.

Presumably, when it is all over Katie will take up residence in Anglesey as an officer’s wife. That should liven up ladies’ nights in the Officers Mess, and also has the added benefit that the Old Bill will be able to stop the smelly socks on the Menai Bridge.

Peter Oborne did a cracking piece in the DT about Maggie’s resistance to the wretched Euro, and the treachery that went on in the Tory party. By A strange irony, the present crisis seems to be leading to the rehabilitation of G Brown, late of No 10. Keeping the UK out of the Euro probably suffices to make up for his manifest and manifold sins as PM. We are not told whether the other non-members, such as the Baltic States, are still itching to join. I guess the enthusiasm has wilted somewhat. But as we have a wedge of drinking vouchers in Irish banks, we are not gloating.

Reverting to the Blessed Margaret, a couple of anecdotes that might give a small insight into her character.

A colleague of mine who was in the Cabinet Office on the staff of No 10 told me that one afternoon she was at a meeting there. Partway through, a sepulchral figure arose from behind the sofa. Maggie looked round and simply said ‘Subside, Denis!’ Which he did.

Shortly after her demise, I was having dinner with George Thomas, the former Speaker. George was renowned for his wonderful speaking-voice, so it was a cruel tragedy when he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He went into hospital for an operation, and when he came round from the anaesthetic he was conscious of a women sitting by his bedside holding his hand. It was the Iron Lady herself. He said that there were two Maggies – one the tough, uncompromising politician; the other one who was extraordinarily kind. Needless to say, George, an ex-miner and a Welsh Labour Party man of the old school, would not hear a word against her.

Here is the latest in Dave’s defence cuts fiasco.

The Service Chiefs generally wanted to demobilise the Tornados because they are high-maintenance and limited in payload during the hot season in Afghaniscam; because there were already sufficient fighter-bombers in Afghaniscam, and because the RAF only needed one type of fast jet, the Typhoon. So what does Dave do? Why, he decided to keep the Tornados and decommission HMS Ark Royal, our only fleet carrier together with its Harriers so that there will be no top cover until HMS Prince of Wales gets its aircraft at some remote time in the future. Decommissioning the Tornados would have saved £5 billion. It would have cost £120 million to keep Ark Royal going. Bet they loved that in Buenos Aires. The previous Ark was decommissioned not long before the last punch-up with the Argies, only now there’s oil down there.

Nice one, Dave. La Luta continua!

I reckon that when Dave reads the obituary columns he can’t figure out how people die in alphabetical order! If his crazy immigration policy is any guide, he must have got his degree by outsourcing his exam papers to Bangalore. There is a cap on skilled people, but otherwise it seems monkey business as usual; the latest is that one of the kidnappers of the Chandlers says he is joining his wife and family in London because he owes £50,000 to his handlers as start-up money for the kidnapping. Don’t fret, Ali; Social Services will pay. The cap will have a minimal effect on immigrant numbers; stupid gesture politics.

As is the 50% top tax band. Labour’s policy, insofar as they have any, is to get rid of Alistair ‘call me’ Darling’s sop to the chattering classes about bank bonuses. George is silent, but it is estimated that the 50% rate will lose the Treasury about £800 million through tax avoidance, emigration and people simply working less. He is obviously a stranger to the Laffer Curve. Gesture politics are usually pointless; these do actual harm. He has just announced that he will hand over £7 billion to the mangy Celtic Tiger, about the same as the total cuts announced in his last budget, plus another £7 billion to the Brussels brigands for the ‘bail out’. That would have kept the Ark going for few years yet.

And POTUS is following the customary line for politicians who have lost it at home by going on ulendo around the globe (‘If it’s Thursday, it must be Paris’). Let’s hope he doesn’t follow that other well-worn route to distract attention from domestic failures by having another bloody war somewhere; there are those in American politics who follow Talleyrand – ‘you can use a bayonet for anything except sitting on’.

'Canute', King of clean power

Let me introduce ‘Canute’, harnessing tides to generate power.

The concept is beautifully simple. There is a humungous great cistern with a turbine inside. As the tide flows the turbine is driven by water entering the cistern. When the tide ebbs, the turbine is driven by the outflow. This means that it generates power 24 hours a day, unlike other tidal systems that are inert for two hours at high and low tides.

It has no adverse effects on marine life, river silt, salt marshes or mudflats

It is environmentally friendly. There is no noise, no pollution, no use of carbon fuels. The cistern can be used for fish farming or breeding. Built in linear fashion, several units along the coast could form a barrier for land reclamation.

There are no fuel costs because the entire ‘grunt’ is provided by Neptune for free, it has unlimited lifespan, the technology already exists, and traditional construction materials are used throughout. It would be prefabricated onshore, and sunk in its required location.

All the basic research has been done. What is now needed is development funding.

So if this is the solution for clean power, what’s the problem?

Could it be that there are now so many vested interests in the ugly, bird-macerating, inefficient, environmentally-unfriendly wind farms marching across the British countryside that they will fight tooth-and-nail against competition that might wipe them out?

I think we should be told!

Wind farms are a racket

The following is an extract from a learned paper on the wind farms that are disfiguring much of Europe. It makes disturbing reading. What is rarely mentioned is wind turbine interference with air traffic control radar. It tends to break up the radar 'paint' at speeds araound 200 m.p.h,more or less the approach speed of airliners and the cruising speed of general aviation planes

Wind Energy Favoured by conservationists and politicians alike, only recently has adverse publicity been observed, largely caused by high profile local pressure groups objecting to sites in their locations.  When on-shore they are visually intrusive, noisy and inefficient. When offshore they are a great deal more costly and unlikely to survive more than 10 years without major repair – and both need expensive re-cabling to bring into the National Grid, causing even more expense and visual impairment. The cost of overground pylons are about £1.6M/mile, underground about £20M/mile. Almost 3,000 wind turbines have been installed in the UK, with another 4,800 planned. UK consumers have not been informed of the huge subsidies needed, nor have the stealth taxes supporting these subsidies been revealed. A 3 Megawatt (MW) unit costs about £3-4M to build, will produce about 9,200 MW hours/a, with an annual value of £0.33M.  It also gains £0.442M through subsidy via ROCS (see EU Emissions Trading Scheme below). With the UK government providing a 20-year guaranteed subsidy, over its 25-year life the turbine attracts £20M of revenue.  This provides an explanation for the “rush-to-gold” by many entrepreneurs. If this is bad for the UK, other European countries are much worse; Germany provides a subsidy of four times cost of generation. The total cost of subsidies for wind power, producing 6.8% of the Germany’s electricity, is estimated at 20.5 billion Euros over the last decade.  This palls to irrelevance compared to the solar subsidy; 53.3 billion Euros to produce just 0.6%! Currently UK users pay an average of £12 (direct charge) + £31 (carbon permits) + £38 (carbon emissions reduction) per site. The total (£81/a) is the effective current total subsidy applying to renewable sources of power.  Further taxes are proposed up to 2020. But it gets worse. The UK government has announced 30GW of renewable-based power is to be built. Since wind generation is the only mature low carbon technology, ergo wind power becomes the only current source of renewable energy. But wind turbines are non-continuous sources, necessitating the building of 24GW of conventional power generators for backup. By coincidence the capital cost of building 30GW wind generators is approximately the same as building nuclear generators of the same capacity. Both are effectively carbon emission free. Consequently the taxpayer is paying twice as much as necessary to gain 30GW of carbon-free electricity, whilst blighting the landscape with unsightly windmills.  The simple question is: why?

Deja vu all over again............

The prospect of a Royal wedding next year will ensure that cheerfulness will break out all over; just what the economy needs, especially for those in the tourist industry. Needless to say, the meeja is wall-to-wall. When I went to ‘Jeff Randall Live’ did I get the business news? Nope. So I switched to ‘Quest means business’ on CNN. And what did I get? That’s right. It is all very good news for the UK. In the space of a year it will have the Wedding, HM’s Diamond Jubilee (that will be the biggest street party of all time), and the Olympics. This will be good both for business and for the country’s morale.

It is also very important constitutionally. Wills and Katie are a more glamorous couple than Charles and Diana ever were. He is tall, very good looking, has an amiable personality, a University degree, and a proper – if somewhat dangerous – job as a search-and-rescue chopper pilot. He also speaks like a normal person. She is beautiful, intelligent (Diana herself said that she was a thick as two short planks), middle-class and seems very sensible. If things go OK the future of the monarchy should be assured for another half-century. If not, I doubt that it will survive Charles. It would be good for the country if Chuck were to renounce the throne. His conduct during the Diana affair showed that he was not fit to be King, but in any case he is too old and too lacking in charisma. Neither is he very bright.

I now have a distinct sense of déjà vu all over again, only this time it’s China-bashing; seems like all America’s woes are down to the evil Mr Chin, who has ‘a carefully thought-out plan to take over America’, according to that well-known anti-masturbator, professional virgin, part-time-witch and no-time politician, Christine O’Donnell. The fact that China’s trade surplus as a percentage of GDP has been steadily reducing and that its current account surplus has halved in three years don’t enter into the Palinista thinking. Neither does the fact that the US has a huge export trade to China in agricultural products, particularly poultry and corn (a billion-plus population takes a lot of grub) or that General Motors has sold 2 million vehicles to China this year, more than in the US.

We are old enough to remember the recession about 30 years ago. As we know, it was all part of a Yellow Peril plot by Japan to take over the world with a politically-motivated economic strategy involving manipulating the yen and paying unfair subsidies to exporters. I remember scenes of laid-off American car-workers smashing-up Japanese cars in parking lots. Reagan was constantly vetoing congressional attempts to build trade-barriers against the evil Japs, proposed by politicians too young or too stupid to understand that it was protectionism that wrecked the world economy in the 1930s. That the Japanese worked harder, saved more and respected education, and built better cars and cameras was neither here nor there.

That the Chinese work harder, save more, and respect education (see what I mean about déjà vu?) and make better and cheaper consumer goods may well have something to do with their success, whilst European workers are not allowed to work more than 48 hours a week.

Still on déjà vu, when Deepwater hit the news months ago we commented on Obama’s foolishness in rushing to blame BP ‘profit before safety’ deficiencies before there was a scrap of evidence of the causes of the spill. We considered that he was in danger of looking a complete prat with his Brit-bashing, macho, gung-ho posturing in front of the cameras. And so it comes to pass. The joys of schadenfreude!

And the originator of our title phrase, the inimitable Dubya seems to have a runaway success with his apologia. At least he was able to have book-signings unlike the Smarmy Swami Blair.

With ‘students’ beating up Tory Party HQ in protest against Labour’s increases in fees, we should be grateful for the opportunities of University education offered to the new generation. They may fit themselves for top jobs in business, industry and the professions by studying ‘Football Culture’, ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Feel the force; how to train the Jedi way’, ‘Robin Hood Studies Pathway’ and ‘History of lace knitting in the Shetlands’, all of which are taught at various universities here. Meanwhile, Dave has decided to pay his ‘vanity’ photographer out of his own capacious bin, so perhaps he’s been reading Heffer’s caustic comments.

Obama: stirring up apathy!

Well, O is on his way home from stirring up apathy in Asia. Sources here indicate that he might just as well have stayed home for all the credit the US received from friends and opponents alike. I don't count the applause he received in Jakarta, after all, he spent 4 years of his youth there. Yet, protests against his visit continued outside the US embassy well after his departure.

While complaining about the futility of competitive currency devaluation, he commissioned Bernanke to print over a trillion dollars, i.e. instant devaluation. Mind you, I am not at all sympathetic with the Chinese who refuse to devalue their currency either. About all they offer internationally is sour grapes. They are at odds with South Korea, Japan and the US and are not at all liked in Southeast Asia. Then again, the US virtually handed China the technical hardware, software and training to manufacture what we had been happily producing for decades. We kept too little for ourselves and we are now paying the price.

I suspect O will also pay the price in the form of a single term president. He went from a bang to a whimper in record time and still seems incapable of capturing the hearts and minds of the public at large. Some say, and I agree, that he will be like Jimmy Carter and make too many wrong moves and bad decisions. His future to some extent depends on the gravity of the Republican candidate. He would beat Sarah Palin, but not Huckabee or even Romney. Too bad that the US does not punish candidates for telling porkies as in the UK. That would make short work of nearly all these scoundrels.

I like the term 'headcount creep' with respect to released civil servants returning to service. I am afraid that our US bureaucracy is, like the third world, populated by tens of thousands of individuals with political connections. As the largest employer in most countries, the civil service needs reducing across the board. I have always found that these people almost need to commit murder to be fired. The ministries and secretariats serve as employment agencies to repay political favors and for nepotistic purposes. Also, like the third world, if no places are available to place the minions, new ministries or departments are created. We have done a very good job of this with respect to our top heavy, and overpopulated security services.

The newly elected senators and representatives are arriving in DC. Monday, they will be scrambling for office space which is allocated on a seniority basis. In the meantime, senior Republicans are threatening to enact legislation to ban earmarks. Reminds me of O's first month in office. After that month, all was quiet on the earmark front as he took a scalding from old timers who must have threatened non-cooperation if he insisted on fighting against their pork barrel projects. I seriously doubt the Republican majority in the House will have any more success and if they do, it would be a major sign of political reform.

Our beloved governor, Rick Perry, looks like a matinee idol. He has longish flowing hair, a permanent tan and is always impeccably dressed. Everything about him is just that, a facade. Sadly, he just won another term against a Democrat who had served well for four years as the mayor of Houston. He, too, came to the table with multiple skeletons in his closet, but to my mind was the lesser of two evils. You may recall that Perry threatened to take Texas and cede from the union; which is a legal Texas right dating back to the time it joined the US. He is an idiot, spends lavishly, puffs up, blows smoke and eventually crawls back into his hole to lick his wounds. A loser.

The people have spoken......the bastards!

The people have spoken, so what are we to make of the mid-terms? In two previous elections the GOP got hammered for making a deficit worse with unaffordable tax cuts, letting Wall Street screw Main Street, two wars, stagnant wages and rising job insecurity. Now there is a jobless ‘recovery’, rising unemployment, even more job insecurity, and still war. So was this a vote for O’s opponents? My take is that it was more a howl of rage. If ‘none of the above’ had been an option, it may have been very attractive to many – I have long believed that people don’t vote governments in; they vote incumbents out.

Back in la-la land, Dave’s defence review beggars belief. The matchless Matt in the DT sums it up.

We will have a carrier with no aircraft for 8 years. When the aircraft arrive they will not be the VSTOL Joint Strike Fighter but the conventional carrier version that needs a longer deck and a stonking great catapult. What we are not told is that carriers also require a mini-fleet of escort ships and supply vessels. Not that this would matter for very long in real hostilities. Dave simultaneously cancelled the updated Nimrod. So HMS Prince of Wales will go to war with no planes, no protective escort, and no airborne early warning radar system. Should last about as long as the previous POW that the Japs made short work of in 1941. The hypersonic anti-ship Sizzler missile might see to that.

Never mind, Johnny Frog will help us out. At this point let me reprise the great pun by Miles Kington. The French Navy decided it needed a stirring battle cry, so they decided on ‘To the water; it is time’ (a l’eau; c’est l’heure). Vive l’entente cordiale.

Excellent news is that the former Minister for Immigration in the Broon tyranny, he who got handbagged by the gorgeous pouting Joanna Lumley, has been unseated and banned from Parliament for 3 years for electoral malpractice – in this case telling the most outrageous porkies against his opponent during the campaign. That’s right; what appears to be normal practice in US elections is actually an offence in the UK. This is the first case of its kind in 99 years, and demonstrates the depths to which political morality sank in the NuLab years.

There should now be a by-election and Labour will lose the seat, unless Mr Speaker, the small but beautifully formed Tory John Bercow so decides (he may delay it until any appeal has been heard or until his Socialist wife, who is much bigger than him, tells him what to do).

That last sentence was intended to be satirical. Scarcely had I written it when the DT announces that the by-election has been postponed by Mr Speaker after the intervention of his wife. Beyond satire!

As with so many things debauched by Blair, the voting system, in the words of the Judge on the enquiry into hanky-panky at elections in Birmingham, ‘would disgrace a banana republic’. It was all fitted up quite simply. In former times, you could only get a postal vote for good reason e.g you were in hospital or incapacitated. Very few were handed out – maybe a couple of hundred in a constituency of 80,000. Under Blair, postal votes were handed out to all and sundry. Result: party apparatchiks would go around collecting up as many as possible and – bingo – our man elected! The official responsible in Birmingham left the £130,000+ a year job under a cloud shortly afterwards and immediately got another public service job at £140,000+ a year. As Immigration commissar. You couldn’t make it up!

More mendacity over Dave’s ‘cuts’. Public expenditure will actually increase during the Brokeback Coalition’s 5-year Plan. ‘More’ is the new ‘less’.

Meanwhile, a member of the nomenklatura of UNITE, the portmanteau of trade unions, declares that ‘upwards of 1 million’ hard-working, deserving, devoted public servants will be thrown on the scrapheap. ‘Upwards’, comrades, means ‘more than’, not quite what you meant to say, I fancy. The Plan predicates a reduction of 800,000 over 5 years.

During that time a large number will be accounted for by natural wastage. There is the related prospect of savings through a recruitment moratorium. Many will take early retirement at age 50 (public service pensions provide for the full pension to be paid on a 40/80 basis so that once you have done 40 years you get a 50% index-linked pension, but there can be 10 added years meaning that you can retire on full pension at age 50 on completion of only 30 years, plus a lump sum). Still with me? Do try to keep up.

Others will take voluntary redundancy. Many staff in any event will be on fixed term contracts. Others will be temporary staff. Compulsory redundancy will certainly be nowhere near the figures quoted by the comrades. But I remember years ago when the Civil Service had to be slashed, a Government Department fired all its temps at the end of the financial year so that the reduction showed up in the statistics. Then they took them all back on again. Moral: never mind about job reductions. Let’s see establishment reductions, so that there is no headcount-creep later.

Scrapheap, anybody? The big loser, of course, will be UNITE as it watches whole swathes of its membership evaporate.

‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’. Er.......not quite. Whilst things are falling apart domestically, the ever-generous British taxpayer will be consoled by the thought that that the overseas aid budget, which was the fastest growing budget under the Blair/Broon reign of terror (by a factor of nearly 3-times the 1997 figure), is set to increase by a whopping 37%. Triples all round, then, in Kampala, Addis Ababa and other centres of political rectitude. And now we have revelations that Dave has a raft of ‘vanity’ staff, including his personal photographer, video cameraman, wife’s style advisor (a what?) and other drones on the public payroll; rather insensitive in these hard times, n’est pas?

Heffer gets Obama wrong

I am disappointed with Simon’s latest effort at O bashing. It is popular among the conservative media to refer to O as the anointed one, or the sainted one. Now, Simon is calling him Saint Barack. There is little in the public eye that supports this frivolous moniker. My call is that Simon spoke with some conservative nut during his recent visit to the US and swallowed every word that was said. Simon then put the regurgitated tripe into his Torygraph column today without plumbing the depths of what was said and ground-truthing the facts. Cheap journalism if I am correct. If Simon wants to beatify someone, he should focus on someone who merits the title; the Blessed Margaret?

Our notorious Rush Limbaugh has been arguing that the Democrats should gear up to put Hillary Clinton as their nominee for President in 2012. This is what Rush does for laughs and not one bit of it could happen and if Hillary has her way, will not happen. Rush’s humorous effort to divide the Democratic house failed miserably save for gullible Simon to pick it up, dust it off, and actually put it into his column.

Yes, O’s visit to India and the Orient is over the top, but it is not an escape from the line of fire as Simon argues. Moreover, Simon claims 34 US warships are to guard O during his trip; a rumor that the US military has categorically denied. Lazy and sensational journalism on Simon’s part and he should know better.

There are other examples of the type of commentary that comes from a quick visit to New York and Simon’s departing as if he were an expert on the country. Alexis de Tocqueville he is not. His puny efforts to denigrate O fall seriously short. O is not regarded here as capable of walking on water and is sadly aware of his shortcomings and, I suspect, the insurmountable difficulties he will have in overcoming them. I also doubt the O will have much success in his efforts to expand US exports to Asia, but this is not because of Simon’s call that Asia can probably manufacture whatever we have for sale more cheaply. We are not selling kewpie dolls, but rather big ticket defense items and high tech equipment that goes along with it. We continue to be competitive in this arena and I am sure that O will employ whatever political leverage he can while making his sales pitch. I expect more from Simon and am dismayed at his parroting the views of American pundits without adding his usually brilliant insights.

Republican hopefuls that remain in the forefront include Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and, can you believe it, Sarah Palin. I fail to place Sarah as anywhere near presidential material and continue to disdain her backwoods, 'hockey mom' image and her red neck promotion of Republican women as 'mother grizzlies'. Huckabee's take on O's Asia tour began with the observation that the political opposition is always critical of a president who leaves the country. In other words, the visit itself is no big deal. Many Americans believe, along with myself, that the presidential entourage is obscene in number of people and cost.

More airport security nonsense

Big Brother Watch has head from a supporter who wishes to remain anonymous but is, in her words, a lady "old enough to have her bus pass".


She tells us that she was subjected to a humiliating experience at Stansted. She has had both her hips replaced and when going security she was taken off to a room and made to undress to show her operation scars to prove that she had had the surgery claimed.

She said the whole experience was utterly humiliating. She questioned the need to put her through this and was just told that it was the law.

Big Brother Watch will be contacting the airport to ask them if that is in accordance with their policy and would love to hear from you if you have heard or seen anything similar, at Stansted or elsewhere.

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.

Roi Barack & Michelle Antoinette

It is difficult for me to wrap my head around the concept of the UK and France sharing a rapid deployment force, aircraft carriers and nuclear research efforts. It will all end in tears of frustration. It is impossible for the French to compromise on anything. Theirs is the French way and zat iz all, monsieur. There is simply no grounds for unity between the French and UK cultures. DeGaulle was not subordinate in his mind to anybody and I dare say his military successors are of much the same frame of mind. In the final analysis, the UK and France are better at fighting one another than fighting side by side and they certainly had more practice at it.

The interminable mid-term elections are finally over. As predicted, the Republicans won big and are busily committing hubris over that event even though the wiser pundits are cautioning that the vote contained a strong anti incumbent element. Some of the Republicans main targets managed to get reelected. Namely, the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Ried, Senator Barbara Boxer of California and, by a larger margin owing to a safe seat, Nancy Polosi the former Speaker of the House. O will have a nationally broadcast speech tonight in which he is likely to pledge his, and ask for their, non-partisan cooperation. Fat chance.

Regardless of their motives, the public has largely sealed the fate of O's campaign for change. Not that it ever took off in the first place. The campaign foundered on O's inability to manage the legislative process needed for success in orchestrating change. He made too many compromises and offered to many deals to legislators seeking quid pro quos in spite of his promise to maintain an open and transparent administration. Even more important in the public eye, was O's failure to markedly reduce unemployment. Not that he could have done so, but rather he could have been much more proactive in educating the public as to the difficulties of this task and the time needed to make it happen. Big failure here as seen in the voting.

While it is clear that America has spoken, it is not at all clear what they said. As a result, the Republicans are now busy putting words in the public mouth and praising the public for having said them. Before long, crow will be regularly served at Senate and House dinners. The new Speaker of the House, John Boener (pronounced Bayner) lacks spark and is not an inspiring speaker. Add to this the growing rift between common everyday Republicans and the further right wing Conservatives and their Tea Party acolytes and party solidarity becomes more of an aspiration than a reality. Janet Daley puts the dilemma quite well in her Telegraph column today:

'The truth comes now: can a party that tapped grass roots anger remain in active touch with the grass roots?'

We live in interesting times and if the Republicans fail to internalize the message that the public is fed up with self-serving politicians, there will be hell to pay.

Meanwhile, O is will soon tour in India. It remains rather unclear as to why, but he booked 750 rooms in the Taj hotel to accommodate some of his entourage of about 7,000 people stuffed into 40 aircraft led by Air Force 1. Roi Barack and Michelle Antoinette are way over the top in their excesses which is no way to make much needed contact with struggling poor and middle class Americans. It is absolutely unbelievable that they are so adamant about cutting their own throats. He who campaigned as a man of the people has succumbed to the good life and is eating their cake in the process.