Obama plays 'King Lear'...

I am not so sure that the prophets of doom in the US are not right. The financial press here is giving some pretty dire indicators – debt 100% of GDP. That puts you guys up there with Ireland and Portugal. S&P have just downgraded the US debt-forecast and there are rumours that its AAA rating is in danger of being downgraded too.

The Republicans seem to be in a mood to make swingeing cuts. Like PBS grants. That should do the trick, and have the added advantage that all TV will be crap not just most of it. O is reported to be promising huge cuts but we have no reports of where they will fall. He is beginning to sound like King Lear

'I will do such things --What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be The terrors of the earth!

Never mind. It’s déjà vu time again.

BP is back on the front pages.

Quote of the week from Bob Dudley (I wrote it down as he said it). ‘BP has been deeply impacted by the deaths.....’.

The AGM was mobbed by impoverished protesters who had flown in from America for the occasion. There were no reports of Gulf protesters demonstrating against Halliburton. But it doesn’t appear as if Bob has got the golden bullet after all. I had a peep at BP shares afterwards. They have dropped from a year high of 655 to 458, about 40% by my simple arithmetic. Of course, the conventional view is that BP, like so many others, is too big to fail. Just like ICI, PAN Am, TWA, perhaps?

Brussels justice. Out of 54,689 arrest warrants issued so far the commission can only quote a handful against serious criminal or terrorist suspects. These people could have been extradited under national systems that protected the entire population who are now unprotected from unjust extradition”.

Conservative backbench MPs are putting pressure on David Cameron to resist the European Court of Human Rights’ demands to lift the ban on prisoners’ right to vote. They claim that an estimated 8,000 ECHR rulings have not been implemented by other countries in the past. The article quotes a leaked Government document confirming that “the direct sanctions for failure to comply with [ECHR] judgment are political rather than judicial. We are not aware of any country that has been expelled from the Council [of Europe] for non-execution of a judgment.”

The Entitlement Society US-style

We continue to enjoy watching Fareed Zacharia's GPS program each Sunday. Last week he featured an engaging interview with former Secretary of State James Baker. The man is brilliant and speaks with clarity, logic and to the point. His concepts convey a common sense that is both rare and compelling. Would that he could influence the current lot of politicians in Washington. The fighting and biting of the latter is becoming boring, boring, boring. America deserves better and I fear for our future. There is no hope on the horizon, in my mind, of improving politicians behavior short of a great civil or natural disaster.

Politics is just now preoccupied with the national budget, the national debt and the national trade deficit. Spending is out of control and political leaders uniformly seek dramatic spending cuts; in projects supported by the opposition of course. A major target is the multitude of social programs instituted over the years, often without foresight regarding sustainability, and the dependencies these programs have created. Time was in America when a sick person would have to be taken care of by himself, family or friends. In like manner, Americans used to blame themselves if they tripped and fell and sustained an injury as a result. Today, growing masses of people not only rely on, but insist that the state care for them and should they sustain an injury through carelessness, they want to immediately sue someone.

We are now ensconced in what is known here as entitlements. To the political right, such entitlements mean social security, health care programs, emergency care and a host of other programs aimed at minority or impoverished groups who are collectively supported by the Nanny State. I extend the concept of entitlement to include professionals who insist on increasing their fees, to entrepreneurs who insist on the right to place productivity over quality and to unions who feel entitled to protect there members at the expense of their quality of service. Entitlements are not a one way street, but are enjoyed and defended by rich and poor, educated and ignorant, bright and less bright and white and blue collar workers. And entitlements are fraught with inequities. Nobody in the USA is entitled to an astronomic salary, to free health care, to immigrate without documentation, to stand for office interminably. Yet, all of these practices are protected either by law or convention. To be sure it is illegal to immigrate without documentation, but once illegally here, one benefits by free health care, free education, free police protection, and even the right to produce a child who, by virtue of being born here, is an automatic citizen.

On top of all this, we are engaged in another war in Libya. The manner in which we are fighting this war, our role in its implementation, and asset commitments are all back burner issues just now owing to the budget crisis. The cost of fighting in Libya, however, is not a back burner issue. Nor is the prospect that we may be in for a much longer engagement than was previously thought. Will we ever learn our lesson? Remember when it was believed that the boys will be home by Christmas. Nobody expected Korea, Vietnam and Iraq to last for more than a few months. We even put a limit on our engagement in Afghanistan, but with conditions and those conditions are likely to extend our commitments for a much longer period of time. Now we enter Libya for a few weeks just to clean up a bit of untidiness regarding a corrupt and decaying dictator who cannot endure our military might. Right.

I have not been slack in my attention to current events in the UK. I quite agree with you that Dave is a hollow man. You said this, or words to that effect, from the beginning along with almost all the other pundits that I read in the Daily Telegraph. He screwed up on Pakistan, he screwed up in his statements about the failure of multiculturalism, he screwed up on his strategy for economic recovery and the list goes on. The evidence is strong that Dave, O , the Hausfrau and the Dwarf are, like other Western leaders, far less powerful than we believe. They are driven by events to be sure, but in a more sinister context, they are driven by their ideological and financial supporters and lobbyists representing big business. We know this, of course, yet why does the world press continue to dote on the personality and commentary of our leaders and ignore the forces behind them in day to day reporting?

I am very much afraid that our democracy is failing us. The institutions for governance that we have created have been transformed into vehicles for the plunder of the masses while feeding them on concepts of individual importance and promises of a brighter future that will not materialize. Not that the masses have a monopoly on right thinking, kindness, generosity, understanding or any other positive attribute. Perhaps they should be treated like sheep after all.

The Italian Job RAF-style

The Coalition’s Near East adventures wobble between tragedy and farce. The bombing campaign is costing the MoD a fortune in hotel charges. How so? Because we have no aircraft carrier. It was decommissioned in the same week that Libya went tits-up, so the raids are carried out by RAF pilots based in Italy instead of Navy pilots based off-shore.

The Yanks have retired to the substitute’s bench, the rest of NATO doesn’t want to know, so it’s Dave and the Poisoned Dwarf saving the fedayeen in Shawadi Wadi.

It also exposes NATO as a farce. Where is this ‘all for one, one for all’ stuff that is supposed to be the core justification? The Rosbifs and the Frogs are the only European countries that are able to tackle any type of warlike engagement.

The Germans just get under foot. In Afghanistan 80% never leave barracks; they are not allowed out at night; and they can’t open fire unless shot at first. As for the Italians – well, you know the old jibe that the difference between Italians and a slice of toast is that you can make soldiers out of toast.

Drop the dead donkey.....

Cameron is all gong and no dinner! Dave’s policies seem to be like Boris’s buses; there’ll be another one along in a minute. He seems eminently qualified to take the title role in ’Drop the Dead Donkey’.

Having returned in triumph from his brown-nosing expedition to Pakistan, he went straight in, boots and all, with another cracker, this time slagging-off Oxford University for not having enough Afro-Caribbeans amongst its intake. I fear that this chap is not the accomplished politician that we have been led to believe. He had clearly not thought out this latest asinine remark before he made it otherwise he should have realised that it would involve him in another senseless political furore. Secondly, he must have known that he would be torn to shreds by left and right. Thirdly, he didn’t check his facts.

First let me give my own take on this.

When I was working in Jamaica I asked my counterpart the lovely and elegant Mrs K why it was that in the Jamaican public service the top management seemed to have an extraordinarily high proportion of women. For example, 8 of the 10 Executive Agencies had female CEOs (and very good they were, too). The Secretary for Justice, whom I got to know well, was a very dynamic and somewhat intimidating lady. During my second stint the PM was a woman.

She told me that it was part of the Jamaican culture that boys tended to goof off school in their early teens for the pleasures of the beach, reggae, and Red Stripe. Meanwhile the girls beavered away at school, got good results, went on to University – often in the US- and started their careers while the boys were still into Bob Marley. By the time the boys had started to come to their senses, the girls were already well up the greasy pole.

Another aspect of Jamaican life is that there is a high proportion of single parents; fathers are somewhat deficient in the responsibility department. Sounds familiar.

On the assumption that these cultural characteristics are carried over to the British environment with the Caribbean diaspora the partial explanation is obvious. Perhaps a more important aspect is that a disproportionate number go to poor schools on sink estates. And on a slightly wider note there is no doubt in my mind or the minds of many others that the main reason why pupils from state schools are under-represented in Oxbridge is nothing to do with privilege. It is everything to do with the lousy educational standards in too many state schools. In former days, the grammar school was the route to Oxbridge for youngsters from ordinary backgrounds – Simon Heffer himself was a grammar school oik, as were Michael Howard, William Hague (who transferred to a comp) and many others who later found fame and fortune.

One interesting piece of information to come out of this furore is that Oxford has a very high proportion of what are euphemistically called ‘ethnic minorities’ i.e. persons of colour. It is no surprise that Chinese and Indians are strongly represented. Another titbit that I picked up is that in schools that have a high percentage of pupils of Chinese background the standards of the school overall are raised because the intelligence and industriousness of Chinese pupils has a salutary impact on the whole body.

The duty of the best universities is the pursuit of excellence not social engineering or some latter-day version of America’s disastrous affirmative action policies.

Dave redeemed himself up to a point with a speech on immigration that was about 20 years overdue. The topic has been taboo since the ‘rivers of blood’ speech that Enoch never made. But the fundamental problem in English politics is that Conservatives have nowhere to go. Dave and Millie are interchangeable – public school and Oxbridge boys from privileged backgrounds who know virtually nothing about real life. They are interchangeable, and many of Dave’s effusions could come from Millie without being able to tell the difference. Today’s choice is between a red lefty toff and a blue lefty toff.



America goes chicken...........

Raising chickens seems to have become a fad. We thought we were the only ones, but recent articles and news broadcasts reveal that more chicken coops are being built now than at any other time since the end of WWII. I believe there is a psychological fear going about that additional and affordable food may well be needed to sustain our population during predicted future crises. This belief is also encouraged by the growing number of domestic vegetable gardens being planted. Ours is growing nicely.

These fears should not be underestimated. While I doubt we are in trouble, I do not doubt for a moment that growing numbers of Americans believe we are in trouble.

There has been a huge rush on the purchase of guns and ammunition over the past few years. Profits of doom abound on radio and TV telling tales about imminent economic, agricultural and natural disasters that will result in urban chaos across America. Populations of private and voluntary militia groups are expanding. Self defense training, including the use of handguns, is becoming increasingly popular. Scenarios of urban gangs of minority groups, bikers, and yobs ranging the countryside in search of fuel and food are beginning to take hold in peoples minds.

The public is being warned by bazaar fear merchants that O and his minions are ruining America due to excessive spending, increased entitlements, expanding government and entry into wars which we cannot afford. Our banks will crash, our currency will become almost valueless, we will not be able to afford to import oil and our house will come tumbling down as a result.

This fringe movement is expanding and people are becoming worried over America's future. Little is being done in Washington to allay these fears. Hence the victory gardens, chicken coops, and self-preservation plans. To be sure, our leaders are out of touch with the public. O has just announced his intention to run for re-election and is looking for a campaign war chest of a billion dollars while people like myself get $35 an acre to move and operate heavy agricultural equipment which, at the end of the day, nets them just a few dollars after expenses.

Our national debt is in the trillions and our minimum wage is around seven or eight dollars an hour. These disparities play heavily on people's minds and they wonder how our economic and political leaders can be so wealthy while the population at large cannot seem to make ends meet. Troubling times, indeed.

We are beginning to look like England in many ways.

MPs in Wonderland..........

Today’s politics remind me of the immortal words of Grouch Marx:

‘The secret of life is honesty and plain dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made!’

Having stalked the corridors of power for many years, I reckon that MPs can and do so many things in the House - sleep, eat, drink copulate - without going outside into the street it becomes a world of its own, and they become increasingly detached from reality. Politicians often have very little real life experience of the problems about which they pontificate so freely, especially if they don’t belong to the ‘class’ that they claim to represent.

Let us take that tribune of the proletariat, the Rt.Hon. Harriet Harman QC, MP.

She is from upper middle class stock. Her father was a Harley Street Doctor, her mother a solicitor. She is related to Lady Longford, Lady Antonia Fraser, and Lady Billington. She went to St Paul’s School for Girls, one of London’s poshest fee-paying establishments. She studied law at York University and was a barrister. Nothing wrong with any of that, but it hardly suggests that she has any concept of what life is like for people on low incomes or living on a sink estate. There was, of course, the famous picture of her going walk-about in her constituency complete with police escort and stab vest.

Her most recent contribution was the Equality Act which made it lawful to discriminate against white men in employment matters.

Admittedly, she does have some ‘previous’ to give her street-cred; a conviction for perjury (later overturned by the ECHR) and an impressive string of motoring convictions.

There are many like her. Since the advent of the professional politician the House is now stuffed with people who have been little else but politicians, including Dave and George. I had great respect for Labour politicians of the old school, who had come up the hard way, like that real gentleman George Thomas. With the exception of the Beast of Bolsover, there are not many left. Most of the conviction politicians also seem to have departed, people like Tam Daziel, life-member of the Awkward squad and a genuine toff, one with convictions and courage. There are some with genuinely working-class credentials on both sides of the House, but few on the Front Bench of either side. David Davis and Alan Johnson spring to mind, both top men but now relegated to the back-benches.

‘’Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You who were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Depart immediately out of this place! Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves, be gone! In the name of God, go!’

Ah , Cromwell, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

Mugabe: my part in his victory..........

Just by way of a change from our penetrating analyses of current affairs, how about a bit more literary criticism? I had started to write up my diary from 1980 when I was overseeing the elections in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Here is an extract. Does anyone want to know this stuff anymore?

‘Every Saturday morning one of each of the Provincial supervisors had to report to Government House in Salisbury for ‘morning prayers’ to brief Lord Soames on the situation.

These sessions were attended by representatives of all the UK participants – election staff, F&CO people, the military and the UK police.

Soames would ask each person to report by Province.

When it got to the Midlands Province, both the military and the police reported ‘All quiet’.

I differed somewhat.

I told the gathering that there was a substantial force of Rhodesian African Rifles manning an ambush position at Gokwe, way out in the Zambezi valley. There had been a skirmish action between the Greys Scouts and terrs in the vicinity of Belingwe, and there was a substantial (and highly illegal) presence of South African troops.

The senior British officer present poured buckets of scorn on this.

‘The troops you saw at Gokwe were Royal Rhodesia Regiment reservists’ he told me, so what made me think they were RAR?

‘Because they were black’ I replied, ‘RRR is an all-white regiment. My colleague was an officer in the RAR so he knows what they look like, and I was Intelligence Officer in 5 RRR, so I know what they look like!’

Not to be put down, he went on ‘Well, the troops you saw at Belingwe must have been RRR. What makes you think they were SA?’ Clearly his Staff College course had never taught him not to ask a question unless he already knows the answer.

‘Because they were dressed in South African army camo, speaking Afrikaans, had SA vehicle registrations, and were spending Rands’.

‘Well, we have heard nothing about a skirmish near Belingwe. How do you know what happened – or if?’

‘Because we saw the Scouts moving, we heard gunfire, and when we asked what this was about we were told!’

The following week I had another story to tell about the RAR in Gokwe.

I had been allocated a Jet Ranger helicopter to get around the province quickly during the election proper. After landing at Gokwe, I called on the RRR position.

The (white) officer in charge greeted me with ‘I’m glad to see you , and I will be even more glad when you go away’. When I asked him why, he said ‘This is the only war we’ve got and we’re looking after it!’

I took off on a lengthy trip around bush out-stations. When I got back our flight engineer, who had stayed behind, was in a state of great excitement. The weekly supply convoy from Gwelo was due to arrive that day. A group of renegade terrs, who preferred a life of banditry to honest toil, had set up an ambush position. The RRR set up an ambush position immediately behind them.

When the convoy arrived the terrs took up firing positions. So did the RR and promptly wiped out the lot of them. The corpses were piled up in the police cells.

This Report was not questioned by either the police or the military. They had clearly bonded with their Rhodesian counterparts and were quite happy with such tales of derring-do.

**********

The unsung hero was John Barratt, the very capable Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council.

Intimidation and violence was rife on all sides, and the Governor had to decide whether it was possible to have an election that could possibly be called ‘free and fair’ in those conditions.

The UK security forces, both military and police, were vociferous in their opposition to the elections going ahead. They were all for a lengthy postponement, although they were less clear on how this would reduce the levels of intimidation.

They were highly prejudiced against Mugabe, and their sympathies seemed to lay wholly with Smith, so their objectivity in advising their Governor was very dubious.

John let the argument play itself out and then simply said ‘Governor, unless we get this election out of the way on schedule and then leave this miserable country there will be a bloodbath’.

Soames looked around the room, put his chin in his hand and said ‘Well, gentlemen, just pity the poor bugger who has to make this decision!’

Ex Afica aliquid semper nasty...

Libya has certainly driven other African atrocities off the front pages.

A few days ago I watched on Aljazeera just about the most appalling scenes I have ever witnessed on TV. A large crowd had taken a group of prisoners. They then poured petrol over them and set them on fire. The sight of naked men writhing in agony while their bodies gradually turned to shrivelling lumps of burning flesh as the skin disappeared was almost unbearable. Thank God there was no sound.

There will be no repercussions, of course. And nothing of this appeared anywhere else in the media as far as I can judge.

Meanwhile Mugabe continues on his murderous way without a peep from the ‘international community’ (whatever that is). In the run-up to his next phony election (which the African Union will immediately declare to be ‘free and fair’) his thugs are randomly killing those thought to be MDC supporters, beating-up almost anyone they choose and generally intimidating the population by systematic brutality in the urban areas as well as in the bush – a relatively new development which shows the total contempt for ‘world opinion’ (whatever that is).

MDC Cabinet ministers have been arrested, jailed in one of Mugabe’s stinking prisons, beaten up and charged with ludicrous offences. Poor old Morgan Tsvangirai is powerless and must go in daily fear of the same fate as befell his wife.

And what has the UN, the liberal media, the world collective of bleeding hearts got to say about all this?

That’s right!

Cameron knows diddlysquat about history.

Back in la-la land, Dave caused the merde to hit the air-conditioning with his asinine remarks during his recent visit to Pakistan. It was all the fault of the Brits and our beastly Raj, says he. Then he handed over megabucks for ‘education’.

Cameron knows diddlysquat about history. The two greatest incorporeal legacies of the Raj to the sub-continent were the English language and the English Common Law.

Until 1947, India was a concept rather than a nation. Prior to that, much of India consisted of Princely states under the Raj. Kashmir was ceded to India by the Maharajah after Independence. Hostilities broke out between India and Pakistan almost immediately. The UN called for a withdrawal of forces on both sides and for a plebiscite of the Kashmiris. Pakistan did not comply and the rest is history. (Why India wishes to hang on to a largely Muslim state that has been trouble since Day 1 has never been explained; perhaps because it dare not set a precedent for fear of engendering other separatist movements).

It is worth remembering also that Pakistan was set up as a Muslim state, not Islamic. Jinnah’s concept was tolerance of other religions and this was generally the position until Zia ruined things. (Mind you, if you are on the top floor of the Marriot in Islamabad you can just about see the Murree Brewery and Distillery which makes a pretty good single malt; who drinks it all is not explained)

Pakistan’s problems are mostly self-induced. Pakistan is rated as 143rd in the corruption league table, a fiercely fought over position with such competition as Nigeria, Somalia, Bangladesh and other star performers. It has a dysfunctional polity. It has appalling socio-economic inequalities. Nothing seems to work properly except the army and the railways, both legacies of the Raj. Like much of Islam, it squanders a huge proportion of its human resource by its discrimination against women, although it has to be said that many have risen to the top despite this, including Benazir, although this might not be a particularly happy example.

I’m afraid that the government is ‘in office but not in power’. The men-with-the-beards seem to have taken over and Pakistan is increasingly becoming a Taliban sanctuary, potentially disastrous when you consider that Pakistan has 120 nuclear warheads. It spends 8 times as much on defence as on education, the exact opposite of Indonesia. And it suits the army nicely to keep the Kashmir dispute going since this justifies their enormous budgets.

As for recent times, Dave seems unaware that, after the US (where charitable donations are tax-deductible) the British public gave by far the greatest amount of money to the flood relief. Not much came from the rest of Europe or from the Pakistanis’ wealthy co-religionists.

Where the hell are you?

Now here's a funny thing.

Since we started publication of this blog a few months ago it has attracted about 1700 hits but only 12 comments, whereas we get this number for each blog we post on My T.

Is it because the 'comment' facility is not user friendly?

Or what?

Is anyone out there?

It's all about money...

There are two outstanding articles in the DT today, one by Peter Oborne and the other by Jeff Randall. Both deal with UK and European money and banking issues and both possess a clarity of writing that I find highly appealing. Which is to say, I can understand the dynamics involved in bailing out Portugal, after Greed and Ireland and quite possibly before Spain. I was also taken by the insights offered into the European Central Bank which in turn inspired questions about the stability of large Western banking institutions. They are not too big to fail, but they may be too costly to save.

What a dilemma.

Debate is intense in Washington over the remaining fiscal year budget while contestants are playing political dodge ball like spoiled children intent on having their way at whatever cost to others. I have dropped out as best I can, but there is hardly a news item or serious conversation around that is not focused on to what extent spending cuts should be imposed.

Meanwhile, and undoubtedly in a move to take some pressure off the Presidency, O announced the inauguration of his re-election campaign this week. Bloody hell, not another one. It is anticipated that O will raise a billion dollars for his 2012 campaign. One highly politicized Fox news pundit commented that money is not the critical factor in winning an election, but rather a candidates public image and, in the case of an incumbent, his ratings, are more important.

Charles Krauthammer, speaking on the same cable news channel set the record straight. Money does win elections and he then proceeded to explain why and how. Pity Charles is not responsible for resolving the debate over this year's budget.

Money does win elections and nobody knows that as well as the Washington elite, including incumbents, lawmakers, lobbyists and big business. We have so many ways of evading, or should I say avoiding, the dictates of our American democracy that only lip service need be paid to this institution.

People are still complaining over the manner in which GW Bush stole the election from Al Gore through vote counting mechanisms in Florida. I believe that incident would have created a much greater public outcry had the public not been so tepid over the prospect of Gore as President. He rather tended to put people to sleep.

Today is what we call a come to Jesus moment. Talk will be inflammatory, viciously ad hominem, and very petty as Republicans and Democrats meet to forge an acceptable compromise before the 12:00 PM deadline for our government to shut down. Feelings are raw in Washington. Politicians have taken to the trenches and dug in their heels as they lob mega lies and distortions at one another from their respective bunkers.

Not only is the public confused, they are also fed up with our leaders and lawmakers. There is also a certain feeling of helplessness as the issues are not so grave as to generate serious civil unrest, but they are hitting our pocketbooks big time and they do engender questions about the need for major reform in government, law and the economy.

'The Land of Lost Content.....'

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

The dilemma of English politics is that conservatives are unable to vote Conservative as long as Cameron is there. The role of the Conservative Party, as the adolescent William Hague memorably said in his speech to the Tory Part conference all those years ago is ‘to roll back the frontiers of the State’. If the Tory Party is not the party of small government and libertarianism then it’s nothing.

Voters were under the impression that the Tories would get Government off their backs. They have been disillusioned very quickly.

One of the first acts of the Coalition was to adopt Labour’s dreadful Equality Act. It promised to dump Labour’s plans to empower the Police to keep records of all e-mails, phone calls etc. It hasn’t. Instead it is planning to slip these proposals through quietly. The latest dottiness coming from Kitten Heels is to give grandparents right of access to the children of divorced parents. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ you may say. Well, for starters I’m not aware that grandparents of children whose parents are not divorced have any legal right of access to them, so what’s it all about? Secondly, I can think of many good reasons why grandparents should not have legal access to their grandchildren. Interestingly, this particular piece of coat-trailing was rapidly denied ‘We were misreported’. Yeah, right!

Why do Tories of all people believe that they have the right to intrude on family life?

Labour rode roughshod over Magna Carta, especially by adopting the dreadful European Arrest Warrant. ‘To none shall we deny, nor delay, justice’. Tell that to the young lad who has spent a year in prison and two on remand awaiting trial in Greece on an EWA. It abolished the double jeopardy rule that had been in place for centuries to prevent the authorities from constantly prosecuting for the same crime. The effect is to enable the Old Bill to keep coming back until they get a result. It abolished the rule preventing evidence of ‘previous’ being given before conviction, ignoring the simple logic that the function of the court is to try the crime not the ‘criminal’ (who is not, until there is a guilty verdict).

Blair’s outrageously one-sided extradition treaty with the US, which does not require even prima facie evidence that an offence has been committed, has been used hundreds of times, but not once for its purpose of catching terrorists. Britain is reputed to have more CCTV cameras than the whole of Europe. And so it goes on.

More than 3,600 new offences were created under New Labour. There are 1,036 that are imprisonable.

It is now an imprisonable offence to allow an unlicensed concert to take place in a church hall. You can go to prison if your child fails to attend school, or if you smoke in a public place, or if you fail to obtain a passport for your pet donkey or if you are a child caught in possession of a firework at any time other than on or around November 5 or New Year's Day. Fishermen who do not ask for permission before fishing on the Lower Esk in Scotland can also be jailed, as can anyone caught importing "an unauthorised veterinary product".

Among the offences created in the past five years, though not necessarily imprisonable ones, are disturbing a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer; offering for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day; attaching an ear tag to an animal when it has previously been used to identify another animal; landing a catch which includes unsorted fish at a harbour without permission; selling types of flora and fauna not native to the UK, such as the grey squirrel, ruddy duck or Japanese knotweed.

What have the Tories done about these frightening attacks on civil liberties? Well, they dumped the ID card and.......er, that’s it.

The most worrying aspect is that nobody seems to care, as the lack of response to this piece will show.

There are fools who say ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about’. Believe me, it’s when you have done nothing wrong you have everything to worry about.

And once AV has been nodded through the same old clique will be firmly perched on the Magic Roundabout and there will be nothing the people can do about it.

Then it will be fixed-term Parliaments so that if the Government fails you will not be able to throw the rascals out. On the old philosophy that ‘if you don’t like my principles I have others’, one lot of political shysters will do deals with another lot and continue more or less as before, never mind that this produces a government that the majority never voted for.

This will bring UK into line with the continentals; there they refer to ‘liberty’ as something granted by governments. The English regard ‘freedom’ as their right.

Not for much longer. It is sleep-walking into ‘1984’. Who cares?

Barmy Britain.

In the House of Commons last week a Jewish MP was forced to apologise for referring to another Jewish MP as a Jew.

The Queen’s English.

A media report tells us that the Libyan army has been ‘attrited’.

Libya: deja vu all over again!

The O administration is becoming more and more like the W administration every day. O's recent speech re why we are confronting Libya employs words and phrases almost identical to those of W when he explained why we were confronting Iraq. Plus the ambiguity. Will we take out Gadaffi or won't we? Will we put American boots on the ground or not? Will we lead the coalition directly or via NATO or not at all? Are we fighting for regime change or not?

Plus the secrecy. O entered Libya without consulting more than a handful of Congressmen. Congress, of course, is irate. Hillary's star is rising and O's is falling; but these short term polls are highly mercurial.

As noted earlier, I am not in favor of this engagement. It will end in tears (ours). It will resolve nothing as we are not even sure who the rebels are. I read that O just issued a secret order commanding a group of CIA spooks to go into Libya, mix with the rebels and find out who they are. Odd, I thought that our embassy in Tripoli would have had that type of intelligence long ago.

Nor do I favor arming the rebels, unless our generals are intent on having these very weapons used against us in future. As for the rebels being trained by the USA in the use of our ordinance, no way. Let them continue to expend their firepower in the air.

Yet, the debate over arming and training continues. One retired ultra right general commenting on Fox news touched upon something I too was concerned about. Namely, the seemingly random and pointless firing of ammunition by the rebels. He noted that almost every news image he had seen of the fighting in Libya featured rebels firing their weapons into the air. He observed rocket launchers being fired at random, without proper anchoring and without targeting objects. He also mentioned men in 'technicals' wildly firing machine guns into oblivion.

His point was twofold. First, we must arm the rebels and second, we must train the rebels how to use the ordinance we supply. According to the NY Times, Defense Secretary Gates agrees with me and does not want to arm the rebels. So does Hillary who as our leading hawk is now reportedly having doubts about our efforts “because of the unknowns” about who the rebels are.

Now you guys have Moussa Koussa and according to some media he is having a long chat with MI6 at some unknown location. Breaking news indicates Moussa will not be given amnesty and that he has 'electrifying' information about the Lockerbie incident. We are not told, of course, what this electrifying news is, as the reporter claims not to know, although the same reporter does know it is electrifying, or perhaps could possibly be electrifying.

This type of journalism is tantamount to a news presenter advising the audience that the latest terrorism warning will be issued after the commercial break.

The Gravy Train hits the buffers....

The Great March against Government spending cuts drove Libya off the front pages for a day or so. I am surprised that none of the commentators has analysed the real position of public servants facing the chop, so here’s a few observations of mine culled from experience.

It is unlikely that they will be forced, starving, onto the streets to sell the Big Issue. Many senior staff will be on fixed term contracts with ‘loss of office’ compensation clauses. In the case of local government, over-50s will be able to take early retirement. Pensions are calculated on 40/80ths (i.e. the pension accrues at one 80th of salary for each year of service) so after serving 40 years there is a full pension of 50% of final salary. This is index linked. There is an ‘added years’ provision so that the employer can add up to 10 years to the length of pensionable service. Thus a person age 50 with 30 years’ service could retire on a full pension. In most cases severance packages should provide a fairly comfortable exit. (The exception to this is MPs, whose pensions are 20/40ths – nice!).

My guess is that the public service will not get a great deal of sympathy. It seems to have lost a great deal of respect in recent years. I can think of two possible reasons.

The first is that there seems to be a widespread feeling that it is no longer the apolitical sector of tradition. Some senior appointments have gone to political activists. Recruitment is often through the public appointments pages of the Guardian which on Wednesdays groans under the load of advertisements. There is some suspicion that the public service was politicised during the Blair years – there are now reports that Cameron is having trouble with his Civil Servants bordering on defiance.

There is also criticism of salaries and benefits. Years ago working in the public service meant lower salaries than in the private sector in return for job security, a good pension at age 60 and generous leave and other provisions. Now one frequently hears ‘fat cats’ as the description of senior officials because of salaries that have outstripped the private sector with little of the risk. Local authorities have attracted particular attention from the media.

A particular example is the Chief Executive of a large local council who has had the unforgiving attentions of Private Eye for ages and who has recently featured in the national press – very unfavourably.

The essence of the criticism is that this official earns around £250,000 a year, substantially more than the PM, plus all the fringe benefits, of course. To get an idea of how top salaries have escalated, years ago the top salary in a local authority would be about 6 to 8 times the lowest. This one is about 12 times; the relative salary has thus more or less doubled in recent years.

Over the past few years the media satirists have had a great harvest of non-jobs in the public sector – outreach advisors and the rest – and I deny any sentient human being to be able to comprehend some of the job descriptions, which appear to be words chosen at random and without any meaning. Having said which the DT today had a headline reading ‘City boys’ e-mail goes viral’. What does that mean? ‘Viral’ means caused by a virus. So perhaps it is not only the public sector that mangles language.

Quote of the week

Rod Liddle in the Speccie:-

‘There are a few lessons to be learned from Japan, mind – the obvious ones, I suppose.

1) Never trust a thing told to you by a large corporation.

2) Never trust a thing told to you by your government.

3) Never, ever, trust anything told to you by an “expert” being interviewed on a rolling news channel’

Exploding underwear.......

My reference to Niall Ferguson, the decline of the Ottoman Empire and its lack of any real intellectual contribution to the world provoked an energetic debate.

One view was that the intellectual stimulus came from the Greeks and Jews who were forced to convert and integrate, the implication being that Arabs created nothing of value. The weakness of this, I feel, is, first that the Middle East was the cradle of civilisation – the great cities of Aleppo, Byblos, Damascus, and so on were centres of learning from time out of mind. Secondly, learning in the Arab world continued to influence Europe for 1000 years after the fall of Rome.

This led to another topic, the hatred between Jews and Muslims.

Some say this goes back to the Prophet Mohammed. I am not so sure. My feeling is that this is a modern manifestation arising from increasing Jewish emigration to Palestine from the late 19 Century until the present. If I have understood Paul Johnson correctly in his magisterial ‘History of the Jews’ both Jews and Christians were tolerated under the Caliphate as ‘people of the book’. Jews held high office in the Caliphate partly for their competence and partly because they were seen to be disinterested. In many instances Jews prospered mightily in the Ottoman Empire. Bankers such as the Rothschilds and Sassoons were Middle East businessmen who set up branches in London and Paris.

Are the current upheavals in Arab countries related to hostility towards Israel? Any connection seems tenuous to the point of invisibility. And another thing; since our gallant lads in Libya are enforcing a ‘no fly’ zone, why are they attacking ground targets? I only asked.

Another attitude is that Muslims are terrorists because they are Muslim. On this reasoning the Omagh bombers who blew to bits young mothers and children were terrorists because they were Catholic. I prefer to believe that they are terrorists because they are thoroughly evil.

My guess is that ‘alienated’ Muslim youth are candidates for exploding underwear because of frustration and envy. They see their kaffir counterparts having the life of Riley – binge-drinking, fornicating, producing illegitimate kids so they can live on ever-increasing state benefits that in turn finance the stock-in-trade of their drugs-dealing sidelines – and they want a slice of it but can never get it.

Biting the hand that stops feeding them...........

Predictably, NATO will now take over enforcement of the no fly zone in Libya. As the US largely controls NATO, there is not much difference between our air marshals or other military brass being in charge or NATO itself. The move does, however, take some of the pressure off O who seems to have committed to an engagement with Libya without informing Congress. Needless to say, Congress is pissed off and, as it now enjoys an opposition majority, is making a meal out of the situation.

There is already talk here of an exit strategy for Libya. The best comment I heard on that subject is that an exit strategy is not mandatory, cannot be predicted and for those reasons should be abandoned altogether. Let's stop talking about an exit strategy and begin using our common sense.

 Had that prevailed in the first place, we would not have become engaged in Libya. The administration here seems to believe that we are involved in a weekend war that will be over by month's end. Nobody that I have read or listened to spoke about the internal nature of the rebellion until recently.

Now, the more savvy pundits, are speaking about conflicts between the main Bedouin tribes of Libya and dissatisfaction by the have nots, i.e. people who are not from Gadaffi's tribe. What's more, a slight current of opinion is gaining momentum that the primary rebelling tribe, from Eastern Libya, is much more dedicated to Islamic fundamentals and more easily radicalized than the ruling tribe.

We shall see how that plays out, but what is absolutely clear to me is that as per usual the US has gotten itself involved in something it does not understand and with the highly plausible prospect that those who we are aiding will return to bite us. Indeed, the Arabs have a penchant for biting the hand that stops feeding them.

Japanese fall-out........or not?

My friend Douggie, the designer of the ‘Canute’ tidal power generator and possessed of an enquiring mind, is curious about reports of panic buying on the west coast of the US because of the prospect of radio-active fall-out arriving from the nuclear disaster in Japan, carried by the jet-stream. As the jet stream was there in 1945 also, he asks why was there no fall-out from Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the nuclear detritus was vastly greater? Ditto the many nuclear test explosions carried out in the Pacific in the ‘50s and ’60s? Or has the whole thing been yet another example of the breathless and semi-hysterical reporting style that is the current fashion?

The Japan coverage has also been notable for its non-reporting. There has been no looting. Well, fancy that! There has been no panic. Bless my soul! The people have been getting stuck-in to put things right. Would you believe it! Unfair to journos!

Outside The Economist it is getting increasingly difficult to get serious news coverage and comment. The print version of the Telegraph now looks like a tabloid with banner headlines and the rest. TV news is endlessly repetitive. Sometimes the various channels run the same story for four hours. Vast amounts of space are given over to stuff about selebs and other garbage. I suspect that one reason for this is that TV now has to provide 24 hours news coverage (why?) so it has a great deal of time and space to fill. Another reason may be that internet news has sharpened competition enormously.

We now watch Al Jazeera. AA Gill, the Sunday Times TV critic rates it as the best news channel with excellent coverage and quality reporting. I started to watch it last year because it was the only news service that reported the trouble in Thailand in any depth or detail – important to us because we were about to depart for Chiang Mai. It is not the PR department of Al Qaeda as Dubya seemed to believe.

Going green.

ActionAid and other campaign groups are claiming that, due to deforestation, emissions associated with the EU’s biofuel targets could be up to six times higher than fossil fuel equivalents, and will also create huge social upheaval with communities losing their land, homes and jobs.

It will all end in tears........ours!

My goodness, our Dear Janet is on thin ice today in her article about O wanting to keep our of the Libya fray. Like so many others, Janet calls upon the founding fathers to justify her position that America should be the promoter and savior of human rights, freedoms and democracy around the world. I seriously doubt that our esteemed founding fathers intended to propel future generations of Yanks into military action against all the human rights violators around the globe. Our lads formulated some romantic and ideal phrases about governance in their efforts to justify rebellion against the throne. According to Janet, these phrases were not only meant to soothe our collective revolutionary conscience, but also to prescribe future congressional behavior.

I do not regret having severed our umbilical cord to English throne, Neither do I believe the best way to preserve democracy throughout the world is to ferment, foster and materially aid revolutionaries seeking to overthrow their dictatorial, corrupt or megalomaniacal leaders. Efforts to this effect are to me examples of cultural imperialism by Americans who possess a rather botched culture, are not imperial and who have almost zero understanding of other peoples and their cultures. We really need to stop this sophomoric silliness of exporting the principles of our founding fathers and cramming them into whatever context suits our purposes. Yes, there are rare times when we need to act, but policing the world is beyond our mandate.

Or am I wrong and O and co are intervening not on the basis of human principles, but a need for oil. After all, we just witnessed some nasty object lessons on the subject of why nuclear power will not become the energy of the future and we remain highly dependent upon and addicted to Middle Eastern oil. If Gadaffi with all his Libyan oil threatens to upset the apple cart like Saddam did in Iraq, then we must act quickly and decisively; in principle that is.

Our intervention in Libya will end in tears. Ours. The new regime will suck on our resources until we tire of offering them and will then come at us like harpies because we stopped feeding them. Their leaders will emerge in an aura of humanitarian and democratic proclamations that will endure until the public finds out how much aid and oil money they are channeling into their own pockets. That's the nature of the beast as I have learned from being there and having felt confounded in my inability to understand their mercurial and often rough behavior. The Libyans are, an Egyptian once explained to me, Bedouin tribesmen whose recent history is one of wandering desert trade routes while seeking water during the day and warmth at night. They can be hospitable and generous one moment and short and cruel the next.

The $ in the poo?............

Anent the suitability of Newt to be POTUS, the Economist did a league table of the potential Republican candidates. Their estimation of Newt was about the same – not enough brains and too much baggage. All other possibilities got a similar thraping to a greater or lesser degree, Romney being classed as smart but erratic and lacking in any clear set of principles. All in all, it made for rather depressing reading and invited the reaction ‘none of the above’.

Would it be unkind of me to suggest that they have an IQ of 180? Between them?

At this time it looks as if the Republican Presidential candidate is another of those known unknowns.

There are some financial commentators who see the ‘green shoots’ of economic recovery in the US. They appear to base this view on a small rise in retail sales, some growth in industrial production, a tiny fall in unemployment and stabilisation in the housing market. Are they clutching at straws?

The Federal debt is $14 trillion. I find it difficult to visualise that sum. If it was all in dollar bills how big would the pile be?

The annual interest is about $200 bn. There is the awful prospect of the US having to borrow just to pay the interest. Isn’t that what bankrupted New York some years ago? And isn’t that the basis of Ponzi schemes? Irwin ‘Alka’ Stelzer in the ST says that the debt is increasing by $4.5 billion every day.

Strewth!

Not reported in the print media is the release of the Pakistan spook Davis by acquittal under Sharia law. However, contrary to my prediction, the US did not pay a large sum in compensation to the family. Hilary says it is not true that $2 million was paid to get the guy back. Yeah, right. Of course, Hilary is perhaps disingenuous, the money having been paid by the Saudis to keep the US clean.

Malthus is over-rated.....

Ages ago, in the shadows of my youth, I clearly recall having spent some of my scarce pocket money on a Boy Scout Handbook. The cover featured a tidily uniformed young lad gallantly helping an elderly woman to cross an urban street. There are two reasons this image stuck with me. First, I wanted to be that young man with his tidy uniform and good intentions. Second, when the time came to begin university, I had some questions about the elderly woman. such as; did she really need assistance and did she want to cross the street at all.

Often in my consulting life in Africa and Asia I reflected on these images while preaching caution about America's penchant for being a good scout and performing good deeds. By the end of my international career my allegiances were more correctly guided by Clair Booth Luce's quip, 'no good deed goes unpunished'. While I don't regard our intervention in WWI and WWII as good deeds, I am of the opinion that our campaign to stamp out the evils of communism as in Korea and Vietnam, our efforts to curtail a tyrant as in Iraq and our determination to keep the world safe from Islamic terrorism as in Afghanistan were symptomatic of our Boy Scout culture. Those self righteous deeds are still being punished.

Indeed, the American culture is depicted in so many contradictory observations that it is not even clear to us who we are. My generation of Yanks was raised on the western film tradition of letting the bad guy draw first. The guy in the white had always managed to issue some fatal shots and win the heroine's affection for his efforts. Much later, 'shoot first and ask questions later' gained popularity. Many observers of America's history claim that we should have initiated pre-emptive strikes against some of our enemies, like Hitler, and were most successful when we did, like in the Spanish-American War.

Did we in fact take the poor and destitute of the world and make them into gentlemen and women? Hardly, but we live with that myth as well. Consider, for example, the remark of an American correspondent in Northeast Japan a few days ago who noted an absence of looting during the earthquake/tsunami aftermath. Discipline and honor apply to Japan, but many elements of our population at large can still be depended upon to profit from disaster and the misfortune of others. I just heard a psychic comment on why we were unable to more quickly and effectively respond to hurricane Katrina. The presenter posed this question with his thought that we did not know how. The psychic replied no, we knew how, corruption was the real culprit.

We should have learned by now that implementing an international policing action is more often punished than rewarded. I for one argue that it is neither in our nor Libya's interest for us, or other world powers, to militarily intervene on behalf of the revolutionaries. It now looks as if we will stay away from the fray, but it is yet early days and besides, America and the world's attention is intensively focused on Japan. And for good reason.

Japan is the only country to have experienced a nuclear bomb. We did it and now, they are victims of another attack; from a tsunami. When the Emperor spoke a few days ago, I knew their situation was dire. While everyone with even vestiges of humanity are hoping for a successful turn around of the situation, things only become worse. Several countries, including ours, are evacuating their citizens not only from the Fukushima area, but from Japan itself. The government has lost much face, partly because of wanting to paint an optimistic picture, and partly because of misinformation. Meanwhile, everyone who ever questioned the plant's design or construction is crowing to the tune of 'I told you so'.

The prophets of doom are having a heyday. They are delighted with the prospect of an accelerating Armageddon. Too many natural disasters are occurring for them to be ignored as coincidence. Sun spot activity is increasing to the point where warnings have been issued about disruptions in electrical and electronic equipment operations. The Telegraph gives Fukushima 48 hours to manifest itself as in or out of control, the US is placing radiation monitors on our West Coast and the UN advises us to expect the first radiation plume within days. It is a wonder we are all still alive with the world appearing to take revenge on the ills of overpopulation and environmental abuse.

I am content to see all of this as works of nature and nothing more. As for overpopulation, I expect Malthusian laws will eventually kick in. In fact, I think they are long overdue. Perhaps Malthus was overrated.

Newt is a nerd....

Perhaps I am prejudiced, but likely presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich is a nerd. Has to be with a name like Newt. He is highly respected for his knowledge of government operations, rules, shortcuts, legal and practical limits, history and capabilities.

Pundits on the political right love him for his political genius and chat show personality. Yet, he recently explained his latest affair with an aide as having to do with being overworked at the office and unable to get home to his wife. That and his recent conversion to Catholicism remind me of a prudent Tony Blair.

I believe part of the reason America accepted John Kennedy as a Catholic was because he didn't behave like one. He was naughty, haughty and decidedly not doctrinaire. He was a Catholic by birth and not conviction which rather let him off the hook as far as the public was concerned.

Newt, on the other hand, has just found God, the true one? The only one? Newt has not yet confided these thoughts on the subject. I should think he should sit down and write a book and reflect on his past affairs rather than attempt becoming our head of state.

I would much prefer the Mormon, Mitt Romney who is not only brilliant but possesses common sense and a good measure of wisdom. He also has a sense of humor. When asked about the former Mormon practice of polygamy, he noted that he has had only one wife while some of our presidents have had more than that. He was undoubtedly referring to Reagan who had been divorced.

The heat is off the Libyan rebels as world attention is glued to Japan and the tsunami aftermath. One, possibly two of Japan’s nuclear power plants is seriously misbehaving giving rise to speculations of another Chernobyl scenario. In real politic terms, Japan has been downgraded with Dow Jones averages rising because a measurable chunk of demand for oil has been removed from the equation. With some demand pressure off oil, prices fall a bit and our stock market is happy with the prospect of Americans spending less on imported oil and more on consumer goods. The market shows no mercy while the final toll in human life is still being calculated.

Some American broadcasters panicked over the prospect of a tsunami hitting our West Coast, never mind Guam, Midway and Hawaii. Devastation was predicted by these few idiots and many Americans were in a dither over what might happen to our coastal resources. This was reminiscent of Orson Well’s 1930's radio broadcast depicting an invasion from outer space.

Most people, however, remained cool and were not overly concerned. Perhaps like myself, I could not see a huge shock wave maintaining its intensity all the way across the Pacific. At last count, we lost one life. A man in a group of three carried out to sea while they were taking pictures of the waves. Search and rescue efforts have been called off. Libya is off the map.

O continues to weigh his choices and options vis-a-vis Libya. Some of us feel that the rebels will all be dead by the time he makes up his mind. I still prefer to let the rebels fight it out without our material aid. If we do assist them, we will regret it. Arabs love us as long as we feed them and give them money.

Several stories have arisen over O and co being out of sinc with one another. Hillary says one thing, Defense Secy Gates another and both are chastised by O for not following the party line. The head of one of our multiple intelligence agencies was asked who he fears the most. He replied China and Russia. As he spoke, VP Biden was being entertained at the Kremlin in Moscow. A fine how-de-do.

I would be surprised if Hillary will be available for a go at a second term. It is difficult to find anything monumental that she has achieved as Secy of State. Indeed, she has been rather lackluster. Gates announced his intention to bail several months ago, so he should be leaving soon. Too bad, I think he is doing a good job and have consistently applauded O for carrying him over from the Bush government.

Gates recently gave a sensible reply to the press over questions about what we should do in Libya. He clearly replied that we need to carefully evaluate any action as the consequences could place us in an untenable position. One correspondent sighted the prospect of our sending humanitarian aid and having one of our ships attacked. ‘What would we do then?’ he asked.

I believe we are beginning to learn some lessons from the past, the past being Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I, Iraq II and Afghanistan. We must learn to think before we pull the trigger regardless of the emotions and pressures of the moment. I would put Gates in the luster category.

Libyan lash-up..........

It seems that my initial assessment of the Libyan fiasco was correct; another fine mess you’ve got us into, Willie. The whole episode was completely addle-pated. The SAS kill people; they are not Securicor minding some FO wallah from the Camel Corps. But the troops should have been on familiar ground; after all, it was only 2 years ago that the government sent a team of SAS to train the Libyans. Smart move.

I reckon our Foreign Secretary is due for an early bath. As Dave may well be if the Tories get monstered in the up-coming local elections.

With the country up the creek, the economy in the merde, and the public services down the drain, how is the Dear Leader responding? Why, he’s going to have ciggies sold in plain wrappings and under the counter, like rubber johnnies and dirty books when I was a lad. That should do it. At least the Nanny State has survived the budget cuts. Apropos which, we are told that 18,000 servicemen are to get the axe under the defence review. We are not told how many MOD civvies are to get the chop. Since there are more of them in the MOD and its satellites than there are people in uniform there must be enormous scope. Or not.

Question: What is Cameron’s ‘Big Society’? Answer: BS.

And I have no reason to change my initial reaction to the Prince Andrew nonsense. He is being castigated for hobnobbing with unsavoury foreign politicians in pursuit of business for UK firms. That’s his job. He apparently does it very well – for free! The DT is now bellyaching about his ‘friend’ Epstein landing his private jet at a RAF airfield. Well, that has nothing to do with Andrew; it’s up to the pilot-in-command. Anybody can land at a service airfield with prior permission. I have taken a tiddly Cessna into front line fighter stations, amidst Phantom jets roaring around me. But, as they say ‘any old stick........’

What appears to be doubly disgraceful is that there has been briefing (i.e. muck-raking) against Andy from within high government circles. Not good politics to use dirty tricks against royalty. He may not be the most liked member of the Firm but I can’t imagine the public taking too kindly to the crooks in Parliament striking moral attitudes against him. One comment was that ‘he has done little with his life’. Apart from a full career in the RN including active service in the Falklands, retiring with the rank of Captain, that is.

Justice – Brussels style.

The Times reports that 22-year-old Andrew Symeou is due to appear in court tomorrow in Greece after being arrested in 2008 under the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). Symeou was extradited to Greece in 2009 and spent almost one year in a Greek prison awaiting trial, before finally being granted bail last year. A leader in the Times notes, “Others worry that a warrant that was designed to speed up the extradition of people suspected of terrorism or organised crime is increasingly being applied to ordinary citizens, with too few safeguards.”

So this young fellow has been held in Greece for 3 years awaiting trial – and on very dodgy evidence. Magna Carta said ‘To none will we deny, nor delay, justice’. But that was before Blair abolished it, along with many other ancient rights and freedoms like the ‘double jeopardy’ rule.

Euronomics.

The CAP is now costing € 120 bn a year, which is greater than the value of Africa’s entire agricultural output. This compares with $20 bn spent by the US government. When grain prices are rocketing and food is getting scarce world-wide, the EU is subsidising the conversion of wheat and maize into bio-fuels. That should save the planet.

Immigration? Pas de probleme.

Another helpful ruling from the ECJ. Illegal immigrants are entitled to residence and a work permit if they produce a child during their stay in the EU. Births of convenience in place of marriages of convenience, then.

And finally......

I have discovered a good reason for the famous neglect of their teeth by the English. It is to safeguard their driving licences. I own a breathalyser. By way of experiment I tested my breath for alcohol. It came up with a reading of 22, about one drink. I then rinsed my mouth with mouthwash and took a second sample. It read 200! QED. Mouthwash contains a quantity of ethanol. Tell that to the Old Bill and they won’t believe you.

Islamsham democracy...

Churchill had it right when he noted that democracy is an imperfect system of government, but it is the best we have. What will become of the world should the Islamic fundamentalists find a strong political voice in a country such as Pakistan, or Yemen, or Saudi Arabia or Iran? The recent assassination of Pakistan's leading Christian politician Shahbaz Bhatti for his efforts to retract his country's blasphemy law vividly illustrates a major weakness in democracy; the assumption that the electorate is enlightened.

I don't believe I am being anti-Muslim or culture-bound when I suggest that the logical conclusion of awarding fundamentalist Muslims their political will shall result in war. Indeed, the climate of opinion in the USA is rapidly moving from anti-Muslim fundamentalist to simply anti-Muslim. Pakistan, Iran and scores of other Islamic countries and political institutions contribute to this trend. Fundamentalist Muslims continue to be hard at work radicalizing the weak of mind here in the US. Islam is a growing institution here.

From a different perspective, it is not the religious beliefs of a nation that are at fault, but rather the people themselves. It could be argued that Bhatti was as fanatic a Christian as Pakistan's majority are fanatic Muslims. Perhaps we should be looking at some sort of social susceptibility index that would scientifically categorize tribes of people, e.g. the Gauls, the Masai, the Gujarati, the Saxons, etc. into levels of gullibility with respect to following religious dictates. I suspect this would result in placing Mr. Bhatti in the same category as the rest of his tribe.

A major domestic issue here is whether or not O should intervene in Libya.

 The Daily Mail claims that both UK civilians and military (Black Watch) are on standby to assist the rebels in ousting Qadaffi. I am tempted to advise Dave and co to not assume the posture of the world's policeman as we have done here in the USA. However, I strongly suspect that the USA is in some sort of alliance with the UK and Italy and other European nations on this score. Whatever the West does by way of intervention in Libya will be viewed by opponents of O and by Muslim extremists and undoubtedly by most Libyans themselves in a negative manner.

Perhaps we should consider allowing the Libyan revolutionaries to win over the country by themselves. Then they would not be beholden to foreigners for gaining power. Assistance to the rebels, however, could well come in the form of political statements, encouragement for Qadaffi to resign, freezing certain bank accounts and even diverting material aid to the rebels.

We should remember, however, that we do not know the rebels, they have no acclaimed leader, and they could, and most probably would, end up very much like Qadaffi after several years in power.

Foreign aid is dead aid.....

I am unsure what to make of Andrew Mitchell, the Minister at DFID.

He is undoubtedly the best informed and most widely travelled Minister ever in the job, so he has better qualifications than any of his predecessors. One of his first moves was to stop business-class travel for DFID staff which may curb some of their jollies, and he has reviewed the whole of the DFID programme. However, he was recently making a spirited defence of the UK aid programme to India; this was rapidly followed by a statement that aid to 26 countries was being cancelled – including India. This U-turn smacks of an edict from on high.

But now we learn that among the countries to continue getting a slice of UK taxpayers’ money are such deserving cases as Burma (I thought we had sanctions against the Generals there), Zimbabwe (to pay for Mrs Bob’s Paris shopping trips?), Somalia (as it doesn’t have a functioning government who is there to steal the loot?), Pakistan (do they have the Taliban’s banking details?). But the wowsers have complained that not enough is going to oil-rich Angola and Nigeria.

He says that everything is up for scrutiny and it is his intention to ‘follow the money’. It could lead him into some interesting places. He might even ask about the success rates of aid programmes and whether they do actually help the poor.

There was a lengthy piece on TV about aid to Sierra Leone. The rural areas where the bulk of the population lives are devoid of even the most basic amenities. The needs of rural areas are clean water, fuel, sanitation, food, heath-care, and money-generating opportunities. In particular, the greatest part of a woman’s day is spent collecting water and firewood from increasingly distant sources.

Since gazillions of aid has been poured in since the end of ‘the troubles’ we have to ask why they are lacking the basics?

Some years ago when I was working in Nepal I had to visit a remote mountain village – so remote that we travelled miles in our SUV along dry river beds and eventually we had to walk a long distance, including crossing a rickety rope foot-bridge over a ravine.

In this particular village they had done some basic improvements. They had installed gutters for the roofs of their houses. They had put in large concrete water tanks. Clean water problem solved. They had installed a tank for all human and animal excrement. Sanitation problem solved. They had capped the tank to capture methane. Fuel problem solved. And it also produced high-grade fertiliser. They had built a small clinic staffed by a health assistant who could give basic treatment and dispense contraceptive advice and condoms..

As we entered the village after a fairly arduous trek, incredibly I saw a bus go past. The village women had got so fed up waiting for the authorities to connect them to the outside world that they had built the road themselves. A consequence was that they could now get their produce to market and enter the cash economy. Some had also set up small shops.

For a number of years the emphasis of aid programmes has been on ‘good governance’. My experience suggests that this is unachievable as presently conceived. Aid itself might be a contributing factor to ‘bad governance’. In some countries it accounts for 60% or more of national budgets. The effect of this is to cut the nexus between political accountability and levels of taxation, so that politicians cease to be answerable to their electorates on public spending. Many politicians in developing countries are irredeemably corrupt, but they are stealing money from other than the taxpayer.

Corruption in the public service arises from slightly different motivations – less from insatiable greed and more from economic reasons. There is a cycle. Senior officials, who are in powerful ‘rent-seeking’ positions, are often appallingly paid (£150 a month for a top official?). They are badly paid because tax revenues are low. Tax revenues are low because economies are weak. Economies are weak through lack of investment. There is little incentive for governments to encourage investment when they can fall back on aid for no effort.

Therefore, governance will not improve until economies improve. (Economies are also weakened by corruption and dirigisme; for example, in Bangladesh I identified 32 rent-seeking opportunities involved in a simple licence application. Catch-22?).

In her excellent book Dead Aid’ Dombisa Moyo, a Zambian economist points out that despite nearly 40 years of aid programmes many ‘developing’ countries are worse off. She suggests that aid is a comfort blanket that shields incompetent regimes from reality. She proposes that aid should be time limited so that recipient governments will know that they have, say, five years of help after which they are on their own.

So while this weird coalition increases aid by 27%, soldiers serving in Helmand are told they are about to be made redundant.

That should do wonders for morale.

More Euroballs..........

On his Telegraph blog, Nile Gardiner notes that in 2009 the EU subsidised several US anti-death penalty groups to the tune of €2.6m through the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR). “It is bad enough that Brussels consistently interferes with the internal affairs of EU member states, but it is surely a bridge too far when it tries to intervene in the affairs of one of the world’s greatest democracies that isn’t even part of the EU,” he argues.

Are the recent decisions of the Fourth Reich on insurance (UK is by far and away the largest insurer in the EU), financial services (UK has the biggest market), and hedge funds (83% British) based on usual EU dottiness? Or could it be down to the age-old French policy of undermining Britain’s economic standing vis-a-vis France? I think we should be told.

Is Fairtrade a racket?

Fairtrade Fortnight will be here shortly. Despite its ‘do-good’ presentation it is really a marketing exercise. Fair trade is anything but. It offers only a very small number of farmers a higher, fixed price for their goods. Simple economics will tell you that these higher prices come at the expense of the great majority of farmers who are left even worse off because the Fairtrade subsidy unbalances normal market forces. It stands to reason that if you subsidise an internationally traded commodity to some producers but not all, the subsidised growers will be able to undercut the non-subsidised. This in turn encourages over-production and is a disincentive to agricultural improvement. Many of the farmers helped by Fairtrade are in Mexico, Argentina, and other relatively developed countries, and not in places like Ethiopia.

We recently bought oranges that we later discovered were marked ‘Fairtrade’. They came from Argentina which has a higher GDP PPP than Poland, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece and Portugal in the top 40 richest nations. And it is blindingly obvious that oranges in European supermarkets don’t come from poor peasant farmers. They come from large commercial estates. And Fairtrade wine? Where are all this impoverished wine producers?

It doesn’t help economic development. It keeps the poor in their place, sustaining uncompetitive farmers on their land and holding back diversification, mechanization, and moves up the value chain. Just 10% of the premium consumers pay for Fairtrade actually goes to the producer. Retailers pocket the rest. It’s a racket. Fairtrade arose from the coffee crisis of the 1990s. This was not a free market failure. Governments tried to rig the market through the International Coffee Agreement and subsidized over-plantation with the encouragement of well-meaning but misguided aid agencies. The crash in prices was the inevitable result of this government intervention, but coffee prices have largely recovered since then.

However, it probably helps addle-pated numpties feel that they have done their bit to save mankind without actually exerting themselves. For ourselves, we refuse to buy anything marked ‘Fairtrade’, ‘organic’ or ‘GM free’.

O is for 'Oil' - and 'Obama'............

Yes, there is an oil boom in North Dakota causing short-term accommodation, manpower and availability of women problems. This is not from a new oilfield discovery, but from new technology focusing on enhanced recovery methods using directional drilling and fractionation.

The latter involves actually fracturing the oil-bearing formation using chemicals, but more recently steam and just plain water. I am informed that fractionation tends to separate and lift up rock formations, such as shale, and thereby allow trapped fossil fuel to flow. Directional drilling allows lateral fractionation along the producing zone and thereby eliminates the need for multiple vertical holes.

As for weaning ourselves from oil, I am of the opinion that O is attempting to do just that. He has refused permission to drill deep wells offshore and has not budged on the prospect of opening up new Alaskan fields; much to the annoyance of our political right and oil patch executives.

I am not in possession of any inside information on this subject, but the facts would support the theory that O is attempting to dramatically reduce our dependence on oil in general, and foreign oil in particular. He is promoting investment in alternative energy through spending programs and tax incentives for investors. We see almost weekly convoys of 18 wheelers under escort each carrying a single propeller blade to wind farms in West Texas. New and improved energy transfer infrastructure is under development.

If I am correct and O's efforts are motivated to better prepare America for oil scarcity, to conserve what we do have for protracted and more narrowly targeted future use and at the same time to relieve us of the growing economic burden of procuring foreign oil, then I am delighted with him. Somebody needs to do this anyway and the task becomes more difficult with each passing year.

Never mind the environmental benefits, but consider the implications of this move on US foreign policy in the Middle East.

Let the kings and emirs sell their oil to China and India and let these two countries struggle with balance of power politics and decisions of which corrupt dictator to regale and support. What we all desperately need are technical innovations, preferably in the direction of electrical energy storage and in alternative energy production cost savings.

Improved capture of solar and water and wave energy would also help. We could reduce our overall oil demand by an enormous amount tomorrow if we were to establish and enforce a 55 mph speed limit. All this and more needs to be assessed, screened and actuated in the face of screaming political oppositions.