Adults, leave them kids alone..

I must confess that I have tended to neglect Heffer since he moved to the Daily Wail.

It’s a curious rag. It has some of the best columnists in the business – apart from Heff, there’s Tom Utley, the egregious Richard Littlejohn, and Quentin Letts, the best Parliamentary Sketch writer in the business (and author of a number of very funny books, like ’50 People who buggered-up Britain’.

And yet the news and editorial is so shrill as to border on the hysterical. It’s as if the company mantra is taken from ‘Abide with Me’:

‘Change and decay in all around I see.....’ There is never, ever any good news that I can find but there is a lot that is trumped-up.

I particularly dislike the way it demonises the younger, under-25, generation, but as this seems to be a national pastime maybe the paper is only reflecting its readers’ attitudes.

Here is an example.

A couple of weeks ago it published a series of photos supporting a shock-horror spread about binge drinking amongst young women, showing them vomiting, striking crude poses, or lying dead-drunk in the street. It went on to say that such scenes are witnessed all over the UK every week-end (they have ways of knowing what happens all over Britain every week-end). Well, not on my manor, squire.

And this was just a reprise of a similar spread 2 years ago of pictures that were mostly taken 5 years ago.

So let’s see if we can get a bit of balance in this.

Sure there is misbehaviour amongst the young, ranging from booze to crime. It was ever thus. There was not much recorded juveniles crime 50 years ago for the simple reasons that there were very few 18 – 20 year olds on the streets, being mostly in the services (which the unthinking suggest should be brought back), and because the police preferred to give miscreants a good thraping rather than go to all the bother of prosecutions.

And the reason you didn’t see drunks lying in the street was because in those days the Old Bill enforced the law on ’drunk and incapable’ which they clearly fail to do now, like much else. Another reason is that there was not the affluence of modern times, but when we had the money we tied a few on. Of course, we only drank beer. This was in the days before the drinks-makers deliberately set out to foster under-age drinking through the introduction of alcopops and other vileness.

And exactly how ‘widespread’ is this behaviour. Now here’s a funny thing. It’s always someone else’s kids who are causing mayhem.

So what has the older generation gifted to the younger?

Well, for starters an education system that has been mucked about for 40 years and has as a consequence become increasingly dysfunctional to the extent that vast numbers of school-leavers are functionally illiterate, who have standards of literacy of 9-year olds, who are becoming incoherent as their spoken vocabulary is alarmingly small, and who are effectively unemployable in an economy that no longer demands sheer muscle-power. We have ‘universities’ that are a laughing stock, that run useless course such as the history of lace-making in the Shetlands and ‘football studies’. We have an acute shortage of graduates in ‘hard’ studies such as physics and maths, so that although job opportunities are there in abundance there is a massive mismatch between what business and industry need and what the educational system is prepared to supply.

At the same time we turn schools into examination mills that put enormous stress on youngsters. In my time we sat for 5 ‘O’ levels at 16, 3 ‘A’ levels at 18 plus 1 ‘S’ level for those seeking a County Scholarship to university. Now the poor little devils sit for maybe 10 or 12 ‘O’ levels.

Through our greed, fecklessness and improvidence we have bequeathed huge burdens of debt to our children and grandchildren together with declining living standards, smaller pensions and later retirement.

We have brought up our kids without any concept of discipline so that we now have the 1984’ish position whereby attempts at disciplining a child may result in a visit from the police or social workers. ‘Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law’.

In Jamaica a couple of years back I was chatting to some British army NCOs who were there for jungle training. They told me about recruitment problems and why so many ‘colonials’ get into the army. Partly it was because the standard of education of recruits was too low but also it was lack of even the most basic idea of discipline to the extent that they were totally mystified as to why they were required to get out of bed before 11 a.m. This was not defiance; it was incomprehension.

And what sort of role models have we given them? Spud-faced footballers who get £1 million a week for kicking a ball once a week for 90 minutes, who have the sexual mores of the farm yard; coke-snorting anorexics also paid large sums to wear awful clothes; untalented sluts who are famous for being famous; ‘pop’ singers who flaunt their sexual preferences but without any noticeable talent; and crooked leaders.

Parents obese to the point of obscenity feed them on junk and take-aways, never cook a meal for them and never sit down to eat with them. We encourage them in obesity, ban competitive sports, and hedge them around with ludicrous health and safety rules so that they grow up unfit, fat and risk averse.

And we have the chutzpah to criticise?

As the old song says ‘I’m glad I’m not young anymore!’

The White House marathon....a long and winding road

The big domestic news remains the Republican presidential nomination debates. This exercise in political masochism is finally being recognized for what it is. Although only about half finished with their scheduled number of debates, viewers and pundits alike are beginning to question the wisdom of this type of political forum. Predictably, as a candidate rises to the top of the polls, the other candidates begin to tear the person apart by making accusations, bringing up past blunders, and asking 'gotcha' questions. The latter being questions designed to embarrass or berate candidates.

What all this does bring out, in full public view is the integrity, vulnerability, mean spiritedness, toughness and resilliance of the candidates. Rick Perry, Governor or Texas, asked Mitt Romney, the current leading contender, why Mitt hired illegal workers to mow his lawn. This was intended to embarrass Romney and to expose him as a liar with respect to his stand against illegal immigration. The problem was that Mitt's worker was not directly hired by him, but was employed by the landscaping company Mitt had hired. 

This example illustrates Perry's lack of  forethought and outright stupidity in thinking that he could expose (gotcha) Romney. Mitt, for his part, simply told the truth and further stated that he had fired the firm as soon as he learned it employed illegals. The end result? Perry looks like a fool. Romney looks like a victim, but should have nevertheless been more thorough in hiring people and, most important, Obama looks like a candidate for sainthood.

It is beyond me why candidates that are so obviously unfit to rule, like Perry, would even think of subjecting themselves to the judgement of the tv audience. I can only conclude that Perry does not even understand himself, let alone national and world politics. Following closely in his footsteps is Michele Bachmann who has managed to memorize about six phrases which she weaves into the answer to every question she is asked. Herman Cain, an outstanding black businessman, is high in the rankings, but lacks the political and economic depth to prevail.

Rick Santorum, who served as a Senator from Pennsylvania, shows promise, but gushes at the mouth, and seems unable to keep his wits about him, but should prove increasingly capable with maturity. Ron Paul is a non-starter, but with some major assets. He is solidly logical although often impractical. He is a Libertarian and as such does not quite fit into either the Republican or the ultra-Conservative Tea Party mold.

Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, is doing extremely well except in the polls. He is bright, experienced, clever, profound and infested with personal issues. His brain is too capacious for his ego and he is forever making the types of faux pas that I associate with an individual who is excessively intelligent but lacking in wisdom. He should be a senior advisor without a cabinet position.

After Gadaffi.......what?

You must see Peter Oborne's article in the DT on Ghadaffi's demise. It brings the post-Ghadaffi situation into focus and perspective.

My take at the moment is that Libya will not be settled until the tribes are isolated from one another which of course means dividing country into two or three smaller and independent nations. I know this idea is popular among Americans as we have divided Viet Nam and Korea and probably should have divided Iraq by at least separating the Kurds.

Peter's insights offer little alternative than independence for the major Bedouin tribes. He also mentioned Berber people in Libya's western mountains. I was unaware of their presence in Libya. It explains why one of the revolutionaries featured recently on tv here had a Berber name.

I just cannot see another solution and I have no hope at all that the forces of democracy will iron out the enmities, jealousy and distrust that prevails between the tribes.

Your William Hague is in Tripoli now; brave lad. His meetings with Mustafa Jalil are making history as I write. I doubt that dividing Libya is on the agenda, but Jalil and his National Transitional Council will need massive doses of help and experience and good luck before the tribal differences can be resolved.

There is also the big question of disarming the revolutionaries. Peter noted that Kalishnikov rifles are so plentiful that their street cost is only $800, down from $4,000.

This cannot be right. When I worked in Yemen about 12 years ago, they were selling for $50 each. Also, I can buy a state of the art assault rifle here in Texas for about $400 and less technical models for half that price.

Libya must be swimming in money if they can get $800 for an AK 47.

Obama beats Gadaffi....

So there was Obama on TV thanking the brave men and women of the US forces for their great victory in Libya. He also managed about four words to indicate that some others were also involved.

Except that there were 20 countries making a military contribution, most NATO some not.

From the outset, Obama was clear that US participation would be ‘low key’.

The heavy lifting was done by the British and French who carried out most of the air-strikes.

So, to the tune of ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres’, altogether now:

 ‘It wasn’t the Yanks who won the war,

Parley-vous,

It wasn’t the Yanks who won the war,

Parley-vous,

It wasn’t the Yanks who won the war,

The Brits and Frogs were there before.

Inky, pinkie parley-vous!’

The Euro conspiracy unravels

Europe continues to sleep-walk into disaster. We have the ludicrous spectacle of Sarko as bag-carrier for Angular. We have him telling the world that France and Germany are in accord, but he doesn’t tell us about what. The Economist quotes a Eurocrat as saying that this ‘partnership’ hides ‘the strength of Germany and the weakness of France’.

France has not had a budget surplus for nearly 40 years. It has one of the biggest debt ratios in the Eurozone. Its AAA rating is in doubt. And Angular has just given Sarko a firm ‘Nein!’ when he tried to persuade her to ante-up to save the Dexia bank. The solution to the Euro’s problems lies in sorting out Greece once and for all (and default seems inevitable, with Angular wanting the depositors to take a bigger haircut than they signed up to), throwing a firewall around solvent countries, recapitalising the banks, and re-writing the rules.

Now the wheels are coming off with a vengeance. It wasn’t meant to be like this.

When the Euro was first contemplated all those years ago, knowledgeable voices were raised against it, pointing out that anyone with ‘O’ level economics or a basic knowledge of history would see that a ‘one size fits all’ currency was a chimera, an unworkable fantasy, because different economies had different needs and were at different levels of development and efficiency.

History had shown that every time a multi-national currency had been tried it had failed. For example, if you had one economy that needed an interest-rate reduction to stimulate growth and another needed an interest rate increase to cool down inflation you would have a situation that was absolutely irreconcilable and could only end in tears.

And so it has proved.

It was cheap money that slew the Celtic Tiger, after it embarked on a crazy spending-spree causing rampant inflation when an interest rate hike was essential to cool it. The antis were derided by the pro-Euro claque as economic Neanderthals, Little Englanders, Luddites, and every other epithet that the Guardianistas could throw at them. But now the Great Conspiracy unravels. Brussels knew all along that a Eurozone couldn’t work without more.

That was part of the game-plan.

The Euro was just a step along the road. It was a tactical measure. The Eurozone was designed to fail. The real objective was not currency union but political union. A single currency cannot succeed without it, as the Brussels mafia well understood.

What was essential was the transfer of budgetary and fiscal powers to Brussels, so that individual member states would lose any control over national budgets, interest rates, taxation levels, borrowing powers – in short, all the elements essential to the independent nation-state. The members would become satraps of the EU Empire.

The dominant parties would be Germany and France. Germany would be the senior partner because of population size and economic strength. The French would be the German’s understrapper. With the advent of monetary/political union in Europe, all of Hitler’s war aims would have been achieved except for the wide-gauge railway between Berlin and Moscow.

Welcome to the Fourth Reich.

Mixing the breed....

Mixed marriage has become something of a hot topic, possibly because latest surveys show that they are on the increase and that mixed-race births are on the increase (well they would be, wouldn’t they) and partly because of a TV series headed up by George Alagaiah.

George is the ideal person for the programme. He is an enormously experienced foreign correspondent, now a BBC anchor, speaks Received English, is extremely good-looking, and he is a Sri Lankan married to an English woman.

I am not entirely unacquainted with the subject. A close relative successively married an English woman, a Malaysian, and a Chinese. Thirty-odd years ago, an Irish friend who was a judge in Botswana married the Indian headmistress of the local girls school, and used restaurants and hotels in neighbouring South Africa at the height of apartheid without ever being challenged. I have another chum who is built like an anorexic jockey married to a statuesque Jamaican with a brilliant daughter at University. There is a local guy married to a Vietnamese who has really got his life sorted. She is Executive Vice President of an international company and he fishes all day in the Mekong River. I worked with a Jamaican Rhodes Scholar married to an English artist; unsurprisingly the kids are very bright indeed.

And why not?

The simple truth is that we English are the product of ethnic mixing since time began; Picts, Scots, Iceni,  Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frieslanders, Scandinavians, Normans, Jews, Huguenots, Italians, West Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians, Chinese and  all the rest of the great melting pot that makes us what we are.

And there is a great deal of truth in the old saw that it’s a wise child that knows  its own father. Some years ago, the Sunday Times did a DNA study of a select group from various ethnic backgrounds. The West Indian who guessed his paternal ancestor might have been a slave from Sierra Leone, as in ‘Roots’,  discovered that  he was German down the paternal line. There was a German influx to Jamaica in the early 19^th century (hence Germanstown) which interbred and has now vanished, except in one remote village where they have clung to both their racial identity and their language).

The great irony is that we now know that Alex Haley himself was actually Welsh in the paternal line!

There are some sound biological reasons for mixing the breed. Exclusiveness tends to make the stock deteriorate with humans as with animals. That is why so many of the aristocracy seem to come from the shallow end of the gene pool. And maybe why the mongrel English have such a propensity for strong drink, lechery, riotous assembly, fighting, exploration, Empire-building, and survival.

From observation, mixed marriages are as successful as others, perhaps more so because it takes particular binding to succeed against the prejudice of others. Where they fail seems to be mostly due to irreconcilable cultural differences. A Muslim man marrying an American woman would soon be in trouble if he tried to treat her as if they were in Islamabad not New York. Similarly an English woman who married her Renta Rasta would rapidly find that marital fidelity was not on his agenda.

But there is one aspect that Dave has promised to deal with (and he always keeps his promises, don’t he) and that is discrimination in adoption. Homosexual men can adopt boys with all the attendant dangers but woe betide a mixed-race couple who try to adopt a child. The race relations industry, being by definition racist, has a policy on this. Remember the white husband and Asian wife? They couldn’t adopt a white child because she was too dark, and they couldn’t adopt a coloured child because he was too light. Truly, it’s a mad, mad world, my masters!

Years ago there was little race consciousness in the UK, probably because most people had never seen a person of colour. In 1955, the non-white population was only 125,000. That was the year I entered the army, and in all my service when I must have seen literally thousands of soldiers nary a one was black. The pendulum now seems to be swinging back. To the younger generation, pigment is an irrelevance; in fact, it is becoming distinctly cool to be of mixed race, with so many role-models around, like Lewis Hamilton. Open the pages of the Sunday Times ‘Style’ magazine and many or most of the models have honey-coloured skin.

One of the most extraordinary products of a mixed race marriage is Mechai Vivavaidya.

Mechai’s father was one of the Thai elite. In the 1930’s he was selected for medical training in Scotland. There he met a Scots student whom he married after they both qualified as doctors. The circumstances of their marriage were a reflection of the times and the attitude towards miscegenation. To her family, marriage across a colour line was to be deplored; to his he was seen to be marrying beneath himself.

But it was a great success and they practiced medicine together in Bangkok.

Mechai went to school and university in Australia. Some years after his return to Thailand he founded the Population and Community Development Association which promoted birth control and in particular the use of condoms partly to counter the growing AIDS problem and partly to arrest the alarming population growth rate. When he began his campaign the average family was 7 children. Today it is 1.5.

People who have met him say his personality is such that you can feel him enter a room; truly magnetic. He clearly has the charm and intelligence of his Thai family background and the sheer grit of his Scottish mother.

His biography is ‘From Cabbages to Condoms’; it is riveting.

Of course, you will always get the ‘sucker’ question ‘Would you like your daughter to marry a coloured man?’ That one telegraphs its arrival about three days in advance. The answer is ‘It’s not the colour, stoopid, it’s the culture!’ If my daughter wanted to marry a Jamaican, I would look at him carefully because some Jamaicans make notoriously bad husbands. If she wanted to marry Lewis Hamilton, I would do handstands! She’s old enough to be his granny.


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Dave shoots his Fox........

Dave has finally shot his fox. Old Brer Liam, the last of the Thatcherites in the Cabinet, was doomed from the moment Downing Street expressed ‘full confidence’ in him. The dirty tricks brigade inside No 10 had been briefing against Fox for months. The leak about ‘defence cuts are indefensible’ obviously came from that source and caused no end of trouble between him and Cameron.

And yet we have the appalling Huhne who is being investigated for serious criminal charges and has just been caught red-handed briefing against fellow members of the Cabinet and the junior Justice Minister with the silly name who has been up to some hanky-panky carry blithely on.

At least this gave Dave the opportunity to correct a serious mistake and make a sensible appointment, instead of the  nobody he has now chosen.

I refer, of course, to the former Shadow Defence Secretary, Patrick Mercer, who is a gallant soldier, a retired infantry Colonel, a highly intelligent man, and very articulate. Unfortunately, he committed the cardinal sin for a politician. He told the truth. And when he said that he had been told by his NCOs that black soldiers were inclined to play the race card when charged with skiving, Cameron, in the best traditions of political correctness, promptly fired him.

It got a bit embarrassing when his former Sergeant Major said that the Colonel was absolutely right; and he himself is black.

And that is why I would never, ever vote for a Tory party led by Cameron.

Facing down the bully state...just say 'No'

One topic that Dave might find time to address is how to get the State off our necks. Much of the state-sponsored bullying that goes on has no basis in law.

For example, I had a young mother complaining to me that the authorities had threatened her with prosecution if she took photos of her toddler at his nursery school Xmas party. They told her she would be in breach of the Data Protection Act. Only they made it up. There is no such offence.

Under the ludicrous ‘Sarah’s Law’, brought in after the horrific murder of two young girls by a school employee who already had form for child-molesting, people who wish to work with youngsters have to get a clearance chit from the Criminal Records Office. This, of course, does not prove that you are not a kiddy-fiddler; merely that you have not been caught. The upshot is that the voluntary sector has been decimated; who is going to be a Boy Scout Master if he has to pay about £140 for a chit?

Then we had the ludicrous case of the elderly lady flower arrangers at the cathedral who were told to get CRO checks because the choirboys used the same lavatories. They simply resigned.

The latest nonsense is a father being stopped by a security guard in a shopping mall when he took a photo on his mobile phone of his small daughter eating a large ice cream. The jobsworth ordered him to delete the picture. When he told the guy that he had already posted 3 pix by twitter, the police were called. They told him that taking pictures of his daughter in the shopping mall was possibly an offence under S.44 of the Terrorism Act. They took his particulars but no further action.

Now ‘they’ appear to have extended this nonsense beyond the intention of the law of protecting children by requiring clearance for volunteers to work with adults. How bureaucrats love to gather power over peoples’ ordinary lives.

So what’s to be done?

My stance would be ‘Just say No!’ Here are some of my suggestions.

Never make eye contact with e.g. airport security. If you get an unreasonable demand from an official, ask for the name and phone number of his superior. Ask to see the supervisor. Keep the Daily Mail editorial desk phone number on your mobile; you might get your 15 minutes of fame if you grass-up a bullying official.

And here is one that really worked because the feisty lady shopkeeper concerned had the backbone to take on the jobsworths.

She had waste paper to dispose of, so she took it to the council paper skip. However, it was full, so she left the box of paper alongside it. After she had returned to the shop, she shortly received a visit from the fool of an inspector who gave her a fixed penalty notice of £80 for littering. She told him to put it where the sun don’t shine.

Then she got a notice of summons for non-payment, to the magistrates’ court.

She replied ‘Sure, see you in court. But not the magistrates’ court, maties; the Crown Court. I want a trial by jury’.

She heard nothing more. The local authority had been faced down and they were not prepared to face the opprobrium of trial or of the inevitable scathing comments from the Judge.

Playing the 'religion' card......

It finally happened. It was inevitable. As many feared, one of our religious fanatics has finally come out with the words needed to undermine Mitt Romney who is accused of being a cult member because he is a practicing Mormon. Everyone was aware of Mitt's convictions, but nobody with anything to lose would discuss them. Finally, a supporter of Rick Perry, Robert Jeffress  publicized Romney's Mormonism claiming the confession is a non-Christian cult. Jeffress is the pastor of a First Baptist church in Dallas, Texas. He was actively anti-Romney during the last elections in which Romney also sought nomination for the presidency. You should be aware that the Dallas and Fort Worth area is a hotbed of conservatism and the home of several wealthy and diehard Republicans.

The accusation by Jeffress occurred following a campaign speech by Rick Perry in Dallas. Perry has since distanced himself from the remarks, but the damage is done. I cannot say that Rick conspired with Jeffress to make the statement, but Rick certainly knew of Jeffress' anti-Mormon track record and apparently had no problem with being introduced by Jeffress prior to his campaign speech.

Romney is clean as a whistle as far as I can tell making it difficult to attack him on personal grounds. His so called waffling on various issues does not really hit the mark when opponents bring up the subject. What does hit home is Romney's Mormonism. Historically, Mormons were not accepted by Christians and were chased out of many locations on the trek to Utah. The big problem is they augmented the Christian Bible with the Book of Mormon. The latter contains a multitude of deviations from the Christian Bible that most Americans find difficult to swallow if not outright offensive. As a nation composed largely of Christians, any contender for public office in the USA who does not  fit into this category is at risk.

My take is that the biggest damage that can be done to Romney is to expose his Mormonism and to make the argument that he is not a Christian. This is debatable, however, as Mormons, including Romney, claim they are Christians. Herman Cain entered the fray as a voice of reason asking 'what does all this have to do with fixing our economy'. Other contenders similarly distanced themselves without getting into the theological debate.

The bottom line is the USA is far from a religiously tolerant nation. First and foremost, it is a Christian nation that suffers sects and other world religions provided they do not challenge our Christianity. The American Jews wisely avoided this issue. For some reason, belief systems like Hinduism and Buddhism are non-threatening. Islam, however, is increasingly threatening what with large-scale migration from places like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria into the US. Moreover, the growth of the Black Muslim movement here has domesticated Islam in the sense that it is now home-grown. Every other black athlete, it would appear, bears a Muslim name on his or her jersey. This movement will soon overtake any issues concerning Mormons and will seriously test our official claim to freedom of religion.

Islamaphobia is growing. Witness the claims that Obama is a Muslim as evidenced by his middle name and his father's religion. Some Muslims claim that if a persons father is a Muslim, then the offspring are also Muslim. Following this logic, the recently departed CEO of Apple Inc. Steve Jobs, is also a Muslim given his Syrian and Muslim father.

Nor should we forget that some white Americans also grow up in Muslim families or convert to Islam later in life, although the percentage of white Muslims is low. Of the 7 million Muslims in the US today, about 33% are of Arab descent and 30% are African-Americans. Islamic sect members, such as the Sufi, Dervish and Ishmalis, are better tolerated in the US than in their home countries. Moreover, Sunni and Shia divisions have far less importance here than in the Middle East.

The € crisis; farce or tragedy?

 I don’t know whether to laugh or cry over the European debt crisis because I can’t make up my mind whether it is farce or tragedy. At this time it’s the former but on my prediction that Greece will default in less than a month it could rapidly become the latter.

It’s definitely déjà vu all over again.

When the banks went tits-up in 2008, the ‘moral hazard’ question was why should the US taxpayer prop up Lehman Bros and its creditors when great reward for great risk have gone hand  in hand. Isn’t this reducing banking to a casino where if the bankers win they keep the moolah but the taxpayer picks up the losses?

Now the question is why should the northern taxpayer pick up the tab for Greek incontinence?

In the earlier case, the US Government let Lehman go to the wall pour encourager les autres (which of course was overseen by Hank Poulson, latterly boss of Golden Sacks, Lehman’s biggest competitor).

The outcome was a collapse of confidence in the whole banking system, not quite what was intended

In the current case, the plain answer is that if Greece makes a disorderly retreat there could be another run on the banks and on the debt of solvent countries that have liquidity problems, especially Italy and Spain.

One outcome of all this is that the European leaders have shown that not one of them is fit to lead a pig to market, as my old man  used to say.

At the outset they maintained that Greece wouldn’t need a bail-out. It has had two.

They maintained that the Greeks would not infect other countries. They did.

They said that the banks would not need to be re-capitalised because European countries never default. Don’t hold your breath.

The US government is in competition for the pusillanimity prize.

It supported a private-sector rescue plan for Bear Stearns. It nationalised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It delivered the coup de grace to Lehman whilst rescuing AIG.

But at least it did something. The European leaders can’t agree on a single thing. National governments, the ECB and the European Commission all seem to be going off in different directions. Coats are now being trailed that bond-holders may have to take a bigger haircut from Greece than they have already signed up to.

That’s pretty good way of further damaging confidence in the banking system.

But ‘Keep buggering on, Inches’, as Winston used to say to his valet.

Foxy Knoxy; the movie...

And so to Foxy Knoxy, now a little of the hysteria and dust has settled. (One could normally expect ‘Amanda Knox; the Movie’ soon but of course that has already been done. It was produced on US TV whilst the appeal case was sub-judice. Contempt of court, anybody?

Pardon my mirth, but at such scenes of joy and rage one could scarce forebear to laugh.

We have the Italians getting drama-queenish over US media accusations that somehow their police are not perfect and that their judicial system is slow and incompetent.

We have the US media squawking about a ‘show trial’ (like Jackson’s Doctor, perhaps) and miscarriage of justice for convicting such a nice, all-American girl, plus a painfully slow appeals procedure that strung out the hearing for 10 months although the court only sat for 11 days, and in any event took 4 years to come to trial. This does not happen in the US, of course. There it takes 20 years, and you still get topped.

So let’s have a peep through the media fog.

What was the judgment of the Appeal Court? Well, we don’t know because nobody has told us. Was it ‘Not guilty’ ‘Not proven’ (should they have such a thing in Italy)? Was it ‘Unsafe and unsatisfactory verdict by the lower court’?

Does it matter? Well, yes, actually, because if it was the last of these it is actually saying that because both the police and the prosecution made such a balls of the whole case that she should never have been convicted. Therefore, if they have a presumption of innocence in Italy, which as far as I am aware does not exist under the Code Napoleon elsewhere in Europe, then she was innocent. (Even if she did it, which on the evidence as now reported seems most unlikely).

So what was it all about?

A large part of the defence case rested on the undoubted fact that the prosecution, aided and abetted by an enthusiastic media, drip-fed lurid details of the case so that by the time it came to trial the jury were bound to be irreversibly prejudiced against the accused. There were frequent illegal leaks that tainted the whole proceedings. The media only published the prosecution evidence.

On those grounds alone the appeal was almost certain to succeed. But the weaknesses of the prosecution case were that they were unable to show motive, there were no witnesses to show that Knox was present at the time of the murder, there was no reliable DNA evidence (it was contaminated by police bungling), the murder weapon didn’t fit all the wounds (which actually suggests that there were 2 knives), and the confession was under duress and later withdrawn.

One of the curiosities is why the West African drug dealer, who was convicted separately earlier, was not called to give evidence – an arcane aspect of Italian criminal law, perhaps.

The only certainty about the whole affair is that Knox will make a lot of money, much good may it do her.

Money talks....in US elections.

America is in a near permanent state of electioneering. The 2012 campaign is in full swing although we are 13 months away from the next presidential election. Money spent and received by this ridiculous process is at the core of the issue.

Money is the critical factor in winning elections.

States with early election proceedings such as the Iowa caucus, the Florida straw poll, and New Hampshire's first primary all profit from campaign money spent by the candidates. Realizing this potential for state income, New Hampshire's earliest primary date is being pre-empted by at least two other states. Where will it all end?

Another remarkable trend is the growing protests movement against Wall Street. Starting in New York, the protests have expanded along the East Coast and to California. Some say they are inspired and backed by trade unions, while others write them off as capricious youth exercising their liberal sentiments en route to maturity.

In any case, it is about time someone took to task the miscreant behavior of some Wall Street denizens. Recent media comments here indicate a growing disdain for 'over the top' executive salaries with particular contempt for multi-million dollar payoffs to failed and fired executives. The pity is that we need to wait for another generation of American youth to take command with the hope that they will reinstall moral and ethical values in politics and commerce.

‘Money talks

I don’t deny.

I heard it once.

It said ‘Goodbye!’

The race to the White House; tortoise &....another tortoise?

Herman Cain is shooting up in popularity. I still believe he is unelectable, although Attila the Hun could beat Obama given the manner in which he contributes to social division in America. Cain, like his pizza empire, is a populist who is chuck full of common sense homilies that seldom pass second thought investigation.

His international knowledge and experience is zero as is his political resume. Likeable, yes, but electable , no way. Two weeks in office and Congress would serve him for lunch. His recent rise in popularity is largely the result of Rick Perry's demise.

Rick is a walking archive of closet skeletons that would have prevented a wiser man from even thinking about the presidency in the first place. They are now haunting him and will continue to do so as long as Rick continues to dream beyond his personal means.

We are left with Mitt Romney. And that is not a bad consolation. He has experience, a sound track record, business acumen, a clean house (as far as anyone can tell) and presidential bearing. That he is inclined to put his audience to sleep is regrettable, but not grounds for divorce.

Unlike O, he campaigns as someone who knows what can be achieved by a president and what cannot. He is not making promises that he cannot keep, or at least making a sterling attempt at keeping. While O promised the moon and delivered dreams, Romney has a credible plan for economic recovery and what's more it sounds achievable.

The big question is O's re-electability. He still commands considerable loyalty among black and Hispanic minorities. His popularity among Jews is waning as they are beginning to abandon their allegiance to Democratic Party liberalism in favor of Republican Party conservatism. This trend has been accelerated by O's generally unsympathetic policies toward Israel.

His staunch support and promotion of labor unions paid political dividends in terms of campaign contributions, but a sharp backlash is apparent. There is a strong anti-union feeling in America that is being unleashed by O's flagrant use of labor union influence to achieve his political ends. His payoffs to unions such as giving the auto workers a significant shareholding in General Motors is one of many examples.

O's lackluster track record is another issue. He has poorly and unconvincingly managed the national debt and his only major achievement, health care reform, is fraught with uncertainties over its cost and effectiveness.

Read us in My Telegraph.

As you know I also publish our blogs on My Telegraph.

I have just downloaded a flag counter which show the hits and where they come from world-wide. The surprising outcome is that we get far more than on blogspot.

To get into this, go to the Daily Telegraph ‘home’ page; scroll to the foot of the page. Got to ‘Comments’; go to ‘My Telegraph’; then all you need to do is register.

You will then be able to see all the comments on ours, and read and comment on everybody else’s  blogs.

It’s easy!

So farewell, then, Greece...Euro next?

Einstein is alleged to have said ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result’. So we must accept that the EU has gone completely off its collective trolley in dealing with the sovereign debt crisis.

The Germans have again been shanghaied into stumping up more gazillions to get the Club Med out of the poo. But what are the realities? We have said here a number of times that Greece is beyond redemption. Cyprus is the same but too small to affect the situation. Greece can’t continue in the Eurozone. It can’t pay its debts. The obvious solution is for it to leave the Euro and reschedule its debts. This does not mean default as such; simply that the creditors will have to wait a few more years for its money. Of course, Greece will not be able to borrow on the world money markets, but an enforced diet of austerity is just what the bloated old crook needs.

Spain is the victim of its own dishonesty, especially in the property market where it allowed speculative building to boom off the back of artificially cheap money (as did Ireland) and then fouled its own nest by dispossessing more than 50,000 expat house-owners through corrupt planning and land transfers by their own officials. But their problems are not beyond recall, neither are those of Italy and Portugal. But apart from Greece, which is bust, the problem with Club Med seems to be liquidity rather than debt.

Ireland seems to be coming out of the woods, mostly because of the admirably determined and courageous way they have tackled their problems, and partly by telling Brussels to go forth and multiply when it tried to force the Irish into giving up their favourable corporation tax regime – the main plank of growth and recovery.

European banks, especially the French, will almost certainly take a crew-cut over sovereign debt rescheduling but this won’t bother them too much; as we know, modern banking is gambling with the customers’ money, keeping the winnings, but passing on the losses to the tax-payer.

When we had our banking crisis in 2007/8, there was much gloating from the French. Not enough regulation, they said (you know how much they enjoy regulation). ‘We order things much better in France,’ they would say. Today the big French banks have lost a third of their value. Societe Generale bought a Greek bank that had been owned by the army (I thought that it was only in places like Burma that the army ran commercial enterprises), as did Credit Agricole. Both were up to their ocksters in Greek bonds that are likely to end up nearly worthless.

The latest victim is Dexia, a giant Franco-Belgian bank; it seems to have acquired a huge liquidity problem along with a huge amount of Greek debt, and is hitting the inter-bank lending famine that caused our crash 3 years ago.

The Paris and Frankfurt stock indices have both fallen by 25% in the last quarter.

Oh dear. But then, déjà vu is French, innit? Schadenfreude pour moi!

In fact, the UK economy seems much stronger than the doomsters tell us. The 10-year bond rate is as strong as it has been for 60 years as money leeches out of Europe; the AAA  rating has just been renewed; the GDP-debt ratio is relatively low; and most Government borrowing has long-term redemption dates, so is clear of the debt crisis facing the sick men of Europe.

Heffer's back!

As I predicted when he left the Torygraph, Heffer is back at the Daily Mail where no doubt he will remain until the editor at the DT is replaced. He is somewhat more subdued than he was previously so perhaps the megalomaniac who runs the Daily Wail has told him to tone it down a bit.

Unfortunately, this means that he is less than entertaining than of yore. I used to look forward to a good Heffer rant twice a week.

It also looks as if he is called upon to perform six days a week.

In advance of the Tory Party conference, he is calling upon Dave to start acting like a Tory. In particular, he wants Dave to move ahead on Scottish independence (fat chance, Simon – the canny Scots will never get off their English gravy-train), a referendum every time there is an EU treaty change (under existing law this is available but not automatic), repatriation of the Common Agricultural policy (I think he means ‘scrapping’) and repatriation of powers over employment, social policy, the environment, and health and safety.

Simon joins Quentin Letts, the best of the Parliamentary sketch writers; Tom Utley whose father was the great Peter Utley on the Torygraph; and the outrageous Richard Littlejohn as the big hitters at the paper.

So there it is; hold your nose, go to Mail Online and enjoy.