US election: 'Texas to arrest UN observers!'

The manifest absurdity of the US being monitored by OSC, as if it were on a par with the Srpska Republic (whose elections I had the honour of monitoring for OSCE) is so risible that it sent me back to the report from Our Man in Islamabad on the Pakistan elections in 1997 in which I led the UK component of the EU group. Here is a bit of what he said:

 

‘The French made fools of themselves, bringing a political figure – the Vice-President of the National Assembly, who had not the slightest intention of observing the elections. He arrived late, dropped out of his assigned mission, and took himself off to Swat for largely touristic purposes. On his return to Islamabad, he called a national press conference without waiting for the EU report, declared the elections free and fair according to his own extensive observations (presumably from the back seat of his car), and disappeared back to Paris’.

 

I was told later that this guy pitched up accompanied by ‘gorgeous putting Rita Chevrolet’!

 

He was also pretty scathing about the Germans, saying ‘…….they appeared to have no practical experience of elections…..doctrinaire academics whose moral vision got badly out of step with the observable facts. The female member of the group was exclusively concerned with women’s rights in the fiercely traditional tribal areas’.

 

So that is the sort of farce that can be expected in the US, although perhaps not in Texas, where the A-G has threatened to arrest any OSCE person who goes near a polling station.

 

And yet they monitored both ’04 and ’08 elections at the invitation of Dubya without comment as far as I can judge.

 

UN to supervise Obama poll?

Tonight is the final O and M debate and the concerned public is waiting nervously to see which candidate will come up trumps. Most probably, neither will and the outcome will be a stalemate with both sides claiming victory. The race is close according to the polls, but then again, there is bias in the polls as well as their interpreters. All in all, its a bit of a mess.

 

One relief is that not much has been made of the race and religion issues. There have been threats of violence, however, against enemies of both candidates should they win. The contest is decidedly passionate and highly ideological.

 

One bazaar phenomenon is the commissioning of polling station monitors from Europe and Central Asia. Amid reports of fiddling at these stations, minority and liberal institutions have requested the presence of monitors from the UN affiliated Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), specializing in this type of monitoring.

 

Fears have been expressed that conservative groups are intent on keeping minority voters away from the polls prompting the administration to allow the monitors access to certain as yet unnamed polling areas.

 

Americans perceive their country as the flagship of democracy and the chief exporter of related principles to peoples throughout the world. We do not take kindly to being monitored for the application of these principles in our own country. The monitors could well be a source of aggravation both before and on voting day.

 

The whole concept of inviting monitors smacks of politically motivated efforts to motivate and incite minorities to come out and vote. Everyone knows that voting fraud of any magnitude is not committed under the eyes of polling station observers. I find it difficult to imagine what some visitor from Central Asia will be able to detect that could not be otherwise, and better, detected by our own people.

 

There is a large insult factor involved in this matter with all Americans feeling somewhat if not seriously annoyed by it.

 

My take on the Ryan-Biden debate was that Joe Biden was better at lying than Ryan was at telling the truth. Yes, Joe was extremely rude and was allowed to practice his impoliteness by a biased moderator, Martha Raddatz of ABC News.

 

Indeed, Martha at times tried to impose herself into the debate. This was also true of Candy Crowley, the CNN moderator of the second presidential debate. She even went so far as to confirm a statement by Obama that she subsequently had to retract as it was incorrect.

 

There were moments when I wondered just who was running for office.

 

UN to moniter US elections; an insult?

Tonight is the final O and M debate and the concerned public is waiting nervously to see which candidate will come up trumps. Most probably, neither will and the outcome will be a stalemate with both sides claiming victory. The race is close according to the polls, but then again, there is bias in the polls as well as their interpreters. All in all, its a bit of a mess.

 

One relief is that not much has been made of the race and religion issues. There have been threats of violence, however, against enemies of both candidates should they win. The contest is decidedly passionate and highly ideological.

 

One bazaar phenomenon is the commissioning of polling station monitors from Europe and Central Asia. Amid reports of fiddling at these stations, minority and liberal institutions have requested the presence of monitors from the UN affiliated Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), specializing in this type of monitoring.

 

Fears have been expressed that conservative groups are intent on keeping minority voters away from the polls prompting the administration to allow the monitors access to certain as yet unnamed polling areas.

 

Americans perceive their country as the flagship of democracy and the chief exporter of related principles to peoples throughout the world. We do not take kindly to being monitored for the application of these principles in our own country. The monitors could well be a source of aggravation both before and on voting day.

 

The whole concept of inviting monitors smacks of politically motivated efforts to motivate and incite minorities to come out and vote. Everyone knows that voting fraud of any magnitude is not committed under the eyes of polling station observers. I find it difficult to imagine what some visitor from Central Asia will be able to detect that could not be otherwise, and better, detected by our own people.

 

There is a large insult factor involved in this matter with all Americans feeling somewhat if not seriously annoyed by it.

 

My take on the Ryan-Biden debate was that Joe Biden was better at lying than Ryan was at telling the truth. Yes, Joe was extremely rude and was allowed to practice his impoliteness by a biased moderator, Martha Raddatz of ABC News.

 

Indeed, Martha at times tried to impose herself into the debate. This was also true of Candy Crowley, the CNN moderator of the second presidential debate. She even went so far as to confirm a statement by Obama that she subsequently had to retract as it was incorrect.

 

There were moments when I wondered just who was running for office.

 

Copyright: MJCHAPUT  2012.

 

The bonkers button.......

Last week in politics, somebody pressed the bonkers button.

 

First we had the Mitchell fiasco.

 

It should have been instantly obvious that Mitchell was yesterday the moment he opened his mouth. As a senior public figure you simply can’t behave like this. Had I done so as a senior public official I should have been out in milliseconds. As Chief Whip he needed to carry the respect – even fear – of Tory MPs, so it was plain at the outset he could no longer do his job.

 

So what did Dave do? He had two options. To fire him immediately or to throw his weight and authority behind him.

 

Instead he did absolutely nothing; zilch; bugger-all. What a leader!

 

It was the 1922 Committee that did for him.

 

And another thing. The real villains of the piece were the Police Federation, one of the last dinosaur unions, along with teachers, transport and the public service lot. The Old Bill not only fed the story to the media in the first place (and I daresay somebody took a little bung for his pains), but also leaked the internal inquiry report to the Sun, such is the integrity of the finest police force that money can buy!

 
Then we had the totally fabricated story about Osborne’s train fare. The most cursory evaluation would have shown that this story had no legs. The simple truth is that he and his aide had 2^nd class tickets. There were no seats so they sat in 1^st class and paid the difference.  End of story.

 

Actually, not quite!

 

I am no fan of wee George, mainly because it is patently absurd that anyone in his 30’s, however brilliant, has the experience and ‘bottom’ to hold one of the great offices of state. Apart from which we should congratulate him on going about his business by train. He could have taken his official car at much greater expense. Or an aircraft of the Queen’s Flight, as Blair did so often without comment (and also used Northolt instead of Heathrow for his long-haul trips to avoid mixing with the hoi-polloi).

 

In most places’ he would have been accompanied by police escorts and flashing blue lights. In the EU, he would have travelled by executive jet, with his driver sent on ahead with the Merc or BMW.

 

He should be congratulated for his parsimony, not berated because a nosy hack was not going to let the truth get in the way of the story.

 

Now we have the DT, which is trying to emulate the hysterical style of the Daily Mail, stirring up more nonsense about first-class rail and business-class airfares.

 

So let’s get this in perspective. UK MPs are amongst the worst paid in any democracy – less than Italy, Ireland, Germany and others, never mind Japan where MPs trouser twice what our lot get. Because successive governments have lacked the guts to tackle the issue of pay, they created an ‘expenses’ culture, and here we are!

 

The answer is simple – too simple, perhaps, for the average bureaucrat to understand.

 

All pay should be on the same scales as the Civil Service. This would instantly de-politicise the issue.

 

The PM would be on the same scale as the Cabinet Secretary; Ministers with Permanent Secretaries; MPs with Deputy Secretaries.

 

Expenses? All would get the Civil Service scale. This means fixed daily subsistence allowance for nights spent away from home, mileage allowance  for travel using own car, first-class rail fares on official business, second-class for travel home to work when living more than 40 miles from London, and air fares at the cheapest economy rate.

 

What’s the problem?

 

 

Whatever happened to the anti-globalisers?

And so to globalisation. Whatever happened to the anti-globalisation protesters? They got a lot of mileage picketing Davos and other places frequented by the great and not-so-good, and then disappeared like the morning dew.

 

Menu for tonight; roast duck, sweet potatoes, new potatoes, long beans, followed by a nice ripe papaya.

 

The duck is from China, the yams from the West Indies, the beans from Kenya, and the papaya from Brazil. There is no such thing as ‘season’s vegetables’ any more. We can get pretty well all we want year-round.

 

The transformation wrought by globalisation has been staggering. Only a few years ago, the growers of the beans would have been subsistence farmers of members of Kenya’s vast army of unemployed. Now they are part of an operation which is so slick fresh roses are on sale in London the following day.

A heart-warming story from Zimbabwe: in anticipation of his farm being stolen by Mugabe’s thugs, he did a deal with his employees. He gave them the land and he processed the vegetables and exported them to London. All were happy and making good money.

 

Then along comes the ZANU mob demanding to take over the land. The women (who do most farm work) were having none of it. Confronting the mob with budzas and pangas, they soon saw them off!

 

Globalisation is what it says: a global phenomenon; we tend to think of it sole in terms of economics, but we have globalisation of tourism, culture (especially American), fashion, politics and particularly language. Apparently the percentage of English in internet traffic is colossal; the next biggest, Japanese, doesn’t even make double figures.

 

As to economic globalisation, it is said that since India opened up in 1991 300,000,000 people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. I haven’t seen equivalent figures for China, but since it joined the real world in 1980 they must be even bigger. Of course, China has a particular problem. It needs to create 5 million jobs a year just to stand still. If it fails, watch out for political instability that would suit none of us. For them, globalisation is as much political as economic.

 

What the antis don’t seem to understand is that globalisation means mutualisation. In simple terms it is an expression of the theory of comparative advantage – if I am better than you at making hammers and you are better than me at making nails it makes obvious sense for us to specialise and trade with each other instead of the beggar thy neighbour stance advocated by the antis. Although China may be best known for manufacturing, the Germans have a massive trade with Mr Chin in the machine tools. Audis from Germany not locally-assembled Toyotas are the car of choice amongst the nouveaux. Rolls can’t knock ‘em out fast enough for the top strata, and Jaguar is doing just fine, thank you.

 

And it is a waste of time to try to make a case ‘for’ or ‘against’. Globalisation has been going on since civilisation began. It is not a ‘policy’ or an ‘ideology’.  It is a happening that is not controllable.

 

Attempts to control it have always ended in tears. Of course, you can go in for protectionism, one of the chief factors that led to the economic distress of the 1930’s and WW2. But the effect is always to invite retaliation and trade wars, let alone the fact that it increases the price of goods to your own people.

 

Or you can go down the road of subsidies. This is the weapon of choice for the EU, which is protectionist by nature. The CAP deliberately discriminates against agricultural products from the third world. For example, subsidies on sugar, a tropical crop by rights, heavily disadvantages countries like Jamaica and Malawi, especially as it produces more than it needs and dumps the surplus on world markets. And as we know it disadvantages the European consumer by increasing the cost per person of the family shopping basket by over € 1100 a year the total cost to the taxpayer is €53 billion.

 

Some countries limit exports – Russia with wheat at this time. This also distorts markets.

 

The unspoken message of the antis is ‘We shall keep you poor so that we can stay rich’.

 

Well, it may be a case of ‘Stop the world, I want to get off’, but it just won’t do your bidding.

Another little drink........

The pundits reckon that Dave played a blinder at the Tory party conference.

 

Well, good for him but as the old proverb has it ‘fine words butter no parsnips’.

 

The electorate is beginning to show signs of voter-rage.

 

The economy is going to hell in a handcart. Osborne keeps banging on about tackling the ‘deficit’, but this is not the problem. It’s the national debt, which continues to rise. Unemployment is far too high, especially amongst under-25s. Tax is a drag on growth. Health, transport, and immigration are a mess. Priority is given to foreign aid over defence. We continue to fight a pointless and unwinnable war in Afghanistan. We are fed up with the shilly-shallying over the EU and the constant interference by the ECJ and the ECHR in our attempts to get rid of foreign terrorists.

 

And yet valuable time is taken up debating ‘gay marriage’ (now there’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one), abortion which we all thought settled over 40 years ago, the Chief Whip calling coppers bad names, and other inessentials. It is all drift and dither, U-turns and broken promises.

 

Dave’s latest piece of nonsense is to aver – on the basis of a 5-year old report – that we have become a nation of incorrigible drunks and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! His solution is to put an end to the sales of cheap alcohol by supermarkets by imposing a minimum price. I always thought that the Tories were the party of free enterprise, but let that pass.

 

And his Oldies Tsar, the thinking man’s crumpet back in the 60s and 70s, is grandstanding about we oldies drinking too much. Bloody cheek!

 

Listen-up, Joan.

 

In the last ten years I have hoovered down 800 litres of Scotch, 3000 litres of wine, and 4000 pints of beer. Oh, and 150,000 ciggies as well. Most of what I have spent has gone on tax, enough to pay even your generous stipend.

 

Instead, let’s have a look at the facts.

 

Drinking peaked in 2000. Since then it has shown a steady decline, by about 12%. We know this from tax receipts.

 

But what about the problem of yoof-boozing?

 

Amongst 16 to 24 year-olds the drop has been dramatic and for 11 to 15-year old it has fallen by half.

 

Most encouraging is the fact that sales of the dreadful ‘alcopops’, specifically aimed at the young end of the market, have dropped more than 60%. Young drinkers have now turned to cider, which is far more sensible. The sting here is that cider carries a lower excise duty than other drinks, and Dave’s minimum price notion would simply jack up the cost.

 

Friday night binge-drinking by yoof may be good for the Daily Wail front page, but the truth is that convictions for drunkenness have halved in the last ten years. Drink-driving convictions have dropped by30% in three years despite more breathalyser tests being done, and the police giving priority with such sneaky tactics as offering a £500 reward for grassing up a fellow driver.

 

So git wid de program, Dave!

 

Cheers!

The BBC & Savile; the view from Texas

The  Jimmy Savile saga is another indictment of the BBC. What in the world is going on over at Broadcasting House? Has it been converted into a school for scoundrels?

 

They reputedly offer seminars on tax avoidance that are guaranteed successful. Are these lessons open to the public, or reserved for staff?

 

It is a great shame that such an institution that earned a sterling name in broadcasting excellence and integrity has come to this. Recent directors have systematically undone what took a world war and civil strife throughout the world to enshrine.

 

The comfort and assurance from listening to the BBC in some remote and lonely world outpost made Englishmen out of all of us. Conversations would stop when the pips announcing the 6:00 news were aired. And with ears glued to the radio we were linked to civilization in spite of the crackle and interference.

 

Never was there a hint of anything but truth, dignity and the dissemination of knowledge to a world audience. Gone, gone were the days.

 

The Mitt 'n O show; Round 1 to Mitt

 

Last Wednesday's debate between O and M offered dramatic and spectacular viewing. O appeared as if he were over tired, on sedatives or out to lunch, take you pick. He bordered on somnambulance as he missed opportunity after opportunity to counter attack with if not reason, certainly vigor.

 

 

It was not typical O by an means and while it gave M a subsequent bounce in the polls, the fat lady has yet to sing.

 

I doubt O will repeat his dream world performance and will instead come after M with a vengeance at the remaining two debates.

 

M did not look or behave much differently than in the past. He was prepared, articulate, clear headed, and poignant. He made good points and clicked off list items of corrective measures he plans to take. He looked every bit the alpha male. That should be enough for most people seeking to choose a leader.

 

 

However, many Americans want someone a bit more soft and cuddly and the press is making reams of copy in pursuit of that desire. It will not happen because it is not the nature of the beast.

 

Pity that so many cannot just be content with what M is.

 

In spite of his other worldly performance and polls to the contrary, O remains on top. There are more Democrats in the USA than Republicans which gives O an edge. While such and edge did not help Jimmy Carter, O is a professional at working his audience, at least most of the time.

 

 

Obama's supporters love him while M's supporters are less emotional about their candidate and offer respect more than affection.

 

To be sure, Americans would rather party with O, but do business with M. So, why is O still in the lead? He has the black vote. Younger women like him. Young people including university students favor him as well. He, like so many of his Democratic predecessors, have captured and fostered the immigrant vote.

 

 

This is a tradition in the Democratic party dating back to the days when Democrats in New York met immigrants at the boat with bags of food and lots of good will.

 

No question, M has closed a bit of the small gap in his popularity but he will need a repeat of his performance in the next two debates to make a difference. I would not underestimate M in being able to achieve this.

 

 

He is a fast study and does his homework. He prepared very diligently for the last debate and is no doubt doing the same with his coaches in preparation for the next two.

‘My name is Bond.......and I'm 50!’

The 50^th Anniversary of the Bond movies takes me back to the Liguanea Club in Kingston, Jamaica, where I lived for two happy years. The opening sequence in Dr No is the facade of the club.

 

Guests staying at the club would often ask to be given the room where Sean Connery or Ursula Andress slept. The manager would reply ‘ You are very lucky; it just happens to be vacant’, and give them whichever key was handy.

 

Of course, neither of them actually stayed there.

 

The inspiration for the gorgeous blonde emerging from the Caribbean in a wet tee-shirt was neither blonde nor Scandinavian. She was Jamaican.  Ian Fleming obviously said ‘I’ll have a bit of that’, and took her home to ’Goldeneye’, his house near Ochos Rios where she became the chatelaine for many years.

 

‘Goldeneye’ is now  preserved much as Fleming left it, and is a very up-market holiday home.

 

There are two stories about how ‘007’ came about.

 

One is that when he was creating Naval Intelligence in the Caribbean during WW2, he was dispatched to New York to bump-off a certain Oriental gentleman in a down-town hotel. There was no such person; it was a test to see if Fleming was the Right Stuff. The room number was 1007, but the 1 had fallen off!

 

The other is that it was the number of the bus route taking his kids to school in Kent, where he lived with Lady Anne and his legitimate family when he wasn’t having fun in Jamaica.

 

I prefer the first but believe the second.

 

‘James Bond’ was the name of a famous Caribbean ornithologist.

 

Fleming seems to have got the plot for the sunken bomber in ’Goldfinger’ from a true incident. German U-boats in the Caribbean were pretty safe before the US entered the war, and crews were accustomed to sneaking ashore to get fresh fruit and veg in isolated villages. There is a very deep trench in Kingston harbour. The Germans were confident of their invulnerability because we had little in the way of sub countermeasures, so they would sit on the bottom taking a peek  at any juicy targets. Fleming sent his dirty-tricks lads down to take it out. Local folklore says it is still down there.

 

The smart set were pretty thick on the ground between Ochos Rios and Port Antonio in the early post-war days, including Noel Coward and Errol Flynn. Flynn owned his own island just off Port Antonio, which he lost in a poker game. The lounge in the Trident Hotel in Port Antonio has photographs of just about every Hollywood star you can think of.

 

So whatever mythology has grown up around Fleming, you can be certain of one thing.

 

He held some awesome parties!

Why Jimmy Savile is important.

The pub discussion the other night was about the Jimmy Savile revelations. The majority sympathised with Jim.

 

‘ He’s dead’. ‘Why don’t they let him rest in peace?’ ‘Why drag this up after all these years?’ ‘He can’t answer for himself’. ‘What’s the point of all this?

 

I’ll tell you the point.

 

It is not about him and his sexual misdemeanours.

 

It is about a massive criminal conspiracy to conceal the serial sexual crimes of a celebrity.

 

This was all triggered by a BBC Newsnight investigation which the BBC suppressed.

 

At the time there was speculation that the BBC was embarrassed because it had only just broadcast a fulsome tribute to their late star.

 

But we now know that the true reason was much more serious.

 

Jim’s sexual predations were an open secret amongst the glitterati of the entertainment world and Fleet St for 40 years. Ester Rantzen, who has a child-welfare charity ChildLine, suspected it. Paul Gambaccini, who was with Jim on Radio 1, knew of it 30 years ago

 

It is alleged, according to the DT,  that ‘Jim abused and raped underage girls on BBC premises, in his  Rolls-Royce and in a caravan after he had made a “celebrity visit” to a girl’s school in Surrey’, but that ‘the circle of those guilty of collusion by silence or inaction is potentially much wider’.  His peccadilloes were well-known in the BBC and in entertainment circles.

 

So why did nobody blow the whistle?

 

The received wisdom is that he was just too big a star. With his charity work and marathon-running he was a national icon. He made himself untouchable.

 

He nearly came unstuck when was interviewed under caution in 2007 police investigating abuse of young girls at an Approved School in Staines, but once again it was Teflon Jim.

 

So will the CPS now bring conspiracy charges?

 

Don’t hold your breath!

Coming soon: The Mitt & O Show....

Come Wednesday evening, the much anticipated O and M debate will be aired. The tone and demeanor of that debate will offer more solid evidence of who is going to win the Presidential nomination than anything else I can think of. Mind you, O has taken a small but indicative lead and M needs a blockbuster performance on Wednesday and during the subsequent two debates if he wants to capture the presidential office.

 

As a campaigner, M has not lived up to expectations. He comes across as stiff and cold in spite of all his baby kissing, open necked shirts, blue jeans and efforts to look human. More important, he has committed gaff after gaff resulting in his being mainly on the defense when given or purchasing air time.

 

In my view, however, his largest problem is the fault of the Republican Party. Never have I seen such a devastating split in party philosophy than now between the classic and conservative Republicans. The latter include the Tea Party disciples and the Libertarians. The brunt of right wing talk radio is solidly aligned with the conservative faction of the Republican Party. As a result, an audience of millions of TV and radio listeners are constantly exposed to the social and fiscal views of some radical but persuasive media personalities.

 

These personalities seriously influence if not set Republican standards and values. The role of these ultra right principles was highly visible during the primary elections for a Republican standard bearer. In order to achieve prominence in the primaries, M was compelled to preach a much more conservative and right wing party line than he espoused as a private citizen and as Governor of Massachusetts. This shift in his stand on several major issues gave M the reputation of a 'flip-flopper'. The Democrats have picked up this aspect of M's dilemma and are proceeding to label him as indecisive, shifty and opportunistic.

 

M aids in sustaining these labels because in order to capture the number of public votes needed to win the presidential election, he has to move back to the political center. Such a move is forced by the dynamics of the prevailing Republic Party split. M could not have done anything different and by following the only path open to him, he has painted himself into a corner. The paint will not dry before the election. The Democrats will see to that.

 

To make matters worse, the more M moves toward the center of mainstream American political thinking, the more he alienates the right wing of his political base. Hence, what he picks up on one hand he loses on the other.

 

M's only hope is to go for broke in the debates by making an appeal to the public based upon his own personal convictions on social and fiscal issues. It must be the force of his personality that grabs the people, not his stand on the issues. To be sure, such a feat is almost impossible given M's flip-flopping and generally cold demeanor. In the process, M has to convince the millions of viewers that O has not only failed to keep his promises, but that he is a phony, a pretender and at heart a person only interested in achieving power through exploiting poverty, racial and environmental issues associated with the political left.

 

The public exposure of Republican Party structural weaknesses may play out by generating a major change in the two party system that America has so long enjoyed. Speculation is rising that a third party will be initiated and will be called either the Conservative or Libertarian party. Never mind that this party appeals only to  a relatively small percentage of the population. It may still come about and could only gain prominence if it stuck to fiscal issues such as a balanced budget, small government, free market and no public debt.

 

If the third party also flogs its social issues it will remain a minority. The far right is characterized as espousing principles related to pro-life, basic family values and no single sex marriage.These social values are not monopolized by the political right and are best left up to the individual rather than a particular party. They are much too controversial to win an election.

 

I look forward to the debate.