'Something nasty in the woodshed'

‘Private Eye’ has the same take as me about the Blair Tome. ‘Eye’ did a parody of it, but I have read a compilation of critiques of the book and it is beyond parody. Much of the demotic language Blair uses is of the ‘I’m a regular kind of guy’ calibre, and one half expects him to describe himself as a ‘diamond geezer’.

What does Grub Street tell us about the Strange Death of the Welshman from MI6, Dai the Spy?

He was both 30 and 31 years old. There’s clever, look you.

He was found in a large sports bag and a suitcase.

He was stabbed several times or even dismembered.

He was poisoned, strangled, asphyxiated, and drugged.

He was assassinated by Al Qaeda.

He was attacked by a friend or casual acquaintance.

He was murdered by a ‘Mata Hari’ honey-trap assassin.

He was killed by a gay lover.

He was the victim of sex game that went wrong.

He died innocently.

He suffocated after locking himself inside a sports bag in some autoerotic session. The key was found outside the bag!

None/all of the above.

Next we will be told that his nickname was ‘Lucky’. Whatever, there is definitely something nasty in the woodshed.

And the Potty Pastor has been landed with a bill of $180,000 for police coverage during his ‘Burn the Koran’ campaign. Ah, the law of unintended consequences; where would we be without it?

So farewell Pope Benedict. The visit got massive coverage in the meeja, with TV news broadcasting every moment of the grand tour to the exclusion of all else. Needless to say, the occasion brought the worms out of the woodwork, with protest marches and celebs mouthing off their vapid opinions. The UK doesn’t need a bout of Catholic-bashing, but I blame the equal opportunities/anti-discrimination wowsers for making constant mischief. For example, a small town in England has traditionally made a big thing of Bonfire Night. Now the wowsers are saying that it is a hate crime against Catholics. I doubt whether there is more than a microscopic minority that know that the Gunpowder Plot was designed to overthrow the state and restore Catholicism. Drawing attention to it only causes bad feeling for spoiling a harmless bit of fun. Both Rome and the Anglican Church come across as obsessed with sex – gay bishops, women priests, kiddie-fiddling. Not much about morality, Christian values, etc. According to the suppressed Gospel of St Peter, Mary Magdalene was not a ‘fallen woman’, but a leader of the early Church and possibly the first Pope, so what’s the argument?

The US economy and O’s ratings seem to be accompanying each other on a flight south. The Economist reckons recovery will take 7 years provided the right decisions are made. So far all measures seem to have failed. The housing market is down the tubes, consumer confidence appears to be at a very low level, the stimulus package has failed and the deficit is terrifying. It seems to me that O’s approach is inflate away debt. I have news for him. Nobody will lend you money if they think that it will be only worth half on maturity. POTUS seems bent on a Broonite ‘tax and spend’ regime; it will all end in tears.

It is ironic that Cleggikin’s absurd diatribe about it being ‘immoral’ to avoid paying tax that the taxman is not entitled to in the same week that it is revealed that the Revenue has made a cock-up of humungous proportions in overcharging or undercharging millions (and has decided not to pursue the undercharging claims). All this from a man who in his entire life has never earned a penny that was not contributed by the tax-payer, as a civil servant, an MEP, an MP, and now as Deputy PM. And we require no sermons from a member of a profession that as a consequence of the MPs’ expenses scandal, has become a byword for venality, dishonesty and deviance. His pompous lefty colleague, the Business Secretary, has appointed as a top advisor a billionaire businessman who has ‘everything in the wife’s name’ in a tax haven.

It must be true; I read it in the papers............

‘Hundreds of competitors flocked to Ramsbottom for the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships. Vying for a £100 top prize, contestants were given three black puddings with which to dislodge as many Yorkshire puddings as they could from a 20ft ledge. ‘Some people say it’s a strange world championship, but it depends where you come from. We’re from Lancashire,’ said the organiser’.

And finally.........

An ode to Hillary Clinton, courtesy of Ogden Nash and Andrew Mason:

Sure, deck your lower limbs in pants,

The choice is yours, my sweeting.

You look divine as you advance,

But have you seen yourself retreating?

Done and dusted Deepwater.

Your idea about extraditing our mad pastor is compelling. Please, take him; he is all yours under whatever legislation you might muster. It is about time we began shedding our religious fanatics back from whence they came. Then again, never mind, his moment on the stage has passed along with that of the now permanently capped, cemented, sealed, entombed, done and dusted Deepwater Explorer.

Further to my heads up about the rise of a third party in the form of a conservative/libertarian coalition, the plot thickens. A nobody mystery woman, Christine O'Donnell, has just emerged in a Delaware primary as the republican nominee for the November mid-term election. Her debut run for the senate unseated a long-term RINO who was a shoo-in for winning against the democratic candidate.

Christine is a tea party conservative and a pleasant looking young woman capable of speaking her mind to the public. As for the state her mind the following is exemplary. She is anti abortion, gays and stem cell research. Her education agenda demands a curriculum that includes teaching creationism. She had some youthful encounter with witchcraft followed by spearheading a public campaign against masturbation. Would you kindly extradite her along with the mad preacher?

Republicans, notably Karl Rove, are aghast at Christine's win and are outspoken about the need for her to clear up several past issues that could easily combine to give the democratic candidate a landslide in November. Moreover, to his credit, Rove insists that republican candidates should have a clean and clear record and be able to demonstrate integrity of character.

Christine was strongly supported by the tea party movement which, as you will recall, is the avant garde of the conservative/libertarian persuasion. These are the ultra right politicians that include Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich and numerous others. The interesting part is that one major spokesperson for the conservatives, Rush Limbaugh, took umbrage with Karl Rove's attack on Christine and earnestly defended and endorsed her. Hence, we have the classic republicans characterized by Karl Rove on one side and the emerging and expanding tea party conservatives characterized by Limbaugh on the other. Given the popularity of Limbaugh, Hannity and similar conservative talk show hosts, there is enough popular momentum to generate a third party. The raging battle between republican and conservative also acts to divert energy and money away from their battle against the democrats in general and O in particular.

Meantime, O is going his merry way seemingly in a dense fog and without ground truthing his ideology. In short, he is out of touch and many of his previous supporters, including the highly respected Colin Powell, are taking him to task. Their message to O is get back on track with your promises of reform beginning with immediate, focused and determined efforts to reduce unemployment. O's ideology is beginning to take shape and has crystallized into one of a social welfare state complete with big government, an expanded civil service, newly established commissions appointed by the President and responsible directly to him and a strong alliance with minorities of color and the trade unions.

One need not be very far to the right to react adversely to this ideology. Indeed, O is haemorrhaging support from his own party, especially the middle class who so believed in him as a figure of destiny. It is basically his inability to manage the economy and to take congress to task for their greed and glut that alienates the middle class. Nor are people very excited about O's medical care reforms. A recent cartoon shows him as a conductor with sheet music entitled Obama Care Part II. Problem is, the orchestra seats are empty and the remaining performers are seen running for the exits.

Yes, the Teflon Tony book-signing was a fiasco and yes, the Yanks still love him. Do you recall my telling you that in the initial stages of Iraq II, commentators on Texas radio were calling for Tony to join W as his vice president? We still don't know any better.

'Out of hubris comes nemesis'

The solution to the Mad Pastor-Koran burning debacle was very simple. The UK Government should have issued an extradition warrant, as there was clearly a prima facie case of incitement under anti-terrorism legislation and for conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace. Since the Pastor’s posturing had received enormous publicity in the UK and there had been disorderly demonstrations as a result, the jurisdiction of the English courts was established. Then he could have been comfortably tucked up in the slammer until 9/11 had passed. That would have stopped his farting in church.

If the warrant had been denied, this would have presented an ideal opportunity to abrogate the extradition treaty with the US which is grotesquely one sided and unfair. If the warrant had been granted, this would be the first time the treaty has been used to deport someone from the US on a terrorism charge. In fact, it has only been used once for its ostensible purpose, although it has been misused over 1000 times for non-terrorist offences. A win-win situation.

The Government says it is already ‘looking at it’. Expect no urgent action from Kitten Heels May; she is like the woman who reads the obituary column and wonders how people could die in alphabetical order.

‘We are all guilty’ seems to be the outcome of the BP Deepwater report. My analysis at the start of the drama seems to be justified that accidents are caused by a combination of events which are not necessarily catastrophic in themselves coming together to make a disaster, and that accidents never have a single cause. When I was learning to fly certain safety routines were dinned into me. For example, a pilot takes off, has an engine failure after take-off, turns back to the field, stalls and crashes. The cause of the crash was engine failure, yes? No. The pilot neglected to do the routine fuel test on pre-flight inspection. The engine failed because of water contamination in the fuel. The pilot then broke the golden rule ‘Never turn back’. It was a succession of events that caused the crash.

So who are the guilty men?

Nobody is going to come out of this smelling of attar of roses. The Sunday Times did a major feature the general theme of which is hubris. It says that the rig survivors were forbidden to take mobile phones and radios on board the rescue boat. It took 28 hours to get them to port where they were first forced to be checked for drugs and urine samples taken, and then ‘strongly encouraged’ to sign a statement that read ‘I was not a witness to the incident....and have no first hand or personal knowledge of it. I was not injured as a result... .’

Inspections before the spill revealed 26 components of the blow-put preventer to be in bad condition. The government official who should have checked the BOP didn’t. The rig crew had constantly warned of serious safety threats, but were ignored. BP, Transocean and Halliburton seemed to have been at constant loggerheads. The crux appears to be money; the rig was 43 days behind schedule at a cost near $1 million a day. Safety considerations took a poor second place.

The handling of the aftermath was the job of the Chairman of BP, but he was away on a cruise in the Far East on his luxury yacht with his mistress. The company’s spin doctor was invisible. POTUS seemed to prefer acting Mr Tough Guy instead of Presidentially. He reminded me of King Lear –

‘I will do such things --

What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be

The terrors of the earth’.

The media coverage was appalling and may well have done more economic damage than the spill. The maladroit Tony Hayward is low on my list – he was left to take the flak, but he’s a geologist not a PR man.

The Federal agency comes out of this as venal and ineffective, with an unhealthy relationship with the oil companies. An internal report 2 years ago found that employees were having sex and taking drugs with oil executives, falsifying contracts and receiving gifts.

Who comes out with credit?

The fishermen, restaurateurs, boatmen and ordinary people who got stuck in to minimise the damage would be top of my list, accompanied by the engineers and technicians who capped the well through almost unbelievable technology and inventiveness. Then there would be the Secretary for Energy who recruited five top-rank scientists to come up with a solution.

And who gains? Well, m’learned friends, of course!

Truly, out of hubris comes nemesis.

Back in la-la land, the Blair book-signing fiasco is a great irony. In the US he is still held in great regard. In the UK so many people detest him that he is unable to appear in public. If a Crazy Cleric could have been found to burn Tone’s tome, what a blaze that would be. People have been going into bookshops and shifting it to the ‘crime’ section.

Cameron’s judgment is being seriously called into question over the nefarious activities alleged against his spinmeister. The Trade Unions are threatening a winter of discontent over service cuts. The Brokeback Coalition is proposing to reduce the size of the armed forces in the middle of a war whilst ring-fencing the aid budget. It’s déjà vu all over again! Welcome to the 1970s.

I have been having a look at the blog stats, which are quite interesting. We have had hits from the US, Canada, UK, Thailand, South Africa, China, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, and Ireland. However, with no comments there is no indication as to whether our stuff is actually being read or whether the 500 hits represents a lot of people or just a lot of hits.

Grub Street news: 'The Queen and Prince Phillip are shooting guests at least twice a week at Broadlands'

'I never vote; it only encourages them!'

We are all abuzz here by the comments made by the round heeled Carla Bruni Sarkozi about Michelle Obama. Evidently, Carla is one to kiss and tell. Her reputed statements about Mrs. O are easily being dealt with and its business as usual at the white house. This Marie Antoinette reincarnate is making husband Nicholas look smaller every day; and he already has a handicap in that direction. I seriously doubt there will be another gala in DC featuring the King and Queen of France at the head table. Pity, O needs friends badly. I believe the diminutive frog realized from the start that our Commander in Chief was all boots and no cattle as he uttered words to that effect early on during O's Washington honeymoon with the presidency.

Jeff Randall's column today on UK government spending being actually more than last year and indeed more than any of the labor years is an eye opener. His analogies to Sweeny Todd added a touch of humor and reality. Better still was Janet Daley's recent column on the insanity of one man's ability to hold America hostage while he decides whether or not to burn a Koran. The depth of her article lies in her explanation of why common American's have such an intimate relationship with our constitution. The reasons behind the constant and frequent talk in the street about human rights, individual rights, and the freedoms so covetously espoused in our Declaration of Independence by the founding fathers is extremely well articulated. The backup material in her article is far more interesting that the burning Koran lead.

Preliminary elections leading up to the mid-term elections in November are dynamite. A huge rift is evolving on the political right between republicans and conservatives. So much so, that the bitter attack against O and co. from the political right has weakened in intensity. The primary gripe among those who call themselves Conservatives is their disaffection with the middle of the road tendencies associated with many republicans. The conservative mantra is individual freedoms, guns, pro life, small government, capitalism and God. Vote getting efforts on the part of many rinos (republicans in name only) violate the mantra and therefore grate on conservative principles. We could easily have a third party in the US what with the large numbers of conservatives and allied libertarians gaining in political strength. Witness their efforts to create and populate the tea party movement. Tea party candidates are winning in enough preliminaries to take heed of their burgeoning power.

The ultimate test, however, will come in November when the grit of the conservatives elected over republican rivals will be put to the test against democrat rivals. There is another trend that is partly fogging the issues. Namely, that of ousting incumbents in favor of new blood. As I have noted earlier, the American public is becoming more and more fed up with senators and representatives who appear to have life-long sinecures and who behave as if they were royalty. In particular, the cozy relationships between elected officials and large political campaign donors such as corporate America and lobbyists, compel growing numbers of the public to believe that their interests have been ignored. The public is voting for new candidates in a decidedly anti-incumbent movement. To what extent the new candidates are elected because they are new or because they are promoted by the tea party movement remains to be seen.

The tea party is a basically conservative power play that has capitalized on the frustration of politically active right wing voters who feel they are no longer represented by elected officials. In particular, and as their name indicates, they complain bitterly about having been Taxed Enough Already. This complaint is mirrored in the public at large and I am quite sure the tea party movement will attract many center and left wing activists who also believe we are being taxed to the extreme. As I write, there is a major debate over extending the Bush administration tax cuts to higher income earners. You know the arguments and particularly so because a very similar debate is going on in the UK over tax rates and national debt reduction. As the tax cuts enacted by W are due to expire at the end of 2010, a sense of urgency prevails; but urgent to some means tax the rich while to others it means extend incentives to job creators to create more jobs.

‘The world is getting to be such a dangerous place, a man is lucky to get out of it alive’.

Poor old Willie Hague seems doomed to employ the world’s worst PR spinners. The outrageous Amanda Platell did for him by getting him to pose in a silly baseball cap, attend a Gay Pride march, and boast of drinking 14 pints of beer a day when he was a lad. Now we have his disastrous public statement about his Special Advisor and all that guff about his marriage. This gave the story legs; without it the whole fiasco would be over. Who cares if he walks on both sides of the street? There have been whispers amongst the chatterati that Willie’s sexuality has been a matter of speculation since he made his well-remembered speech at the Tory Party conference when he was only 16 because he never had anything to do with girls. Why? It seems much more likely that Willie never thought about rumpy-pumpy because he only ever thought about politics. He married the charming Fi when he became Welsh Secretary; she was a prominent member of the Taffia.

An excess of testosterone is part of the essential make-up of a politician. Exposures of toe sucking, copulating in a Manchester United football shirt, self-starring porno videos made within the hallowed precincts of Westminster, ‘Shagger’ Norris with his plethora of concurrent mistresses, Jeremy Thorpe and the Great Dane, Mandelson and his Latino catamite, fatalities during weird sex-games, and John Prescott laying his secretary (anything is possible, even that unlikely episode) – I tell you, it’s like the Ball of Kirriemuir’ in there. Going back further, we had the Profumo Affair, and Harold Macmillan’s wife was the long-standing mistress of Bob Boothby who sodomised the queer Kray brother when Dorothy was not about. Ambidextrous was our Bob. These guys are game for anything as long as it stands still long enough. I don’t care, although I draw the line at the strange activities of one (ex) Lib-Dem MP whose tastes ran to rent boys and excrement. But I guess some of the women MPs will die wondering.

The Great Pakistani Cricket Scam will not go away, either. It now emerges that the Old Bill has been following the go-between for months. It will be a very complicated enquiry, so there won’t be any closure in the short term. If the players are charged in London, which now seems increasingly likely, they will be bailed. The intriguing question is whether they will answer bail and return from Pakistan to face trial. If they don’t, I foresee the future of Pakistan cricket as being extremely uncertain. The Pakistani authorities have handled this appallingly, with the High Commissioner suggesting that the News of the World video was a fake. Bad move. The News of the Screws will be all over him now. England have been playing international cricket since the 1870s, but big money and big temptation only arrived with satellite TV coverage a few years ago. The rot centres on the Indian sub-continent because that is where the illegal bookies operate.

Interestingly, a week-end opinion poll showed overwhelming support for Willie; the vast majority believed him to be telling the truth (as opinion polls of politicians’ veracity are concerned, this one should get in the Guinness Book of Records). The wisdom of issuing the Press Statement was about equally divided, although my firm practice has always been to follow the military maxim ‘never explain, never complain, never apologise’. The ST did a good commentary piece about voter hypocrisy and the prurient interest in the admittedly diverse and inexhaustible sex lives of politicians. Of course, this can cut both ways. If Edwina Currie had published her memoirs revealing not just her affair with John Major but also the impressive contents of his Y-fronts in 1996, he might have won in 1997. When rumours spread during an election campaign in eighteen hundred and frozen stiff that Lord Palmerston had been caught in flagrante delicto in his 80s, the leader of the opposition said ‘Don’t let it get out; he’ll sweep the country’.

This seems to be ‘Gotcha’ time in UK politics. Andy Coulson, Dave’s spinmeister, is also under the spotlight, with the comrades implying that he is or has been deeply involved in hacking into MPs’ mobile phones. He was accused of this when he was Editor of the Screws of the World, but exonerated – or rather it was ‘not proven’. The deeper question is what Dave thought he was doing in appointing the head hack of the lowest of the Red Tops apart from Sunday Sport.

I have not seen any reference to Dr Kelly in the Blair apologia; he does observe that the Queen was ‘haughty, which I take to mean that she was not impressed with Tone’s charm or Cherie’s vulgarity. When Cherie asked Princess Anne to call her ‘Cherie’, HRH replied that ‘Mrs Blair’ would do fine. Ouch. But the masterwork is flying off the shelves, to the benefit of old soldiers. Tone admits that it was deliberate policy to encourage immigration purely for the sake of enticing the Tories to react adversely so that he could shout ‘nasty party’ again. The Tories were not falling into that obvious trap. But when immigration became a major issue in this year’s election, Cameroon said that a Tory government would bring it under control with a system of quotas and vouchers, and all others would be deported.

A slight snag here. Immigrants from Eastern European countries that are members of the EU can’t be sent home. Back to the drawing board, Dave. Tsarkozy is up to the same stunt to repair his terrible ratings. He is beating his little chest and chucking out the Roma. They will just come back again, as they are entitled, but it does boost the wee chap’s Napoleonic image, which needs all the help it can get. And a new book implies that la grande horizontale might have to be buried in a Y-shaped coffin.

A revealing comment from Blair when asked why he never sacked the awful Broon was that it would have split the Labour Party; instead he merely ruined the country. So that’s alright, then.

Returning to the theme of the danger to one’s freedom of telling Irish jokes, we came back from Cape Town in 1991 on the ‘Canberra’. The resident comedian was a Paddy (pardon, Irish male) called Pat Noonan. He told the story of going into a bar in Dublin. The barman told him it was the ‘holy hour’, the one time during the day when pubs were not allowed to serve. ‘Then I’ll wait until you open’ said Pat. The barman replied ‘Will you have a drink while you’re waiting?’ Some years later I went into a pub in Waterford with my son-in-law, Paddy Keogh (no kidding). He ordered two pints of Guinness. The barmaid said that the pub was not open for another quarter of an hour. Paddy said in that case we would wait. Can you guess what the barmaid replied? Goddit in one. Truly life follows art, as that great Paddy, Oscar Wilde, memorably said.

Quote of the week.

"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."

When did I last see my little Willie?

Will Hague is taking a beating in the press; and much of it is self-induced. His efforts to deflect aspersions made the situation worse, especially after bringing his wife into the fray. His clumsy public statements cause me to wonder how he came to be such a close advisor to Margaret Thatcher. Much of what I read about him is less than complimentary and this has to give him a handicap when dealing with foreign affairs. Nor did it help that his young advisor ran away. I believe your assessment of Hague's character, but the manner in which the ordeal is being handled has many of the earmarks of a guilty conscience. Just for the record, I could give a toss if he is gay, but it is important that he be a man of substance and good judgement or his opponents will have him for lunch.

Situation America is going from bad to worse. O's ratings are falling by the day and it now looks as if the opposition will win a House majority and come close to winning over the Senate as well in the upcoming mid-term elections. The Republicans have managed to exact sufficient party and pundit discipline to focus their attacks on O's management, or mismanagement, of the economy. In the process, they have seriously eroded public confidence in the dollar, the Fed, major banks and our twin housing regulation authorities, Fannie May and Freddie Mack. The strategy has been well executed; perhaps too well because the Republicans will have a difficult time regaining public confidence in the economy once they get back into power.

O has also been tagged as seriously pro labor, partly because the unions have contributed gazillions of dollars to his campaign and the campaign of his fellow Democrats. Accusations are that the newly proposed roads, rails and runways infrastructure development legislation is contaminated with promises of union jobs. After Reagan's successful effort to break the air traffic controllers strike, the image of unions in general has declined, strikes did not happen and the larger unions such as teachers and government workers unions were relatively quiet. It was nearly a situation in which we felt we could get along without the unions, until O came riding in on a flotilla of union dollars. To many, he made a pact with the devil and to his enemies, this pact is another string in their bow of contention about his mismanagement of the economy.

Then there is the high strung evangelical preacher who wants to burn the Koran in protest against the Muslims. This has certainly got up the nose of Muslim groups who are undoubtedly prompted and propagandized by militant Mullahs seeking their own power structure and path to paradise. The government, in the form of Hillary Clinton for one and General Petraeus for another, has openly criticized the misguided missionary who seems totally oblivious to anybody's feelings other than his own. He is behaving like a martyr and is backing up his intended deed with references to the need for our saintly Christian religion to combat and defeat the evil of Islam. Jesus Christ!

Deepwater Horizon is off the radar, at least until the results of testing the blowout preventer are completed. As soon as it surfaced, the BOP was formally 'arrested' and placed under the care of one agency or another, I don't recall which. I have no idea when the BOP tests will be completed, but I can only imagine how difficult it must be to ensure that the tool is properly handled and that it is kept away from unauthorized persons. Every effort will surely be made not to contaminate the evidence. Who knows, BP may be fully exonerated

'If heaven ain't like Texas, I'm stayin' at home'

Mid term elections, Blair revelations, and three hurricanes all in a row liven up the world news. We here on the prairie, however, take little stock of such events and are content to lull ourselves into an isolated sense of security while listening to one of country western's latest, 'If heaven ain't like Texas, I'm stay'n home'.

The truth is now being told. Bush and Blair plotted to arrest Brown's rise to power. A rise so fraught with emotion that Teflon Tony was driven to drink. Plus, he is deeply sorry for the Iraq war. All that would drive anyone to a Catholic confession. The more TB says, the deeper into the sierra, hotel, india, tango he sinks. All this by his own admission. And now, he wants to reveal the temptations of public office. He and our increasingly popular Glenn Beck should get together with God for an expurgation of public and private sin.

I believe we are witnessing the rise of a modern day prophet in the form of one Glenn Beck. He quit Catholicism in favor of Mormonism and has unbelievably emerged as the peoples choice. He staged a risky rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and drew a crowd of more than three hundred thousand. Traditionally, MLK commemorative events are monopolized by black personalities, one of whom, Rev. Al Sharpton was holding a competing event nearby. The people's vote was for Beck if numbers of attendees is the measure. Glenn was in his full glory and spiced his heartfelt address with lots of prayer and appeals to the Almighty to save us from evil and its many manifestations. You heard it here, Glenn will become a religious icon and in his name miracles will be attributed. Incredible, but true. Glenn is the sort of speaker who comes across as if he is talking to you personally in your very own parlor. He conveys a sense of sincerity that eclipses the hogwash that he is preaching. His pouting and sometimes teary eyed Fox TV presentations capture the imagination of the right, the religious right, and most importantly, the gullible. Mankind is insane, but perhaps this is what it takes to wake people up to the cruel and corrupt ways of our contemporary military, industrial and political complex. We have Tony Blairs all over the bloody place as well as elected politicians who hold institutionalized positions to which they firmly believed they are entitled.

Then there is the cricket scandal precipitated by your blessed Pakistani brothers. I understand why you like them . Actually, there are lots of Pakistanis whom I have met that are really first class blokes, at least they were when I met them. I suspect, in this case, that the scandal goes much deeper than just the Pakistan team and that other players and teams will emerge with a black eye. Also, when sports like cricket go international, they need to understand and accept the baggage that accompanies such moves.

The expose on William Hague was a bit of a shock. I have no problem with gay, but I do wish they would come into the open and thereby get rid of the suspicions. My radar heats up when people heatedly deny accusations and yet there is little alternative if the accusations are not true. I recall the many, many times during my overseas career when I was accused of being CIA. The more I denied it, the firmer my accusers believed themselves to be correct. One particularly embarrassing and nasty episode came while I worked in Zambia and happened to office next to a young Zambian who had been educated somewhere in the Soviet Union. He was adamant about my professional origins and did not hesitate to tell everyone he knew and many who he did not know. Frustrated beyond reason by his continual harangues, I finally asked him if he actually believed that the CIA would pay me lots of money to have him as an office mate. End of conversation on that topic.

"I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead."

Well, who’d a’ thought it? An American TV News leading with a cricket story! Not, of course, England’s record win over Pakistan but the gambling scam. ‘A disastrous day for cricket’; ‘the world of cricket on its knees’. Steady on, dears; it doesn’t even begin to compare with the Hansie Cronje scandal – team captain, good looking, rich, one of the world’s top batsmen national hero fixing matches. It was like discovering that Mary Poppins was on the game.

If TB expected phrases of praise on the donation of his loot from the biog to wounded soldiers he had another think coming. The media is now probing the sources of the £20 million he seems to have made in 5 years. The latest is the news that he has just forked out £1 million for his daughter’s apartment just round the corner from Chateau Blair in London. She already has a £250.000 crash pad in Strasburg. The Blurs now have 9 properties. Latest reports suggest that they are now looking at properties in Barbados. How naf! Suggested price tag is £4 million. The autobiography is not even published yet but the Blairs have received no plaudits for their donation; the general view is that it is conscience money. I disagree on the grounds that he doesn’t have any such thing. There is much speculation as to whether they are worth £20 or 60 million, but it has not gone unnoticed that the UK taxpayer is still picking up the bill for their security.

And still in relation to Blair, the establishment has rushed into print to rubbish speculation about the strange death of Dr Kelly. The Home Office pathologist asserts that it was a classic case of suicide by cutting his wrist and overdosing on pain killers. He also had a dicky ticker, we are somewhat belatedly told. He said that he was so incensed by the way Dr Kelly had been treated during the WMD inquiry that he went out of his way to detect signs of homicide. Call me an old cynic (what, moi?) but trying to find evidence to support a prior opinion hardly strikes me as scientific objectivity. He makes the quite telling point that the doctors who published their misgivings and started the story running again were orthopods and the like without his specialism in forensic pathology. This prompted a response from a Professor that the pathologist was not a toxicologist but no report had been revealed giving an expert view on the effect of the painkillers. The truth should come out if there is ever an inquest, but I think the real truth is that the Government of the day had acquired such a corrosive reputation for preferring spin to truth that people became inclined to believe the very opposite of everything the Government said.

In addition, I reckon that the public has become distrustful of experts because they have seen all too often how charlatans will craft their findings to fit the conclusions demanded by their paymasters. As a result there have been some spectacular cock-ups - the millennium bug (I’m sure a lot of people made a bundle out of that), the assertion that AIDS and CJD would wipe out vast numbers of people (I recall that the media said that AIDS would affect one UK family in four), the prediction in the 1970s of the coming of a new Ice Age, the forecast in 2006 that drought would be the usual climate of the UK because of decreasing rainfall, the swine flu epidemic which according to our grandstanding Health PS would infect 5 million people (or was it 15 million?). I could go back to when it was authoritatively predicted that manufacture of motor cars would be limited by the number of chauffeurs available.

‘Deepwatergate’ has now moved to the financial pages but I guess that it will be back up front when the Bly Report commissioned by BP is published in a couple of weeks. With inquiry reports from the Justice Department and the Congressional hearing plus the Presidential Commission into industry practice due to come out at various times, it looks as if the story will run and run. Focus is now switching to Transocean. It seems to be a rum set-up, with management in Geneva, operations in Houston, rig-building in South Korea and Singapore, and drilling all over the world. Last December, Transocean had a blow-out at a North Sea rig, but this time the blow-out preventer worked. ‘Deepwater Horizon’ had apparently not returned to port since it was built 9 years ago.

Within a month of the spill, Transocean decided to pay a € 1 billion dividend, in stark contrast to BP, which forewent the divi and instead deposited £2 billion for compensation. The Swiss Government blocked the payment.

Elsewhere, we learn that Big Oil now has the technology to deal with a repetition of the Deepwater disaster. This begs the question as to why the technology wasn’t developed before it was needed rather than afterwards.

Your comments about the US media indicate that the exasperation is transatlantic. Your domestic CNN seems to be as bad as CNN International is good. Most anchors should have a ‘w’ in their title. Unlike your version, CNN news here carries almost no commercials, which means that I have to dash to refill the glass during the very short breaks. ‘Quest means Business’ often runs for 45 minutes instead of the full hour, the quarter-hour then being taken up with excellent short news reviews from Africa and the Middle East. Quest has been around a long time. I first came across him as BBC World’s Wall Street man; then he had a news-magazine programme on CNN with Alison Bell until she disappeared overnight in a scandal involving the sainted princess’s ex-squeeze. The silly woman who was over-promoted as Editor of the DT described his voice as ‘like gargling in vomit’, so it’s not just the Yanks who cringe at his throaty delivery. She got fired shortly afterwards.

We also get interesting snippets out of ‘Backstory’; it has just covered Katrina five years on and getting back to normal in Florida after Deepwater. The activities of the Federal Government and the Army Corps of Engineers seem inept. New Orleans is still a bit of a shambles. In Florida people got fed-up with waiting for the Government to get going that they did what was needed themselves.

We have abandoned the print media apart from the Sunday Times, which passes the morning until the pubs open. Half of it is thrown away unopened. We usually get to about page 16 before finding anything of interest. The big story this week was the Pakistan cricket gambling scam, but the ST didn’t mention it. We no longer watch TV news; we have Skynews running at 6 p.m. in another room so they we can catch any interesting headline, which is very rare. All the news services are partial and biased. For instance, over the week-end there was a confrontation in Bradford between mobs of whites and Asians. The whites were described as ‘right-wing extremists’ and the Asians as ‘anti-racism protestors’. As nobody interviewed anybody from either group, how did they know? Which reminds me of being at lunch a number of years ago with a Scottish Chief Constable. He said that the best way to disperse a mob in Aberdeen was to rattle a collecting box.

We certainly have no intention of paying the Dirty Digger to get into Timesonline. It is difficult to forgive The Times for outing one of the most popular bloggers whose topic was real life in the Police. He was a serving copper and the Times dropped him deep in the merde; the blog was closed down. We now get most of our news from the Economist, the Torygraph online (not much these days since it became an oversize red-top), the BBC website and, particularly, surfing.

And finally

Ten reasons to get out of the EU from the excellent Dan Hannan MEP:

1. Since we joined the EEC in 1973, we have been in surplus with every continent in the world except Europe. Over those 27 years, we have run a trade deficit with the other member states that averages out at £30 million per day.
2. In 2010 our gross contribution to the EU budget will be £14 billion. To put this figure in context, all the reductions announced by George Osborne would, collectively, save £7 billion a year across the whole of government spending.
3. On the European Commission’s own figures, the annual costs of EU regulation outweigh the advantages of the single market by €600 to €180 billion.
4. The Common Agricultural Policy costs every family £1200 a year in higher food bills.
5. Outside the Common Fisheries Policy, Britain could reassert control over its waters out to 200 miles or the median line, which would take in around 65 per cent of North Sea stocks.
6. Successive British governments have refused to say what proportion of domestic laws come from Brussels, but a thorough analysis by the German Federal Justice Ministry showed that 84 per cent of the legislation in that country came from the EU.
7. Outside the EU, Britain would be free to negotiate much more liberal trade agreements with third countries than is possible under the Common External Tariff.
8. The countries with the highest GDP per capita in Europe are Norway and Switzerland. Both export more, proportionately, to the EU, than Britain does.
9. Outside the EU, Britain could be a deregulated, competitive, offshore haven.
10. Oh, and we’d be a democracy again.

Keep buggering on, as Winston used to say.

We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality

There have been around 400 hits on the blog but of course this is no guide to the size of our readership. A dearth of comment and reaction continues. Readers e-mail:-

‘best read of the week’
‘love it’
‘addictive; I suppose I must now make time to read the bloody thing’.

To our muttons!

So farewell, then, the Manx Grand Prix. For the pleasure of a few petrol-heads we have 12 hours house arrest on a Bank Holiday (and on two more days during the week) so that they can spend 2 hours doing 200 m.p.h on public roads. The weather has been almost entirely perfect which has meant that at least we have not had to suffer weather-related postponements that mess-up the whole week. But two competitors were killed early in the first race of the second day, so the whole day’s events were cancelled, and an additional day of road closures was the result. A non-competing biker was also killed a day or so earlier after being hit by a Range Rover, the vehicle of choice for ambassadors of good taste like premier league soccer players, low-rent pop stars, and poseurs of every description.

The early opening of the roads as a result of the cancellation meant we could nip out for a quickie. In the pub was a nice young man missing his right arm and leg after hitting a hare at supersonic speed in last year’s races.

The whole damn thing is an anachronism; OK when the Island had a population of 5000 and very little on the roads. Now that it is a busy financial and commercial place the disruption to business must far outweigh any tourism revenues, not to mention the public cost of putting on the event. But if you criticise, the mantra is ‘There’s a boat in the morning’.

Crossing on the ferry to England during the TT earlier this year we were surprised to see large numbers of bikers returning to England before the event had even started. I was told that they only come across for the week-end previous to the opening of the TT so that they can ride the circuit on ‘Mad Sunday’. On this day anybody can roar around the circuit at high speed without the intervention of the Old Bill. Crazy, man! One of them killed himself 15 minutes after getting off the ferry.

We have just had the coldest August since – well, the last coldest – with temps closer to November. July was the wettest since Noah. We are already using central heating. The locals go around dressed for a tropical beach, and barely-covered boobs are a traffic hazard. Toughies, these Manxies. Or thick. On the brighter side, the latest economic figures show an unemployment rate of under 2% - a negative rate actually, because there are vastly more vacancies than jobs leading firms to recruit off-island. One of my drinking chums, who is a bit of a linguist, told me that during a short walk to his office he heard Spanish, French, Turkish, German and a Slavic lingo. No Manx, though. The second most widely spoken language is Afrikaans. We also have Thais in some numbers and Filipinas are the mainstay of the hospitals and care homes). The economic growth rate is a healthy 6%.

I am convinced that the main reason is that our politicians are inept and idle, and having no ideas they do no harm. The common view is that not one of them could sleep straight in bed.

The Great Cricket Scandal has had more front page coverage for Pakistan than the flood disaster. There was Heffer harrumphing away about the whole international game being run by imbeciles and controlled by racketeers. It is revealed that Pakistan has form going back twenty years or more – and I don’t mean ‘form’ in the sporting sense. Truly, ‘We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality’. Heff is dreaming of another England when cricket meant a system of values, sportsmanship and

THERE'S a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

Not any more, maties. Now it’s big money, big crookery, cheating, gamesmanship, sledging, and the rest. Heretofore there was so little money in the game that the suits weren’t interested. With big TV contracts all this has changed. One England player gave a hint of today’s earnings when he bought a large country house in Cheshire, the epicentre of bad taste. He then pulled down this beautiful old pile to build a pad that would challenge the vulgarity of the rich footballers who favour the area. Unfortunately, he did this before getting planning permission, leaving him the proud owner of a £5 million pile of hardcore. Quelle fromage!

PC rools OK?
Here is Rod Liddle in the Speccie:

Terrific piece by Douglas Murray in the latest edition of the magazine. He explains how he was reported to the Press Complaints Commission for having repeated an Irish joke made by a councillor (who was forced to apologise for it) and called for readers to send in more Irish jokes by way of protest. One of the points which Douglas doesn’t make is that the joke in question doesn’t necessarily confer the intimation of stupidity upon the Irishman in question. It could just as well be the intimation of great wit or knowing perversity. The joke is this: man walks into a Dublin bar and sees his friend sitting with an empty glass. “Can I get you another, Paddy?” the man enquires. “Well now what would I be wanting with another empty glass,” Paddy replies. As Douglas says, it’s not a very good joke. But why the furore? The witless idiot of a union rep who heard this joke uttered by the aforementioned councillor instituted legal proceedings which eventually won him thousands of quid in compensation. This is a madness, isn’t it?

My understanding of the law according to TB is that it is an offence to utter something that the listener considers to be discriminatory. Whether it is a fact, whether it is something that a reasonable person would regard as discriminatory is irrelevant. The offence is absolute; there is no burden of proof. Welcome to the world of George Orwell. In any case, Irish jokes are not about demonstrating that Paddy is stupid; they are all based on the Irish gift of stretching logic until it screams. For example ‘How do I get to Ballygorblimey?’; ‘If Oi were you, sorr, I wouldn’t start from here at all’. I rest my case.

Grubstreet news.
The meeja surely reached new depths this week with the sleazy stuff about Willie Hague’s personal life. Apparently he spent a night in a twin room at a hotel with his Special Advisor. Ooo, Mabel! Nudge, nudge; wink, wink; know wot I mean? Slimy innuendo, Chinese whispers, muck-raking – the stuff of life for the bottom-of-the sewer tabloids. Except that this one was run by the Daily Not-so-Torygraph, the broadsheet red-top. It once had a circulation of over 1 million; it’s now 687,000. Good show! And what is odd about the whole nonsense is that after 30 years of gay rights campaigning, statutory protection, and all the rest it is still regarded as pejorative to imply that someone is a homosexualist.There’s no evidence whatsoever to support the snide innuendos against Hague. He has been such a public figure since the age of 16, when he fired up the Tory Party conference, that it seems inconceivable that he has escaped being outed for nearly 40 years. One never knows, but so what? As Mrs Pat said ‘It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses’

And we hear that Piers Moron is to take over from Larry King Live on CNN, he who is best known for being fired as Editor of the Daily Mirror for publishing fake photos of British soldiers beating up Iraqis and being decked by Jeremy Clarkson. I bet that this will have the life of a mayfly.

Economics for dummies.
Stiglitz was on CNN yet again, pontificating about how everybody was wrong about the economic situation except him; we are all doomed! Then there was one of the Bank of England MPC members wittering on about double-dip recession. You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize-winner like Professor S to understand that the basic driver of markets is confidence. You can talk it up and you talk it down. And if guys in your position continue to talk it down it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

It must be true; I read it in the papers.
‘More than 50% of US troops deployed to Iraq receive disability pensions’. Less than 50% of troops are likely to be fighting men, so they must be a bit careless with the paperclips.

What’s in a name?
The boss of Delhi City administration is Mrs Dikshit.

‘Few things in life are more agreeable than seeing your neighbour fall off his roof’.

Far from slipping away, the great Mosque debate is now getting on to the front pages here. On one day The Independent carried three different feature articles, although there was no eureka moment in any of them. Quest did a piece with a very reasonable, articulate, and intelligent Muslim Republican politician, who also made the point about the danger of encouraging alienation and a feeling of being Muslim first and American second He also questioned what would be a reasonable distance if 2 blocks is too close – 4 blocks? Six? Or what? Reasonable debate seems to have been lost, and O looks as if he is facing both ways. The polls show that 26% of Americans believe that because his middle name is Hussein, he must be a Muslim himself. So a person whose name is Robin must be a bird, OK?

The Big Spill is dead but it won’t lie down. We hear that the State of Alabama is going to sue BP. Will BP join the Federal Government as a co-defendant? ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but to be counsel was very heaven’. Transocean’s writs were 249 at the last count. The CNN’s man in Florida was struggling on Quest to make a story. The best he could do was to produce yet another ‘expert’ saying that OK there was no oil to be seen on the beaches, other than Factor 8, but the fish were ingesting the oil which could be disastrous for mankind. Handy on the BBQ, though.

After all the sound and fury of poor old Tony Hayward being monstered for taking a day off to go sailing, it is now alleged that apparently the Chairman of BP, Svanberg the Invisible, took a cruise on his luxury yacht with his squeeze just after the spill. And this was not a couple of hours around the Isle of Wight. This was an odyssey to Thailand, Singapore, Bali, and Australia. Whether he took this vacation or not would have made no difference to capping the spill. However, he is said to work at least two or three days a week for his £750,000, so he must have needed the break.

And here’s a funny thing.

This story seems to have gone largely unreported apart from the Daily Mail and an Aussie paper. Private Eye has mentioned it, natch. It didn’t seem to interest Fox News, gobby US Senators, O, the meeja jackals who tore Tony to pieces, or anyone on the other side of the pond. Perhaps the Mail fabricated it.

At the same time, you guys are still asking for Mehgrabi to be returned to the Scottish bridewell. Spiky comments here suggest that the reason for his unexpected survival is being released from the tender mercies of the NHS. It is also mildly embarrassing that the only documents not in the public domain are those embargoed by the US Government, according to the Haggisbashers.

One of the sanity-preserving institutions in this increasingly flaky world is Richard Ingrams. He is one of the original founders of Private Eye and of The Oldie. He also does a column in The Independent which is reproduced in the Oldie newsletter e-mail every Friday. Eye and Oldie probably do more to expose the malfeasances and mock the pretensions of those set in authority over us than all the conventional media together. It was the Eye that gave the lead on the above revelation. Between them Oldie and Eye also have the best cartoons.

It may also be noticed that I am a fan of CNN International. The spoken English is better than we get on UK news channels, the women are mostly better-looking (although if Fiannula gets any bigger I will need a wide-screen box), all presenters are very articulate except Andrew Finnegan who can sometimes lose the plot , ‘Quest Means Business’ is a must when our Richard is there, but he seems to have more vacations than POTUS. The short programmes on Africa and the Middle East are outstanding. The financial commentators are remarkably articulate without a teleprompter, although I challenge the fastest short-hand writer to keep up with Maggie Lake. The oddity is that it is not transmitted in the US. Same problem with the superb BBC World News Service, which is not transmitted in the UK. From my experience, CNN in the US is as bad as BBC News in the UK.

A further comment on the fair-trade racket. One of our supermarkets carries a big banner announcing that it stocks Fair-trade wines. Eh? Where are all these impoverished peasants producing Chateau Collapso? Chile and South Africa, that’s where. Chile is a medium income country that features in the top 70 nations in terms of GDP and the Human Development Index. South African wine farms occupy some of the most highly-valued real estate on the continent. I believe that there is still a quota system to prevent wine lakes and keep prices stable. I have visited quite a number of SA vineyards and have yet to see a farmer with his broekies in tatters.

A most uplifting scene on TV news was the coverage of the bull that leapt out of the bullring and charged the spectators all over the ball park. Truly, as Confucius say, ‘Few things in life are more agreeable than seeing your neighbour fall off his roof’.

Yes, we have no Obamas

I hear so much about why we are in trouble and how we need to dig ourselves out of the recession that I swear one can hire an expert to confirm anything one wants confirmed. Finally, however, a pattern is emerging that has most pundits in agreement. Namely, we exercised panicky knee-jerk reactions through this and that finger-in-the-dike monetary and fiscal measure without regard to the long term. Our salvation can only come through a reasoned, workable and manageable long-term plan that will measurably and demonstrably reduce the national debt. The plan should also act to initiate the process of confidence building in government's ability to lead the economy and control spending.

This seems like a reasonable solution and one that would garner favor among the masses in spite of inevitable sacrifices that will need to be made. However, I continue to fret over the possibility of losing sight of other priorities of a less savory nature. Namely, tort reform, term limits, tax reform, defense spending cuts, and measures to control the overweening lust for power and wealth of those managing our financial institutions. These priorities collectively demonstrate the extent to which our basic power institutions have gone ballistic with respect to spending, entitlement and entrenchment. Once dealt with, immediate attention is needed to upgrade our educational systems and redefine the dysfunctional relationships that now prevail between teachers, students and parents. Nor can we neglect to redefine the role of labor unions with a view toward rationalizing legitimate employee demands with economic realities.

Great news; O is pulling out of Iraq. Wait a minute, the last convoy just crossed over into Kuwait. Can we expect that remaining soldiers will eventually leave without the security of a convoy? How can there still be thousands of soldiers remaining if we have just pulled the combatants out? Are we about to seriously commit to hiring mercenaries and civilians to fight and administer our wars? Was hiring mercenaries not a primary reason for the demise of empires?

Our entire military complex needs a remake from top to bottom. Defense Secretary Gates has just come up with a cut and slash plan to bring the military back to earth. Fareed Zukaria did a super expose on military spending and military excesses that would seem to not only justify, but mandate, huge spending reductions along with a major effort to render the military more efficient and effective and considerably less self serving. Strange, Defense Secretary Gates also announced his intention to resign next year. I trust that what looks very much like a hit and run maneuver will not crater for lack of continuity and determination. We shall see, but I am not optimistic, nor do I expect to see financial reform, tax reform, tort reform, union controls, improved education and term limits. I do believe we are out of control and require something devastating to bring us back to reality.

All hat and no cattle

Well, kiss me neck. So O didn’t listen to you about the WTC mosque. The Economist did a Lexington piece on the wrangle, the general line of which was that the US is proud of the fact that Muslims assimilate better into America than elsewhere and it should avoid the danger of creating a ‘them-and-us’ attitude that might lead to home grown terrs (you have already had a couple). It did a hatchet job on Gingrich thus:

The former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives may or may not have presidential pretensions, but he certainly has intellectual ones. That makes it impossible to excuse the mean spirit and scrambled logic of his assertion that “there should be no mosque near ground zero so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia”. Come again? Why hold the rights of Americans who happen to be Muslim hostage to the policy of a foreign country that happens also to be Muslim? To Mr Gingrich, it seems, an American Muslim is a Muslim first and an American second. Al-Qaeda would doubtless concur.

Mr Gingrich also objects to the centre’s name. Imam Feisal says he chose “Cordoba” in recollection of a time when the rest of Europe had sunk into the Dark Ages but Muslims, Jews and Christians created an oasis of art, culture and science. Mr Gingrich sees only a “deliberate insult”, a reminder of a period when Muslim conquerors ruled Spain. Like Mr bin Laden, Mr Gingrich is apparently still relitigating the victories and defeats of religious wars fought in Europe and the Middle East centuries ago. He should rejoin the modern world, before he does real harm.

I thought that O’s speech was equally lacking in logic. The general theme was the protection of the American right to freedom of religion. This ruckus has nothing to do with freedom of worship; it is about putting up a building, and there is no absolute freedom to do that. However, the First Amendment protects both religious freedom and bad taste. The entire proposal strikes me either as crassly insensitive, arrogant or seriously provocative – or all three. A report from the Big Bagel says that most New Yorkers are not particularly fazed by it all, especially as a mosque, it is said, already exists on the site and this is a rebuild (at $100 million a pretty big one). The Governor of NY State is said to have offered to find another site more remote from Ground Zero, but this was refused.

There was a recent proposal to erect the biggest mosque in Europe alongside the Olympic stadium in London. It would have accommodated thousands. There was an outcry; people took the scheme as a power-statement and an attempt to upstage the Olympics. Fortunately the proposal collapsed for funding reasons. I can well sympathise with Americans who object to this one. But Gingrich seems to have been indulging in the worst kind of rabble-rousing; he puts the US on all fours with Saudi, as if they had shared values. Not a smart argument.

O’s later ‘clarification’ - that he was only talking about the legal situation, not the merits of the case - was pretty weasly. More than ever he is coming across as all hat and no cattle, as you Texans say. He seems to have stirred up hostility on both sides, the Right accusing him of ‘pandering to radical Islam’ (Gingrich) and the Left of buggering-up their chances in November. The debate now seems to have reached rock-bottom, with Mayor Bloomberg calling anyone who disagrees with him ‘bigoted’ (have you noticed how lefties, greens, warmists, carbonatics (thank you ,Martin) and organicists always use abuse in place of debate?), red-necks against ‘liberals’, O against Palin; lots of heat, little light. The polls show 60% against the project. Stand by for more swallowing of tails.

(A footnote on the onwards march of Islam; when I first went to Malawi 50 years ago the Moslem religion was confined to the north. Twenty years ago it had crept down to the southern lake shore. There was a frenzied building programme, but every time a ‘moskew’ was built the Catholics built a church as close to it as possible. I met a young lad who told me that his name was Yussuf or Joseph, depending on which place he was attending at the time. He was paid for attending both. Ecumenical or what?).

There is a great deal of comment here, also, about O’s less than dazzling performance in the polls. One gets the impression that he is less popular than a fart in a space suit. . His latest disapproval rating is 50% - with Congress scarcely out of the starting gate with a disapproval rating of 72%. What is intriguing is that there does not appear to be a carpe diem moment amongst the Republicans. Who is the coming man – or woman? If you tell me Palin I shall check-in to the home for the old and bewildered.

Rather more worrying is the state of the US economy. If America is the world engine of growth, then it looks like ‘cash for clunkers’ time. You have falling house values, falling manufacturing output, rising inventories, increasing long-term unemployment, but no discernible long-term plan to tackle the deficit. The previous highest deficit in the last ten years was 3.5%; now it’s 10% of GDP. ‘Alka’ Stelzer in the ST talks of ‘hope for the Good Ship Robust Recovery’. Really? It strikes me that the US is deep in sierra hotel 1 tango.

In a traditionally slow news month, the meeja have returned to the Strange Death of Dr Kelly, the WMD expert who ‘committed suicide’ after being outed as the source of leaks about the government’s porkies. Some medical experts have called for the case to be reopened because they cast doubts on the robustness of the evidence as to the cause of death. The conspiracy theorists are having a field day. The suspicious circumstances include the impossibility of Kelly bleeding to death through a transverse arterial cut on his wrist, doubt as to whether the pain killers he took also were sufficient to kill him, the lack of blood in any quantity at the scene of the death, the establishment of a police incident room nine hours before he was reported missing, the lack of an inquest, the key documents being kept secret for 70 years, and so on. He was a guy who was used to stress and high pressure – he was a weapons inspector for Gawd’s sake. Hardly the sort likely to top himself because a bunch of MPs were beastly to him.

One commentator says that it is inconceivable that the government would conspire in the assassination of one of its officials. Hmmm. Andrew Gilligan, who ran the original ‘no wmd’ story for BBC and got fired for his pains, believes that it was a cry for help that went wrong. The fire had already passed over Kelly so what was the motivation for suicide? Because the Government had threatened to sack him and take his pension away, theorises another.

This is actually quite an old story, the call for a re-examination of the case being made several months ago. The solution is to have a proper inquest.

The Pakistan disaster is not getting as much attention as anticipated. The Torygraph ran a comment piece on the mystery of the paucity of donations to the aid effort. It says that over a given amount of time UK contributions were only 10% of those for Haiti. The British are the second most generous givers to charity per head, after the US, so why the closed wallets now? The piece comments

A more plausible excuse for withholding your money is the incompetence of many aid operations, and the corruption of the governments with which they have to work. In Afghanistan, the failure to monitor how aid money is spent has led to huge sums disappearing into the pockets of the powerful, rather than being used to build the roads, schools and hospitals that it was meant to. The corruption is so widespread that aid workers call the place "Afghaniscam". Something similar is likely to happen to a proportion of whatever is donated to the flood victims. The terrible earthquake in Kashmir in 2005 prompted Britons to hand over more than £20 million. A lot of that money was misappropriated – as was much of the cash given by the World Bank to the Pakistani government to build flood defenses which could have mitigated the current crisis.


One possibility is donor fatigue. However, posters to the piece made frequent reference to the amount of money that Pakistan spends on arms, including nuclear weapons, the fear of money finding its way to the Taliban, and some spiky remarks about the level of donations from wealthy Muslim countries (on which we have no information). Antagonism towards Pakistan might be a factor, but I suspect not a lot. The brutal truth is that there has been a dearth of shocking TV images; floods are not as telegenic as an earthquake. Donations depend on emotions, not on logic, otherwise many charities would have a tough time. The worst is yet to come, with cholera, measles, dysentery and malaria taking a bigger toll than the floods themselves. Here is the present tally:

The root of the problem is not money; it’s our old friend Institutional Capacity (or lack of it). The nature of disasters makes it very difficult to actually distribute aid, especially where the capacity and infrastructure has either been destroyed or because of corruption and institutional incompetence. And it doesn’t encourage donors when the government on the receiving end charges duty on imports of food aid and materials.


An amusing little story dredged up by Quest. An enterprising Indian businessman (is there any other sort?) has revived the East India Company that was formed in 1600 under Liz 1 and ceased trading in 1878. At its zenith it controlled 50% of the entire world trade. It also governed India and a big chunk of SE Asia until the Raj took over. The new owner acquired all the intellectual property of the company; this has lain dormant since it ceased trading. The business plan is to trade in a number of the goods that the EIC specialised in, such as highest quality tea. The old company logo is now appearing on the merchandise. Of course what he is really selling is nostalgia – amongst Indians at that. Maybe the Raj was not so bad after all.

It must be true; I read it in the papers.

• Daft headline of the week: ‘Unfaithful men twice as likely to be caught cheating’. (DT)

• Another daft headline: ‘Rare plants more difficult to find’. (DT)

• ‘Not many hurt’ headline: ‘Two builders made redundant’. (Isle of Man Examiner)

• Daft reporting; ‘The RAF is to be cut to its lowest size for 100 years’ (It was formed in 1918). (Economist)

• Daft reporter; I dipped into Glenn Beck’s slot the other night. After 10 minutes I was losing the will to live. A complete a**hole. Is the entire American right-wing meeja commentariat always this buffoonish? I know that if mountains were made of bull-sh** there would be skiing in Texas, but he is beyond belief. Or was I too hasty? I do not intend to find out.

• Amazing headline; ‘Blair gives book cash to charity’. The Beeb reports that the Rev. Blair is to give all the proceeds of his memoirs to the Royal British Legion to build a sports facility for wounded soldiers. Well, as a new convert to Rome, he will be familiar with the ancient practice of purchasing indulgences. £5 million plus royalties should get him past the Pearly Gates, but he won’t know anybody there.

‘May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpit’.

Well, this blog has garnered a couple of hundred hits in its first three weeks, but the curious thing is there has only been a single comment and not one reaction. Does this indicate acquiescence or indifference?

There was a brief mention in the meeja of the Forgotten Man of Politics; I refer, of course, to G. Broon who is busily writing his masterpiece on financial management ‘How I saved the World, the Universe and Everything’, or words to that effect. Can’t wait. I thought that the above Arab curse suited the situation. I would also commend to him the wise advice of Tom Lehrer:

Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please "research"

So farewell, then, Deepwater Disaster. Is this ‘egg-on-face’ time for O and the gobby Senators who unwisely tried to tie it into Lockerbie? The latter have returned to the fray, demanding the medical records of Mehgrabi and the identities of the doctors. They know well that the Scots will tell them to go forth and multiply, so it can only be grandstanding, n’est pas? I reckon O should have handled it the English way:-

1. Fix the problem;
2. Hold a public inquiry;
3. Cover with whitewash;
4. Ignore the claims of the victims;
5. Carry on as before, leaving the miscreants in their comfortable positions.

1 above is optional. 3, 4, and 5 are mandatory. 2 is OK as long as the report is written first.

I strongly forecast that the merde is about to hit the air-conditioning big time, and it will be trebles all round for m’ learned friends for the next 20 years. We read that BP commissioned a safety audit on Transocean’s performance seven months before the disaster, which revealed a lengthy maintenance backlog. It says that 390 tasks were more than a month overdue, safety policy was not communicated, safety records were substandard, and there was a dearth of senior managers. However, Transocean says that even if it is found to be grossly negligent it is immune from financial penalties under its contract with BP. We shall see.

The truth is that accidents are rarely caused by a single event; most often they are the culmination of a chain of events that are not individually disastrous but taken together create a catastrophe. It is going to take a long time to unravel all this, which, at the risk of repeating myself, points up the folly of O rushing in with his gung-ho stuff about fitting up BP. Apportioning blame amongst the many actors in this drama will keep the lawyers prosperous for years to come. And the Ineluctable Law of Sod will see a major oil-spill by one of the US majors somewhere in the world. Will that be pay-back time?

It seems to me that much of the problem is not the event but its handling. It was Big O, not Big Oil, wot done it. Once O had declared Deepwater to be the worst environmental disaster ever in America, the media let rip. The Governor of Mississippi himself said that the biggest negative impact was not oil spillage but media exaggeration that gave the impression that the whole of the Gulf coast from Florida to Texas was up to its ocksters in the sticky stuff. This was what caused damage to the tourist industry rather than the oil. And as for environmental damage, we learn that only about 350 acres of oiled wetland was found whereas Louisiana loses about 15,000 acres every year from other causes.

To address your point about the apparent contradiction between the Government’s need to tax and to stimulate the economy at the same time, we have to revisit our old friend the Laffer curve. I believe this was drawn on a napkin in a restaurant, but is no less revealing for all that. It shows the tax take from various levels of taxation, from zero when the tax take is 0% to zero when the tax take is 100%. Basically, as you raise taxes you increase revenue to a point at which it peaks. After that the revenue starts to decrease because of the disincentives to work; people would rather not earn extra money by overtime or working harder or whatever if the tax gatherer is going to purloin too much of it.

Another serious consequence in this mobile age is that both firms and individuals are tempted to decamp to a more business friendly tax regime. Both scenarios are possible under the recently-introduced 50% top tax rate in UK. The Isle of Man Government is having a wobbly at this time because of EU pressure to abolish the zero rate corporation tax (the Brussels bullies see no limit to their jurisdiction, even small islands outside the Fourth Reich). A survey indicates that if a tax of only 10% is imposed the bulk of the financial services industry will relocate elsewhere – Singapore, BVI, Hong Kong or wherever.



If you lighten the tax burden you allow people to spend more of their own money which increases consumption which encourages investment which expands the economy which leads to higher tax revenues. The experience of the Thatcher years shows that the theory works. Before Maggie, top tax rates were in excess of 80%, waste swathes of the economy was nationalised and under-invested, there was stringent exchange control and various other socialist impositions that stifled the economy. Maggie halved the highest rate of tax, swept away all sorts of financial restrictions and gave people their money back. The economy boomed and the UK had many years of amazing growth until the onset of the Broon Terror.

Of course you know all this, but I thought I would explain it for the benefit of the economically illiterate, like George Osborne.

O’s economic policy clearly isn’t working, if job creation and consumer confidence are anything to go by. The US companies that seem to be doing well are those that kept the Feds at arm’s length and have substantial foreign earnings, like Ford. It has been well said that you can’t spend your way out of a recession or borrow your way out of debt. It is also reported that there are now millions of Americans who are not only out of work but also out of time on benefit. What happens to them? I believe that the strong American attachment to small government is correct, to reduce the Federal budgets and spending, and staff numbers, and consequently tax levels. O is going in the opposite direction.

Back to the topic of tax havens, the local press report a bust by our FSC minders concerning two wealthy Texans, to wit, Charles and Sam Wyly. They have been working with the Feds since the 1990s on an insider-trading scam involving a sum not unadjacent to $550 million. Contributions to the Republican Party are now likely to be diminished. No Hiding Place when these Manxies get their teeth in. They have recently sent a wealthy old geezer on several years’ of a porridge diet for money laundering with an accomplice in New York. The silly old bugger had the stash in Switzerland where it was perfectly safe. For reasons not disclosed at the trial he transferred it to the Isle of Man where it was immediately pounced upon. I tell you, this is not a good place for tax dodgers and financial hanky-panky.

Here in La-La land, I predict a short life for the Brokeback Coalition.

Our Home Secretary, Kitten Heels May has managed to enrage her Tory chums twice in a few days. She has nodded through the European Investigative Order which enables foreign police to require UK cops to divulge information even in respect of matters which are not an offence in the UK. This information includes DNA records (the UK has 5 times as many as any other European country because of the activities of the NuLab stasi in the reign of terror, including the retention of DNA samples from people – the majority – who have never been charged, let alone convicted) bank transactions, etc. Previous examples of minor criminal offences already pursued around Europe include a carpenter who fitted wardrobe doors and then removed them when the client refused to pay him, and the Polish authorities requesting the extradition of a suspect for theft of a dessert.

She also activated the Equality Act of Mad Hattie which had an immediate application of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It was thuswise. A Tory MP declared that he would not hold a surgery with anyone wearing the niqab. The Equality Commission immediately threatened to prosecute him under the new Act for discrimination. Hopefully, he will say ‘see you in court’, they will go ahead, his defence will be that he would refuse to see anyone whose face is covered, and if the defence fails it will open up the most enormous can of worms e.g. how about banks that refuse to admit anyone wearing a motor cycle crash-helmet and visor for security reasons? I foresee an early bath for the lady.

‘Slasher’ Osborne is expecting massive cuts in the defence budget in the middle of a war, and promises to put the Minister ‘back in his box’. The Minister will resign. There will be a punch-up between Osborne and St Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, and Cable will resign also. The coalition is having an easy time right now because the Labour lot are lacking a leader. Come September Labour, either Tweedledum or Tweedledee Miliband will be driving wedges into all parts of the Government, exploiting the fact that the coalition is less than popular amongst the LibDem rank-and-file, especially since their poll ratings have been hurtling south since May.

I notice that Quest on CNN is now sporting the tie of Garrick Club, the exclusive London hangout for luvvies. Welcome to the Establishment, Richard. I was once taken to lunch there and it was like being in Central Casting. He did an ‘In Depth’ piece about the demise of the boss of HP. I have difficulty in following the logic. The apparent reasons for his removal were a piffling sum in expenses (nothing to compare with our Honourable Members who remain unscathed) and a spot of rumpy pumpy (ditto). Here is a man who turned around the company after Carly screwed up. In a short space of time he vastly increased shareholder value and profitability.

Ah, say the terminally self-righteous, it was a breach of ethics. Why is it unethical in an electronics business to have a bit on the side that merits dismissal when it is OK for a Deputy Prime Minister and other highly-placed people too numerous to name? Ethics is supposed to be indivisible, so why did not the Pope resign over kiddy-fiddling priests? (Private Eye said that boys used to go into the priesthood; now it’s the other way round). Do the same rules apply to major competitors in India, China and the rest of the world? I am clearly missing something here. Obiter dicta of that wise old bird Lord Justice Denning was that nobody’s sex life could withstand close scrutiny.

Are the stockholders and employees of HP ecstatic about this show of corporate morality?

In ‘Global Warming and Other Bollocks’, Stanley Feldman does a fine demolition job on the ‘ethics industry’. He says ‘The ethics industry has nationalised morality. An individual can no longer make a free choice as to what is right and what is wrong. It is a matter of ticking boxes. If sufficient ticks are in the right box it becomes ethical. It destroys the fundamental difference between man as an individual and man as an animal in a herd. He can no longer choose according to his own conscience but must conform at all times to the diktat of authority’.

Quite so. Why is it unethical for a barrister to advertise but not for a solicitor? Until a few years ago no lawyer of any stamp could advertise. So if it was unethical then, why not now? Can it be because authority says so? Is it unethical to buy from a sweatshop or unethical to put poor people out of work by refusing to do so? As an Aussie colleague was wont to say ‘Everything’s a racket – unless you’re in it!

Thought for the day; would Dr Spooner have described Broon as a shining wit?