Look out, Dave: UKIP's behind you........

The recent outbreak of local elections has seen much self-congratulation by Labour for dishing the Tories which puts them roughly back where they were before they got donnered last time around (leaving aside Bradford where they had their noses rubbed in it by the Islamic ‘Respect’ Party, and the irrepressible Boffo Johnson retaining the Mayoralty of London).

But the commentators seem to missing the true significance.

The real winner was UKIP which got 13% of the vote. It is well on the way to replacing Lib Dems as the third force in English politics.

This is all bad news for the Conservative Party. UKIP voters tend to be disillusioned Tories.

There will be EU elections in 2014. Last time UKIP came in 2^nd with 16.5% of the vote. Next time they may well do much better as the EU moves up the agenda of concerns for the electorate. This could provide the momentum for the General Election the following year.

Europe is not going off the front page any time soon. 2014 will be a momentous year.

In 2 years time we shall still be feeling the aftermath of the Euro crisis, and further IMF contributions at the expense of the UK taxpayer.

This the last opportunity for the UK to decide  whether to irrevocably opt in to EU jurisdiction over 130 police and justice measures (including the awful EWA). And after the debacles over the deportation of terrorists, I can envisage the electorate going completely ape if a British government agrees to even more judicial power going to Brussels.

There will be a Commons vote on ratifying the EU 7-year budget framework, probably entailing a rise but at best  freeze, which, at a time of possible tax hikes in the UK, will be about as welcome as a condom salesman in a nunnery.

The EU will implement a provision in the Lisbon Treaty which will enable the Eurozone (assuming it still exists) to gang-up on the UK to pass financial regulations that could have serious implications for our financial services industry.

All this is good news for UKIP and bad news for the Tories who may well see their share of the vote haemorrhaging away as disaffected Tory voters change allegiance or merely sit on their hands.

The Tories in particular have always played down EU affairs in their election campaigns for fear of reopening old ’Maastricht’ wounds. Now Europe is  a serious headline issue amongst voters. The People’s Pledge, a pressure group campaigning for a referendum on the UK’s continuing membership of the EU, recently held a referendum in one English parliamentary constituency. There was a turn-out of 13,000 and an 89% vote in favour of a referendum. Even Vince Cable, Europhile and star of the Lib Dems, has launched a fierce attack on the Brussels bureaucracy and called for a more limited Europe. The tectonic plates are shifting, to use a right-on cliché.

So what is Dave to do?

Well, for starters he can spell out clear policies on the return of powers, a more flexible EU, remaining outside the Euro, exercising the block opt-out on police and justice matters, shrinking the EU budget especially the CAP. And not gold-plating the EU regulations that are implemented, and, indeed, simply ignoring those that are detrimental to British interests.

And then he might consider ditching some of his more crack-pot notions that have no resonance with the voters.

Who gives a flying fig for House of Lords reform except for a few deranged Libdems? It does a pretty good job as it is in protecting us from elective dictatorship of the Commons. Leaving aside the tired old has-beens elevated to the Lords after being life-long under-achievers in the Commons, it is a repository of a vast array of talent, experience and expertise amongst those of their Lordships who would scorn the idea of campaigning for election. I once had to appear before the Lords Committee on Science. Amongst the committee membership were such luminaries a s Lord Ritchie-Calder, one of the most distinguished scientists of the20th century.

What mandate does he have for wasting Parliamentary time and taxpayers’ money on homosexual ‘marriages’ ?

And how about keeping a few promises, like the reform of the defamation laws that make the English courts a magnet for American libel-tourists and throttle free speech. As with ‘super-injunctions that allow wealthy celebs to conceal their misdoings behind an injunction wherein the media is forbidden even to report that an injunction has been granted.

He might also wake up to the fact that increasing foreign aid by 37% at the same time as abolishing the names of famous old regiments and making 20,000 soldiers redundant does not sit too well with his natural constituency

So much to do, Dave; so little time!

Watch our; there’s lawyer about!

Everybody who blogs, twitters, or uses Facebook (or any other ‘social media’) would be wise to consider the recent case of Cairns v. Modi.

Chris Cairns is a cricketer; Lalit Modi is a former chairman of the IPL.

Modi tweeted (or twittered) that Cairns had been involved in match-fixing.

Cairns sued for defamation and won.

Lodi’s 24-word tweet is likely to cost him over £1 million.

This should make us think quite hard about what we publish on-line, because although we may have the illusion of anonymity and that we are merely addressing a few ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ we are in fact exposing ourselves in a very public way – and permanently, because what you put on the internet stays there. What’s more, the web-site can easily hand over your name and address.

You may be tempted to put things on the internet that you would not say to a person’s face from behind an imagined cloak of anonymity.

But a libel is a libel. If you blog something libellous a plaintiff might first go for the web-site, in which case it would most likely join you in the action.

When I was advising politicians about whether they should say or do something, I would tell them to ask themselves how it would look on the front page of the local newspaper.

'The light's on at Signpost......!'

I should first explain the rather curious title.

On the Manx motor-bike racing course, the last check-point before the finish is called ‘Signpost’. When a rider passes it, a light comes on to tell him he has nearly completed his race. So when a Manxman says ‘the light’s on at Signpost, he means that you are getting to the end of your journey through this vale of tears. And that is when we tend to look back rather than forwards.

(It is also the title of a book by our late resident famous author, George MacDonald Frazier, best known for his ‘Flashman’ series. In fact, most of his career was as a script-writer on Hollywood blockbusters. The book is autobiographical and is interspersed with his political views, which are a shade to the right of Heligoland. He also wrote the finest book from the perspective of the ordinary Private in the Burma Campaign called ‘Quartered safely out here’, a quote from Kipling and still in print).

One of the comments on ’75 not out’ suggested that we have seen moral, social and political deterioration in our lifetime, and that things were better in the 30’s and 40’s. Let’s have a look at these.

‘Moral’ deterioration is certainly apparent in a perceived widespread lack of a sense of right and wrong, manifested by the looting in London last year in which educated middle-class young people gleefully participated (they’re not laughing now). However,WW2 and military service afterwards created a culture of fiddling, skiving and beating the system. It was perfectly OK to ’liberate’ all sorts of public property. A friend in the army was part of a ‘milk scam’; the dairy would only deliver half the ordered quantity, double-invoice, and split the difference  with the cook-house staff at the end of the week. He later became a parson.

Likewise previously accepted sexual mores. And a good thing, too, say I. The concept of sexual morals was foisted on us by the Church. It must have caused untold misery over the centuries, and liberation came with the invention of ‘the pill’, one of the greatest breakthroughs of all time, and the main cause of the long-overdue liberation of women. The religious concept was based not on ‘morals’ but on inheritance. In the days before birth control it was important that estates were inherited by biological heirs.

Until the pill, it is likely that many (most?) working class marriages were of the shotgun variety which ended in tears at a time when divorce was almost impossible for any but the well-heeled, and largely unknown. In my village we had a divorced couple of retired colonials. They were a source of great interest; no-one had ever seen a divorced couple before.

Adolescent youngsters are sexual time-bombs, because that is what nature intended. If they can now indulge in a little horizontal jogging that’s fine with me as long as they recognise that the health consequences can be dire if they overdo it. Our pre-marital years were spent in an a torment of frustration. Kids today have never had it so good – or so often. I suspect that those who rant about teen-age promiscuity are secretly envious that they themselves never had the chance to go at it like a frog up a pump.

Social values? I generally write out of experience or study, so I can’t speak with much authority about the 1930’s, which are as remote from us today as the 1850’s were then. However, I can refer back to the early life of my father.

He was born in 1907, left school at 13, became an apprentice iron-moulder at Vickers Armstrong’s in the Scotswood Road, Newcastle (where the bus-wheel flew off in ‘Blaydon Races’), and lost his job in the Great Depression. He walked to London to find work as a building-site labourer, a big come-down for a skilled craftsman. It was harsh manual labour and my mother used to recount how she had to wash him because his hands were ragged from rough work.

It was a hard life.

In ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’, George Orwell recounts how he saw grinding poverty in the industrial north, sparse food, stinking dirty houses, high rents for damp-infested rooms 70 yards from the nearest privy shared by the whole row, and back-breaking shifts in damp and dangerous coal-mines. And no 5-day week or paid holidays, medical benefits or company pensions for the workers.

Until the Swinging Sixties heralded a social revolution, Britain was riven with class-distinction, a social apartheid. I well recall the appalling snobbery that I faced as a working-class officer in the Army. To be fair social mobility was pretty easy for grammar school oiks; I became what the pollsters would call middle class by the time I was 20. We were also almost unbelievably deferential compared with today. Peter Cook did a good hatchet-job on this when he gave his wonderfully cruel parody of Harold Macmillan with Harold in the audience, and political satire became very big in the 60’s to 80’s. It has now disappeared; modern politics is beyond satire.

There was censorship of books which was effectively destroyed by the failure of the prosecution in the ’Lady Chatterley’ trial (when Counsel for the Crown achieved overnight fame by asking the jury whether this was the sort of book to be read ‘by your wife and servants’). The acid test under the1959 Obscene Publications Act was whether the publication was of literary merit. I doubt whether many would pass that test today, but who cares?

There was theatre censorship that had gone on for 231 years until it was abandoned as late as 1968. This is what the DT had to say:

The Lord Chamberlain’s office had long been a channel for fathoms-deep reserves of reactionary philistinism. No other outlook could have banned the phrase “up periscopes” from being used on stage because, in the view of the Lord Chamberlain’s comptrollers, more impressionable minds than theirs might be incited to “commit buggery”.

So society was not quite as free as some might fondly imagine. In the present century we have sacrificed freedoms that in the past people had fought and died for under the pretext of ‘ant-terrorism’. As Ben Franklin said ‘Those who would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety’, but rather curiously this refuses to become a political issue. Of course, there are plenty of fools around  who say ‘if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear’ and yet that is precisely when you do have something to fear.

Political standards?

Between 1930 and the 1980’s politics was very polarized and class-based. That was the problem then. Today it is homogenised. That is the problem now.

The 30’s was a time of political pygmies in the West. Ramsey Macdonald; Stanley Baldwin; Neville Chamberlain?

And then there was Adolf. In a new book, AN Wilson takes the view that Hitler’s creed has been inherited by the liberal intelligentsia, as epitomised by Blair who believed that he was entitled to impose his own values on other countries by force, and that the Olympics and other extravaganzas are subconscious re-enactments of Nuremburg Rallies (the Olympic torch was invented for the Nazi Olympics in 1936 and designed and made by the arms manufacturer, Krupp).

By contrast the 1940’s produced political giants; Winston above all but also Nye Bevan, Ernie Bevin, Herbert Morrison, Attlee, Supermac, and many others. This was before politics ceased to be a calling and became a career. Then reversion with Wilson (clever but slippery), and the worst of all time, Heath, whose traitorous lies led us into the present mess in Europe.

‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’, though; or in this case the woman, and along came Maggie to save the ship of state just as it was sinking. (I will always have a soft spot for Maggie because of two wonderful gaffes. Referring to Willie Whitelaw, the Deputy PM, she memorably observed that ‘every Prime Minister should have a Willie!’.  And sitting on a huge artillery piece during an Army visit, when the Sergeant Major handed her the firing lanyard she said ‘If I pull this will it jerk me off?’).

Major was a decent enough fellow, and all the ‘sleaze’ of his final administration – the toe-sucking, the cash-for-questions -  would not raise a single eyebrow in comparison with the institutional corruption of the expenses scandal and Murdoch. If the electorate had known that John Major was hung like a grandfather clock and was discussing Uganda with Edwina Currie, Blair wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Unremarked upon is the dearth of great Parliamentarians, MPs who were devoted to the Commons and were superb orators and debaters. I am thinking of Enoch Powell, Michael Foot, Tony Benn, who were friends despite their political differences, and, back in the 30’s and40’s, MP’s like Lloyd George (who also had a sex-life far more lurid than today’s political Lotharios. But people were more discreet then; as Mrs. Patrick Campbell said ‘It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t do it in  the street and frighten the horses!’).

So where does this all leave us? A re-run of the 30’s, perhaps,  with economic depression, increasing and widening poverty, civil unrest in a number of countries, Greek unemployment at 25%, Spanish youth unemployment the same, reversion to the protectionism that was so disastrous back then, loss of faith in democracy, the rise of Fascism?

Déjà vu all over again?

When TV news can report the deaths of 2 more British soldiers in Helmand as last item after the weather forecast and just before the sports report, I can only surmise that we have entered the Age of Indifference.

Spiking the football.......

Pity that politics went downhill over our lifetimes. There were some good spells, but as of late our legislative assembly halls are schools for scoundrels. What seems to be brewing in the EU is but one example. I read this morning that a dark plot is underway to remake the EU into a United States of Europe with a strong leader and no room for countries that seek to maintain their own cultural identity; that would be the UK of course. This was reported in today's Express in an article entitled "EU Plot to Scrap Britain".

Newt Gingrich gave his umteenth resignation speech stating that he was not quitting, but 'transitioning' out of the Republican primaries. He is very bitter and seems to take personally all the negative attacks launched at him by Romney and others. Newt is his own worst enemy and has thin skin to boot. He has not vowed to support Romney as would be expected of an also ran, but to promote Conservative principles in the US.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, O is spiking the football. In the rare event that you are unfamiliar with this expression, it is taken from American football. When some players score a goal their pride is so intense that they slam the football onto the ground as hard as they can and then do a bit of a jig. If carried too far, it results in an official penalty. It is somewhat akin to a soccer player who, after scoring, races down the pitch while removing his jersey and then jumps into the waiting arms of a fellow player.

Well, O did his spiking over the Bin Laden assassination. He marked the one year anniversary of the event by tripping to Afghanistan, signing a pledge for long term support and then visiting with the troops. At the same time he launched a political ad featuring his role in the assassination and suggesting that Romney would not have taken such a decision. The right wing is irate with this sort of behavior. 

However, the intended impact was achieved, O is building and icon of himself and Romney is forced to go on the defensive. Old Mitt will have to pull some much higher class political tricks out of the bag to match this type of hype.

'75 not out!'......

Come 3^rd May and I’m three-quarters of the way to the telegram from Her Maj. I definitely have a great future behind me. I was 2 when WW2 began and 7 when it finished, 9 before I had my first ice-cream, 10 before I saw a banana. Oh the deprivation of wartime! But now I get a free TV licence!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. We kids had almost total freedom to come and go as we pleased. The only men about the village were mostly oldies, like George D the painter and decorator who got shell-shocked in WW1, had a terrible tremor and was never heard to speak; and George B, the groundsman for our cricket pitch who was a conshie in WW1 and was for ever after known as Slacker Beckett. No bathroom, no hot water, no inside toilet, no cars, not much of anything really!

Britain has been involved in 28 wars since 1945, so never a dull moment. We were carted off to the armed forces at 18, where there was a wide choice of places to be shot at – Palestine, Korea, Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, the Suez Canal Zone, to name but a few. The 15 years after the war were the pits. Bread rationing, which had never happened during the war, was introduced by the Labour government. Sweets only came off ration in time for the Coronation in 1953. Sex had not yet been invented. But beer was about 8p a pint, cigarettes about  22p.

I missed the Swinging Sixties. I was in Africa for the whole decade where I experienced the dying days of colonialism. I was fated to become a tiny cog in the dismantling machine in Zambia and Malawi in the 60s, and Namibia and Rhodesia in the 80s.

The seventies were a terrible time for Britain, but a very good time for me, despite there being the worst administration of all time under Heath. We dumped the Empire as quickly as we could, and were tricked into joining the ’European Common Market’; now we are living through the grinding of the tectonic plates as the whole rotten edifice begins to fall apart. We had the 3-day week (the joke at the time was that Liverpool Corporation workers refused to do the extra time). And we sat and watched while Red Robbo and other specimens of pond-life systematically dismantled British manufacturing industry.

The 80s were tremendous fun, when everybody except the miners seemed to be in party mood, when business was fuelled by alcohol not Class A drugs, and we had ‘The Two Ronnies’ and ‘Morecambe  and Wise on the telly. The Big Bang was champagne at 11 a.m., ‘barrow boys’ making shedloads of money in the City, and Porsches and Aston Martins in the pub car-park of a Sunday morning

I spent the nineties and noughties all over the place,  the Caribbean, the Balkans, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda,  Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, the US, Pakistan. I have been either a rolling-stone or a permanent expat for all but 19 years in the last 50.

I last took sick-leave in 1964.

But each decade was better than the previous. Although we spent the best years of our lives under the threat of nuclear extermination, the baddies were beaten in the end; the Nazis, the Communists, apartheid, Maoism, the Khymer Rouge, the Balkan genociders, all gone during the past 70 years.

Our standard of living has improved out of all recognition. But quality of life? Hmmm……Time was when I could smoke in most any place except in Church; when I could go out for a drink without worrying that the cops were lurking around the corner with a breathalyser; when I could say pretty well what I liked without being accused of racism, homophobia, or verbal assault; when I could get on a flight without enduring the ludicrous attentions of ‘security’ and travel as a valued passenger, not as self-loading cargo.

Now the Islamists look like winning; the draconian ‘anti-terrorist’ laws, far more stringent than anything even in WW2, have created the kind of repressive and intolerant state that the Islamists so love. Free speech is a thing of the past; vulgar abuse is now a ‘hate crime’; Magna Carta is dead history; habeas corpus almost extinct, along with double jeopardy and the rule against disclosure of ‘previous’. Dave has not done a single thing to undo the abuses of the Blair reign of terror, including the 3,500 new offences created by the Revd. Tony, and the wretched Human Rights Act which enabled the Wicked Witch to set up lucrative new chambers expressly to exploit the rich pickings therefrom.

For those who say ‘fings ain’t what they used to be’ I say ‘No, matey, they never were; nostalgia is not what it was!’

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Politics of the absurd..

I scan the news like a good soldier every morning and evening and find more and more trash and less and less journalism. We may be suffering a downturn in interesting news, but I suspect the reason is that we may have a case of news fatigue. Often, when I begin to read an article I don't finish it because I feel that I already know the middle and the end; it is as if I could have written the item myself. And unlike a great novel, old and repetitive news is never worth reading again.  

In another vein, it may well be that we are living in such comfortable times that there is no need for a great leader to come fourth. If this 'give me the times and I will give you the man' scenario is correct, then we have been cheated out of some great leadership figures.

Further to the above, my take is that leaders with the potential of a Churchill are shunning political life because of how filthy it has become. In the West, politics is only about power. The opposition will do anything and everything to get power and the incumbents will do likewise to keep it. Hence, respected leaders like, for example, Colin Powell, will not agree to be put forth as candidates. They are far to intelligent to fall for that scam.

The power theory of contemporary politics as applied to the USA has another facet. The leader him or herself has little power but rather is a puppet of what Eisenhower called the 'military industrial complex'. This complex is composed of super rich and super powerful individuals who 'own' politicians and who are capable of creating and perpetuating public institutions to feed their needs. Such organizations have titles that contain key words that appear again and again in the myriad of institutions created and recreated by Washington. Examples are: energy, security, defense, atomic, American and so on.

The super rich are highly controlling individuals who have amassed fortunes through industry, oil, finance or commerce and who inevitably adhere to right and extreme right wing politics. Examples include Ross Perot, some of the Rockafellers, T. Boone Pickens, members of the John Birch Society. The military side of this equation is represented less by leaders and more by doers. Generals and sometimes colonels are required to promote ideas that conform to the interests of financiers. For example, a general that wants to nuke Iran is of more value to this group than one who wants to talk peace. A general who believes our best line of defense is to have massive armaments at hand is of more interest than one promoting arms control.

The amount of money this power group has to test, foster and finance political candidates is of major concern. Donating through anonymous Political Acton Committees, they can double, triple and even quadruple the millions of dollars amassed in a candidate's campaign chest. There is no question that the candidate with the biggest war chest has the best chance of winning an election. 

My worry is that the above take borders on conspiracy theory and should therefore be thrown out with the bathwater. I have no doubt, however, that these big money, far right people have a consuming financial and political influence on American life. Recall it was T. Boone Pickens who financed the ant-John Kerry ads about his being a poor and cowardly leader as captain of a fast boat in Vietnam. That alone is credited with swinging the public vote to W.

 

'I've got a little list..........'

‘As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,

I’ve got a little list,

I’ve got a little list,

Of society offenders who might well be underground,

And who never would be missed’

Trawling the media for something stimulating turned my thoughts to what or who is most disliked these days, and I came to the conclusion that the list is likely to be long.

News International would be high on the list. We are heartily sick of Murdoch, Leveson and all the coverage giving to the hacking scandal. But with prosecutions imminent this will run and run. The Murdoch press has started attacking Dave at every turn. Not a good move. Revenge beckons. And I predict a diet of porridge for the accused hacks, especially the one with hair like an explosion in a mattress factory.

Foreign courts must be current hate-targets with a succession of farcical decisions that bring them into ridicule and contempt, the latest being the deportation case which all turns on the meaning of ‘three months’. The ECHR says that the appeal was properly lodged with one day to spare. The deportation notice was issued on the 90^th day. Is this three months? Or is it three calendar months? And does time start to run from the date of the judgement or the following day? And does it run according to the time at the place of judgement – one hour ahead of GMT – or the place of domicile of the original jurisdiction (it was issued at midnight on the 90th day)?  What a load of nonsense! We have rules in English law about the computation of time.

‘Health and safety’ is a prime candidate. The poor old HSE gets most of the flak, but there are many villains – jobsworths who love inventing a little bit of power for themselves, such as telling parents that it is illegal to take photos of their kids’ Nativity Play’ when it is not – but ambulance-chasing lawyers and insurance companies are the main culprits.

PC is loathed by all except the Libdems. They say it is designed to ensure decent speech and conduct. It isn’t. It is to propagate the perversion of language and the suppression of free speech, the better to control us.

The EU is a favourite Aunt Sally, and justifiably so. It has destroyed the sovereignty of Parliament and left us to the untender mercies of a corrupt and unelected bureaucracy based in a foreign country. We were tricked into joining by persistent lying by Ted Heath, who told us that we were going into a ‘common market’. What the chatterati cannot fathom is that we English are by nature suspicious of foreigners (I can’t speak for the Celtic fringe). It is part of our race memory. In most of our history the arrival of foreigners has signalled invasion. As an island race we are, well, insular. Apart from the Irish, we have little in common with the members of the EU by way of tradition, constitution, politics,  law, outlook, even culture. And we are a maritime people; most of the others are not.

Now a Common Market of the Netherlands, Germany and the Nordics would make a lot of sense, but the present set-up is a rag-bag. Some of the far-flung members which have joined in recent years are not much more than third-world countries.

And finally, there’s the whole of the political class. In both the UK and the US politicians seem to be almost universally despised, with a few honourable exceptions, but worse for the US where governance depends on compromise of which little is to be seen right now.

A personal hate of mine is selfish and obsessive dog-owners (and if it comes to that the whole of the animal rights lobby; they don’t love animals, they just hate people).  Where I live it is quite common to see people taking walkies as many as six variegated mutts. Their passage is marked by piles of steaming poo. The owners will scream blue murder at attempts to bar them for children’s’ play-grounds. We have a nature reserve near us which is one of the few breeding grounds for terns. Every year between April and August signs go up saying that dogs must be kept on leads so as not to disturb the nests. Do the owners respect this? Nope. They even tear down the signs. The terns have not nested for about 4 years.

New broom at the World Bank..

I was delighted to hear about support Ngozi Okonjo-Iwaela as a candidate for the presidency of the World Bank. Somebody should. She is brilliant. Judging from her name, I thought she was a Youruba, but after checking I learned she is Ibo. Definitely not from the north and, checking further, brilliant with her Harvard and MIT degrees.

I remain skeptical of Nigerians, however, as they has an exceedingly bad reputation here in the USA for activities decidedly criminal.

Their financial scams are legendary. They migrate freely and have acquired the enmity of many other African populations by their competitive commercial disposition. They move in and take over. When I was last in Johannesburg, I listened to a lady curio seller complain of how the Nigerians have moved into the city and threatened small enterprises like her own with their aggressive sales and marketing. Ironically, she was not even South African, but Kenyan.

The eventual appointment does not displease me. I view Jim Yong Kim as a transitional appointment from a traditional US post to one open to people from other countries. Born in South Korea, Kim has a stunning record, albeit not in the area of development economics.

My call is that Kim will do a good job. He is a leader and will undoubtedly get all sorts of good (and bad) advice and will use his experience with people to forge ahead on the correct path.

We all know the Bank is somewhat of a sham anyway as it has poured billions into the coffers of Third World leaders and their minions while allowing so called beneficiaries to do without, or with precious little. I would like to see Kim shake up the Bank a bit, although I have no illusions about his, or anyone else's getting rid of Third World corruption.

Is Prince Charles fit to be King?

Soon we shall be revving up to celebrate the 60^th of Her Maj.

I reckon this will be the high water-mark for the Monarchy. By common consent she has never put a foot wrong, but inevitably people will be reflecting on how much longer she can go on. Hopefully, she will have a longevity that matches her mother’s. If so, Chuck will be pushing 80 before he gets his chance, and he may decide (but almost certainly won’t) to hand the baton to Wills.

I reckon there are widespread misgivings about Charles as King. Part of this must be the post-Diana effect, as Camilla seems to have some difficulty in gaining acceptability. The debate about whether she should be called ‘Queen’ is, of course, totally sterile because if Charles becomes King she automatically becomes Queen, just as she would automatically have become ‘Mrs’ if she had married a commoner.

I am sure that she is a very nice and worthy person, and appeals to me if only because she is clearly no stranger to the odd ciggie and double G&T. But to the public she just ain’t Diana. She will never be accepted as a true Queen simply because of the ‘Diana effect’. People will see that her way to the title was thoroughly besmirched.

The question in my mind is whether Charles is actually fit to be King.

On the plus side he has a remarkable record of public service. He did his time in the RN on small ships, hardly the most comfortable way of spending your days.

He has founded no less than 16 charities, many of them devoted to young people, which raise c. £110 million annually. He is patron of 350 other charities.

He has been very influential in what could be generally called the built environment, and it was really he who launched organic farming. He was much laughed at when he began. They aren’t laughing now. It’s a mega-million business.

He is exceptionally well-thought of in the world of Islam, and the significance of this can’t be overstated – he was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Oxfords Centre for Islamic Studies.

And yet……

Monarchy rests on a tacit understanding, a silent compact between monarch and people that, in return for wealth and privilege, monarchy will represent certain national standards and virtues, such as trust, dedication, probity, integrity and fidelity. We expect the monarch to set an example to the whole nation of good behaviour.

At the time, the wedding of Charles and Diana seemed like a marriage made in heaven that would ensure the continuance of the Crown for another generation.

There was Charles, as future head of the Church of England, making solemn vows before God that he clearly had no intention of keeping. He committed adultery over a long period with Mrs Parker-Bowles and cuckolded the worthy Brigadier Parker-Bowles. Is it any wonder that when Diana realised that her sole function was as brood-mare to preserve the Windsor line that she went completely off the rails and dedicated the remainder of her tragically short life to embarrassing the Royal family at every turn?

Even if Charles discovered too late they he and Diana were irredeemably incompatible, it was his duty, as heir to the throne, to stick it out, to put a brave face on it, to abide by his vows and to set the example expected of Royalty.

Instead, he brought the institution of monarchy into disrepute and triggered a wave of media hostility and mockery that lasted for many years and badly damaged the Queen herself. And made matters worse by marrying the source of the marriage break-down.

So should Chuck chuck it?

Will America ever grow up?

We learned today that several of O's bodyguards from our Secret Service were relieved of their duties in Columbia for visiting prostitutes and heavy drinking. Will America ever lose the puritan ethic inherited from our forefathers? The lads in Cartagena risk their lives to protect our dear leader and are trained to take a bullet for him. That, plus the boredom of standing around for hours on end requires respite. America needs to at least show some signs of growing up, maturing and accepting human nature as it is.

We should also go south. Our fixation on east-west relations is so embedded in us that we tend to neglect Latin America except in emergencies. Then we overreact. The new land of milk and honey is in South America. Land, minerals, labor, energy, ambition and a new frontier awaits those who dare. An daring is no big deal. Our cattle industry has been going south to Argentina and Brazil for years, but we continue to speak of the American west as if we have a monopoly on beef.

It seems to me that after alienating many and isolating other Latin American countries, we simply ignore those that remain. Overstatement aside, an energetic policy toward moving ahead with the Latins would be in order and would prove a strong sting in the bow of either of our presidential contenders. Our attention and cooperation would go far in dislodging the US from its current economic doldrums.

Although Latin American investments are about one third of those in Europe, $1,976 billion in Europe versus $680 billion in Latin America in 2009, little is spoken or written about American investment there. Oil and gas certainly accounts for a great deal as does equipment assembly including automobiles. Sadly, we are often accused of skirting American environmental laws by setting up factories in Latin America. Mexico accounts for the lion's share of such plants as well as manufacturing that employs toxic materials.

Margaret Thatcher once opined that investment follows degrees. Judging from the foreign students studying here in 2009, we will be investing heavily in Asia as those countries accounted for 60% of foreign student enrollment. Next was Europe with 13% followed by Latin America with 10%. Thatcher's statement is highly credible, although a new trend is developing whereby foreign students come to the US to study and work for a spell before repatriating themselves and their new-found technologies back to their homeland; namely  Asia and particularly China.

Obama & the race card......

The Republican primary race is finally down to one man; Mitt Romney. The dogma driven Rick Santorum bailed. Take you pick of the reasons why: family reasons relating to an ill and mentally challenged young daughter,  a seriously dwindling campaign chest, high  probability Rick would lose to Romney in Rick's home state of Pennsylvania.

Ron Paul remains in the race. The reasons for his staying on are about as vague as his political philosophy and chances of winning more than 10% of the vote.

The historical revisionist with all four feet in his mouth, Newton Leroy Gingrich, also remains. He is happy as a pig in a hog wallow and is already counting future primary votes for himself that would have otherwise gone to Santorum. Newt has one big enemy that, try as he might, he cannot defeat. Namely, himself. Claiming the title of the 'last remaining Conservative" with a rhetoric more befitting to the "Last of the Mohicans" our steadfast lad is so cocooned in himself that he knows not whether it is sunny or raining. Romney will be the nominee failing any major disaster and, as you well know, disasters in politics are as frequent as drought in Texas.

The sad truth for the Republicans is they are disunited, suffering a schismatic rift between their moderates and far right Tea Party Conservatives and have failed to produce a candidate capable of capturing the allegiance of the American public. Sadder still, were the presidential vote held today, Obama would win.

Predictions are that this presidential race will be down and dirty. I take that to mean vicious attacks by anonymous backers such as Political Action Committees against the vulnerable underbelly of each candidate. In Mitts case it is his religion and in O's case it is his race. O got a racial pass when he was elected the first time, but I doubt he will get another given his silence over growing racial incidents and issues.

One glaring example is the offer of a $10,000 reward  by the Black Panther Party for George Zimmerman dead or alive. George, a Hispanic American, is accused of murdering a young black person. The vigilante character of this offer is not consistent with our dedication to rule of law, yet has not been challenged by the President or his Attorney General. There are numerous other examples of black inspired crime, discontent and threats that have transpired without White House comment.

There is also a growing feeling that minorities, including black people, are taking advantage of expanding welfare benefits to the point where we now have large segments of society dependent upon entitlements. The media is playing this up big time as are right wing talk show hosts and political commentators. One could write a compelling sociological thesis on this subject and its antecedents. Bookstores are full of previous efforts in this direction and generally play on white guilt over slavery and abuses against blacks during and after that period and continuing up to the present day.

In short, many blacks in America believe they have a good excuse to live off of society. Efforts by other black and white citizens to inspire socially-dependent blacks to become employed, be responsible, and become part of mainstream American society have largely failed. My call is that this issue will be placed in O's lap during the campaign and it may get out of hand as blacks could well take umbrage for a variety of reasons.

Let's hope not.

Crisis.......what crisis?

I have been trawling the financial pages to try to make sense of it all. Not easy!

In the US there has been something approaching euphoria (especially in the O camp) that the economy is showing fresh buds. But we must remember that ‘rough winds do shake the darling buds of May’. The fact that only 121,000 private sector jobs were added in March puts a bit of a dampener on it. And I guess that the unemployment figures of c.8% are only job-seekers, not the unemployed who have given up. The true figure of those out of work must be much higher.

What’s going on?

Well, according to Irwin ‘Alka’ Stelzer, there are some very good signs.

One is ‘on-shoring’ – bringing back jobs that had been off-shored  to lower-cost areas especially China. GE, for example, is repatriating its appliance manufacturing operations. As I have previously predicted, China’s rocketing labour costs have brought them more into line with US costs, and foreign firms are also getting increasingly fed-up with intellectual property theft which is rife in China. One reason for the increase in labour costs is that the regime is desperate to avoid civil unrest, although I suspect that the genie is already out of the bottle.

Another is that retailing is doing better than expected.

New car sales are doing very well. In March they were the highest for 5 years. Accustomed as we are to believing that Americans swop their cars almost as quickly as they change their socks, I was amazed that the average age is 10 years. Petrol at $4 a gallon (less than half the UK price) is encouraging Americans to trade-in their old bangers for smaller and more fuel efficient transport. Low interest rates make HP more affordable.

More (very) good news is that the housing market is now stirring. The main reason for this is that whereas historically rental costs were about 10% lower than to buy. Now the ratios have swopped places, with renting about 15% more expensive than buying, plus the fact that low interest rates make mortgages cheaper.

Another factor is that there has been an influx of foreign buyers of holiday homes or as investment. There has also been capital flight from Europe in the wake of the euro-crisis. Truly it’s an ill wind…….! And there has been substantial investment buying as groups snap up as many as 1000 houses in a single deal at fire-sale prices.

So what’s the problem? Well, it’s the usual one – the wretched politicians who insanely refuse to make the required compromises over tax cuts, payroll relief, and spending cuts.

Back in the UK, it’s difficult to make head or tail of it all.

Depending on which set of figures you believe, we are either in recession, stagnation, or growth. The OECD, the ONS and private surveys all tell a different story. The overall picture is that there has been modest growth over the past 3 years.

If things are as bad as Ed Balls claims, how come the UK has added 700,000 private sector jobs in the last 2 years?

And finally…………what to make of the disgraceful farce surrounding the appointment of a new boss for the World Bank?

The obvious candidate is the ex-Finance Minister of Nigeria. She is widely respected for her financial acumen, has the right experience as a former deputy at the World Bank, and is thoroughly acceptable especially to the emerging economies.

However, O is sticking to the convention that the World Bank is an American fief. He has nominated a candidate who does not appear to have a single qualification apart from working on AIDS in the WHO.

An observer has described it as ‘shameful and self-destructive’.