US: the state we're in.............

The political scene in the USA is glum at best.

 

O is seldom home, cannot tolerate Congress and is desperately searching for what should become his positive legacy. His critics smell blood and have gathered for the kill. It is doubtful the Democrats will be able to keep the Senate and the House will surely remain Republican.

 

Sadly, in my view, many of the leading Republicans are of the ultra-conservative and fundamentalist variety who blindly believe that an inviolable constitution and faith in God will resolve all of our problems. While these leaders have plenty of support, it is largely paid for and actually represents only about 15% of the population.

 

More importantly, these leaders have created a deep rift in the mainstream Republican party leaving the party handicapped in its efforts to generate alternatives to current national policies. Conflicting forces are cancelling each other out.

 

America is rabid over the ISIS beheadings. This ire was sufficient only to induce O to initiate air strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. His plan is for the heretofore Iraqi army to serve as our skin in the ground game. He also has high hopes for the Kurds who he enlisted in the ground war but without the benefit of meaningful ordinance. They were issued little more than rifles.

 

Presumably, our fear is that heavy weaponry issued to the Kurds would be at considerable risk of being taken away and used against our interests. Such a scenario is not without precedent in the Middle East.

 

Nor are the Yanks at all pleased with Turkey. We feel they are not doing their bit. We also understand why. The Turks go ballistic when they think about their sworn enemy, the Kurds. This is about as far as our thinking goes.

 

I should think that from a British perspective, it may be reasonable to suspect the Turks are still fuming from their being iced out of the EU. Hence, their return to a more devoted practice of Islam and hesitance in aiding the West as a member of NATO and as a broker of Israeli-Palestinian solutions.

 

Against this background, we Americans hear Netanyahu constantly remind us that we are targeting the wrong enemy. We need to focus on Iran and their race to weaponize the atom. The Saudis and their migratory coterie of allies in Arabia remind us they too have a stake in the game.

 

Although not eager to put their dog in the fight, they have conceded to allow us space to train Iraqi soldiers and have unleashed their rampant flying princes into the air war.

 

The stark reality here is that we have not felt the impact of war. It is not heavy on our minds as are stagnant wages, skyrocketing prices, rampant entitlement spending, the erosion of our middle class and domestic issues such as immigration, governmental corruption and a failing education system.

 

 

Yewtree: ‘The mountains laboured and brought forth a mouse".

As yet there is no sign of an end to the institutionalised witch-hunt of elderly celebs by Operation Yewtree and other related inquiries.

 

Dave Lee Travis was prosecuted on 14 counts. He was acquitted on 12 and the jury couldn’t make up its mind about the remainder. Simple reasoning should have convinced the CPS to throw in the towel at that juncture. Instead they forced a retrial on the remaining two counts. They got a result on one, a fifteen second squeeze of the breast of an adult woman nearly 20 years ago. DLT got 3-months suspended, a pretty good indication of what the trial judge thought of the prosecution.

 

Did the CPS then quit while it was ahead? Not likely! It is now appealing on the grounds of undue leniency. That seems more like vindictiveness than justice.

 

Writing in The Independent Rosie Millard said "one has to ask whether the Operation Yewtree fervour, fuelled no doubt by the frustration that one of Britain’s sickest and most evil perverts died before he could come to justice, has simply gone a bit crazy. If we started jailing every man who has ever squeezed a breast, there would be no time for any other sort of case in our courts, and our prisons would be the size of a small city."^[

 

DLT had something of a reputation for being – shall we say – a bit tactile. But nothing more serious. A couple of years ago, Camilla Long did an interview with him in the Sunday Times. It was a fairly light-hearted piece about how he pursued her throughout the interview. Lo and behold, a short time ago another piece by this lady appeared in the News Review about how shocked and disgusted she had been at DLT’s groping efforts.

 

Oh, c’mon. She is not a shy teenager. She is a Grub Street toughie. If she had been offended by DLT she could have (a) ended the interview; (b) belted him.

 

After all this activity, costing millions and huge amounts of police time involving 14 police forces, so far the CPS has achieved 3 custodial sentences. Stuart Hall pleaded guilty, possibly on a promise of leniency. The prosecution appealed and got the jail-time greatly increased, maybe  a death sentence for a man in his mid-80s. Max Clifford got an 8-stretch (compared with the 6 years recently handed down to a thug who, in an unprovoked attack, struck and killed an innocent man in the street). Rolf Harris got 5 years and 9 months.

 

Plus one suicide.

 

After repeat arrests and masses of adverse publicity, ‘no further action’ is proposed in the cases of Freddie Starr, Wilfred De’ath, Jim Davidson, DJ Mike Osman, Jimmy Tarbuck and two ‘unnamed’ i.e. not celebs so not worth the bother?

 

William Roache and Michael le Vell were found not guilty. Charges against Le Vell had been dropped in 2011, before Savile, but were revived  afterwards as the bandwagon rolled on.

 

Gary Glitter was arrested 2 years ago. The last news on this case was that he is bailed until November. Paul Gambaccini has been on bail for almost a year. Whatever happened to Magna Carta – ‘to none will we deny or delay right or justice’.

 

Which brings us to Cliff Richard.

 

Grandstanding by the South Yorkshire police, perhaps to divert attention from the Rotherham child abuse scandal (which has not merited another Yewtree) ensured maximum publicity. They even provided a map so that the BBC helicopter went to the correct house. It backfired. Minor and largely forgotten celebs are one thing; going for a national icon is quite another.

 

We have heard nothing lately. Too hot to handle?

 

 

 

 

'This is the BBC'........but not what it was!

As time goes by the BBC appears more and more as an absurd anachronism.

 

It got the appellation ‘Auntie Beeb’ because in times past it seemed like an elderly maiden aunt; respectable, a bit old fashioned, prudish, an old maid who thought that sex was ‘dirty’. Now she resembles more a greedy old tart.

 

It has money-raising powers greater than the Government, which depends on Parliament passing an annual Finance Bill in order to raise taxes. Once the licence fee is settled, the BBC can go on squeezing the licence fee out of us for years without hindrance, and prosecute us if we don’t pay. It is not a licence to watch its programmes. It is a levy allowing us to own a TV set. It has a reputation for harassing over-75s for not paying their licence fee (from which they are exempt). It is not allowed to carry advertising, but at the same time it is a massive international business.

 

It is supervised by a Trust of 13 members supposedly to look after the licence payers’ interests, although its behaviour during the recent scandals seemed more concerned with damage-limitation.

 

The BBC sets its own salaries, and we know from recent revelations that at the top they are not only breath-taking but the reward for failure is equally generous. It has at least 121 executives earning more than £150,000.

 

The top brass was clearly an accessory before, during and after the fact of the Savile affair; many of his predations are alleged to have taken place on BBC premises, and one would have to be particularly naïve to believe that this was all unknown during  more than 40 years of rape and sexual assault of minors.

 

Much could be forgiven if it had kept its reputation for quality. That has long gone. There was a time when BBC News was almost gospel, and the world respected it. Now it has a reputation for left-wing bias and partiality, for being pro-Palestine and anti-Israel, for supporting the EU come what may, and for suppressing whatever does not suit its world-view, of which the suppression of the Savile expose was merely the most egregious.

 

As for TV, the great days of quality entertainment are long gone. Almost all its dismal programing is bought-in. This means that it does not have the expense of paying actors, writers, producers, make-up artists and the many others who actually create shows. There is almost no quality drama. All channels rely heavily on outsourced documentaries and sport – 13 hours of Wimbledon on a single day, endless coverage of golf, and football fixtures featuring foreign clubs.

 

It is fair to assume that Friday between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. is a peak viewing time.  Here is a typical programme schedule:

 

BBC1: documentaries;

BBC2: documentaries;

BBC3: repeat documentaries;

BBC4: documentaries.

 

There is heavy emphasis on low-rent stuff such as quizzes, cookery programmes and game shows, plus juvenile trash like ‘Top Gear’ which the producer himself said was aimed at people ‘with a mental age of 12’, and pond-life like Russell Brand.

 

Will it change? Not a chance. It’s an Institution, like the Monarchy, the Church of England and the House of Lords. What must change is the means of financing it. The most touted is to make it a subscription-only service. The competition is Sky which carries more trash than a landfill plus 33 hard-core porno channels, and is much more expensive than the BBC licence fee, especially when the extras are included, such as pay-sport and films.

 

A possible compromise would be a choice between the licence fee and subscription, but this will only raise its head when the next fee review comes up.

 

Meanwhile it will be ‘plus ca change…..’.

Nigel laughs last.....

Well, it looks as if Nigel has shot Dave’s fox.

 

There are deep suspicions that Cameron recalled Parliament on last Friday partly to overshadow Farage’s speech at the UKIP Conference. He was successful up to a considerable point. The media coverage was minimal, raising more suspicions that the establishment is up to its old tricks of blanking UKIP. SKY devoted its entire programme to the Commons vote apart from a couple of minutes squeezed in right at the end before the sports report. It needed a thorough search of the print media to find out just what Farage had said.

 

There was some appealing stuff, such as his proposed ‘wag tax’ that would levy a higher rate of VAT on luxury goods on the perfectly reasonable grounds that it was unfair that ordinary people buying necessaries should have to pay the same rate of VAT as the wealthy pay for £2000 handbags. He also plans to stop VAT relief for luxury purchases by wealthy Arabs  and other non-Europeans.

 

He would abolish inheritance tax which is a burden on asset-rich, cash-poor people and raises little revenue.

 

Now we have the defection of Mark Reckless announced on the eve of theory Party Conference, but obviously decided in advance. By a pure stroke of luck we also have the Minister for Civil Society (whatever that might be) resigning after being caught flashing on the internet.

 

These stories will run and run throughout the Conference. The Tories are not going to get the media attention that they anticipated.

 

Two can play at that game, Dave!

Muslims: high achievers, not terrorists...

A most important collateral casualty of the endless warfare in the Middle East is Islam itself.

 

Years ago few in the West gave much thought to it. The extent of the ordinary persons knowledge was probably limited the fact that Muslims don’t eat pork. Pakistanis in Bradford and elsewhere were seen as hardworking, honest people who kept themselves to themselves and caused little trouble.. Since then, successive atrocities and terrorist outrages  has forced people to know more, and they don’t like it. Islamists have brought one of the three great Abrahamic religions into ‘hatred, ridicule and contempt’.

 

Now Muslims everywhere are looked upon with suspicion. They are seen as essentially hostile to their host nations; not to be trusted; potential terrorists or at least fellow-travellers. Their blatant refusal to integrate is exemplified by their ‘in your face’ message from the burka – ‘ I am different. I reject your culture, values and institutions. I refuse to be like you or to speak your language’.

 

But there is another side.

 

I began this inquiry after reading an article by Dr Afzal Ashraf, a management consultant. I was intrigued to see that he was a retired Group Captain in the RAF, and engineering officer. We don’t usually think of the British military as a career choice for Asians, and yet the first Muslim to become a General served in both World Wars – it was that long ago.

 

Despite self-imposed handicaps, Muslims have been remarkably successful in many walks of life – politics, business, the professions, arts and entertainment, academia, journalism, justice and others.

 

In the public service, the Ambassador to the Philippines is a British Muslim, having previously been Ambassador to Thailand, as was the High Commissioner to Bangladesh, now a senior F&CO official. There are a good many Muslims holding senior positions in central and local government.

 

Muslims are prolific in law and medicine. For nearly 40 years all my GPs were such. There are barristers and solicitors aplenty, judges and Crown Prosecutors, one of whom wasted no time in  initiating prosecutions of child-abusers in Rochdale shortly after his appointment. There are artists, writers, journalists, poets. There are actors, musicians, comedians, TV producers, film script writers – just about the whole gamut of the entertainment industry.

 

In the media, the most instantly recognisable in a long list are Rageh Omar, Konnie Huq and Mishal Husain. Passing quickly over Yasmin Alibhai-Kahn, there are sports personalities in boxing, such as Naseem, a former world champion, cricket including our latest find Moeen, martial arts, football.

 

This brings us inevitably to politics.

 

At the last count, there were 11 MPs, 5 MEPs (one UKIP), 3 MSPs, 16 peers, and 7 Mayors.

 

So what’s all this discrimination, lack of equal opportunities, blah-blah that we hear from the race relations industry?

 

 

 

Exit the Rotherham Five..........

Salami  through the slicer is the most apt description of the Home Affairs Select Committee aka the Keith Vaz Star Chamber when it grilled the Rotherham Five -  the present Chief Constable, his predecessor, the Chief Executive, the head of the department Joyce Thacker, and Shaun Wright the (then) PCC. Such was the catalogue of incompetence, negligence and abuse of office that that it might have been the scenario for  political satire were it not so disgusting and shameful.

 

First up was  Chief Constable Crompton. Compared with what was to come, he had a fairly easy ride, although he had a difficult time when the case of a Home Office researcher was raised. Her report exposing the scandal had been trashed and she had been threatened at night by two police officers who said ‘Wouldn’t it be a bad thing if some of these men (abusers) found out where you live?’ Her key files had also been stolen, and although the names of  the key-holders were known to the police, no action was taken.

 

The Committee also gave him an uncomfortable time when they touched on the Cliff Richard farce in which the police had given the BBC a photograph of Cliff’s house so that their helicopter went to the right place.

 

Keith Vaz commented ‘The evidence we have heard was not only shocking to us but quite harrowing in respect of a number of the cases that were mentioned. I  find it incredible that the police seemed not to know about what was happening in the South Yorkshire area, in particular in Rotherham’.

 

Next was the former Chief Constable, Meredydd Hughes, and the same theme was pursued. The Committee was clearly not buying his claim that he knew nothing about the child abuse epidemic despite have been Deputy then Chief Constable during almost the whole period.

 

Three times he made the same reply that he was not aware of the scale and the scope of the problem. What he really meant was that he was more interested in harassing motorists, for which he was both notorious and proud; he boasted that he had tripled breathalyser convictions during his term.

Michael Ellis MP commented ‘.. it was incompetence on your part to be in such a highly paid position and not to know that child exploitation on an industrial scale was going on within your force area. At the very least you were grossly incompetent and negligent in the functioning of your

Duties’.  Vaz said ‘We find your evidence totally unconvincing’.

 

Then it was the turn of Martin Kimber, the Chief Executive, and Joyce Thacker.

 

Andrew Norfolk of The Times had published an expose of the Rotherham scandal. Instead of pursuing the issues  raised, this pair tied to suppress the story. Ellis asked ‘ How much, Mr Kimber, did you waste of taxpayers’ money on the legal action against The Times newspaper seeking to block them from doing the public service that they did? How much? How much did those lawyers cost?’ Answer came there none.

 

Ellis went on ‘: Mr Kimber, is it a rotten borough council that you have been presiding over that, first, blames victims; secondly, blocks complaints of horrific child sexual abuse and exploitation over a prolonged period of time; and, thirdly, seeks an injunction against The Times newspaper, who quite frankly with Andrew Norfolk have done more to expose this incident than a lot of very highly paid public servants who are a disgrace to the public

service?

 

The Committee was equally dismissive of Joyce Thacker; ‘….it is the view of this Committee that the evidence we have received from Joyce Thacker today has been unimpressive and we believe that she should be asked to step down, to reflect on her position and, if she does not do so, she should resign’. She quit last Friday.

 

Then came the defenestration of the PPC, Shaun Wright, who had steadfastly refused to resign although none of the local authorities would any longer work with him.

 

Paul Flynn MP asked ‘Can I tell you that having been here 26 years, having served on thousands of meetings of Select Committee, you are the least credible witness I have ever come across?

 

Wouldn’t you agree that you are a busted flush, you are a dead PCC walking? No one will take you seriously in future. You will have no influence. What is the point of continuing?’ He went on ‘But there is no support for you, except your own love of your salary, isn’t that true? It is the only reason you are carrying on. I blush at my own party. I have been a member of this party for three times as long as you and I am rather ashamed of the fact that I have shared a party with you. What you have revealed yourself to be here today is a charlatan who is in love with office, in love with a salary and you are a disgrace’.

 

Vaz then said ‘. It is the unanimous view of this Committee that you should resign immediately’.

 

Which he did.

 

So the top five have gone. One factor has emerged about the political culture at Rotherham. The politicians, police, and Pakistanis were all too palsy-walsy.  For example, ex-Chief Constable Hughes was shortlisted as a Labour candidate for the election  of PCC, but was not finally selected. One-party rule always decline into corruption.

 

What happens now? Hughes is in danger of losing his pension. Kimber will never get another top job but he will have a pension not unadjacent to £80,000 a year plus a lump sum to ease the pain.  Thacker has gone on ‘undisclosed terms’. Which   generally means ‘quite a lot’.

 

We are now entitled to expect the dock at Rotherham courts to be overcrowded with young Pakistani men charged with rape, assault, abduction, and drug dealing and gun running which financed their crimes against children.

 

It could be a long wait.

Westminster: all change!.........

Now that Scotsbore is largely history we may now look forward (?) to an extended debate about the constitutional fall-out, with the political pundits and chattering classes proposing all kinds of crack-pot solutions.

 

Labour will try to revive regional governments to create a quasi-federal system. The fact that ten years ago the electorate roundly rejected the notion of yet another layer of government being loaded onto peoples’ overloaded  backs is of no consequence to Miliband. He is another who believes that ’the gentleman from Whitehall really does know best’.

 

Perhaps Cameron might care to use the ‘Crown Dependency’ option. Scotland would then have all powers except defence, foreign affairs, immigration, customs, the currency and a few odds-and-sods; full taxation powers; full responsibility to run – and pay for – all services, its own bank-notes for internal use only. Of course, it would have no MPs in Westminster, so that would solve the West Lothian question at a stroke

 

There is already much talk about an ‘English Parliament’ and an English First Minister. What for? The notion is that the UK Parliament would only deal with UK-wide issues. How these will be determined is not explained, since some ‘English-only’ legislation would have an impact elsewhere in the UK. Neither are we given any clues as to the role of the House of Lords, or the composition of the two Parliaments bearing in mind that the existing House of Commons already has too little work and there are far too many members.

 

The Commons has 650 Members. The Lords has 760. The US Congress has 435 Representatives and 100 Senators. We can be reasonably confident that an English Parliament will be an increment, not a substitute, so there will be yet another layer of politicians and bureaucrats; but it is the people not the politicians who suffer from over-government. The latter thrive on it.

 

Cameron’s first move gives a clue as to how he sees the prospect of the biggest constitutional revolution since 1688. He has appointed lame-duck William Hague to chair a special Cabinet Committee in the expectation that it will all be sorted by next May. Given that time-scale the outcome can’t be anything other than a complete shambles. If the job is to be done properly it will have to look in detail at governance overall and answer the ‘who does what?’ question.

 

The first step should be what consultants term a ‘prior options review’.

 

In simple terms, this requires every function of every Government Department to be thoroughly scrutinised. The options are, first, stop doing it!  There is an inertia in large organisations that can lead to  things continuing to be done long after their original purpose has ceased (in the 1950s an Army depot carried saddlery to supply a complete cavalry division although the cavalry had become motorised at least 30 years earlier). The next decisions will cover ‘no change’, move to another department, move to another authority such as local government, privatise, contract-out, or shift to a statutory body, government-owned company, or a quasi- or non-governmental institution.

 

If this is done properly, the outcome should be right-sized government with decisions taken at the lowest level following a major shift of power out of Westminster. Sadly, it has been Conservative governments that have concentrated government in the hands of an increasingly remote and disdainful  central elite; Heath with his reorganisation of local government and the courts which abolished counties and the assizes that had existed since medieval times, and Thatcher with her centralising urge that turned councils into Westminster satraps.

 

At the very least this constitutional debate should aim to shift power downwards, not sideways. It could be achieved in the 5-year lifetime of a new Parliament. But not in 7 months or by a coalition government.

 

It is more likely is that the whole issue will be kicked down the Yellow-brick Road. Then we can revert to what we do best. Muddling through.

 

 

Dave, devomax, and deception.....

Dave is peddling the line that he has the answer to the West Lothian question (which for the few uninitiated is ‘Why should Scottish MPs be allowed to vote on English-only matters when English MPs can’t vote on Scottish-only matters?’ posed by that wonderful trouble-maker, the sorely-missed Tam Dayiel).

He hasn’t.

The heart of the problem is that it is quite conceivable that a government in Westminster would have a majority on English-only matters but not on United Kingdom matters. Even a self-denying ordinance by Scottish MPs would not change that. The question can only be answered by creating an English Parliament. The UK would then have a federal system.


Heaven forfend!

The reality is that the English are not much bothered by arcane constitutional questions. What they manifestly do not want is a continuation of Government  from an elite clique populating the Westminster village, that is contemptuous of the people, arrogant, self-serving, and self-perpetuating. They want politicians who have at least some understanding of the lives of ordinary people, who can be trusted, and whose interests in their constituents extends beyond a General Election period.

The reason why UKIP will have a landslide in Clacton is because Douglas Carswell is an exceptional constituency MP who is widely known, gets things done, and is seen as a man of principle, a conviction politician, not a careerist or time-server. According to a recent poll, there may be a 64% swing to UKIP, the biggest ever in a by-election.

There could be more to come.

The people do not want years of tedious political debate on who-does-what. They want change, and on current predictions they are going to get it; it is now very likely that UKIP will win 4 or 5 seats next year. It is possible that when they see the size of the Clacton majority, more Tory MPs will do a Carswell.

But this mould-breaking was not started by UKIP.  It is Alex Salmond who should be thanked. He took over the SNP when it was on its last legs. He transformed it into the governing party in Scotland, demolishing the clammy one-party rule  of the Scottish Labour Party.

As for the Lib-Dems, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that in the next Parliament Clegg and Cable will be Leader and Deputy leader.


As the only two Lib-Dem MPs.

Scotland: Cameron's Waterloo?

This wretched Referendum campaign seems to have lasted for an age and has been proof  that the ‘cock-up’ theory really works, at least in political circles.

 

We can then return to the real world. But if we imagine for one moment that things will return to normal once the result is in, we are due for a rude awakening. That is when the fighting really starts.

 

First into the fray will be David Cameron. If there is a ‘yes’ majority, he will be in the cross-hairs of half of Scotland, most of England, and probably a majority of the Tory Party.  Although he is safe until the General Election, it is beginning to look as if his position is untenable in the longer term,.

 

And justifiably so. His legacy would be as the man who destroyed the Union.

 

When he agreed to hold the Referendum during this Parliament, he may have thought that he was  taking the wind out of Salmond’s bagpipes, and that the Scots, once faced with reality, would hastily drop the notion of full independence on the precept of ‘Always keep a hold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse’. Well, he got that badly wrong. Up until the last minute he seems to have taken little real interest or action in the possible belief that early opinion polls indicated that the SNP was in  for monstering.

 

The ‘no’ campaign itself was lacklustre and feeble. Alistair Darling’s approach was like that of a country solicitor warning his client of the folly of a proposed course of action without suggesting something positive in return. He appealed entirely to the pocket and forgot the soul.

 

With hindsight, and not too much of that, it now seems obvious that the choice should have been Gordon Brown.  It needed his brand of bone-crushing politics to face down Salmond’s  heavies.

 

The final days of the campaign were pure pantomime without the jokes, as all three major parties rushed around promising Scotland everything it could possible want short of a divorce, like a frantic husband offering his estranged wife the moon if only she will stay.

 

All this was put on the table at the last minute, too late to have any real effect. And yet ‘devomax’ has been on the table almost since the debate began. The general approach was the ‘Manx’ solution whereby Scotland would have responsibility for just about everything except defence, foreign affairs, immigration, border control, currency and the central bank. This works extremely well with the Isle of Man which has the kind of low inflation, low unemployment, high income economy that Salmond is promising the Scots and which he will not be able to deliver.

 

This is the point at which Cameron made his fatal mistake.

 

The voting paper gives the simple choice of ‘In’ or Out’. There could have been a third choice, ‘Devomax’. Cameron vetoed this.

 

 It is now pretty clear that Scottish voters would have bitten-off Cameron’s hand for this; better than having your cake and eating it – it would have been English cake!

Rotherham & DLT; What's going on?

At last!

 

The PCC for South Yorkshire has quit. He was last seen being rushed out of an angry public meeting and driven off in a police car at high speed that was reminiscent of Starsky and Hutch. Better late than never, although he must be either arrogant or stupid not to realise that his position had become totally  untenable on the day the report was published. If he had gone immediately, as did the Leader of the Council,  he would have retained a measure of public respect.

 

Under-reported was the news that the Chief Executive had fallen on his sword. He has done the proper thing and he deserves a measure of sympathy for having inherited a mess that pre-existed his appointment by many years. His fault was that he did not get a grip of it. His opposite number at Rochdale inherited a similar situation, if much smaller. He acted quickly and a number of staff were required to continue their careers elsewhere. I suspect he was out of his depth. He was previously a Planner, so it is unlikely that he would have had much exposure to the vicious, back-stabbing politics that prevail in the Leader’s Office, at party group meetings and elsewhere behind the closed doors of the Town Hall.

 

So where does this leave the Chief Constable?

 

The Chief Constable of Wiltshire is facing an IPC investigation over mishandling of abuse cases over a period of about two years, not the 17 years and three inquiry reports at Rotherham.

 

And it does seem remarkable that despite the time lapse since these outrages came to light, there have been no arrests of the perpetrators. Neither has any action been instituted against anyone for misconduct in a public office. Could it be that this is seen in police circles of being of less interest than Yewtree?

 

However, the CPS continues its persecution of Dave Lee Travis, having lost the first round with 12 of 14 counts thrown out and the jury failing to agree on the remaining two. Common sense says that the CPS should have called it a day, but there is little sign of that characteristic in those circles. His alleged offences were against adults, and consist largely of ‘inappropriate touching’ above the clothing.

 

 

If that is a serious offence then, in the words of Dr Heinz Kiosk,  ‘We are all guilty’.

 

 

 

   

Ukraine: where next?

Were the situation not so serious the total incomprehension between the West and Russia would be risible; neither side seems to have the slightest notion of where the other is coming from, and yet it is simple. Their respective positions are almost identical.  They are united in mutual misunderstanding.

 

The West sees Russia as revanchist. After Georgia, the Crimea and now Ukraine; where next? Bulgaria, where Putin already seems to be putting a bit of stick about? The Baltic states? Putin sees the West in almost identical terms, with the EU muscling in on his sphere of economic influence and NATO parking its tanks on his lawn, not that the parlous state of NATO forces will make him lose any sleep. NATO clearly signalled its lack of serious intent by its lukewarm reaction to Obama’s call for increases in defence spending. It is nonsense to suggest that fear of NATO pushed Putin into the ceasefire. It was Ukraine’s doing because it had been defeated.

 

Western policy is a shambles. The recent NATO hot-air-fest in Wales has already been consigned to history. It decided nothing and formed no plan. The members have failed to give any commitments to bring their defence budgets up to2% of GDP, and appear to have no intention of doing so.

 

‘So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. So we go on preparing more months and years …… for the locusts to eat’. 

 

Drawing comparison with 1914 or the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Hitler is infantile politics. Putin’s ambition is not to recreate the USSR but to restore Russia as a world power, respected,  influential and  listened to in international councils. The one shared factor with 1936 is that it will end in appeasement.

 

The initiative is with Russia. The big question is what will Putin do now? Ukraine has lost the military conflict, hence the phony ‘cease-fire’. Putin’s strategy is probably to turn Ukraine into a client state utterly separated from the West and dancing to whatever tune the Russian bear chooses to play. The danger is uncertainty. Putin has by no means escaped unscathed. The downing of the Malaysian Airlines plane was a public relations catastrophe for Russia, evoking memories of KAL 007. There was no damage-limitation response from the Kremlin. Had it been a US carrier………..! And up to a point he has painted himself into a corner and this could make him dangerous. But his approval ratings remain  sky-high, more than 80%.

 

The EU now proposes more feeble sanctions. They will not work for the simple reason that they never do. They were applied to Russia on several occasions during the Cold War. In recent years they have been imposed on 32 countries. They were judged to  be effective in only one case. They will have some effect but not nearly enough to change Russia’s Ukraine policy. The rouble is falling; the self-imposed sanctions on food imports will cause prices to rise (and fall in Europe, such the Law of Unexpected Consequences), inflation could rise to 8% which is bad but hardly crisis level.  Rosneft needs $40 billion to refinance its short-term debt. A few ‘oligarchs’ have been inconvenienced, although when the EU telegraphed its intentions the fat-cats had plenty of time to make other arrangements.

 

The main effect of sanctions so far has been to rally the people around the regime. The Russians will tighten their belts until they cut themselves in half before they give in. They are accustomed to suffering.

 

The key question is ‘What vital Western interests are involved?’ To the people of Western Europe and the US, the Ukraine is a far-away, irredeemably corrupt place of no value or interest.

 

It will  end in ‘an historic agreement’, or, as the Americans would say ‘All smoke and mirrors’.

 

Perhaps then the West can concentrate on the clear and present danger –the conflagration in the Gulf and Middle East.

 

 

 

 

 

That referendum: boring but important..........

The referendum campaign must be the longest attempted suicide in history. Fortunately we have only a few more tedious days to discover whether Scotland succeeds in topping itself.

 

There will be no need to wait until 2016 to discover the true consequences. They are showing up right now.

 

Capital flight is a real and present danger, especially with business that has significant exposure to both Scotland and England. Many firms plan to move to England entirely; others to increase their presence south of the border. Standard Life and Lloyds/BOS have contingency plans to move to London. EU rules specifying that a bank must have it HQ in the country of its core business may cause an exodus. Money has started to move out of Scottish banks.

 

A major Scottish service industry is insurance. The Scots invented life assurance when Scottish Widows was founded in the 18^th Century to provide for the relics of the clergy. Some of the largest pension funds are based in Edinburgh. It is a fair prediction that the flow of pension money will begin to dry up; investors will not want their funds to be in a foreign country in a foreign currency.

 

And it must be appreciated that it will take years to get a complete break. After a ‘yes’ vote, everything will be on the table, from the currency to nuclear weapons. The negotiations will be nasty, brutish and long. Until the currency central/bank issue is sorted out, Scotland will be in financial limbo. It will be a drawn-out process for Scotland to transfer power from London to Brussels. It is far from certain whether its bid to subject itself to the EU will avoid vetoes by the numerous member-states to which secession is anathema.

 

And finally……….

 

The former Chairman of RBS at the time the world’s biggest bank had to be bailed out by the (mostly) English taxpayer, has come out on the side of Wee Eck. Neck doesn’t come much more brassy than that!