Footba' crazy, footba' mad.........

I belong to an oppressed and endangered species.  I loathe, detest and despise  ‘the beautiful game’ and everything that goes with it.

 

Its lifeblood is greed.

 

There is something repellent about kicking a plastic ball around a field for 90 minutes and being paid obscene amounts of money. The average Premier League player pulls down £2.3 million a year. Wayne Rooney will trouser £73 million for his five-year contract, Ferdinand £44 million, Garrard £42 million, Mourinho £40 million, Lampard £39 million, Ronaldo £80 million, Messi £52 million .

 

In Britain, footballers occupy 7 of the 10 ‘rich list’ places. Time was when the boyhood heroes, Tommy Lawton, Wo’or Jackie, Stanley Matthews, got by on £12.50 a week!

 

But King of the Midden is Brand Beckham, worth a cool £500 million (to be fair, he personally donates to charities, especially these for children, including £3.4 million that he earned playing for Paris St Germaine).

 

The Premier League is said to be the richest football league in the world. Its TV rights deal nets over £5 billion. It is so awash with cash that there is possibly no need to charge for tickets, and yet Liverpool attempted to increase its ticket price over £70 but was forced into retreat when 10,000 fans walked out f a home game in protest.

 

But all this fades into relative insignificance when the massive corruption and embezzlement right at the top remains uncorrected.

 

FIFA has been a byword for fiscal crime over many years. It was only when Blatter finally overreached himself that the balloon burst. It was common knowledge for years that Blatter couldn’t lay straight in bed, but the world of football simply shrugged its shoulders and he kept getting re-admitted to the cookie jar. Meanwhile, pardon us if we ae a little cynical about  the successor’s ability to clean up the mess. One hopeful sign is that the new man is not a machine FIFA place-man; he is currently head of UEFA and uncontaminated by FIFA history.

 

And to pile on the ordure, at League and club level, match-fixing has been described as ‘endemic’. In 2013, Europol investigated 680 match-fixing allegations in 30 countries.

 

Then there is the constant invasion of our personal space. Hours of prime-time TV are taken up with matches, often between teams largely known for their obscurity. The most common sound in pubs these days is of a commentator shouting his head off as if he had no microphone and who is watching in a warm studio – not even present at the game. The accompaniment is the yells and roars and fist-waving from the customers as if they were.

 

There is a pub nearby that has been extensively and tastefully renovated and furnished. There are three comfortable bars. In each one there is a massive flat-screen TV blaring out a match often between two  foreign teams with the commentary in Italian. But perhaps all is not lost. Some pubs now advertise ‘No football’ as a major attraction, which, of course, it is.

 

Worst of all, perhaps, is  the death of conversation. In male company the talk is all about how Man United fared or whatever. They are indifferent to the louche behaviour of some players, yet scarcely a week passes without a front-page story of some sexual or other misdemeanour.

 

As to the financial scandals, they couldn’t give a damn.

 

 

The Last Trump: revenge of the plebs................

The single truth emerging from our latest endeavor to elect POTUS is that everybody got it wrong Considerable pundit and funder support went to Jeb Bush who was considered the best bet to defeat Hillary Clinton. Jeb cratered along with the hopes and millions of dollars in investment of his Super PAC (Political Action Committee) supporters, or rather gamblers.

 

 

Looking backward, Jeb mounted a campaign his father and brother were proud to endorse. Problem is, Jeb failed miserably to capture the prevailing climate of opinion. Americans are angry, frustrated and fed up with our politicians in both houses and in the Oval Office. We are not yet revolution minded, but if nothing is done, there could be a spot of bother.

 

We now know that anyone associated with the political establishment has a poor chance at best of winning mass support. Hillary who was up until a few months ago a shoe in for the Democratic Party nomination and the Presidency, is struggling for the former and is highly unlikely to achieve the latter.

 

 

A 74 year old Jewish socialist named Bernie Sanders ripped into Hillary on almost every front leaving here clinging to the black vote at best. Owing to the was the deck is stacked in favor of establishment politicians in the Democratic Party, Hillary is picking up electoral votes at many times the rate as Bernie even though she is behind in the popular vote of states that already held their primaries and caucuses.

 

 

The great surprise here is that a person like Bernie could have made such a huge dent in Hillary's popularity. The speculation is that almost any mainstream Republican could defeat her in a national election.

 

As for The Donald, he is the new political idol of the mindless masses. He is attracting support on both the left and the right and loudly avows that by  financing his own campaign through his enormous personal wealth, he is indebted to no one, to no PAC or group of lobbyists.

 

 

His outlandish and outspoken proclamations empower the people like no other candidate can. He is a bully who may well be handed the bully pulpit as a reward for crass, crude, knee-jerk and untutored statements. As such, he is as accurate a reflection of the man in the street as one could find. 

 

The Pundits and professionals alike are now talking of Trump as a political force in himself that needs to be reconciled with sensitive and pressing foreign and domestic issues. It is clear that the Republican powers that be are now putting their full support on Marco Rubio as the only remaining candidate who, albeit poorly, reflects establishment aspirations and who has the potential to both defeat Trump and win against Hillary. This is a big gamble as Rubio still ranks only third behind Trump and Ted Cruz in the latest polls. It is unlikely that Cruz will endure as he is too far to the right. More importantly, his supporters are more likely to convert to Trump than Rubio should Cruz drop out or fail. Tangentially, it is not easy for a second generation Cuban immigrant to capture the imagination of the American public and both Cruz and Rubio are just that

 

As you might rightly opine, there is many a slip between cup and lip and we all know the fat lady has yet to sing. Moreover, the experts have been embarrassingly wrong so far and are now a bit gun shy about making strong predictions Yet, the media goes on, and on ad nauseam spouting their nonsensical guesswork to the point of extreme boredom.

Michael Gove's full statement.........

For weeks now I have been wrestling with the most difficult decision of my political life. But taking difficult decisions is what politicians are paid to do. No-one is forced to stand for Parliament, no-one is compelled to become a minister. If you take on those roles, which are great privileges, you also take on big responsibilities.

 

I was encouraged to stand for Parliament by David Cameron and he has given me the opportunity to serve in what I believe is a great, reforming Government. I think he is an outstanding Prime Minister. There is, as far as I can see, only one significant issue on which we have differed.

And that is the future of the UK in the European Union.

It pains me to have to disagree with the Prime Minister on any issue. My instinct is to support him through good times and bad.

But I cannot duck the choice which the Prime Minister has given every one of us. In a few months time we will all have the opportunity to decide whether Britain should stay in the European Union or leave. I believe our country would be freer, fairer and better off outside the EU. And if, at this moment of decision, I didn’t say what I believe I would not be true to my convictions or my country.

I don’t want to take anything away from the Prime Minister’s dedicated efforts to get a better deal for Britain. He has negotiated with courage and tenacity. But I think Britain would be stronger outside the EU.

 

My starting point is simple. I believe that the decisions which govern all our lives, the laws we must all obey and the taxes we must all pay should be decided by people we choose and who we can throw out if we want change. If power is to be used wisely, if we are to avoid corruption and complacency in high office, then the public must have the right to change laws and Governments at election time.

But our membership of the European Union prevents us being able to change huge swathes of law and stops us being able to choose who makes critical decisions which affect all our lives. Laws which govern citizens in this country are decided by politicians from other nations who we never elected and can’t throw out. We can take out our anger on elected representatives in Westminster but whoever is in Government in London cannot remove or reduce VAT, cannot support a steel plant through troubled times, cannot build the houses we need where they’re needed and cannot deport all the individuals who shouldn’t be in this country. I believe that needs to change. And I believe that both the lessons of our past and the shape of the future make the case for change compelling.

The ability to choose who governs us, and the freedom to change laws we do not like, were secured for us in the past by radicals and liberals who took power from unaccountable elites and placed it in the hands of the people. As a result of their efforts we developed, and exported to nations like the US, India, Canada and Australia a system of democratic self-government which has brought prosperity and peace to millions.

 

Our democracy stood the test of time. We showed the world what a free people could achieve if they were allowed to govern themselves.

 

In Britain we established trial by jury in the modern world, we set up the first free parliament, we ensured no-one could be arbitrarily detained at the behest of the Government, we forced our rulers to recognise they ruled by consent not by right, we led the world in abolishing slavery, we established free education for all, national insurance, the National Health Service and a national broadcaster respected across the world.

 

By way of contrast, the European Union, despite the undoubted idealism of its founders and the good intentions of so many leaders, has proved a failure on so many fronts. The euro has created economic misery for Europe’s poorest people. European Union regulation has entrenched mass unemployment. EU immigration policies have encouraged people traffickers and brought desperate refugee camps to our borders.

 

Far from providing security in an uncertain world, the EU’s policies have become a source of instability and insecurity. Razor wire once more criss-crosses the continent, historic tensions between nations such as Greece and Germany have resurfaced in ugly ways and the EU is proving incapable of dealing with the current crises in Libya and Syria. The former head of Interpol says the EU’s internal borders policy is “like hanging a sign welcoming terrorists to Europe” and Scandinavian nations which once prided themselves on their openness are now turning in on themselves. All of these factors, combined with popular anger at the lack of political accountability, has encouraged extremism, to the extent that far-right parties are stronger across the continent than at any time since the 1930.

 

The EU is an institution rooted in the past and is proving incapable of reforming to meet the big technological, demographic and economic challenges of our time. It was developed in the 1950s and 1960s and like other institutions which seemed modern then, from tower blocks to telexes, it is now hopelessly out of date. The EU tries to standardise and regulate rather than encourage diversity and innovation. It is an analogue union in a digital age.

 

The EU is built to keep power and control with the elites rather than the people. Even though we are outside the euro we are still subject to an unelected EU commission which is generating new laws every day and an unaccountable European Court in Luxembourg which is extending its reach every week, increasingly using the Charter of Fundamental Rights which in many ways gives the EU more power and reach than ever before. This growing EU bureaucracy holds us back in every area. EU rules dictate everything from the maximum size of containers in which olive oil may be sold (five litres) to the distance houses have to be from heathland to prevent cats chasing birds (five kilometres).

 

Individually these rules may be comical. Collectively, and there are tens of thousands of them, they are inimical to creativity, growth and progress. Rules like the EU clinical trials directive have slowed down the creation of new drugs to cure terrible diseases and ECJ judgements on data protection issues hobble the growth of internet companies. As a minister I’ve seen hundreds of new EU rules cross my desk, none of which were requested by the UK Parliament, none of which I or any other British politician could alter in any way and none of which made us freer, richer or fairer.

It is hard to overstate the degree to which the EU is a constraint on ministers’ ability to do the things they were elected to do, or to use their judgment about the right course of action for the people of this country. I have long had concerns about our membership of the EU but the experience of Government has only deepened my conviction that we need change. Every single day, every single minister is told: ‘Yes Minister, I understand, but I’m afraid that’s against EU rules’. I know it. My colleagues in government know it. And the British people ought to know it too: your government is not, ultimately, in control in hundreds of areas that matter.

 

But by leaving the EU we can take control. Indeed we can show the rest of Europe the way to flourish. Instead of grumbling and complaining about the things we can’t change and growing resentful and bitter, we can shape an optimistic, forward-looking and genuinely internationalist alternative to the path the EU is going down. We can show leadership. Like the Americans who declared their independence and never looked back, we can become an exemplar of what an inclusive, open and innovative democracy can achieve.

 

We can take back the billions we give to the EU, the money which is squandered on grand parliamentary buildings and bureaucratic follies, and invest it in science and technology, schools and apprenticeships. We can get rid of the regulations which big business uses to crush competition and instead support new start-up businesses and creative talent. We can forge trade deals and partnerships with nations across the globe, helping developing countries to grow and benefiting from faster and better access to new markets.

 

We are the world’s fifth largest economy, with the best armed forces of any nation, more Nobel Prizes than any European country and more world-leading universities than any European country. Our economy is more dynamic than the Eurozone, we have the most attractive capital city on the globe, the greatest “soft power” and global influence of any state and a leadership role in NATO and the UN. Are we really too small, too weak and too powerless to make a success of self-rule? On the contrary, the reason the EU’s bureaucrats oppose us leaving is they fear that our success outside will only underline the scale of their failure.

 

This chance may never come again in our lifetimes, which is why I will be true to my principles and take the opportunity this referendum provides to leave an EU mired in the past and embrace a better future.

Dave: spinning out of control.

Who is Cameron’s spin-meister these days? I have lost touch since the Wickford wide-boy became a guest of HMP. Whoever he (or she) might be is doing a lousy job.

 

Dave’s presentation of his EU ‘negotiations’ was a train-crash. He was absent from the debate. He was widely mocked. One Red Top headline was ‘Who do you think EU  are kidding, Mr Cameron?’ It came across, as the Bard said, as ‘a thing of sound and fury, signifying nothing’. It simply confirmed the widespread assumption right from the beginning that  these so-called negotiations were nothing more than a snow job.

 

It is becoming more evident that the footling ‘concessions’  which Brussels has condescended to grant to put in Dave’s begging bowl will simply be brushed off as time goes on. Post-referendum, we will notice nothing different.

 

This came immediately after Cameron, for some unaccountable reason, rushed into print, thundering in the Sunday Times with both the headline story and a personal article about ‘discrimination’ against blacks in university admissions practices.

 

Given the left-leaning libertarian proclivities of our centres of learning, it is more likely to be the other way round.

 

Whoever drafted this stuff deserves an early bath. Its fatal fault was simply that it was wrong. The spinner didn’t do his basic research.

 

So here’s the reality check.

 

Last year nearly 70% of Africans got 5 good GCSE grades. Whites got 65%, and Caribbeans 60%. Just under 60% of Africans will go on to university, with slightly under 40% for Caribbeans and about 30% for whites. So where’s the discrimination?

 

Then came the fiasco over his scare mongering on Calais refugees, who, he said, would come flooding into Dover on Brexit, not quite mentioning that the control of immigrants in ‘the jungle’  by UK immigration staff turns on  two direct agreements with the French Government and nothing to do with Brussels.

 

And the latest is his new-found crusade for prison reform. But we the people know full well that there are two caveats here. The first is that the very sensible proposals for  a new approach to imprisonment comes  from Michael Gove (perhaps as a consolation for being forced to ditch his human rights reform agenda, leaving the ECHR free to stop the UK deporting terrorists, which may come as news to many as there has been no clear announcement to this effect).

 

The second is that the shambles that the Prison Service has become is of Cameron’s own making, or rather of his disaster-on-legs, Chris Grayling. He it was who, not content with banning books in prisons, cutting legal aid, charging for courts time, and interfering with the reports of the Chief Inspector of Prisons, slashed the prisons budget by a sum not unadjacent to £900 million, reduced staffing levels by about 30% when the prison population was growing.

 

As with Blair, Cameron seems to believe that he must pontificate on every issue instead of leaving things to his Ministers. The outcome is over-exposure and a bored public.

 

As a former spin-doctor himself, Cameron of all people should have grasped this.

 

 

 

'Twas a famous victory .....for Dave!

Lyndon B Johnson might have called it ‘not worth a pitcher of warm spit’. Certainly the quasi-deal that Cameron appears to have negotiated with Brussels nomenklatura has not been greeted with even a modicum of enthusiasm. 

 

 

It is not difficult to imagine the ‘negotiations’ being not a gritty struggle by Cameron to get a deal that he can sell to the British voter, but a comfortable chat after a good lunch on the general theme of ‘What can we give Dave to stitch up his proles just like Harold Wilson did the first time around?’

 

The package contains four main ingredients.

 

There will be a four-year partial ban on migrants’ access to benefits. A big yawn for this; the fact is that the public is not particularly bothered. They know that emigrants come here to work, not to claim benefits, and a very small proportion actually does so. There will also be a bit of casting pearls before swine with a partial ban on overseas remittances of child benefit

 

The real problem here is the absurd working tax credit. This has been described by no less than Cameron’s former guru, Steve Hilton,  as ‘economic, political, social, moral madness’. In effect, the Government tops up low pay; it is a subsidy that enables employers to continue to pay below a living wage. Osborne wanted to abolish migrants’ entitlement, but chickened out under a bit of back-bench pressure from MPs who clearly do not have the slightest understanding of WTC or its malign effects.

 

And so to immigration. This is one of the really key issues and the source of a large part of British antagonism towards Brussels.

 

The UK will get new powers to prevent suspected terrorist and criminals coming to the UK, and to prevent ‘sham marriages’. Many people may be surprised that the UK does not have these powers right now; after all, control of your own borders is an essential part of national sovereignty.

 

On that key issue. Brussels concedes that Britain is not committed to ’ever closer union’. As if we ever were! Another ‘concession’ is the  ‘red card’ that will allow the to block unwanted EU legislation. The snag is that this will only kick-in if we have 14 other supports. Fat chance!

 

Then there’s the euro. Brussels will protect the £ by recognising that the EU has more than one currency, and that sterling cannot be used to prop-up the euro. Matters affecting all members will not be capable of discussion by euro members separately. Now, there’s chutzpah for you!

 

That’s about it. The revolution is not coming, so put away your pitchforks.

 

 

 

Jihadi strategy is working,,,,,,,,,

Whatever the Masters of the Universe would have us believe, there is a very long term jihadi strategy, and it’s working.

 

It is an arguable hypothesis that jihadism, in the sense of a holy war waged against unbelievers as part of a religious duty, saw its genesis in the fall of the Shah of Iran, and attacks against the West have been planned ever since by various terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda.

 

In this context, to think that 9/11 was a one-off attack designed to give the Great Satan a bloody nose in naïve. It was a deliberate provocation to massive US retaliation as part of an overall strategy to draw the US into unwinnable conflicts in the Muslim world and thus unite Islam in a holy war against western civilisation.

 

It worked perfectly (it is said that Bush actually considered the nuclear option). The target was Iraq despite the fact that 9/11 was nothing to do with Saddam. So Gulf 2 was launched with appalling results that are the main cause of increasingly aggressive terrorism today. In  the lead-up, I was working in the Cabinet Office in Jamaica. A Jamaican colleague told me that it was beyond belief that the US and the UK. Would put themselves in the cross hairs of Arab terrorism’. I told him that in my view this was all bluff; the West would not be so stupid as to destabilise the only non-Islamic, secular, country in the region, one which was kept in order; albeit by a brutal dictator.

 

So jihad sucked the West into a bloody war that continues to this day, except we now have the new menace of Isil which trades in a barbarity not seen before.

 

Then jihad tempted us into Afghanistan by letting it be known that Al Qaeda had its main operational base there.

 

Once again, the West swallowed the bait. Al Qaeda decamped to Yemen and other dusty hell-holes within three weeks. The ‘allies’ i.e. the Americans and British stayed for another 14 years. Quite why has never been explained. A brief reading of history, as in ‘The Great Game’, would have shown the impossibility of waging war in Afghanistan. And the Russians, with their much more recent experience, could have told us that.

 

The guiding principle when contemplating military action is ‘ What vital British interests are at stake?’ We have yet to be told.

 

Next was the ‘Arab spring’ which was heralded in the West as the downfall of the dictators. That was not going to happen. In Egypt the dominant power has always been the military, and there was no way they would allow a revolutionary government led by the Muslim Brotherhood to loosen their grip. The Saudis quickly snuffed out any democratic leanings in Bahrein. The overthrow of Gaddafi, aided and abetted by the West, had the same effect as with the case of Saddam. There is now a totally dysfunctional state which has become a haven for Isis, which is now signalling that it will move their centre of operations to Sirte, which they already control if Syria gets too hot.

 

And so to Syria.

 

It was the received wisdom at the time that Assad would only last a few weeks. Wrong again. It would have happened if the West had pulled the rug from under him quickly, but the Obama doctrine of ‘no foreign entanglements’ ruled this out. Thus we intervened when we should not, and funked it when we should.

 

To add to this woeful state of affairs, Western intelligence completely misread Isil. We were led to believe that it was no existential threat to us because its sole interest was in establishing a medieval caliphate in parts of Syria, Iraq and Kurdistan with strict Islamic law as prescribed by their primitive interpretation of the Quran.

 

We are now clear as to how wrong this was. Isil has supplanted Al Qaeda as the spearhead of jihad against the West. AQ is a spent force, at least for the moment.

 

Terrorism by a group that is suicidal is a frightening prospect. Fear of death is an essential characteristic of being human. How to cope with those who seem to be semi-detached human beings? Modern societies are incredibly vulnerable. A single SAM fired at Heathrow would close it for days. One aimed at the ATC tower would be even more serious. It would be relatively easy to sabotage water and electricity supplies. Ricin in a rush-hour tube station scarcely bears thinking about.

 

The strategy must be two-fold. Isil must be destroyed in situ. The objective should be not victory but extermination, and if this means using force ‘with extreme prejudice’, as the Americans say, then so be it.

 

And every measure, no matter how offensive to so-called human rights,  must be taken to prevent Isil terrorists from infiltrating the West.

 

Which brings us to the issue of the hour; Muslim refugees. The EU will continue its faffing-about, so no solution there is to be expected.

 

Simple logic and the instinct of self-preservation should tell us how many Muslim refugees should be accepted into Europe and the US.      

 

None!       

 

If, as we are led to believe, 2 million have already arrived, it is a reasonable certainty that this number will contain a number of jihadi terrorists: 2000 might be a conservative estimate. It is said that the IRA had only about 300 ‘active’ at any given time. They killed over 3000 people and maimed many more in gun and bomb attacks over a period of over 30 years.

 

But they were not suicide bombers or beheaders or believers in paradise.

 

It takes little imagination to grasp the mayhem ISIL fanatics could wreak throughout Europe, perhaps over decades.

 

Just how strong is our will to suppress the bleeding hearts? In WW2, there were two ‘defence of the realm’ measures that might be worth reviving; ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy’, and ‘spreading alarm and despondency’.

 

The one reasonable certainty is that the situation will get worse before it gets better, given the limp-wristed leadership in most of the West.

 

 

Brexit and the Wall Street mob................

 

Almost coincidentally with the ‘Brexit’ campaign getting its act together (sort of; we have two competing sets of ‘Outers’) it has had an extraordinary piece of good luck which could be worth a swathe of ‘out’ votes.

 

The ‘In’ crowd is getting a large donation from Goldman Sachs.

 

First up, the British electorate does not take kindly to foreigners sticking their noses into UK politics. Especially something a sensitive and contested as Britain’s future in the EU. Obama has consistently failed to understand this. His various strictures about ‘Britain must stay’ have not gone down at all well.

 

We now have an enormously wealthy New York bank, Goldman Sachs, grub-staking the ‘In-crowd’. And a major part of the Out case is that the ‘Ins’ represent  only the interests of large corporations, banks, financiers of all stripes, and tax-dodgers.

 

And it gets better.

 

Golden Sacks has more form than a Derby winner.

 

It is perhaps most widely notorious for its role in the Greek debt crisis that brought the country to the edge of bankruptcy and almost did for the Euro. It helped the Greek government cover up the true state of its finances for 11 years through a raft of derivatives deals so that it could qualify for Euro membership. When the bubble burst Greece was on the verge of bankruptcy three times between 2010 and 2011.

 

The General Manager of the Debt Management Agency was ex-G-S. No surprise there, then; when it comes to revolving doors, G-S is the past-master.

 

Distinguished alumni include Mario Monti, the former Italian Prime Minister;  Omar Issing formerly of the Bundesbank and the European Bank; boss of the ECB, Mario Draghi; Antonio Borges,  head of the European Department of the EMF. Not forgetting Hank Paulson, the man who pulled the plug on Lehman Brothers, a major competitor of G-S, when he was Secretary to the US Treasury. He was later followed by Larry Summers.

 

Closer to home, our very own Mark Carney was with G-S for13 years.

 

The ducking and diving by ‘the Great Vampire Squid’ is difficult to grasp in its immense extent.

 

At the beginning of the ‘crunch’ in 2007, it made $4 billion betting on the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market. It made a profit of $350 million trading in funds deposited by the Libyan Investment Authority whilst managing to lose 98% of the $1.3 billion Libya had handed over. It is alleged to have taken part in insider-trading over a long period, maybe 1986 to 2012. It was accused of manipulating commodity prices including aluminium and oil futures, and of taking kick-backs relating to IPOs. In 2010 it coughed up $550 million to settle securities fraud charges; a Vice President was  found guilty on 6 out of 7 counts. It also settled charges of ‘predatory’ mortgage dealing by paying $60 million to the Massachusetts  state government.

 

But it was not all bad. In one year it reduced its tax liability from $6 billion to $14 million but then it does have 28 offshore ‘tax-efficient vehicles, 15 of them in the Cayman Islands.                                         

                           

Now we have JP Morgan (consultant: T Blair), Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley mulling over large donations to the ‘In’ crowd.

 

The strategy of the ‘in crowd appears to be to appeal almost solely to our cupidity; how much is membership worth to us? The big noise for the ‘In’ campaign is Sir Michael Rose, the less-than-impressive former boss of M&S. Today he tells us that we pay into the Brussels coffers £350 per annum per head, and we get back £3,500. Yeah, right. So where’s my cheque, Michael?

 

What bothers the great British public more than the cash nexus is that the Grand Design that they were conned into in the 1970s became the Great Illusion and is now the Great Delusion. Brussels is seen as an incubus that is obsessed with trifles such as vacuum cleaners, light bulbs, cucumber shapes and quotas for anglers. The immigration crisis has shown that it is totally incapable of handling important supra-national issues and is thus purposeless.

 

Nigel Farage should be doing hand-stands!

                                       

Gunslingers!

There is one American characteristic that baffles the British probably more than  any other. The obsession with firearms is inexplicable; many British would regard it as infantile, a cowboy fantasy, the belief that if you are packing a gun somehow you become Superman when the figures show that you are more likely to become dead.

 

There reckoned to be 300 million firearms in the US, one each for almost the whole population (nobody is really sure because there must be a large number of  ‘illegal’ guns). American heroes appear to consist heavily of gunslingers real and fictional; Wyatt Earp, Butch Cassidy, Dirty Harry, Jesse James; the list goes on.

The gun lobby insists that the Second Amendment sanctifies gun-ownership without let or hindrance. This reads:                                    

"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

It is not necessary to be a lawyer to understand that the meaning is plain. The right to bear arms relates only to membership of a militia. The rationale is simple to see. The US was just emerging from a Civil War, the War of Independence. It had no standing army so defence was the remit of militias, part-time soldiers who presumably had to supply their own weapons. And law and order was scarcely extant in large parts of America, so it was a ‘given’ that every able bodied man ought to own a gun.

 

But this was the 18^th Century, and it is surely naïve to think that the Founding Fathers would have would have drafted such a measure in the 21st Century.

 

According to District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court held that the Constitution protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defence within the home.

 

This judgment is at odds with the wording of the Second Amendment and is surely perverse.

 

The gun lobby clings to the notion that guns keep you safe. Its propaganda is often virulent. On one day there were no less than 17 posts on Facebook

Last year, there were 353 mass killings and  62 school shootings. There were 12.223 deaths from firearms; this would have been less than 2,000 if the rate had been similar to thee UK, which had 29 firearms-related fatalities

 

But before the British get too self-righteous about ‘gun law’, they might wish to reflect on the stark contrast.

 

Since Tony Blair’s kneejerk reaction to the Dunblane school killings, it has become almost impossible for an ordinary citizen to acquire any sort of firearm, especially a handgun (when the prohibition was brought in, the Essex police confiscated the starting cannon at the  Yacht Club at Burnham-on-Crouch as the barrel length was less than the permitted minimum).

 

There was a time when a boy’s most prized possession was his air-rifle. Not anymore. These need a licence and a minimum age limit of 18. Cross-bows are caught. The humble catapult needs no licence but it is probably categorised by the Bill as an offensive weapon.

 

 

There’s not much left that is not an object of suspicion for the police. Pepper spray? Forget about it. And be careful what you carry in your car. My old builder was cautioned by the police for ‘going equipped with house-breaking implements’. It was his tool-kit.

 

The upshot is that the only people carrying guns are the police and the villains, neither of whom is to be trusted with them.

The US is another country; they do things differently there......

 

No doubt about it; Britain and America exist in an amiable (mostly) state of misunderstanding, especially when it comes to the way we conduct our national affairs..

 

We do things differently. Politics is a rough trade, but at least Congress appears to conduct itself with a measure of outward decorum. How would the average Congressman cope in the bear garden that is the House of Commons? Well- we got quite a good idea of this when the effable George Galloway stitched up the Senate like a kipper in 2005 when it tried to interrogate him over breaches of Iraq oil sanctions . As for Obama at PMQs every Wednesday minus cue-cards and teleprompter, ‘bloodbath’ comes to mind.

 

We are bemused by election campaigning that is virtually continuous. We get fed up with it after 6 weeks. For Americans it seems interminable. And  there is still nearly a year to go before the new POTUS takes office.

 

Yes, it’s obvious that Hillary is a shoo-in to continue the long US tradition of dynasties, as if compensating for ditching George III all those years before. After all, if you don’t like her principles she has others. There is speculation that, based on recent polls, Bernie Sanders will give her a run for her plentiful money.

 

The real entertainment is watching the Republicans eat themselves.

 

The star of this grisly farce is, of course, The Donald. In the UK, Trump would have a problem getting himself elected unopposed for the Parish Council, but over there he has moved from being pure comedy to the frightening prospect of being the RP candidate.

 

At least his  policies are simple to understand; ban it, bomb it or lock it up!

 

It may be a mad world, my masters, but a Presidential contest between a buffoon and a superannuated socialist is unthinkable. Isn’t it?

 

American politics is nastier than British, especially when it comes to media comment. The bias and partiality of American cable news-networks would not be permitted in Britain, Adherence to impartiality is a requirement for TV news, even if the BBC is unaware of this.

 

A hugely popular radio commentator is Rush Limbaugh. Here are some of his gems:

‘Steinbrenner was a “Cracker Who Made African-Americans Millionaires”.

Obama & Oprah are only successful because they’re black

Gov. Paterson is a “Massa” and  Obama “Uppity”

And here’s one from Glenn Beck:

 "I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out. Is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus -- band -- Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, 'Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore,' and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, 'Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death.'

 

But surely the ultimate in outrageous bad taste is one Anne Coulter. These are some of her contributions to the gaiety of the nation:

 

I have never seen people enjoying their husband's deaths so much." -on 9/11 widows who have been critical of the Bush administration
"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee. That's just a joke, for you in the media."
"Liberals love America like O.J. loved Nicole."
"There are a lot of bad republicans; there are no good democrats."
We need to execute people like (John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals."
"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots."
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."
"Liberals are stalwart defenders of civil liberties -- provided we're only talking about criminals."

 

But here was an insult too far:

 

‘How many f*****g Jews do these people think there are in America?’

 

In Britain, these three would be assisting Inspector Knacker with his enquiries.

But the most interesting personality to emerge in the Republican campaign is Namrata Nikki Randhawa aka Nikki Haley, the two-term Governor of South Carolina. She is of a family of Sikh immigrants who made good in America, big-time. Father is an academic, but the family business is worth millions; a classic American success story.

 

She is being trailed as a possible Vice Presidential candidate, and her prospects improved considerably when she replied to Obamas State of the Nation valediction (in the course of which she skewered Trust with ‘There’s an important lesson in this. In many parts of society today, whether in popular culture, academia, the media, or politics, there’s a tendency to falsely equate noise with results. Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That is just not true. Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume. When the sound is quieter, you can actually hear what someone else is saying. And that can make a world of difference’

 

She is also extremely attractive, something that can’t be said about the other hopefuls.

 

The dream ticket for the Republicans would surely be Rubio and Nikki Haley.

 

An Hispanic POTUS and Sikh Vice? Alas, too good to be true!