DENVERSTROPE

Happy New Year - Lunatics

2011-01-01T06:00:00.000Z

Happy New Year.

God help us all this year because I'm not totally convinced we're all going to make it.

That's just the way it is.

New Labour Leader: Tory Reaction

2010-09-25T19:12:00.005+01:00

Just found a Tory circular in my email putatively from Baroness Warsi. Here's the important bit (my italics):

On behalf of all of us in the Conservative Party, I congratulate Ed Miliband on his election as Leader of the Labour Party.

He will have many challenges ahead in these next few days, but if he wants to be taken seriously, the first thing he's got to do is own up to his role in creating the mess that Britain is in and tell us what he'd do to fix it.

From advising Gordon Brown in the Treasury in the 90s, to serving in his Cabinet in the 2000s, he must recognise his central role in creating the financial mess we're all paying for.

For the past five months, all we've heard from Labour is knee jerk opposition to our plans to tackle the deficit. Now is the time for Mr Miliband to tell us what he'd do instead. He promised us a Labour spending plan before the spending review, now we'd all like to see it.

The new Labour leader now has a clear choice. He can either serve the national interest by joining with us and the Liberal Democrats and set out how he would cut the deficit, or he can stand on the sidelines and refuse to engage with the biggest challenge facing Britain in decades.

The fact that Ed Miliband owes his position to the votes of the unions does not bode well. At the moment this looks like a great leap backwards for the Labour Party.

Spot on. Miliband Minor, the one who sounds like he's underwater when he talks, can't be permitted to wriggle his party out of its responsibility for the massive economic, social and foreign policy calamities its previous leadership and cabinet wrought on this country. Miliband Minor must also be brought to book the instant he caves in to his militant socialist union backers.

Personally, I expect the Coalition to treat this latest Labour clown with the contempt he so richly deserves. I know I will.

The Coalition Song

2010-09-23T02:11:00.001+01:00

After minister of the Crown for Business, the overloading-Cable's electrifying all out, carpet-bombing, nonsensical assault on the fundamental process of wealth creation, the basic tenets of civilised capitalism and, amusingly, all business generally, at the LibDum conference, I was just wondering what should be David Cameron's ironic song of the month. I've come up with this one:

Perhaps others can think of a better one. For myself, the only electricity currently flowing from this unhappy political arrangement is the stuff from the power stations that the lefty enviro-loon Chris Huhne hasn't closed down (yet) and will never replace anyway once he does. Our coalition-compromise lunatic Energy minister has stated categorically that he will not allow new power stations to be built, not just nuclear ones but any type as far as I can see, until George Osborne gives in to his tax reform demands. The tax reforms are actually a pretty good idea if taken in total theoretical isolation. But the fact that mad-Huhne and his insane-professor mentor, Cable, are demanding these things from their own government, and that hatstand Huhne is prepared to hold the entire nation to energy ransom to get his way, tells me two things:

1) This coalition is one major reality check away from welcome collapse.
2) Cameron better realise that his friends are very definitely electric. They switch their loyalty on and off at the drop of a headline.

These dudes have strayed way off the reservation territory the Tory-LibDum treaty had so fairly mapped-out for them.

Interesting times are back. And Dave, hey mate: 'friends' are always electric, especially political ones.

A Proper Christian Attitude

2010-09-11T03:55:00.000+01:00

No book-burner I. In my ideal world, we turn our detractors from backwardness to comfort through a message that I believe should come with the strength of the beauty that is Christian (Catholic) largesse (sanctified but absolute free will nonetheless).

There's certainly no need for any extra antagonism. Everyone already knows where there is a clash so there is certainly no need for a chap in Florida who believes he has "found God" to make any sort of a fuss. He must not.

Anyway, that's all I really have to say about that.

Nice sort of to see you all again.

See? Christianity, if properly engaged with, is simply a very good thing. I challenge you or anyone else to prove otherwise.

The Amusing Truth About Education

2010-08-08T03:54:00.002+01:00

It's probably worth enjoying this again today because the loonies are no longer in charge of the asylum, apparently - since the election.

If the Goves of this world really can't create a way of honestly educating this nation's young then we really are finished.

As this bit of classic comedy demonstrates, all Gove needs to do is, to put it simply, do it! What "it" is is entirely up to him.

But whether the prime minister, or anyone else for that matter, likes it or not, education is the real future of this country - and decontaminating it from years of disastrous socialist dogma must be the first port of call.

If you disagree, then you are [probably] a socialist and you either are just being typically typecast: dull, hysterical and/or dishonest. Or you're just trying to mix things up abit. Pray for you that it's not the latter, because I can get very cranky (!)

Labour Leadership Election? A Futile Displacement Acitivity

2010-08-06T14:44:00.004+01:00

Jeff Randall typically has come up with the best opinion piece so far about the total dearth of quality, both in terms of its tainted, lightweight candidates and its inability to interest the country, in the current Labour leadership election sham.

So far, observing the battle for Labour's captaincy has been like watching a 0-0 draw between reserve sides in a Sunday pub league. Lots of huffing and puffing, but no goals, little excitement, and a gloomy acceptance among supporters that it really doesn't matter who wins, because the players are simply not good enough, and no amount of post-match lagers can change that.

Of course, Randall soon homes in like a well-targeted cruise missile on the real weakness underpinning the current incarnation of the parliamentary Labour party foundations and leadership: rank, institutional, barefaced, epic hypocrisy. Only, it's not just Dianne Abbott's hypocrisy he rightly lambasts (as I did here a while back) but the hypocrisy of that entire rotten political organisation. But what he does to the Milibands is priceless. Of Mili Major (Dave), before writing him off: "Offer him a platitude and he will contrive a soundbite."

For Mili Minor (Ed): he manages to muster only a cursory put down for the ugly one with a voice like a defective waste pipe, as if he just isn't worth it (he isn't):

This week, he said that he wanted Labour to become "the party of small business". Too late – Mr Brown already tried that. He began with lots of big businesses and turned many into small ones.

Boom! Two targets with one bomb.

The bottom line, of course, is that everyone has just had a complete bellyful of the whole package: the lying, the spin, the waste, the arrogance, the pocket-lining, the risible incompetence at every level and, it almost goes without saying, the huge levels of hypocrisy that have outraged so many for so long but who have only recently had the chance to show their displeasure. That gulf, between the Labour leadership's public pronouncements and private behaviour, grew so fast under Blair that the leader of the people's party was somehow able to leave office a millionaire many times over. But even all that is trumped by people's contempt for Labour's diabolical economic record in government (again):

Labour's problem is that none of the candidates can accept the real reason for the party's abysmal performance at the ballot box. As research by Demos, the think tank, revealed this week, the public is sick of borrow, tax and waste. The days of bribing voters with their own devalued money are over.

Let's hope "the public" really is that sick of it and has seen through the oldest Labour ruse of all (bribing voters with their own money). And let's hope public memories are a bit longer this time. My view is that this leadership campaign signals the death knell for Labour, for the reason implied in Randall's opening: it is now a party of alley cats, fat cats and pussy cats led by a bunch of common or garden careerist donkeys.

That lack of real new leadership will kill it.

Blog Life

2010-08-05T01:38:00.000+01:00

My impression, having been 'blogging' for over a year now, is that this activity almost necessarily follows the patterns of real life, whatever they are. Unless, of course, you are a 'professional' blogger, a strange breed, like the redtop Guido or the broadshite - I mean 'broadsheet', (of course) - Dale. They are professionals - they do it, very professionally, for money.

The sad thing is that for amateur bloggers, like me, who choose to write about the central weighty issues of the day, according to their proclivities and their lights, naturally, (and of which they are fully aware and to which they are relatively well-adjusted) - real life is just so time-consuming.

Being busy is clearly the scurge of amateur (political) bloggers.

Anyway, point is I am quite busy just now in real life. But that does not mean I've stopped bloggin, in spite of the fact I recently managed (typically for me) to upset some of the nicest Scottish nationalists anywhere on the internet, and blew any semblance of credibility I might have had out of the water in the process.

I am so very, very sad about that. Of course.

Update about how sad I am and how you can deal with my sadness to follow, quite soon.. Watch this space!

Rhodesia

2010-08-01T00:24:00.003+01:00

I don't know if it lowers yer blog stock price if you start embedding YouTube music video uploads to it a bit too often for comfort, but it seems to me that if your blog stock price (BSP) is already in negative territory, it really doesn't matter. You can see from my profile description what I'm mainly up to on this blog - the democratic assassination of that menace to British and world politics that is the Labour party, by any means and with extreme prejudice. But I do have other interests.

One of them is music, and rather odd music at that. I, for instance, still hark back to the late-70s/early 80s less commercial bands who disappeared without trace pretty fast but had a far bigger influence on serious modern music - and on society generally - that anyone cares to mention, especially if they're in the industry trying to market the next vacuous girl/boy "band". (I put the word "band" in inverted commas because, even during those dark days of Duran Duran, "bands" were people with some kind of instrumental, musical ability and who somehow joined together on that basis. The "Beatle Model", you might call it, rather than the "Take That" mutation).

Speaking of which, here's one of those weird 70s "bands": Japan. Now I know that its lead singer thought that his musical outflow smelt far better than his peers' (hence the flowery meaningless crap he's came up with since he broke up the band), but there was some stuff in the early days that really was challenging.

I've chosen one such example for this post, although I could have chosen a number of equally challenging others. How they're challenging is a damn good question. Politically, naturally, they are challenging. And they duly challenged and intrigued me in formative years, which is probably why I spout in this way in this place through this easy electronic mass medium now. But that music, among many other forms, was the start of my inspiration. (Learning to cope with real, working life was the rest of it!)

My only request is this: if anyone has the slightest idea what these lyrics actually mean I'd love to hear from you. It sounds so meaningful, but it could be a load of sh...

Anyway, thanks for your input in anticipation of it.

PS: This is even more fantastic, and basically incomprehensible. Maybe you can work it out, because I can't:

It's a warning to all bloggers, that's what it is...

Bloggers Are Free

2010-07-31T00:21:00.001+01:00

You can agree or disagree with everything that irritates you all you want, and even believe that what you're spouting in response, according to your own outlook on your own, discrete blog, might even be true. But, ultimately, I really do not care about that. Why should I?

No matter what almost-sizable political movement you think you belong to, in the end there's just you - and that's it.

It matters not how popular you are, on or offline. What matters is that you have a view and that you are loyal to it. In the end, though, no matter how much you think you believe in something political, even to the point of becoming a useful activist, you must remain unaligned in order to keep your personal, private integrity intact. Never be tainted: Be free! Or be compromised.

Anyway, that's why this Levellers toon is still so wonderful to me. It's a protest song that's more about free-thinking than it is about politics. In that sense, it's timeless.

If you don't like it then, you know, we're clearly very different and there's no need for you ever to come back here.

Seems fair enough to me.

PS: And there's more...

Humbling brilliance.

Balls: What A Piece Of Work

2010-07-29T22:12:00.002+01:00

Just a short note to record my astonishment at the hypocrisy and arrogance not just of Labour but of a particularly bad Labourist about the roots of the Coalition on that Robinson thing on telly just now. I had thought, foolishly, that Ed Balls was incapable of getting any worse. I was, of course, wrong. Hearing him whine about Labour's negotiations with the Lib Dems after the hung parliament is extraordinary.

I think some cognitive malfunction in his mind, combined with some serious weakness in his character, together mean that he simply is incapable of comprehending what it means to be honest. He just lies all the time, effortlessly, and has no awareness whatsoever that his habitually revised narrative of events is just that: lies - and, what's more, is known to be lies by everyone outside his mind who has seen the evidence - and the truth - laid out, crystal clear, before their very eyes. But it doesn't stop him - oh no! - because it's pathological. He talks, for instance, about this idea that Nick Clegg about-faced on cuts just for leverage in the negotiation process. Not so (read more about that in the Speccy online here). It was a bare-faced lie, on camera, for the film - but Balls didn't care because he doesn't understand what he did. Maybe we should pity him, he's that bad. (Nah.)

Anyway, I could go on but this is, thankfully, all cold water under Westminster bridge. The right - the only - outcome for Britain came to pass, so none of it really matters to anyone other than various breeds of historian and fading BBC journalists like Robinson any more.

Apart from Balls, that is. He wants to a party leader, but his party (no doubt with him - along with Straw and the other usual suspects - the ringleaders) are about to renege genuinely on a manifesto promise for the sake of political expediency with the AV/constituency restructuring Bill. That's genuine, pathetic, grubby opportunism and it's also why I and other people who feel, for the current incarnation of the Labour party, nothing but utter contempt, would very much like to see Balls win. It would be a great day for the nation (the death of Labour).

But remember, always, there was at least one joyous ending to those strange days of uncertainty back in May: forget Balls because his rather more lunatic mentor, Gordon Brown, was gone, gone, gone! at the end of it all. And the nation breathed a heavy, collective sigh of relief because of it.

Now that's what I call "victory". So, what the hell: good luck to the Coalition deal that fashioned that happy outcome, Tory and Lib Dem members both. Hats off to the nationalists, too (a party of which I happily and tactically voted for).

And why not?

New Word: "Turcophile"

2010-07-27T11:36:00.002+01:00

I rather like Dan Hannan's latest post about how shockingly bad the treatment of Turkey has been - and still is - by the EU (in reality, when it comes to Turkey, the semi-racist France and the fully racist Germany). This probably telegraphs my ignorance, but he also taught me a new word: "Turcophile". I like this word and I'm going to use it in polite conversation from now on. I also like the concept it denotes: admiration for Turkey and Turkish people. And, it seems, I'm not the only one. David Cameron is a Turcophile too. But that was always to be expected, says Hannan, for he is a hard line traditionalist Tory at heart and always has been. Yet there is a lot more to his Turcophilia (?) than mere nostalgia and tradition, and a lot more at stake should the EU (Germany) be permitted to ostracise Turkey any longer. As Hannan says:

I have argued before that David Cameron is a remarkably traditional Tory, and his attitude to Turkey is as traditional as they come. His – my – party has been Turcophile since Derby’s leadership a century and a half ago. (So, come to that, has The Daily Telegraph, which broke with Gladstone over his anti-Ottoman policy in 1877, and has been Tory ever since.) Cameron’s reasons for backing Ankara’s EU membership bid are solidly Conservative: Turkey guarded Europe’s flank against the Bolshevists for three generations, and may one day be called on to do the same against the jihadis. In the circumstances, the PM believes, Turks are being treated ungratefully by their allies.

To me, the "guardians of the flank against the jihadis" argument for halting Turkey's shabby treatment by German politicians in particular is bullet proof. But what about EU membership? Well, it seems to me that the EU is slightly worse at foreign policy than the last Labour government - utterly appalling in other words. Who'd want to be associated with an organisation that appears to be quite adept at upsetting all of the people all of the time while simultaneously being completely unable actually to do anything, anywhere, ever. Furthermore, if you accept the real motives behind the EU's passive-aggressive bureaucratic obstructionism over Turkish membership are ones of national self-interest on the parts of the usual suspects, then you realise that this translates as outright hostility in terms of international relations, whether it comes via Brussels or not. Why on earth would Turkey want to be a part of any of that? (Why on earth do we, for heaven's sake!).

As Hannan says:

For what it’s worth, if I were Turkish, I would be against EU membership. Turkey is a dynamic country with – in marked contrast to the EU – a young population. The last thing it needs is the 48-hour week, the Common Agricultural Policy, the euro and the rest of the apparatus of Brussels corporatism. Why tie yourself to a shrinking part of the world economy; when you have teeming new markets to your east? Why submit to rule by people who barely trouble to disguise their contempt for you?

Good question. He answers it, too.

There is a difference, though, between choosing not to join and being told that you’re not good enough to join. Turks are as entitled to their pride as any other people. The way they have been messed around can hardly fail to make them despise the EU. Which, in the broader sweep of history, is likely to hurt the EU more than it does Turkey.

Now, you know as well as I do that Hannan is a smart dude. He's not just talking about Turkey, is he? (Or was that obvious?) He's talking about us, too. The reason why up to 70% of the UK's adult population if not despises then mistrusts the EU is because they feel the cold blast of its contempt for their beliefs, traditions, sense of independence, history, national identity and sovereignty every day. That's why I'm pretty certain Hannan is on to something here, and so is Cameron. By championing Turkey, and wearing his Turcophile tendencies on his sleeve, he can appeal to people's in-built Euroscepticism at home, temper the coaltion's Europhiliac tendencies and highlight Brussel's in-built Angloscepticism. All at a single stroke.

If this is true then it's a foreign policy stroke of genius. Or maybe it just seems that way after years of Labour verbal incontinence on just about any international relations topic you care to think of, and total incompetence in actually doing anything, or total dishonesty and betrayal in the case of the EU.

Maybe, for a change, this new Turcophilia is just the right policy. How refreshing.

I think I'll have a large donar for lunch.

I Write Like...

2010-07-26T11:18:00.001+01:00

While mucking around with the internet yesterday, I stumbled on this little engine. It's called "I Write Like..." and it claims to be able to use a sample of your own work and, by the magic of modern electronics, analyse it and then say whether your style is similar to a famous author - or not, presumably: who you "write like" in other words.

Apparently, after extensive testing with different blog posts, I write like H.P. Lovecraft. Good grief!

I'd never really understood exactly what people meant when they described this blog as a horror story. I thought they were just being rude. But thanks to "I Write Like..." dot com, I now know it's because I write like the father of the grizzly modern horror genre. So there you go.

If you're a blogger or just curious about your general writing style, then give it a try. You might find you're (yet) another H.P. Lovecraft. Or possibly even worse.

The Final Delusion

2010-07-25T01:56:00.000+01:00

My utter and entirely justified contempt for Gordon Brown is well-documented on this blog. But even he's managed to surpass himself in terms of delusion and sanctimonious bullshit flammery in his post-prime ministerial speech to a bunch of corrupt socialist African 'leaders' (dictators) in Kampala yesterday.
But hey, that's just my view of the utter Brown catastrophe. Here's a bit of what he said. I think the entire speech, taken as watertight evidence of a diseased mind, conclusively demonsrates that he is, at heart, a quasi-totalitarian egoist with messianic tendencies. But, naturally, you must make-up your own mind:

All of our lives are connected: we can all impact for good or ill on the lives of people we have never met. And yet we don’t currently share a common society or effective global institutions that allow us to treat strangers as neighbours or give life to our feelings of fellowship, solidarity, compassion and care.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. I believe that it is possible for people, acting together, to build a global society, and design the institutions that would best serve its values

OK, Gord, you get on with 'building a global society'. But while you're busy designing the brave new world, the rest of us normal people will be searching for ways to harness individual compassion as a social force, lowering taxes to reward hard work and freeing the education system so that our brightest no longer have to feel disadvantageded because they aren't part of the anti-excellence Labour average.
I digress. The simple point is that Brown is a well-known, now-talkative lunatic, and Balls should just resign,

RIP The Hurricane

2010-07-25T01:10:00.001+01:00

I suppose as one gets older (mind you, I'm only 38 - for another month or so) you have to get used to burying your dead or, if it's not a close relative you're putting in the ground, mourning the passing of a true hero.

Alex Higgins was never one of my personal heroes, but he was certainly one of the true sporting greats that defined my childhood. Snooker, in the early 80s, was strangely massive to all of us. Higgins, largely because of his unthinkable '82 win in the age of the Steve Davis machine, was one of the reasons why.

RIP Alex Higgins.

Why The CPS Is, Unfortunately, Wrong

2010-07-23T09:22:00.004+01:00

Dizzy Thinks has an interesting post this morning on the travesty of justice that is the CPS decision not to prosecute a policeman for causing the death (according to the evidence of two out of three experts) of an innocent, if intoxicated, bystander at the G8 protests a couple of years back. He goes through all the various legal scenarios and outcomes studied and predicted over 16 long months by the strangely unimpressive Keir Starmer and his Crown Prosecution 'Service'. Dizzy's post is pretty comprehensive so I won't go into it in too much detail. Better you read it for yourself here. Suffice to say, he sums up his explanation of the CPS' decision and why he thinks it's the right one as follows:

Think about it for a moment. It would, frankly, be absurd for the Crown to attempt to prosecute someone and then have their own witness testify that their own case wasn't water-tight and that the defendant might in fact be not guilty.

That's why the CPS didn't, wouldn't, and couldn't go ahead with a trial, and screaming "whitewash" or "cover-up" is little more than a jerking knee inspired by those who have prejudged the case and have a committed held view on the officer's guilt already. If this had gone to trial, and the result would've been not guilty, I imagine there would be theories and speculation about Jury nobbling too.

I'm very uncomfortable with these comments for two main reasons - and several minor ones. The main reasons are that, first, no one is shouting 'whitewash' on this blog and it is silly - if not self-defeating - for Dizzy Thinks to characterise everyone who disagrees with the decision not to prosecute the policeman concerned for anything at all after the death of a human being as either Lefties or conspiracy theorists. It's just not true, and suggests a rather unbalanced view on his part, frankly.

Second, the decision itself. To me it was desperately wrong for a reason of principle, namely, that the CPS was not set up to adjudicate in criminal matters. It was set up to organise prosecutions. It's up to a jury in a trial to determine guilt or innocence and advocates to make the case, or defend the defendant, as best they can.

The reason why the CPS is wrong is because the decision should not have been up to the CPS - or Keir Starmer - to decide whether there was a case for the suspect to answer in the first place. No one seems to doubt that there was, even if it were one of common assault, not even the police themselves.

This is just one more instance among so many others that indicate the CPS is basically out of control. Reform seems to me to be the next logical step, so we at least can try to get back to trial by a jury of our peers - and justice - instead of non-trial by evidence review by a glorified quango - or injustice.

Update

I was quite pleased to read Gerald Warner's comment in the Telegraph just now:

If there are “fundamental differences” of medical opinion, as cited by the CPS, surely that is all the more reason to resolve them in a court of law, rather than to kick this life-and-deathquestion into the long grass.

Dizzy can hardly describe Warner as a Lefty or a conspiracy theorist. Warner simply understands what an awful lot of other people do too: it should be up to the courts to decide whether a person is guilty of a crime, not the CPS and certainly not Keir-bloody-Starmer.

It's probably worth adding that Warner's article mainly concerns the probability that the police's image, already quite thoroughly tarnished for a large number of pretty shabby reasons over the past decade, has just taken another hit thanks to Starmer's extremely puzzling decision. Is that really what they wanted, one wonders? Do they even care?

Brown vs Cameron: The Contrast

2010-07-20T22:19:00.003+01:00

There's Dave...

Sky News' Jon Craig has posted an interesting piece on the latest Brown-sighting this evening. After Cameron's highly adroit - even deft - performance in the US, it's becoming pretty clear that, in absolute fact, Britain is far better off, both at home and abroad, now that she is finally being represented by a prime minister that isn't either a) a hopeless attention-seeker obsessed with his own image rather than concerned with the needs of a country he laughably purported to lead or the world that he generally preferred to start wars in, or b) a socially inept weirdo with terrifying delusions of grandeur and a pathological inability to recognise, much less tell, the truth.

Jon Craig writes of the latter's latest noises well-off performance:

So what did Gordon Brown do after his brief appearance in the House of Lords?
(See previous blog.)
Speak in the Commons during the third reading debate on the Finance Bill?
Er, no.
Pop down to Strangers' Bar or the terrace for a few beers with old comrades?
Er, no.
The former Prime Minister, I can reveal, had already invited new Labour MPs elected for the first time on May 6 - about 70 in all - for a chat at 4pm in his grand and spacious new office on the top floor of Portcullis House.
An audience with Gordon.
Aah. So the room was packed, then?
Er, no.
Apparently, so my informant tells me, only about 10 turned up to listen to the former PM.
I'm also told that some of the bright young things turned up hoping to ask him worthy questions about the Alternative Vote referendum and other current topics.
But they were disapppointed to hear him talk at some length - no change there, then - about how the Tories kept trashing his record in power.
Oh dear.
In denial?
That's what some Labour MPs are claiming.

Where's ~~Wally~~ Gordon?

I'm quite surprised to be writing this, but Cameron is actually beginning to look great. Now that could just be because he's normal compared to the two contemptible Labour has-beens this country and the world have been forced to tolerate for over a decade in unequal shares until very recently.

But he did look and sound great today - a real independent force. Having seen some of the clips of his performance with the latest incarnation of the US president, compared to the rather brittle-looking, slightly spiteful-sounding Barack Hussein Obama, he was, well, just great.

Hang-on, I know it's early days, but it is possible Cameron is great - as in an unusually gifted statesman and leader (at least in the making).

One day maybe it'll even become a famous quotation: "Andy Burnham [or whoever], you are no David Cameron! (You're actually a bit like Tony Blair - but not quite as bad as Gordon Thingumyjig)," says someone or other who's fairly famous in politics .

Hmm. Maybe not (yet). But he's clearly better than Blair. And way, way, way better than the unspeakable (and nearly vanished forever anyway) Brown. We might still be in the 'thank God for small mercies' stage of Cameron's premiership, but there can be no denying it: there were one or two glimpses of greatness there today.

What a contrast!

Blair To Blame For Brown

2010-07-18T19:47:00.003+01:00

Quite aside from all his other disastrous decisions, mainly on foreign policy, it seems perfectly fair to me that Blair be blamed for not seeing while he was Prime Minister that Britain wasn't saddled with a successor he himself thought was unfit to govern. This is, according to Andrew Rawnsley in his extraordinarily excoriating assault on virtually the entire Labour administration, the thing for which Blair, ultimately, is most guilty. It's a heck of a read and should be disastrous for all Labour's leadership candidates, tainted as they are with the charge of cowardice, arch and chronic dishonesty and, simply put, self-interested misgovernance. Anyway, here's a taste of something which, if you haven't already read it, is well worth a look:

If Blair thought that Brown was unfit to be prime minister – and there's now lots of evidence that this is precisely what Blair thought – he had an obligation to his party and his country to do something about it. At the very least, he should have, as he could have, ensured that there was a contest for the succession in 2007 rather than allow Brown to be crowned without proper scrutiny. It was one of Blair's most selfish acts and a gross dereliction of duty to swan off to make his millions while leaving his party and country to cope with the consequences of a Brown premiership.

The implication from this is that by the time he had finally given in to the forces of hell unleashed by Brown in the form of Balls, Wheelan et al in 2006, Blair simply didn't give a toss about what happened next. A more damning indictment of the man as Prime Minister is simply inconceivable, even one involving his misleading the House of Commons, the country and the world over WMDs in Iraq. It's actually quite difficult accurately to describe a person like that, whose self-interest and vanity is only trumped by his greed and dishonesty. In some ways if one views it in the light of this unforgivable dereliction of duty, as Rawnsley rightly calls it, Blair ends up as an even worse national leader than Brown, difficult though that might be for some (like me) to swallow.

If you do accept Rawnsley's characterisation of Blair, it is, however, perfectly possible to argue that he was worse than Brown as a man and as a leader. The only difference between the two frauds being, therefore, that Blair was a far better con man than Brown ever could be, which meant that Blair was able to trick the country into believing him and then voting for him. By contrast, Brown was just Brown: paranoid, delusional, vicious, incompetent even in disguising his many falsehoods and, ultimately, a total electoral liability and a catastrophe for the nation.

The impact of these realisations on the Labour leadership campaign as I said should be massive. All the candidates are as discredited as each other for failing to make the decision Blair couldn't be ar*ed to make and stopping Brown once it was crystal clear he was utterly hopeless. As Rawnsley says, quite fairly and quite mildly in truth:

Andy Burnham was one of the nodding dogs who would declare to TV cameras that the cabinet had every confidence in Gordon Brown when the reverse was the case. Ed Balls ran the thuggish Brownite machine and the decade-long insurgency against Tony Blair to put his master in Number 10. Ed Miliband makes pious noises denouncing "factionalism" as if he is a saintly figure who never had anything to do with it. "The emissary from Planet Fuck" – as he was known among Blair's aides during the civil war – was at the heart of the Brown faction.It is a bit tricky for David Miliband. He was one of the senior members of the cabinet who knew Brown was taking them to defeat and failed to act before it was too late.

So they all should be screwed - and rightly so. For all his hypocrisy, Mandelson doesn't really matter because he's not a leadership candidate. So, assuming (and this is a big assumption) the MSM ends its own version of Labourist dishonesty and begins to treat the rest with the contempt they should have coming to them for their pathetic behaviour in propping up Brown, the only untainted candidate in the Labour leadership race is, hilariously, Diane Abbott!

Either way, and this is essentially Rawnsley's conclusion, Labour is truly, deservedly and royally buggered. And in the end, of course, they themselves are the ones who are to blame for it. After all, Blair only gave us Brown because he'd given up, and that's how history will judge him. But the Milibands, Burnham and Balls (and Mandelson) are the ones who propped the disastrous loser up. That was unforgivable - and the country isn't going to forgive them, ever.

Now, thankfully, their past seems finally to be catching up with them. Soon there'll be nowhere left for them to hide any more and no amount of continued lying will save their collective political bacon. If the PLP is stupid enough to elect one of them, (and it's almost certain that it is that stupid) then they should prepare to be out of power for decades, if not forever. Mind you, exactly the same thing will happen if they choose bonkers Abbott.

Catch 22 for the Labourist wreckers - and music to my ears!

Brian Clough: What A Legend

2010-07-17T21:23:00.003+01:00

Just watch this video and realise that not only does English football urgently need a man like Brian Clough, British public life generally does too. A sense of fair play, a respect for authority, a deep understanding of genuine priorities - what's really important (like taking the initiative when someone's being an idiot and stopping them!) - and a healthy contempt for the BBC's po-faced, self-important, self-appointed, misplaced, half-baked didacticism. Best man never to have managed England, obviously, and rightfully regarded by those who knew him or supported football clubs he coached as a legend. Wish I'd been one of them!

Marvellous.

My word he would have made a team out of that bunch of overpaid airheads and losers we sent to South Africa. He makes Don Fabio look like precisely what he is, only a half-decent manager, and John Motson look like precisely what he is: a complete idiot.

Where are this nation's Brian Cloughs, with all that flair, individualism and inner steel, when we so desperately need them!

Hunt Declares War On The BBC

2010-07-16T22:59:00.003+01:00

Not a moment too soon it actually looks like the BBC's cosy world of unaccountability, an appallingly cavalier attitude to income it does not earn but extorts from the general public for whom it has constantly shown nothing but contempt in recent years, and a severe political bias that has penetrated every level of the organisation over several decades, is about to come to an abrupt end. It certainly looks like Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative culture secretary, has actually been listening to people like me (and there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people like me) and has bravely, recognising the urgent necessity, decided to be the one to stand up to and take on the monolithic social, economic and cultural parasite that our national broadcaster, in its current form, has become.

If we are to believe what Hunt has told the Daily Telegraph, then the skids really are finally under the BBC closed shop. Furthermore, if its managers refuse to budge on certain issues, including Hunt's very reasonable proposal that there be a significant reduction in the ridiculous licence tax given the Labour-generated current economic climate, then it could, finally, finally, herald the moment when long-overdue and massive reform comes to the creaking, unfit-for-purpose, throwback-Soviet organisation.

The Telegraph reports Hunt as saying, among other things:

There are huge numbers of things that need to be changed at the BBC. They need to demonstrate the very constrained financial situation we are now in

All the concerns I had in opposition about executive salaries and use of licence fee funds for things many people thought were extraordinary or outrageous - that (next year) will be moment when I express them

Now, I know this won't lead to the kind of breaking-up of the corporation I want to see, with the selling off of all but the core radio and TV channels (R4, R2, Five Live, BBC1 and 2), the abolition of the jurassic licence fee (to be replaced by a central grant, charitable status and fundraising powers), but I certainly recognise that this is far more than mere gesture politics at a ripe moment. Hunt means to force the BBC into putting its house in real order, or else.

Never thought I'd see the day. Well done Jeremy Hunt. Let battle commence!

Inside the Bunker

2010-07-16T00:18:00.003+01:00

Iain Martin has provided, presumably from his sources inside the civil service, a fascinating and chilling insight into Brown's autocratic, paranoid and hopeless (mis)management of day-to-day Prime Ministerial business. If you haven't already read it, click through here.

It will take a lot of effort to work out just how much damage three years (or 13 years if you include his time as a diabolical, serially disloyal Chancellor) of Brown's weirdness and chaos in Downing Street has done to this nation. The litany of disasters that can be traced directly back to Brown's bunker door are emerging daily, of course, so the process could take less time than we think.

Quite frankly, I think how such a man was elevated to the level of the highest office in the land in the first place, without even the pretence of any form of democratic election, should also be a source of deep and urgent study. Why? Because it must never, ever be permitted to happen again and if that means radical alterations to the rules governing the way Prime Ministers are chosen, then so be it.

In the meantime we can be happy about a couple of things, and Martin alludes to these in his excellent piece: stable, reasonable, elected people are back in charge, cabinet government appears to have returned and the principles of ministerial and collective responsibility look like being rigorously reinstated.

We shall see, but after the cocksure, cowboy, sofa government years of Blair and the mentally disturbed, incoherent, mafiosi years of Brown, it certainly feels like accountability, professionalism and, crucially, normality have returned to Downing Street, Whitehall and, perhaps (just perhaps), even Westminster.

Well, you might disagree. But God help us all if I'm wrong!

Just remember, Brown's chief hit man, Balls, is still around, waiting in the wings, shamelessly spewing his poisonous politics of propaganda, division, dishonesty and fear. He's on This Week right now lying through his teeth about, in this case, his many crimes against Tony Blair on behalf of his boss, Brown, to whom he remains fanatically loyal. The chances of the evil Balls becoming leader even of his own party are pretty slim, I admit, (oh I do hope he wins!) but there's still that chance, however slight, and the frailties of our system, exposed by the Brown 2007 coup d'état, mean that at that point, he would be a hell of a lot closer to Number 10 than is sanely conceivable.

If Iain Martin's revelations reveal just how very, very, incredibly bad Brown was, just imagine what life would be like under Prime Minister Balls.

That would be a nightmare from which we might never wake up.

Mandelson Spins His Own Memoirs

2010-07-15T09:18:00.004+01:00

New Labour Spin Twins: currently out-lying each other

Hardly surprising, I know, but since they have not been entirely well-received by his own party it was necessary for Mandelson to spin his memoirs for all he was worth upon their publication today in the face of what I predict will be pretty poor sales - and some reasonably tough questioning from Evan Davies this morning.

Even so, to hear Mandelson actually trying to spin his own, printed words from his own, conceited book - to hear him attempt the epistemologically impossible and wriggle and squirm as he did so - was a source of some pleasure for me as I battled my way into work through sheets and sheets of West Wales rain.

Doesn't he realise we stopped believing anything he says long ago? Davies made the point quite well: something like, don't you think the public will find it quite annoying that only three months ago you were telling them to vote for what you now call a 'dysfunctional' prime minister and party. Mandelson had no convincing answer to that, at least, not convincing enough for any potential readership, I would say.

But is this a case of one spin operation too far for the Prince of Spain (sic)? I suppose it's inevitable, actually, that spinners end up spectacularly but stubbornly contradicting themselves. After all, 'spin' is merely a euphemism for 'lie'. And Mandelson, after Alistair Campbell, is the biggest spinner of them all.

The only important thing about this book of Mandy's is that it represents the first shot in Labour's latest civil war, a war which, with enough luck, should keep them away from office - and us - for a generation.

So well done he. Sort of.

We Need Troops In Afghanistan, Not Just Timetables

2010-07-14T09:19:00.003+01:00

Mission accomplished? Hardly

I must say, I'm afraid I found Liam Fox's explanations and justifications for the combat drawdown timetable in Afghanistan on Radio 4 this morning rather unconvincing. At one point he started to remind me of various Labour defence ministers (you can pick one) in his attempts to service the argument that the Afghan National Army will somehow be ready to take over from American and British troops in five years' time, despite mounting evidence to the contrary (not least yesterday's tragic rocket attack on British soldiers by an insurgent who had infiltrated the Afghan army) and continuing military reversals (I define losing territory you have just gained from the enemy because you don't have enough men to hold it a 'reversal', don't you?).

It's not that I don't buy what he says - in most ways, he is far more believable than his Labour predecessors, who spent most of their time lying through their teeth about helicopter numbers, among many other things - it's that things just don't add up given the time frame proposed and troop levels involved.

It's been said by a lot of commentators and experts alike that the mission, the war aims, the 'liberation not occupation' philosophy, the 'protecting us at home by fighting terror abroad' ideology, even the timetable that's been announced, are all theoretically sound apart from one, vitally important factor: for all these goals to be accomplished, our troop levels in the short term need to rise substantially; our level of engagement intensify dramatically.

Under-manning has and, it seems, always will be the British problem in Afghanistan. In order to fulfil the mission we set for ourselves, two or even three divisions of soldiers (around 30,000+ combat troops plus support) should have been committed, and now should be committed, to augment the USA's 10. "But that would cost the country a fortune!" I hear you gasp. Well, war does cost a fortune and if you are not prepared to pay it, then you should pull the hell out immediately because there is no point in staying.

It was a fortune of our treasure that Gordon Brown was not willing to spend on our behalf to protect our armed forces, so I place the blame squarely at his door for subsequent losses, both the ones caused by a lack of equipment - strength in the air - and the ones caused by insufficient strength on the ground.

I'm now wondering, though, will the Coalition government try to fight this war on the cheap as well? If they do, then we will lose.

Dr Fox had better wake up to that reality - fast. And so had David Cameron and the Coalition he purports to lead.

Another Day, Another BBC Online Pro-Labour Report

2010-07-13T15:16:00.005+01:00

200K London Superhead? Yer 'avin a larf in't ya?

I know, I know - if you wanted to read about how bad the BBC is, you'd make your way to the first rate "Biased BBC" blog. But I just can't help it, mainly because every day with relentless regularity, the BBC - particularly its online news incarnation - confirms all my suspicions about it. The chief suspicion, of course - that the BBC is institutionally left wing, pro-Labour and viscerally Tory-hating - can hardly be called a 'suspicion' any more since so much evidence to prove this is right beyond any reasonable doubt has been forthcoming over the years. Lame BBC managerial and editorial statements to the contrary have become a joke.

You, as I often do, might be wondering to what lengths the BBC will go in pursuit of its propaganda goals. Well, today we have yet more data to show that "any" is the answer. Consider the farce of Ed Balls' entire education strategy for the past three years, given plummeting literacy and numeracy levels and ever-dumber standards in exams. Consider, for instance, the £10Bn+ that has been frittered away over and above the £30Bn school building and refurbishment programme, now being gallantly corrected by Michael Gove.

Consider also today's extraordinary news that a primary school head teacher has been raking in 200 large a year on the back of, we assume, some half-decent administration of a small school, the consequence of another Balls brainchild, "City Challenge". Jackpot! At least for Mark Elms, that is, who, it seems, is some kind of hyper-teacher, a true saviour capable of healing the educationally sick and giving the word-blind sight. At least I assume that's how good he is otherwise why is he troughing eight times more for running a primary school than a close relative of mine retired on after 35 years of highly distinguished teaching and administration in the secondary sector? No one, but no one, in the education industry is that good.

It seems the BBC's reporter, one Hannah Richardson, disagrees. I'll quote a bit of it, but you will need to read to whole thing to get a taste of just how extraordinarily one-sided it is - and I mean in favour, by implication, not of the teacher in question, but of the brains behind the ridiculously expensive but "prestigious" (according to Richardson - you betcha, girly! Anyone who can syphon off 200k from the government for running a primary school deserves some kind of admiration) "National Leader of Education" programme, Edward BALLS.

For this work, at his 400-pupil school, Mr Elms receives a basic salary of £82,417.This is well within the maximum head teacher pay rate of £109,000 for large inner London state schools.

The bulk of the £200,000 pay package he received last year was for the work he did on the London Challenge and City Challenge project over two years.

These schemes support schools in challenging circumstances and have been very successful in improving education in deprived areas of the country.

Well now, pardon me for complaining, but does this or any of the other half-baked comments she makes in her little piece remotely justify giving one man two hundred grand for running one school, no matter how bad it had become in a Labour-run inner city area. As I said, however, it's important to recognise that that's not the real purpose of this dizzyingly-spun article. The real purpose for this editorially on-message young BBC hackette is to speak out for a very expensive, and highly divisive, Labour schools policy, and therefore, by implication, up for Balls.

Gladly, if the rider at the top of the old Department for Children, Schools and Families, website dedicated to this policy from the incumbents is anything to go by, the "City Challenge" policy Ms Richardson seems to like so much, and Mark Elms obviously loves, is now as defunct and kaput as the failed government that spawned it. It goes:

A new UK Government took office on 11 May. As a result the content on this site may not reflect current Government policy.
All statutory guidance and legislation published on this site continues to reflect the current legal position unless indicated otherwise.
To view the new Department for Education website, please go to http://www.education.gov.uk

I like it! Seems Hannah Richardson was reporting on a dead policy walking, regardless of her motives for doing so.

Time she and the BBC woke up to the fact that Labour is out of office, and that their cosy world of protected political bias is no longer as safe as they might like to believe. Just as Mark Elms can expect no more ridiculous bonuses (or perhaps "bribes" would be a better word) for doing his job in a less than salubrious area of the Smoke, left wing BBC hacks, editors and managers can expect no more sanctuary in a public institution that urgently needs to be given back to the public, or go the way of the "Department for Children, Families, Schools, Pets and Wasting Money", Ed Balls and the entire, trainwreck New Labour Government.

Do you think they get that yet? I don't.

Quote of the Day: The BBC's Contradiction

2010-07-12T11:24:00.001+01:00

Rod Liddle in the Speccy has quoted a first class Charles Moore piece to help him emphasise his own refreshing and welcome disdain for the direction the BBC has been taking for the past decade or so, especially as regards its squandering of the licence fee tax on overpaid and highly over-rated "talent". He points out that Moore illustrates the contradiction that lies at the heart of the BBC's funding-spending model and the dishonesty in senior managers' constant attempts to deflect our attention away from it. Liddle writes:

Charles’s diary in the last edition of the magazine put far more succinctly, and clearly, the point I was trying to get at in my blog about the BBC a few items down from this one. I talked about the BBC’s moral cross-subsidisation (which is never publicly admitted by the corporation) and how this is increasingly difficult to justify. Charles puts it better, with this exposition of what lies at the heart of the “endless contradiction” which the BBC exploits

Excellent, sure, but then he goes on to quote Moore:

“When you complain that it is funded in a privileged way, it says that it does things which no one else can do. When you complain that it spends its unique funding on enormous contracts with stars, it says it has to do so in order to behave like its rivals. The truth is that the concept of the star……….is incompatible with the Public Purposes expressed in the Charter of the BBC.”

Brilliantly put. What I know is that the corruption at the centre of the BBC, and its cause has seldom been more eloquently articulated than it is by Moore here, must be challenged and the corporation reformed, broken-up or abolished altogether.

Until then, for instance, more than a quarter of all criminal court actions will continue to be licence fee-tax related. People will continue to go to jail and/or be fined extraordinarily punitive amounts in their tens of thousands simply because, as is often the case, they cannot afford to fund the lifestyle of people like Jonathan Ross.

That is unacceptable, and this government had better do something about it in this parliament or be viewed, at least by this blogger, as a failure.

Mandelson's Irrelevant Memoirs

2010-07-12T10:12:00.004+01:00

Jackie Ashley, in her piece in the Graun this morning that's basically a 1500-word moan about why-oh-why the Labour party is imploding and so many people are 'abusing' the party's record in government, describes Mandelson's new memoirs as "bank-swelling". I'm not sure I agree with her about that. Beyond all the MSM political hacks who must buy it (assuming they're not given free copies), the professional bloggers (one of whom probably helped to publish it), MPs and former ministers, (who'll all be desperate to see if they get a mention from the oily old pocket-liner) I have a sneaking suspicion that very few people will be remotely interested enough to shell out their hard-earned on such an artefact of conceit.

You see, the thing Labour people like Ashley don't seem to grasp is that contempt for the Labour party and all its works has gone well beyond mere abuse now. Try as she and her BBC husband might to talk it up, the fact is that people have moved well on from the Labour narrative and are comfortable with the new, Tory/coalition one. So comments like this from her, let's face it, pretty desperate piece...

Somebody needs to fight back against the hysterical torrent of abuse being poured on Labour's economic record, which after all included a decade of good times, the rebuilding of public services, and successful action to stave off a full-scale collapse in the banking system. It may be too early: the self-righteousness of the Labour-haters now matches the self-righteousness of New Labour in its pomp. But the time will come.

...sort of pretty spectacularly miss the point. The "hysterical torrent of abuse" would not be the relevant thing even if it actually existed (it doesn't), the outcome of the general election is, with millions of people deciding, not as "self-righteous Labour-haters" (a rather feeble example of the sneering hyperbole I've often heard from self-righteous Tory-haters like her), but as ordinary voters, to reject Labour and its pisspoor record. You know, in their self-righteous Tory-hating, which shields them from all conceivable criticism, I think Labour-losers still really haven't understood the fact that they have lost the argument - comprehensively and conclusively - and that they are, consequently and with increasing shrillness, talking to themselves.

The sales of Mandelson's new novel, the serialisation of which is safely hidden behind a Murdoch paywall, should provide a fair measurement of just how irrelevant Labour have quickly become, and just how far the country has moved on from them and their sorry tale of failure in government.

Me? I expect to see it in the bargain bins within weeks, along with Mandelson's memoirs.

Saturday Night Music Special

2010-07-11T02:31:00.001+01:00

I'm oddly happy with the state of the news just now what with Mandelson coming out and scuppering the irrelevance that is the Labour leadership fiasco and that tragic Moat bloke finally doing our idiot police a favour and putting himself out of their heavily-armed misery, and the awesome Booker planting another hobnailed boot in the sweaty groin of climate change fanaticism.

The great Gove's rearguard after his crew's cockups and his brave resurrection of political accountability seems to be working reasonably well too. Excellent.

In other words, there's nothing much around that's annoying enough to talk about, so I think this a downtime moment - a time for some nice music, perhaps.

How about this: "Dream Away" by my hero, George Harrison?

I suppose we're all "Time Bandits" really, one way or another. We all dream of reliving our past so we can correct it in whatever way from a position of knowledgable strength. That's the ammunition known as hindsight. Sadly, of course, it's an impotent trick of memory.

Be content you own the human gift that is regret. It keeps us little people honest - and (oddly) free :)

Silly Season At The BBC: Obesity and Exercise

2010-07-08T09:19:00.003+01:00

To be fair, though, it's not just the BBC - it just reported it on its website and then followed it up with a debate on Today this morning between a silly man called Fry and some other dude who wasn't quite so silly - it's a bunch of extremely silly scientists who have published a very silly paper on the relationship between exercise and obesity in children. To call the scientists' conclusions "silly", as covered in the BBC web story is, however, to be very generous. They're not merely silly, to my mind they're potentially dangerous.

The researchers at the EarlyBird Diabetes Study, based at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, has been following a group of more than 200 city school children for the past 11 years.

As part of the long-term study, they monitored body fat and exercise at regular intervals over three years.

They found no indication that doing more physical activity had any effect on weight, but they did find that children who put on weight did relatively less exercise.

And so it goes on, hedging and blurring its way to the final, soggy-wet-fish-in-the-gob conclusion - that without exercise children get fat and when they get fat they do less exercise and, because of their big tummies, crave more food. Well, duh.

How many millions of pounds was wasted on this ridiculous study just so the ultra-bleedin' obvious could be restated, but couched in pseudo-scientific terms, complete with the thinnest of anecdotal statistical 'links'?

But that's not the point is it? The real point, if the the Today broadcast this morning was anything to go on, is that this just represents yet another extension of the ongoing battle between intervention and information, between the answer of the Left (to ban and order) and the libertarian Right (to inform, suggest and trust).

The BBC, in its boundless silliness, has clearly decided that Andrew Lansley's decision to reverse the previous government's failed policies on people eating too much and not exercising enough, and save enormous sums of money into the bargain, must be challenged - because a new study, however silly, says so; because something called the "National Obesity Forum" says so. Because the improbable Mr Fry, who wants to regulate the entire food industry and then, presumably, eating itself, says so.

In other words, because nanny (the interventionist Left) says so. If it wasn't so pathetic it really would be silly.

Oh, by the way, if you want children to be less fat, feed them fruit, milk, bread & butter and beans on toast and let them play for as long as they want every day - which will be a lot. Oh, right, in Labour's Britain, even play must be regulated - and the streets aren't safe any more (we are led to believe by the generally hysterical media), so buy the little darlings an Xbox and plonk them in front of the TV out of the way...and see what happens (has happened).

Unlock your children, folks. They need the exercise!

Another Word About Michael Gove

2010-07-07T20:00:00.001+01:00

My admiration for the man has, if anything, risen even further after his dignified apology to the House of Commons in a personal statement he made in the past few minutes.

Of course it's a cause for concern that 25 schools were left with the impression they were going to enjoy the post-Labour luxury of refurbishment, at massive cost to the taxpayer, through the astonishingly inefficient Balls Future Schools policy, but after his sincere apology about the inaccuracy of the lists released on Monday, which is ultimately a Civil Service issue for which the education minister is properly taking ministerial responsibility - Labourists take note - Gove's reputation remains intact, if not enhanced.

Compare and contrast the reputations of the screaming Labour benches with their fake anger, wallowing in the deepest of hypocrisy. Compare their behaviour and reach the only conclusion possible: not only are they not fit for government, after the hideous unpleasantness of Tom Watson MP, for example (shrieking baseless accusations and vicious insults directly at Gove), a fair proportion of them aren't fit to be Members of Parliament. That will be crystal clear to any sane person watching the exchanges.

There is one other point that's emerged from this latest parliamentary spat and it concerns Bercow. He seems to think the being "Speaker" means he has to speak all the time. He appears to imagine that not only must he intervene to keep order, he must pass judgment on every point made, especially on the Tory side. He apparently considers his condescending, smug, self-publicising manner is appropriate for the great office of state he's attempting, and failing, to fill. I've seen this odious man in action long enough now to know that he's little more than a catspaw for Labour, no doubt to please his wife. He's got to go before he does any more damage to the proper business of parliament and the reputation of the House of Commons. He's that bad.

So, this procedural storm in a teacup, predictably stirred-up by the malignant, mendacious opposition and, one has to say after his questionable interventions and rulings today, by their tame placeman in the Speaker's chair, Bercow, will soon blow over. But the debris left in its wake will not represent obstacles to Gove's or the coalition's programme of righting Labour wrongs and getting their disastrous, spiralling deficit under control. Far from it. Gove's statement has re-established the principle of ministerial responsibility (I have no doubt he offered his resignation to David Cameron, judging by the depth and sincerity of his apology on behalf of his department) after all those years of abuse by the previous Labour regime. It has also revealed the pettiness and revisionism of a contemptible Labour contingent unable to take any responsibility whatsoever for their role in causing the worst crisis in British public finances for, to quote one of their number, sixty years.

Perhaps that's what Gove was doing: smoking out the dishonest, discredited cabal of ex-ministers and their sweaty-toothed left wing comrades on the backbenches with sincerity. It's possible - he's that clever. However, I prefer to think that he was just doing what he thinks is right - owning-up, taking responsibility and apologising for the error. Insodoing he has left no one in any doubt as to his good faith and decency, and cast massive ones over a large swathe of Labour party members'.

"Good faith and decency"? Thy name is not the oily, weasily Bercow, and certainly not the scrofulous Tom Watson. Thy name is Michael Gove.

A Word About Michael Gove

2010-07-05T18:24:00.003+01:00

Education is an area that interests me intensely so it might not be surprising that I'm spending the early evening watching the education funding statement on the parliament channel at this very moment (exciting, eh?).

Suffice to say, and in the spirit of his refreshing brevity and precision, Michael Gove is giving one of the more polished parliamentary performances I've seen in defending his policy of suspending Ed Balls' pie-in-the-sky, dishonest pre-election plans for building and refurbishing 700 schools. A number of facts are emerging thanks to Gove's extraordinary mastery of the detail, not least among them the bureaucratic waste, vast inefficiency and dreadful mismanagement of PFI contracts by Ed Balls and the department he apparently headed (even though he seemed far more busy most of the time trying in his role as Gordon Brown's barely house trained thug, propping up the auld fraud and protecting him almost 24/7 from his own cabinet, a full time job in itself).

Gove's handling of the various whining Labour opposition MPs, moaning about things that their own pathetic leadership brought down on them, is just breathtakingly good. The more insulting and detached from reality they become, the more witty and precise his answers become and, in a spiral that can only ever tarnish the grim image of the socialists further, causes the Labour MPs to become even more insulting and detached from reality.

The reason for this is simple: the principles underpinning Gove's policy initiatives, even ones that amount to large but necessary cuts in the education budget at a time, thanks to the disastrous failures of the previous government, of great insecurity in the public finances, are bullet proof. Better value for money, less bureaucracy and higher standards through greater choice are on offer. And you would bet your house that Gove is the sort of man who will deliver.

All poor old Balls, the biggest villain of this piece, can do meanwhile is moan about the list of affected schools not being available in the Commons library for a handful of minutes. That really is the best he can do - and it's not very good, is it? I think I can predict Gove's response: "Ball, E: must do better, but on the strength of past performances probably won't. D-".

Gove is a truly impressive figure - everyone knows that. But when he's up against the likes of feeble Balls and his ilk on the opposition benches, he looks like a world beater. Cameron beware!

Oh dear. And Balls is still moaning away - this time about his money fiddling of that dodgy Islamic faith school some aeons ago. Labourists - you've gotta love 'em (sort of). They are totally clueless. It's a wonder to me they remember to breathe.

For them to be whinging about pre-announced policies is just priceless!

BBC Still Isn't Learning

2010-07-05T16:18:00.004+01:00

Whether it's a typical public sector ingrained sense of entitlement or some quite new and unique phenomenon, the BBC simply isn't learning. Now that Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, has been publicly contradicted by a putative inferior in the form of the Director General, Mark Thompson, over the publication of salaries, one can safely assume that the watering down of Lyons' remarks that we heard on Radio 4 this morning will only gather pace. If Lyons doesn't regain control of his underlings pretty quickly it will simply serve to send the clearest of messages to people that the corporation is out of control.

But why has Mark Thompson decided to go down this road of secrecy? He says it's because the BBC needs to be able to compete for the 'best talent' and its being forced to reveal pay levels when other stations don't would lead to their having an unfair advantage.

OK, let's deal with that first then: what utter, dishonest tosh! He and his ilk really do think we're that stupid. The BBC already has a massive 'unfair advantage' in that it can legally extort under penalty of fine and imprisonment a large sum of money from the vast majority of the adult population of Great Britain. And yet the salaries go on secretly increasing and programmes just keep on getting worse and worse. That's not just my opinion, the BBC Trust has just said so too. Let's not hear talk of unfair advantages again then, lest we move on to the BBC's virtual monopoly of radio in this country and its sinister and vastly expensive occupation of vast tracts of cyberspace.

How has this come to pass? Because people like Thompson over the years have transformed the BBC from public service broadcaster, paid for out of a modest appliance licence fee, into some form of parasitical organism which pretends benevolence but in actual fact is gradually sucking the life out of its host. The BBC's host is Britain. You can say whatever you like about the BBC, but if it is positive, then I'm likely to disagree. Why? Well, you want to know the real reason why Thompson doesn't want salaries published? I'll give you a clue: it has nothing to do with paying incredible fortunes for top talent - you know, 'top talent' like Fiona Bruce or Jonathan "Top Ranker" Woss (at least he's gone) - and everything to do with his ever-ballooning salary and the generous salaries of the managerial class that's taken over that organisation. That's how the parasitism incubates itself and then spreads throughout the entire organism. It has managed to reproduce itself, with its eggs usually being transmitted through the crap that comes out of the mouths of public sector managers everywhere, in just about every public body in the nation now.

It happened to the BBC some time ago (perhaps the BBC was the first); it happened to the NHS, another deeply infected body, generally over the last 13 nightmare years of a Labour government. Thompson, like all fakes, is uncertain about whether he's worth the money he pays himself. If he is certain, then he should declare all and stop hiding behind this fatuous argument about 'attracting the best talent' (for one thing, it's not the BBC's job to compete with commercial television, for another, its job is to grow new talent, not hire overpriced old hands). Failing that, Thompson, after these new Telegraph revelations, should resign - or be sacked by the coalition government. New broom and all that.

In the end, the most depressing thing about all this is that, for whatever pathetic reason, since it's now crystal clear the BBC just isn't learning, it must be forced to see the error of its ways with sackings and the genuine threat of 'restructuring'.

Humph. If this interesting David Blackburn take on events 't Beeb is anything to go on, then fat chance!

Taxpayers Alliance On Prentis, Simpson, Crow

2010-07-02T09:37:00.004+01:00

UNITE: Protecting Simpson's Salary

On Sky News this morning I was pretty disgusted to learn from the Taxpayers Alliance chief, Matthew Elliott, that three of the nation's biggest and most militant, disruptive union bosses earn ~~substantially more than~~ about the same as the Prime Minister and that no less than 38 of the various types of general secretaries and other forms of leader earn over a hundred grand a piece (plus perks and pensions, natch). Said Elliott in a press release this fair morn:

"It is hypocritical for firebrand trade union leaders to be calling for strikes and higher taxes while they themselves live a life of well-paid luxury. It is small wonder that they aren't worried about the tax burden or the national debt when they are so well-off, but it is ordinary, over-stretched taxpayers who will suffer if they get their way. Their bluster should be ignored, and the Government should stop pouring taxpayers' money into union coffers, as they clearly have more than enough cash already."

Who could disagree with that (apart from the usual suspects)?

You can read the rest of this excellent expose, which is rightly and refreshingly a pretty big story today coming as it does on the back of the government's decision to publish a list of the highest paid quangocrats, on the TPA blog...here.

Standing On Your Own Two Pegs

2010-07-01T00:07:00.001+01:00

I do like the idea (it smells like a free ride), of joining the vast ranks of the British incapable, but, sadly and unfortunately, at least to me, I know that standing on your own two feet is far, far better than getting by with a little help from your Labour-loving friends, be those friends genuinely childhood acquaintances or not.

More likely, in those circumstances, your only mate is the State. In which case you've allowed yourself to become almost literally nothing but a slave (the State really does not care about you where genuine friends might). Never mind.

Relying on the "little help" smacks of taking things for granted and an absence of some awareness of Duty. And that, according to my pretty ordinary, educated lower middle class upbringing, would never do.

Never mind, here's the tuneless Ringo classic in question:

Make your own bloody mind up. I'm honestly past caring.

Moscow Centre Still In Business

2010-06-29T14:57:00.002+01:00

Putin honouring ex-Soviet spy George Koval, 2007

I love John LeCarre and his greatest creation, George Smiley, so it's super to know that whoever the real Karla is, whatever the real Moscow Centre actually is and however many times the KGB has changed its name, some things will never alter. The Russians' eternal paranoia being one of them. From the story:

They were alleged to have met US government officials given codenames such as "Farmer", "Parrot" and "Cat" as well as engaging such tried and tested espionage methods as dead drops and brush passes.

And so it goes on. Whoever thinks LeCarre was writing fiction can think again, as, indeed, the newspaper points out itself. Con Coughlin has also written a good little comment piece on the real spy ring bust but, much more importantly, Radio 4 has just finished the last instalment of an excellent, year-long re-working of the complete Smiley collection with the superb Simon Russell Beale as the planet-brained superspy. Sometimes they still get it right. Well, rarely.

Still, I think I might buy this one. I've come over all nostalgic

Besides, in this case truth and fiction are the same thing anyway, but with one, small exception: Smiley is serious but the truth is bloody hilarious.

Bucket List

2010-06-28T22:17:00.002+01:00

I'd love to try walking route one down some busy city street like this just to see what would happen. Without the film crew, the cameras, the choreography and the overdub, I just have that sneaking suspicion it would all quickly end in (my) tears.

But it's still on my Bucket List, just after taking part in the Paris-Dakar rally, sailing round the world on my own in a hovercraft and learning how to pilot a helicopter.

Half-decent song, that. Owed a lot to the Stones, I hear.

Be that as it may, I wonder, what's on your Bucket List? Not sure I'll tick off any of mine in time, but from now on, I'm definitely going to try!

Brown's Cronies Still Delusional

2010-06-28T10:20:00.004+01:00

A serious Labour politician

The sound of son of a butcher and former schoolteacher Paul "Lord" Myners on the Today programme this morning was all the reminding I needed of how utterly delusional members of the previous government remain, particularly in the area of their economic (mis)management. He seemed to be saying that what the coalition government is doing in announcing what amount to, in reality, pretty modest savings in the short term, designed merely to halt the speed of expansion of the national debt by slowing down government spending rather than slashing it, is putting some kind of Labourist-inspired 'recovery' at risk. I kid you not.

He and his ilk still seem to think that the last months of Brown, where spending was allowed to run out of control not as part of any genuine attempt to kick start the economy through some kind of novel notion (which even Keynes never proposed) that you can spend your way out of recession while servicing gigantic levels of borrowing, but as part of a calculated effort to save nothing more and nothing less than Brown's political career by bribing Labour's heartlands and key marginals, is actually defensible. It's not, epsecially because it worked, predictably, in the North East, North West and, to a slightly lesser degree, Yorkshire, hence there was no Labour wipeout even if it didn't save Brown (nothing could), but it didn't work in the marginals, hence the coalition.

The point is, let us hear no more from the likes of Myners pretending that there was no political calculation involved with the reckless spending levels following the crash, or, indeed, that Labour had nothing to do with causing that crash with its disastrous system of banking regulation or deliberate stoking-up of cheap credit into a gargantuan property bubble. Even without the credit crunch (which did start in America) there would have been a crash in Britain inevitably, and a pretty big one at that.

Additionally, Myners completed his flight from reality by claiming that the latest G20 meeting was pointless and lacked the substance of the London summit in 2009, presumably because Cameron was there making the case for deficit reduction in the UK, rather than arrogantly lecturing the rest of the world about how to manage their own economies. I suppose Myners was so dismissive about the event because there was no really big chunk of money to boast about at the end. I think it was a mere one trillion dollars at the London event wasn't it? Well, of 'promised' money that is, of course, although hardly any of it ever materialised and hardly any of that which did had any effect on the forces of nature driving the economic cycle anyway. But socialists don't understand that, see? Sometimes the right thing to do strategically is nothing. Well, it matters not for the likes of Myners or Brown or, come to think of it, Alistair "Apologise To Me!" Darling any more. All they can do from now on is nothing. That, at least, should mean that they can do no more damage, thank God.

One last thing I thought worth mentioning: at the end of that programme we also had the annoying, schoolboy voice of Nick Robinson putting the sneering BBC spin on the Cameron G20 performance by referring to a picture of him with his head in his hands as the utterly outclassed, out-thought and luckless England team went 4-1 down to the dreaded Germans and musing, rather lamely I thought, as to whether this "new leader on the world stage" (he's not that new) would end up "hapless" and ignored by the others. I wondered to myself at that point, seeing as it was apparently the day to make sweepingly dismissive statements, whether the performance of this England team, rather than somehow reflecting a "hapless" David Cameron, at least in mind of the Robinson talking head, had far more symbolic force as representing the end of the era of expensive under-performers who nevertheless walk away with a fortune despite having been kicked out of the tournament. That's not England, thought I, that's New Labour! Funny how the two eras, the "Golden Generation" and the gilt-edged years of plenty under New Labour, seem to parallel one another. But, of course, the reality check in the Merchant of Venice (Act 2, Scene 7) says it all:
All that glitters is not gold/Often have you heard that told/Many a man has his soul sold...

Less money (unless deserved), more passion (motivation) and more graft (productivity): that's what we need not only from England's footballers, but from the British population generally. Less bling and more sting; more passion - and less fashion. The superficiality of England's performance almost perfectly parallels the intellectual and moral vacuum at the heart of New Labour. Over-rated and all mouth, costing a fortune, but when the going gets tough they crumble and the results become disastrous. In England's case, Germany showed them up for what they really are, in New Labour's, it was the crash. The only difference is, of course, that England were beaten by superior opponents, which is fair enough, but Myners is trying to defend Gordon Brown, the team captain who made all the wrong moves, chose all the wrong tactics and managed to defeat himself, taking the country with him. And that was after the credit crunch began. That was merely his Germany in the economic tournament. The moment Brown was really tested, the whole economic kingdom of debt that he created crumbled, and so did New Labour.

Myners and others who choose their own narrative on this lamentable passage in British history according to their political orientation are naturally welcome to do so. It might even be a coherent, even persuasive, story for the gullible, but it will never make it right.

As for the BBC, well, I assume there will come a time when the Conservative party finally has its bellyful of the licence fee-funded, left wing dominated organisation's constant breaching of its charter and either disinfects it once and for all or breaks it up into little pieces, some commercial (the ones that are already, that is!) and some taxpayer-funded, with no licence fee. Then the left will have to go away and infect some other institution, if there are any remaining in the United Kingdom, which I doubt.

PS: Actually, Myners' performance on this morning's show was all the more bizarre when you consider that speech he made torpedoing current Labour politicians' arguments against Tory plans. As Wiki says of the speech:

On 8 June 2010, Myners made headlines with a speech he made in the Lords. He said, "We clearly need a policy of fiscal caution. It was right to support the economy during the global recession but there now needs to be fiscal adjustment, as evidenced by the last Government in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. There is nothing progressive about a Government who consistently spend more than they can raise in taxation, and certainly nothing progressive that endows generations to come with the liabilities incurred by the current generation."

Well, my feeling is now that he made that speech certainly not for the benefit of the Tories but to influence the Labour leadership race, possibly in favour of Ed Balls. Conclusive proof, if you'll forgive the straw man, that Labour is only talking to itself. Long may that continue.

Flash Gordon II

2010-06-24T14:50:00.004+01:00

Guido has the lowdown on the latest sighting of the Brown Pimpernel. Apparently, like Flash Harry from the St Trinians films, he's taken to wearing a trilby hat low over his eyes and a long coat that makes him look like he's gliding along without any sign of leg movement, slithering from Important Rich Luminary to Important Rich Luminary, touting for a bit of trade. "Inconspicuous" is the watchword.

After some excitement this morning that Gordon Brown might actually be in town to represent his constituents the truth unravels. While he may have put a fleeting five minutes in the chamber, (making the number of days he as been in two out of a possible forty-nine,) King of the Lobby Gary Gibbon has; what he was really down here for. A meeting with a Kennedy, a chat with Sir Tim Berners-Lee about his future employability and a natter with his old cabinet allies.

So it seems the great Brownian contempt for his own constituents, the public purse that provides his unearned salary and his abject lack of contrition for - or even interest in - his role in the debt disaster now confronting Britain thanks to him will just go on and on and on. Until someone in government has the guts to put a stop to it, preferably with legislation on the conduct of sitting MPs.

People should be a lot more angry about this than the painful budget Brown has brought down on our heads thanks to that sponging loser's economic incompetence and political desperation.

As much as it was a Coalition budget, this was Brown's budget. The Tories were right: let no one forget that. Oh, and if we are expected to make sacrifices for the sake of the future security of the nation's finances, then might I suggest that everyone should be forced to pull his or her weight. We're all in this together, after all.

Flash Gordon, that ex-wrecker and now dodgy shirker, would be a top target for me for the chop. Why should I be paying for him not to do his job? Cameron can lead by example, but he can also make them - preferably of the predecessor who is so frightened of facing the music to the extent that he is effectively now on the run.

It's time Brown's past caught up with him.

Heath And Brown

2010-06-21T16:47:00.002+01:00

At least that copper's happy

I almost missed Charles Moore's interesting review of a startling new biography about Edward Heath in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph. Had it not been for the fact that I was looking up the latest footy scores (7-0 to Portugal against the North Koreans, eh? See article below) I would never have seen it and missed a treat. The book is by Philip Ziegler who I imagine is the same author who in the late 1960s wrote one of my favourite books about the Black Death. Hang on, I'll check.

(Time passes...)

It is he.

Moore gives some examples from what we are to believe is a whole litany of character flaws associated with Heath. I'd always wondered why my grandmother threw a (full) cup of tea at her television when his face appeared on it 30-plus years ago. Well, perhaps here's why:

Although he faithfully sets out the virtues – honesty, courage and determination – Ziegler gives a catalogue of blemishes. Here is a tiny selection of the numerous examples. At the Oxford Union, Heath declared that, "Women have no original contribution to make to our debates." He did not answer the plaintive letters of Kay Raven, the only person who ever came close to being his girlfriend, but when she finally gave him up and married someone else, Heath was angry with her. In sharp contrast to the young Margaret Roberts (soon to be Thatcher), who stood, in the 1950 general election, in the seat that adjoined Heath's, young Ted took his constituency workers for granted and treated them like children.

Heath grabbed perks and luxuries, scoffing chocolates by the boxful, demanding money for his travels from commercial interests and taking no trouble about the comfort of those who had to travel with him. When, as Leader of the Opposition, he took up sailing, his yacht Morning Cloud cost £20,000 a year to run. Various businessmen paid for the yacht, but Heath was not worried by the danger of a quid pro quo: he got around the problem by never thanking them. "Gratitude," as Ziegler puts it, "was not one of his more marked characteristics."

At this point we realise that Heath must have been an absolute nightmare to work with, for, near or under. It's also pretty clear that no matter how smart and even gifted he might have been, and I am unconvinced that genuinely intelligent people are unpleasant to those who work for them (Maggie wasn't), he had not clue-one about motivating people and would not have survived for long beyond his cloistered, soft-furnished world. And yet it goes on. More is yet revealed about the man who took us in to the EEC on the back of a pack of lies, out-Laboured Labour with the NUM and behaved as though he and only he understood human nature, when quite the opposite was patently the case. As Moore goes on:

He had a huge sense of entitlement...[but]...as Ziegler points out, he had no gift for exposition, because he was utterly uninterested in what others thought. This is why people felt cheated, and still do to this day, about the terms on which Heath took Britain into the EEC. He never took the British people into his confidence.

Once, when attacking free-market attitudes, Heath said: "What distinguishes man from the animals is his desire and his ability to control and shape his environment." Is that really the key distinction? This arid, managerial philosophy was reductive of human freedom and possibility. It also ensured that the country was very badly run. The famous U-turn over economic policy and state support for industry, the rigidities of the Industrial Relations Act, the hopelessness of trying to control prices and incomes, the defeat by the miners were all related to the beliefs and character of the man who presided over these disasters.

Moore then goes on to say that Ziegler's book provides a first class illustration of Heath's character and its flaws and his subsequent failures, but the historian does not provide any political explanations, so Moore then offers one of his own which resonates with another, recently departed, deeply flawed but clever prime minster of Britain. Moore says, of Heath, tellingly:

Heath's future opponent, Keith Joseph, persuaded Margaret Thatcher to vote for him as leader in 1965 on the grounds that "Ted has a passion to get Britain right". Perhaps he did. He was certainly brave in pursuing what he believed in. But he got Britain wrong.

I can't help thinking he had Gordon Brown in mind when he wrote that. But then it struck me: of course he didn't. There's no comparison. Heath might have been a selfish, puffed-up, interventionist Tory Europhile with a talent for music and boats, but he was no liar (not even on Europe - I suspect he really believed them) and he knew how to go when the time came. He also stayed in Parliament till nearly his dying day, maybe to spite Margaret Thatcher ("that evil woman") or - more likely in my view - because he liked being an MP and he was good at it. But where's Gordon? The contrasts with Brown are there for all to see, and I've just touched on one or two of them.

The point is, if Heath was a terrible Prime Minister (and I'm certainly not alone in feeling he was), then Brown was a catastrophe (ditto). If you were forced to choose between the lesser of these two weevils, my guess is that you'd plump for Heath, though through gritted teeth, naturally. I would.

My God, we don't half pick 'em.

"Political Classes": Definition Of

2010-06-19T18:31:00.002+01:00

Ich bin ein Old Holborns?

I use the term "political classes" quite a bit on this blog but I've never really bothered to define what the term actually means, at least to me. Well, Charles Moore on the Daily Telegraph used it too in his bit on the death of the Euro today (which, incidentally, is quite a good read in my humble, whether you are a Europhile, Eurosceptic or just curious). He talks about the "German political classes", which, on the face of it, seemed to me to be sensible enough being, as it is, a sort of currency term that appears to refer to the totality of our, or their, elected representatives as some kind of separate entity to the rest of society, and harks back to days before universal suffrage and when hereditary entitlement was purely a class phenomenon.

However, I wasn't satisfied with my own explanation so I phoned a friend and asked her what she thought it might mean, reminding her that "body politic", for instance, by contrast refers to the entire electorate and not to the collective body of elected representitives (a confusion I've seen even on the more august political blogs). Couldn't it be the case that we are all part of the "political classes" one way or other, given that in an advanced democracy the people, theoretically, are where political power ultimately rests? Isn't the term therefore mistaken in this day and age?

"Oh no," she answered, "that's not right at all." What did she mean, I asked, fascinated. "Well, it's simple really. 'Political classes' refers to anyone who stands for election, lies to win it, spends the next five years planning how to get re-elected, leaves running the country to a professional civil service, and all the while gathers as much expenses money, lobbying patronage, consultancies and directorships as possible so that if the unimaginable happens and they're voted out by an even more effective liar, then they've got all that to fall back on, plus the gold-plated pension plan. That's what "political classes" really means, with very few exceptions and regardless of political affiliation".

As she said, simple really. Or is it?

BP Is Finished - It's Only A Matter Of Time

2010-06-18T11:23:00.003+01:00

Hayward: Bleak Prospects

It's getting pretty clear now that the United States government will settle for nothing less than the destruction of BP as punishment for the environmental and economic impact of the disastrous Gulf oil spill. This is the conclusion that a lot of people have now if not reached, then are certainly nearing. After BP's flat footed and presentationally poor chief Tony Hayward's performance in front of a bunch of nauseating US administrators yesterday, which demonstrated his stamina but nothing more than that, no one in their right mind can dismiss the idea that BP is gravely ill. The oil leak is bleeding it anaemic. Credibility, credit worthiness and gargantuan sums of money are all being poured into the stratosphere. Pretty soon, all that will be left is the name.

The evidence for this pessimism? The Telegraph's report today, which has been covered widely in the US on Fox and CNBC too, that the cost to BP for its liability will top $100 Billion should be enough, shouldn't it? No company can withstand that kind of bill and remain intact, no matter how large it is. That's the kind of money that takes down entire middle-sized countries. United States congressmen and women don't give two hoots about that, however, this being an election year. All they care about is the hysterical US public opinion. It's a simple calculation that US politicians from the pisspoor president down have made: 'the more we hurt BP (shake it down and pump it dry) and dogwhistle the anti-British meme, the more votes we get'. It's as pathetic as it is dismally feeble as it is dishonest.

BP will be gone by the end of the year. I'll put money on it.

The economic, political - even the historical - implications of this are truly frightening (particularly in terms of just how rotten the United States political classes have become) but they're separate issues that I'll have a stab at in a later post.

Or maybe someone else, if they accept the basic premiss (that BP is finished), could have a go.

North Korea's World Cup Mash

2010-06-17T12:15:00.003+01:00

NORTH KOREA CELEBRATES FLAWLESS 8-0 WIN
16-06-10
NORTH Koreans were celebrating last night after their team's long-predicted 8-0 thrashing of decadent capitalist Brazil.

Glorious leader win 1966 Word Cup after beating Harold Wilson 195-0
Footage of Korea's nine-foot tall players scoring goal after goal past a weeping and unusually Oriental-looking Brazilian side was beamed across the country to over 35 million people, 11 million more than its actual population.

The first three goals saw their goalkeeper earn the 47th hat-trick of his career, with the last being a remarkable bicycle kick from the halfway line.

Each goal was celebrated by the players running to the corner flag and delivering an impassioned five-minute lecture on the nation's rising factory productivity to a rapt crowd of 52,000 Korean fans.

Tom Logan, World Cup analyst at Madeley-Finnegan, said: "North Korea's footage differs significantly from the rest of the world, inasmuch as Ellis Park appeared to be a dilapidated velodrome on an industrial estate and Korea's fourth and seventh goal was exactly the same footage."

But Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il said: "Our glorious players showed what discipline, moral fortitude and being repeatedly beaten can achieve. I personally coached the team myself, shortly after writing my 375th novel Super Kim Slays Moth-Ra & Has Sexy Fun With Madonna, and fighting a bear with a claw hammer."

A North Korean government spokesman added: "Some may think they remember a goalkeeper called Ri Myong-Guk. They are mistaken. If anybody meets somebody claiming to be a member of his family, they are actually Western demons and should be shot on sight."

North Korean fan Jong-Se Park said: "Much appreciation and fraternal joy to the mighty footballers of our land! I do so hope my family can please be released unharmed so they can witness the ultimate triumph in the final!"

As reported by the Daily Mash!

Bloody Sunday: The Provisional IRA Was Entirely To Blame

2010-06-16T15:48:00.003+01:00

The Real Bad Guys

There is a dangerous moral quivalence that emerges over the Saville Report. It suggests that whatever terrible acts were committed by British troops on Bloody Sunday, IRA atrocities were worse, and that this observation in some way mitigates or even justifies the killing of unarmed civilians, some of them teenagers.

This attitude is well represented by an outburst on BBC radio in 1999 by Colonel Wilford, who commanded 1 Para that day: “I have to ask what about Bloody Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and every day of the week? What about Bloody Omagh? What about Bloody Warrenpoint, Enniskillen, Hyde Park, or Bloody Aldershot and Brighton — bloody everything the IRA have ever touched.”

In some quarters, this is described as “a good question”. It is not. The British Army represents our parliamentary democracy and defends our freedoms. We are entitled to expect better of it than terrorists. Its actions must be entirely professional and accountable. Furthermore, to kill civilians is more morally reprehensible for our soldiers and degrades their moral integrity to a level lower than the actions of IRA terrorists, because that is what we expect of terrorists – it is not what we expect of the British Army.

Whether, after this passage of time, there is a public interest in prosecuting the perpetrators of these vile acts is an entirely separate question. But those soldiers stand condemned today by the people they served and those of them who survive today should feel utterly shamed and humiliated. They are objects of contempt. They acted not as British soldiers, but as hysterical thugs and panicking cowards. End of.

This nonsense was written by a professional writer (of sorts) over on the Telegraph blogs today.

I’ve tried to stay away from the whole Bloody Sunday/Saville inquiry thing over the past few, very busy, exam-filled days because I had thought that my limited knowledge of the affair (I only studied it as part of my first degree and knew someone who was there, after all) would hardly be worth sharing and would add very little to the debate. However, I’ve just read something so utterly ignorant, and by a member of the clergy no less, that I figured what the hell, if The Rev George Pilchard, or whatever his name is, can spout a load of codswallop on something about which he clearly knows nothing, then what I say can hardly do any more damage, can it?

First of all, soldiers. They are certainly “thugs”, as Pitcher says, especially (but not exclusively) the rank and file, uneducated but disciplined and usually in their late teens as they are. But “hysterical” and “panicking cowards” are not the words I would use to describe the chap I knew who was there on those Londonderry streets that fateful day. Given, he was no wet-behind-the-ears rookie looking for a firefight. He was a marksman; a dead shot and a ruthless one at that. Yes, he was an army sniper and given the order, his sole aim would be to kill.

What emerged from the ridiculously long Saville inquiry, to me, was that that order had been given, or at least a broad definition of it. "Take back UK soil from a rebel force" was effectively the command. At that point, unless someone intervened and until the objective was achieved, the Bogside effectively became a free fire zone, within limits. Remember, these men were soldiers not riot police. They are (or were) not schooled in the delicate art of crowd control, they are fighters extensively trained to smash things up and kill people (and, , die in the process if necessary). George Pitcher doesn't understand such indelicate realities, however.

Unfortunately, the reason why this was not such a good policy on that day in

Northern Ireland

was that, as far as I am concerned, the Communist-sympathising, revolutionary Provisional IRA had set the whole thing up from start to bloody finish. It fits perfectly with their propaganda campaign style at the time, trying, as they were, to get the Catholic community to turn on the British troops as quickly as possible so they could launch their colossal campaign of terror with no internal opposition. They were ably aided in this pursuit by the pig-ignorant, pointy-headed Protestant majority, whose persecution of Catholics brought the British Army there in the first place. Lest men like the fool Pitcher forget, the soldiers went in in the late 60s to protect the Catholics!

The point is, and this view is supported by a number of academics, although I hesitate to name the one I studied under here, everyone, almost from the start of the British intervention, played straight into the Provos’ Cuba-esque ‘revolutionary’ arms. And then their leadership had the excuse they needed to use violent intimidation against the community they pretended to be protecting but were, in fact, hiding behind while they prosecuted their revolutionary campaign.

Bloody Sunday partly symbolises, partly embodies, the situation at that stage of the Troubles. A flat-footed, slow-on-the-uptake British government, with the Army an almost perfect expression of that government, combined with the wholesale bigotry, sectarian hatred and viciousness of the Protestant majority meets a long-oppressed Catholic minority whose civil rights cause was on the verge of being co-opted by a ruthless, cunning and utterly dishonest political movement, complete with its own propaganda wing. Into this brew was thrown left-wing public opinion in Britain, which naturally – and with typical, total stupidity – identified with what it saw as an ideologically justifiable, armed struggle against, in this case, British imperialist history! Thus, when the troops opened-fire against the IRA’s sacrificial Catholic lambs at Bogside that day the outcry against the loss of life was gigantic, torrential and game-changing.

Suffice to say, after nearly £200 million, a staggering, totally disproportionate sum, and 11 years, all the Saville enquiry has really revealed is that the killings were unjustified and unlawful and that a few young Paras, intimidated and encouraged in equal measure at the time by the military police, massaged the truth to protect each other from legal retribution.

The killings were always unjustified and unlawful because the victims were unarmed and, in some cases, had little or nothing to do with the civil rights protests (with which I still sympathise in some ways) anyway. But never forget that the Provisional IRA was there, its members heavily armed. They wanted this thing to happen, so they kicked it off. What the hell does Pitcher, in all his clerical wisdom, think Martin “Bloody Sunday” McGuinness was doing there with a sub-machine gun? Protecting people? You see, to me, the establishment still hasn’t learnt. Possibly they never will and the IRA – or Sinn Fein as it now is, all respectable and besuited in government, pretending to be reformed – will continue to run rings around it.

This will sound callous but the killings were not just unjustified, even unlawful, (although once the British decided that a part of British soil had fallen under rebel control, I can’t see what other outcome there could have been), but they were also utterly, utterly stupid. What people like Pitcher will never be able to comprehend is that the British soldiers at work there were just instruments of war doing what they do best. But there were other, more menacing forces at work there on that day. They were scheming, political, revolutionary forces, represented by people like McGuinness and they would stop at nothing to get their war, even if it meant a massacre of their ‘own’ (revolutionary ideology is morally self-justifying, remember. Pitcher doesn’t get that).

They were the real cowards, not the British soldiers. But, as others have written, when will they face their inquiry for their role in these events? Where is the moral outrage, voiced by fools like Pitcher, against people like Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister? Not on Pitcher’s blog that’s for sure because it's an issue that is clearly far too complex and nuanced for the good vicar to contemplate.

And that's all you need to know about him. End of.

Vandal Brown Deserves An ASBO

2010-06-13T14:13:00.002+01:00


Hitler Brown

This article, buried away in the Sunday Telegraph, had me chuckling quietly into my cornflakes this morning - at first. Apparently, mysterious and severe damage to an antique table in Downing Street was caused by Gordon Brown ferociously scribbling on documents containing stuff he didn't like and either scraping so hard he punctured the paper or missing it altogether and just scrawling illegibly on the wood. Years of this abuse have left the table so badly scratched that it will be too expensive to repair in this post-Crash Gordon age of austerity. Here's a bit of the entertaining piece.

The damage to the table is so severe that cleaning staff have been unable to remove the marks despite frantic polishing. "The marks to the table were noticed by people using the room on the very first day of the new Government. People were curious about what had caused the damage," says Mandrake's man in No 10. "We learnt it was the room that was regularly used by Gordon Brown. It became apparent that the marks were caused by his manic scratchings. He was clearly writing very angrily with his pen and the marks came through the paper on to the table. Some are two or three inches long and very deep."

Now I know this all smacks of a bit of Downing Street propaganda, but it just sounds so totally plausible that I think it must be true, and, if true, then it's not a smear. With that in mind, personally I think this, combined with Brown's many other acts of weirdness, falls comfortably into the category of "anti-social behaviour", complete with expensive damage to public property and a high nuisance value for the recently arrived, new tenants of the building. Since such "low level" criminal activity can't be punished any more in post-Labour Britain, realistically justice will have to be seen to be done with the only instrument of public retribution left: Ken Clarke must serve Brown with an ASBO.

Better still, let's just send the vandalising old fraud the bill, or take it out of the MP's salary he's still drawing but not earning these days. I'm serious about that last option. About £160 Billion should cover it. Well, some of it.

What Is "Gentrification"? Ask Diane Abbott, MP

2010-06-11T17:54:00.007+01:00

It's heartening to know that propective Labour leader, hard left loon Diane Abbott, believed as early as 1987, when she was the newly elected MP for Hackney, that the Tories were responsible for what she curiously branded the "gentrification" of London.

Now, we all know that what she really means by "gentrification" is the migration of wealth from traditionally affluent areas of the capital, like Chelsea and Westminster, to what were then traditional Labour slag heaps often resembing demilitarised zones, like Battersea and Docklands. It's no accident, for instance, that Kubrick, for his classic war movie Full Metal Jacket, deemed the latter wasteland as the perfect filming location for that movie's desolate battle scenes throughout 1986 - just before the evil Tories began to, er, "gentrify" it, I guess.

It's also no accident, at least to me, that Abbott's constituency, which she has now been protecting vigilantly from gentrification for 23 years, is still an absolute sh*thole where no one in their right mind would dare, never mind want, to live. And that's just the way she likes it. But why? It's pretty obvious really.

People like her, namely corrupt, hypocritical chardonnay socialists (and I do not care one jot what she pretends her background was, that's what she became a long, long time ago) always preach one thing and practise another. In her case, no matter what she might say to the contrary, she's perfectly comfortable with the misery and poverty her brand of political ideology not only fails to alleviate, (regardless of what they laughably say about wanting to do just that), it actually entrenches it and makes it worse. Look around you. Look at the vast, socialist-built housing estates and tower blocks in virtually every inner city in the land, most of which have been under Labour control for decades, and you will see deprivation unchallenged, crime unpunished, immigration uncontrolled, children uneducated and mothers unmarried. Everywhere.

So for Diane Abbott to talk, as she does in this early interview, about schools being "damaged" across London by the then Conservative government's attempts to break what was already back then a desperate cycle of despair and ignorance begun in the post-war world by socialists just like her, is simply an insult to reason and an affront to common decency. She sends her child to a private school for God's sake. However she might try to hide behind her gender, pathetically, as she did in a radio interview yesterday afternoon, that is a fact and it smacks of the rankest of a rank hypocrisy, something which is, sadly, indicative of her type.

I do remember how she attempted to justify this on This Week some years ago, moaning when challenged that the local schools in her constituency, (with a Labour dominated LEA in a socialist-dominated sector, naturally), weren't "good enough" for her son. I also remember how Starkey, that annoying historian, memorably slapped her down by saying that if it wasn't good enough for her child, it wasn't good enough for anyone's. Hear hear.

But I digress. The simple point is that putting the hypocrite Abbott's strange complaint, born as it is of nugatory, familiar, fake class warrior mendacity, to one side for a moment, this Tory government needs to press on with urgent zeal and reboot this "gentrification" of not just London's remaining Labour fortresses of futility, but the whole of the United Kingdom's - everywhere (and I don't mean with a Brown-style catastrophic property boom and bust). It means fighting entrenched Labour corruption and double standards, which Abbott perfectly personifies, everywhere and ruthlessly. This time, the Tories should be playing for keeps.

That there's an outside chance Abbott will be leader of a dying Labour party when that process is well and truly underway fills me with glee. The elegant irony of the arrangement would be priceless.

Oh, and in case any socialists out there are still confused enough not to understand what I'm saying, I'll spell it out for you: for "gentrification" read success, growth, social regeneration, aspiration and, of course, liberty - something that everyone deserves to be part of, and which is at least possible under a Conservative government, but completely impossible under a socialist one, as the last thirteen years have just proved with such terrible, terrible consequences. Get it now?

Enough said.

(Isn't John Stapleton good, by the way?)

Obama's Anti-British Venom

2010-06-10T22:15:00.006+01:00

It has consequences, this incomprehensible, outmoded, spiteful anti-British venom of Obama's.

For instance, for it to be sustained, this poor President must deny the reality of the true impact of his cheaply political, unthinking, bargain-basement, anachronistic Brit-bashing. That 'true reality' is framed rather neatly by Iain Martin this evening:

If President Obama can break off from crafting his next anti-British Petroleum soundbite, it might be worth him checking out the ownership structure of BP and pausing for a moment. It appears that 39% of the shares in the company are American owned (25% by U.S. pension funds and 14% by individual American investors). According to BP’s figures, 40% of the stock is owned in the U.K.

So, the company not paying, limiting or delaying payment of its dividend (as Mr. Obama has demanded as retribution for BP causing him so many problems — no, I mean desecrating the Gulf of Mexico) would impact directly on rather a lot of American investors, and those with pensions.

Who is going to tell the president? Perhaps it could be British Prime Minister David Cameron, when the pair talk on Saturday in an attempt to limit the diplomatic damage from the crisis.

No wonder serious US stockmarket commentators are getting a little nervous about Obama's loud mouth. BP is a massive multinational, with investment interests in the US that at least parallel those of the UK - and we're talking hundreds of billions here, all told - not just market value. If BP Plc goes down, which is what the idiot Obama and his fellow administration coat tail morons seem to want, then BP Inc will have already died - and that one, giant company's politically induced failure could take the entire, fragile world economy down with it.

Taking out a company as big as BP just because you want to look tough could trigger another depression - globally. People should understand that that's the desperate game Obama has chosen to play, but just doesn't understand.

This terrible political decision tree should be seen for what it is, and then he (Obama) should be seen for what he really is, and then, once the dawn of clarity has finally set in, anything he says or does from here on in should be stoically resisted, on both sides of the Atlantic.

The fact that Cameron hasn't even made a decent position statement on this travesty yet tells me one thing, however. Ordinary Americans and Brits still have at least one thing in common: our respective political leaders are basically first order and ineffective world class shits!

Now that's the real "Special Relationship" that I've had the privilege of enjoying for many decades (thanks to my roots).

Go Easy On BP

2010-06-10T16:02:00.001+01:00

I stand by my opinion that Tony Hayward has done enough diplomatic and other damage with his foot-in-mouth mismanagement of the Gulf disaster to warrant his dignified exit, an analysis with which a former head of Shell Oil Inc. on Radio 4 this morning appeared to agree with, at least in part.

However, it would be fair to add that while Hayward has undoubtedly been poor in the face of a near-hysterical US media maelstrom whipping up public outrage, the behaviour of Obama has simply been beneath contempt. The man is unfit for the office of the Presidency. It was no accident, for instance, that when I watched the opening of that live press conference on the latest US posturing over Iran (again, suspiciously timed), I honestly and completely believed Obama was talking about BP again!

But then I realised, he was being far too diplomatic. Never once would he have said "I want to kick Iran's ass". But to him, apparently, it's fine to do that with a major multinational company. Think it's not comparable? Well, you'd be right. Telling that lunatic Ahmadinajacket that he was about to be given the proverbial, presidential ass whoopin' of his life would have had zero impact on the zombie relations between the two nations and certainly would have had no discernible economic effect.

Compare and contrast Obama's pathetic posturing and filthy, insulting language - and threats to abuse his own nation's system of law to make it pay and pay big - with BP. Remember, without there actually having been a trial to find out just who really is ultimately responsible for the disaster - my money is on the US government - this kind of thing from Obama is calculated to be prejudicial not against BP Inc, but against the mother company. It's deliberate! It's also working. Forty percent plus of the value of that company's shares has been destroyed so far.

That's about £60billion to you and me. And the point is, it could well be you and me that end up on the receiving end of the Obama asskicking because our pension funds are taking a hammering as a consequence of this big mouthed/small minded man. Our oh-so wonderful ally, led by such a person as this, seems perfectly happy to sit back and watch Britain humiliated once more. It's sickening. Whether Ben Brogan thinks so or not, that "special relationship" the Westminster villagers love to drone on about? Hey, Ben. It's over.

BP didn't kill it, Obama did.

BP (BP "Inc", lest we forget) has done all it can to clear up this mess, so I agree with those who say lay off them (that doesn't mean lay off the accident prone Hayward, however). The real villain of this piece as it turns out? Ladies and gentleman, I give you the most unpresidential president since, er, the last one - Barack Hussain Obama.

Witty.

But for Britain, sadly, this really is no laughing matter.

Prescott Swearing Shock

2010-06-09T09:18:00.005+01:00

Well, no. It wasn't really much of a shock that John - sorry - "Lord" Prescott felt he was so important that he could swear at fellow interviewee Zac Goldsmith on Radio 4 this morning, and then smear said new Tory MP with impunity.

Nor was it much of a shock that the interviewer did nothing to intervene - if nothing else than to get Prescott for once in his miserable political life to stick to the point, but merely apologised vaguely afterwards I assume for his own conduct by saying that sometimes it's best for these things to be allowed to run their natural course - without getting involved.

As to the issue being discussed - Labour's (Prescott's, in fact) appalling record on housing and the disastrous assault on our nation's green spaces under that regime, which, Prescott seemed quite happy to admit, was more or less a conscious brand of class war - others will disagree no doubt, but I thought Goldsmith wiped the floor with Lord Two Jags (or should that be Lord Two Shags?).

Goldsmith commanded his brief and, when permitted by the lame BBC interviewer, delivered a rational, compelling set of reasons for why, to meet the housing shortage, existing housing stock must be renovated, only appropriate spaces should be built on (ie: not greenfield sites), and local councils must be released from central government meddling so they can do what they were elected to do and make policy to suit the area for which they are responsible and which they (in theory) know best how to manage.

It was a polished performance and Prescott had no answer to it, his policies having buggered everything up (to borrow his expression) in the first place.

One-nil to Goldsmith.

(And minus one to the BBC, again.)

Jobless Bloke: "I Love Lisa"

2010-06-08T23:25:00.004+01:00

While I was messing around with the word 'hypnosis' on YouTube, I stumbled on this gem.

I certainly like to listen to the sound of her woyce and I really dig the deep, hype-notic sleep that her beautiful, green-eyed woyce generates with a little of what amounts to your basic counting, as far as I can tell.

Good/bad, this puppy would definitely sleep with Lisa. (That is what she said, right?)

Whatever. But you know what? I reckon this is a Tory party political aimed at indolent male dole spongers. Brilliant! This will be one of the most effective deficit reduction strategies of all time. A government-subsidised young Russian(?) dominatrix's sex promise in exchange for significant efforts finally to find a job and stick with it.

It's definitely novel and it could be a winner. So well done, George Osborne! (As long as that's not your sister. That would be weird.)

BP's Hayward Should Go Now

2010-06-08T17:50:00.006+01:00

BP: Big Problem

Iain Martin has just quite justifiably wondered out loud when David Cameron is going to answer the ridiculously shrill and totally unjustified anti-British sentiments, disguised as tough-guy criticism of BP Inc for the Gulf oil disaster, emanating from the irritating Obama's noise hole. He says:

President Obama’s attitude to the company is starting to grate. Astonishingly, pressure is now being applied on BP to reduce its next dividend, or else. That is a matter for the management and board of BP to decide upon, not the president of the United States. The air is thick with threats from the Obama administration about what lies in store if the company does not do as it says. The assaults on BP come tinged with a hint of anti-Britishness.
In this climate of distrust, a letter writer to the FT this morning asks when the U.K. government will speak up to defend BP. It is a fair question, one we can expect to hear more often.

I agree, but I also suspect there is a fairly simple answer to this vexing question. It could play something like this. By leaping to the defence of the multinational oil giant, Cameron could, but will not want to, be seen by implication defending someone who is accident prone and insensitive in Tony Hayward, and who really has only himself to blame for what Martin calls his "monstering" by the US media.

I would have thought, therefore, that Cameron will only begin to defend Britain's good name, currently being indirectly but consciously impugned by a suspiciously energised (but pretty ineffective) US president, when the embattled BP supremo does the decent thing and quits.

Leaving Obama's nauseating anti-Brit dogwhistle propaganda aside for a moment, the issue of Hayward's departure must now come first. Whatever Obama's up to, and I think we in the UK pretty much all know what that is given his pretty appalling treatment of what we are led to believe is America's closest and most loyal ally during his spell so far as leader of the free world, it's Hayward that's really giving Britain a bad name - whenever he opens his mouth.

The longer he remains in post, the longer we will undeservedly take the flack for his many apparent shortcomings, the longer Obama will be able to get away with his pathetic political displacement activities and the longer it will be before Cameron can launch some kind of diplomatic damage limitation operation. With Hayward there, the PM's hands are pretty much tied. The BP boss has been that bad.

But having said all that, if any Obama fans deign to read this post and choose, predictably (and usually rudely) to disagree, I have one word for your sort: Bhopal.

Talking Rubbish

2010-06-07T09:09:00.006+01:00

It was good to hear that Eric Pickles has officially scrapped Labour's preposterous bin tax. I'm all for recycling, but using tagged, chipped, electronically tracked bins as an excuse effectively to spy on and surcharge people on their already astronomical local taxes severely damaged the integrity of a what is, at least on the surface, a decent cause. An incentive scheme is a far more sensible idea if we really must go down this road.

Personally, I think recycling is a bit of a scam as it is has been permitted to develop as an the industry thanks largely to the previous administration's cavalier approach to all things concerning private companies earning public money, civic duty and civil liberties. Currently, huge private firms hoover up council contracts and then make a heck of a lot more money out of waste management via exploitation of what should be, as I said, a good cause, namely recycling. Consequence? Hardly anything is actually recycled in this country as a proportion of the total and yet we are already paying far more for the privilege of having our household waste taken away. Pickles' idea therefore seems to be the best of a bad set of options. If people are to be forced to pay more for refuse collection, and forced to sort out their own rubbish, then yes, some kind of payback incentive is a reasonable idea. Maybe it should go further and become a full rebate for getting your recycling 100% right. That would be a real incentive and prove the sincerity of any council's recycling motive.

Predictably on the Today programme this morning, John Humphreys seemed quite keen to attack even this popular and modest Tory government policy by trying to argue the toss with a pretty no-nonsense Norfolk councillor who had only briefly looked at the Windsor and Maidenhead pilot scheme on which the new government policy is apparently based and was having none of Humphrey's puffed-up, scornful nonsense. Humphreys eventually seemed to realise he was talking rubbish and marginally altered his inappropriately confrontational tone towards the end. In fact, I'd say he was pretty comprehensively 'owned' by whoever that interviewee was, actually, and it was a very pleasant experience for this listener. I've never really heard anyone who likes the sound of his own voice more than Humphreys, apart from, possibly, David Dimbleby. Oh, and Paxman. Not forgetting Marr who's shaping up as another fine lefty BBC windbag as well. But that's another story, I suppose.

Whatever anyone thinks about the abolition of the bin tax proposals, this to me is another example of the Tories trying to right Labour's wrongs. It's therefore worth praising just on those grounds, even if it is merely a shuffle in the right direction when it comes to this country's sorry record on recycling, value for money for local services and councils' continuing erosion of privacy and individual rights (including the rights guarding against trespass by council officials), and local government 'snooping'. In the end, that's perhaps what was at the heart of this issue, not recycling. In that sense, what Pickles has done is to begin the process of tackling the surveillance mentality of far too many local authorities and to reframe the authoritarian zeitgeist that prevailed under Labour in a small state philosophy that should help to bring about a shift towards a freer society. I have no doubt that this is his aim, and it's laudable in its libertarianism.

Whether he achieves any more than making sure our bins continue to be dumb trash cans rather than being permitted to evolve into spying robots working for the state remains to be seen. But it's a start.

AWOL Brown Should Be Kicked Out Of Parliament

2010-06-06T16:29:00.002+01:00

Mandrake (Tim Walker) in today's Sunday Telegraph reveals that one of Gordon Brown's last acts as Prime Minister was to secretly cut the future incumbant's salary by £250,000 over five years.

Gordon Brown's failure to turn up for the State Opening of Parliament may well have been because he couldn't look David Cameron in the face. Mandrake hears that one of Brown's final acts in the Downing Street bunker was quietly to organise a pay cut for his successor which he must have known would leave him out of pocket to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
On Brown's orders, the Prime Minister's remuneration package was cut from £194,000 to £150,000, but this was done with such stealth that no formal announcement was ever made.

Now, some might say that that was done for sound economic reasons since the country faces economic collapse due the parlous state of the public finances - thanks, er, to Brown. That conclusion would be completely naive. Even Walker's conclusion, jovial as it is, and quoting a 'Whitehall source' is wide of the mark in my humble opinion.

"This was pure Gordon," harrumphs my man in Whitehall. "Quite prepared to make the big sacrifices – so long as it wasn't him who actually had to make them."

Not so. While his pocket-lining, self-serving instincts were certainly part of the motivation for his actions, Brown did this out of pure malice for his successor. That's why he did it secretly. As a result, Cameron will earn little more than he did as leader of the opposition, and could well earn less in terms of salary alone given that he has also handed himself and the cabinet an example-setting 5% pay cut, unaware that Brown had already sabotaged that good faith gesture.

As far as I'm concerned, Brown is a seriously twisted individual who finished the way he started in office, by sticking two fingers up ostensibly at the hated Tories, but really at the entire population of the country he pretty much single-handedly ruined. He must be held to account, and, if fraud or corruption are ever uncovered, brought to book for his crimes against the people of Britain.

In the meantime, let's focus on something else. It's not just that he couldn't face David Cameron at the Queen's Speech, or that he hasn't turned up in parliament once on behalf of his constituency since he was booted out of Number 10, or that he has continued to draw an MP's salary while, in effect, going AWOL (I hear he's been in up in Kirkaldy but effectively incommunicado since his ousting)...these things are bad enough. It's not any of that, however, but something far simpler. Clearly, there is a strong case for him to be suspended from parliament pending a review of his activities, or lack thereof, since regaining that safest of safe seats, (and whether his supporters in that safest of safe seat like it or not)]. If necessary, legislation should be introduced to this end. It should be applied not just to Brown but to any MPs suspected of not discharging their duties of office adequately.

Well, I know it won't happen - which is a pity - but, in the end, something must be done about Brown. He deserves some kind of punishment for his vicious spite and, ultimately, his cowardice both in and now out of office.

If nothing else, though, we should expect and demand better from our backbench MPs.

Inflation Storm Clouds

2010-06-04T09:21:00.006+01:00

That senior economists are even talking about inflation now, having pretended it didn't exist for so long, should be a source of anxiety. That one of them should say something like this should be the prelude to panic.

In an opinion piece for on Friday, Mr Bean writes: "Some people have suggested that a bit of extra inflation now might actually be a good thing. After all, wouldn't it help to get the economy going by reducing the real value of public and private debt? This is severely misguided.

"Aside from the dubious morality of redistributing wealth from savers to borrowers, we have seen from past experience that a bit of inflation has a nasty habit of turning into a lot of inflation."

Deflation was a smoke screen for devaluation and new debt. However, someone has now broken ranks to warn of the true nature of the coming catastrophe: hyperinflation.

We're doomed! Doomed!

Update:

Of course, I forgot. Without debt (money - or rather the promise of non-existent money), and more and more of it at that, the entire world economy would collapse into depression. Stupid me...

Get it? I don't. Let's get this straight again, without debt there would be no money = Great Depression II.

Well, you figure it out because I sure can't.

Dangerous Subversives, Section 3

2010-06-04T01:10:00.004+01:00

I always liked the steel-fisted, tooth breaking irony of this large larf at the lawmaking killjoys way back in the beginning of the day 20 years ago. Hell, I was there! And after I'd been studying my bollocks off at uni for two years, by 1991 I thought this video was just a fecking documentary. How laughably wrong I was.

Serendipitous Oil Spills

2010-06-03T15:54:00.005+01:00

Dizzy has found a remarkable website charting the spread of the Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill. It's a hefty leak, and what you can do with this tool is superimpose its vast expanse on wherever you like in the world to see just how huge it is. I suppose there is some valid environmental message in such an exercise somewhere. I'm not sure what it is, exactly, beyond 'Cor, that really brings it home to you', or maybe, 'Cor, isn't the ocean big!'.

There is another use, however, of this program, as Dizzy demonstrates. You can bury your least favourite bits of your own country under thirty million barrels of oil slick. Neat. Dizzy chose Scotland. I sort of approved at first, but in the end it wasn't target-rich enough for me, so I opted for an alternative ground zero of Huddersfield so that I could take out the entire expanse of the two giant northern English conurbations and Labour heartlands.

Unfortunately, I had to take out York, Harrogate, the Peaks and the Dales in order to get Tyneside. Oh, and half the Irish Sea, all of North Wales - and Shrewsbury. Well, sacrifices had to be made to get them all under the one spill - without threatening the Home Counties. Besides, who's really going to miss Mold? And I did save the Lake District...sort of. You just can't get to it any more.

Getting Education Right

2010-06-03T10:03:00.005+01:00

Gove will have to take-on the teaching unions -
and he will win

I was pleased to read last night on the Spectator website that 1100 schools have already taken up Michael Gove's invitation to opt for 'Academy' status (basically to opt out of LEA control in the old parlance). I remember last week some heavily unionised lefty university 'expert' on state education, or whatever she was, on Radio 4 (where else?) trying to poo poo the whole thing with the usual nonsense about it creating a two tier system. Well, it didn't before - at least not in the sense she meant - and it won't this time. Opting out leaves more central funding available for schools that need the boost, so that they too can eventually become more independent, manage their own affairs and rid themselves of stultifying state prescribed educational ideology, so long the blight of the education system of Britain - at least since the evil that was the late 60s/early 70s was perpetrated.

In any case, what's so bad about a few high standards for once? What socialists, especially ones who think they're educators of some sort, don't get is that academic aspiration is as natural as any other form of ambition. It cannot simply be magicked away with a wave of some socialist wand, or, more likely, suppressed through some sort of highly divisive forms of social engineering. There is demand for genuine quality - elitism, even - and it will never go away, whether people like Ed Balls think they can make it go away with their interfering, top down interventionist, ideologically motivated lawmaking or not. The point is they haven't - and never would have. Socialists have always thought they could mould human nature by manipulating society by using taxation and interventionist laws as some sort of blunt, clunking sculpting tools. Signs are, after another 13-year dose of them has caused another national cataclysm, that they will never change. They will never understand that,as history shows, the many glorious aspects of human nature evolve gradually over time, and the best politics is the politics that evolves with it, reflecting it while simultaneously creating a society in which the aspirational, ambitious, optimistic, adventurous parts of human nature have the opportunity to flourish.

Still, even though the socialists have once again failed to break the population's general spirit, though they tried as hard as ever, especially through our schools, not least by diluting the exams system to the point where GCSEs, for instance, are almost completely worthless now as tests of a child's intellectual and academic development in any given discipline (especially for prospective employers), you have that nagging sensation in the pit of you stomach that Michael Gove has arrived just in the nick of time.

First, we have the Academies, liberating good schools from central control. Then, we have the other two thrusts of Gove's brilliant, triple-pronged revolution, of which the most important by far is the dismantling of Labour's insane education quangocracy, itself a heavily politicised, labyrinthine, undemocratic, bureaucratic nightmare designed for one purpose: social capture. Gove's already started by abolishing the General Teaching Council (thank God) and two others. The former organisation was designed quite simply to create and monitor a generation of under-experienced, under-educated, over-trained, over-paid, indoctrinated teaching robots - and exclude all others. It worked! Well, its website (all these damn quangos have elaborate websites that seem to mimic government departments' - anyone ever noticed that?) published this note from the gallows yesterday:

The Secretary of State for Education announced on Tuesday 2 June his intention to introduce primary legislation in the late autumn which will abolish the General Teaching Council for England.

In response, the GTC said: 'The GTC was created by Parliament to work in the public interest to improve standards of professional conduct among teachers, to contribute to raising standards of teaching and learning and to raise the standing of the teaching profession.

'We are seeking legal advice on our position and will be seeking urgent clarification from Ministers and Department for Education officials on the implications of today’s announcement for the GTC’s work over the next period and for its staff and Members.'

Looks like they ain't going to go gentle into that good night. So much the better. A public spat will finally bring a bit of scrutiny to bear on these shadow/duplicate government organisations, so expensive and so suspiciously beloved by Labour, that have sprouted up like so much fungi on a fallen oak.

Oh yes, the second part of Gove's three prong revolution is the so-called free schools. Brilliant, and like all organic children of private enterprise, some will fail but most will succeed spectacularly, which will no doubt irritate that lefty, GTC-type woman on Radio 4, who tried to poo poo these too as being 'unprofessional'. Unprofessional? Ha! If the chaos and despair we currently have in Britain is what 'professionalism' (socialist style) delivers, then bring on the amateurs! In fact, and joking apart, I think that Gove has already worked this out. He's trying to break a monopoly of education supply that's grown up over the past thirty or so years, and that has betrayed our children so comprehensively and failed this country so utterly. He knows that the only people who really, genuinely care - or should care - about children's education are parents, not teachers (and especially not unthinking, doubleplusgoodthinking, inadequate young robot teachers). That parents are somehow 'amateurs' should not preclude them from having a huge say in their children's school career.

I know, I know, there's more to it even than all this. All I'm really saying is that Gove looks to me like the real deal - and he must be supported fully and without hesitation. However, having said that, judging by that GTC comment, which is public remember, he is going to be pissing off an awful lot of establishment interest groups (and remember, the left is the establishment in education). Perhaps that's his intention. Well, if it is, he needs to remember that annoying quangos before you dispatch them is one thing, annoying the NUT, with its 300,000 members is quite another. Though having said that, his abolition of the GTC has, strangely enough, gone down reasonably well with the NUT. Its General Secretary, Christine Blower, said yesterday:

"From its inception, the GTC has struggled to overcome the fact that teachers felt it had been imposed on them. Equally, the annual fee of £36.50 has remained a sore point. The NUT has consistently argued that teachers should not have to pay the GTC fee.

"Under the GTC, teachers now feel over-scrutinised. Last year's 'code of conduct' was a worrying development, encompassing activities and behaviour outside of work. It sought to turn aspirations for best practice into rules. Any replacement for the GTC needs to distance itself from the belief that a watchdog can also reserve the right to make intrusive judgments on teachers' personal lives.

I wouldn't count on this superficially supportive sentiment lasting too long if I were Michael Gove, however. She goes on:

"Rather than have outright abolition, all teachers ought to be consulted on whether they believe a professional council for teachers should be maintained. What we cannot have, however, is a council which is at the whims of any Secretary of State. If we are to achieve the holy grail of evidence based policy making, free from political interference, there would be merit in looking at the recent proposal for a Chief Education Officer along the lines of the Chief Science and Medical Officer."

Interesting, isn't it? The NUT was quite prepared to put up with Balls' eternal meddling and politicised interventions. It was even happy, in the end, to put up with the sinister GTC's politicised prescriptions and intrusions. Why? Because Balls is a comrade and the GTC is basically populated by comrades. As soon as Gove comes along, however, with his exciting (or terrifying, if you're a comrade) brand of pragmatic radicalism and a fresh educational philosophy, the time has come for another quango, quick! Or, at the very least, an expensive, 'independent' tsar civil servant who used to be a professor of something or other mildly educational at the University of Brixton, but who, above all, is a comrade.

Gove is definitely doing something right!

Not NICE Again!

2010-06-02T10:06:00.003+01:00

Swansea city centre last Friday night. NICE!

Another one of these pejorative, interventionist (socialist) medical reports has just been released by one of the UK's many health scare professional quangos, this time calling for enforced national temperance. I have several bones to pick not just with this particular, latest piece of medical meddling in people's lives, but with these kinds of moralising "experts" and this sort of lifestyle intervention nonsense period. They seem to think that if something "costs the NHS" x-billions of pounds, they have the right to launch into moral crusade mode, as if the NHS is some sort of precious thing with a life of its own that must be protected as an institution over and above the people who pay a fortune for it and whom it is bloody well meant to serve, doubleplusungood lifestyle or not. These are the same clowns who helped give us the pub smoking ban, with no discernible impact on smoking rates anywhere seen so far as a result of it, but the destruction of the entire pub industry imminent thanks directly to it. Hewitt's and Labour's masterpiece.

I'm not going to rant too much about this latest here - haven't got the time this morning - but I will say two further things. NICE is the same quango that regularly fails to take on big pharmaceutical corporations to get the price of, for example, life saving cancer drugs down so they are affordable. Instead it simply rations them, but never objects when the NHS iniquitously refuses further free treatment to patients who opt to buy the drugs for thousands of pounds privately. Why does NICE behave like this? Well, I was unsurprised to find out from Private Eye not that long ago (no links, sorry) that a suspicious number of "experts" who work for NICE also have strong connections with big Pharma. Surprise surprise. So it is hardly surprising that I do not trust them when they start pontificating about how people should live their lives. Sure, drink related illnesses kill 10,000 people a year (so they say). But you know what? About 500,000 people died last year, many after prolonged periods of treatment for things like heart disease and cancer and most of those diseases were the product of old age rather than any specific, chronic lifestyle problem.

Of the 500,000 dead, most were over the age of 75 (some 66% of all deaths for 2009, says the ONS). So the real "problem" for the NHS is that better diets, hygiene, sanitation, inoculation, peace, affluence, antibiotics and yes, medical technology, means that Britain's annual death rate is plummeting. And that means the NHS is having to cope with tens of thousands more elderly and infirm bods each year - and guess what, it can't. But it can't talk about that so it allows one of its quangos to go into displacement activity overdrive by talking about binge drinking which, let's face it, is far more a social ("Broken Britain") issue than it is a health issue. Ask anyone who lives in any town centre anywhere in the UK.

That's the general point. The second point is that while there are lots of good reasons to encourage people to live healthier lifestyles, especially if they are drinking too much, smoking, not getting enough exercise and/or taking drugs, you have to give them a reason why. Attempting to force people to drink less by hammering them in the pocket and saying that a) it's for their own good, and b) it's for the good of the NHS (as if some patients are somehow more 'deserving' than others) has never worked, won't work today and will never work in the future. All it will do is hammer the poorest and those millions in Labour heartlands up and down the country living on benefits while annoying the hell out of the middle classes who have done nothing wrong generally speaking (although NICE or that moron Liam Donaldson will doubtless come up with another spurious, anecdotal study on middle class binging), but who will be forced to stump up another chunk of money to fund the biggest bottomless pit the world has ever seen - the NHS.

But that's what this is really all about, isn't it? The National-bloody-Health Service. Well, at least Andrew Lansley, the new health minister, has seen some sort of sense.

"Regarding Nice's recommendations... it is not clear that the research examines specifically the regressive effect on low income families, or proves conclusively that it is the best way to impact price in order to impact demand."

He went on: "The root causes of social problems lie not just in Government policies - although 24-hour drinking legislation has severely undermined clinician and police efforts to get to grips with this problem - but in social norms and peer influence.

"We must work across Government, society, communities and families to challenge negative social norms and promote the positives."

Between the sociology-speak lines, this is more or less a comprehensive rubbishing of the report and a libertarian reading of the causes of the binge culture. A cause for hope, then, if not for celebration. We finally have a health minister with a brain. Next thing he can do is use that brain again to save his department, and us, about, oh, potentially £70 million in 2011 by abolishing Labour's drug-rationing, talkative, 1999 brainchild altogether.

the Institute [has grown since 1999] from an organisation with no staff, premises, or bank account and a nominal budget of £8.5 million a year, to a body now employing over 270 people, with offices in London and Manchester, and an annual budget of £35 million which is set to more than double over the next few years.

...said one of its talking heads last year. Well, there's been an election since then and there will be no need for a shadow, unelected Department of Health, inventing work for itself and expanding its remit daily, from now on thanks all the same. Abolition should be imminent. Well, you decide. Here's its website. It looks suspiciously like another Department of Health to me. So, and I say this with unabashed relish, this report should be that particular expensive quango's swan song.

'NICE' to have known you as they say.

Israel Will Never Change - And Never Should

2010-06-01T16:54:00.004+01:00

It never should, is my point, when its very existence is at stake. Now, I have to be careful what I say here because of my line of work. I can't afford to get too mixed up in the political side of this latest hooha over Israel's security policies and the nefarious activities of spurious 'aid workers' who themselves seemed to think they needed to be armed and travel in division strength to perform best in their capacity as putative angels of mercy. With that in mind, I think I'll stick to the historical dimension. (Possibly - we'll see how it goes ;)

In addition, I have to be careful because some pointless commenter on my last post has said that my writing style (I didn't think I had one) stinks and that I don't know how to punctuate. Now, I don't mind the first meaningless dig - that's about taste - but the second one is patently bollocks. Nobody know's how, to punctuate better than me. they really dont. It felt like I was being told off by Pee Wee Herman. What a weirdo. And all because the twit in question thinks that David Laws isn't a troughing thief who deserved all he got - and more.

Anyway, back to Israel. I would like to make a couple of points about this latest non-story coming out of that part of the world, and they mainly concern the British reaction to it and what history tells us the Israeli reaction to that British reaction will be. There is a prejudice against Israel that runs so deep in this country that it is pretty difficult to quantify. It emanates from several sources and comes in a number of varieties but it all amounts to the same thing: loathing. Powerful political, lobbyist and media blocs in the UK indulge a fairly private agenda that is driven by a desire to kick Israel, and to see Israel kicked, as hard and as often as possible. That Israel's desire to search 10,000 tonnes of 'humanitarian' gear being shipped to terrorist-run Gaza warranted such a vicious reaction from the suspiciously well-armed, boarder-repelling 'aid workers' was very telling to me.

That these terrorist sympathisers' film of the inevitable firefight, as Israeli soldiers sought to defend themselves from what must have felt like a deadly assault, was the footage preferred and shown over and over again on British televisions speaks volumes about the unconscionable bias of Britain's mainstream media, especially (naturally) the BBC. Just imagine if this had been the USA and ATF officers or the US Coast Guard had been violently repelled by a foreign ship's crew and passengers. "Nine dead?" people would say, "Uncle Sam must be going soft in his old age. They were lucky they weren't all shot!" No one would have batted an eyelid.

But oh no. This is the plight of the Palestinians, so we have to bring out the standard, Pavlovian hyperbole and hysteria. The Left, the George Galloways of this world, who hijacked this issue long ago as they do with all issues they think possess the required propaganda potential to further the Marxist cause and the coming dictatorship of the workers, make the worn-out, cliched Israel=USA=Zionist Conspiracy=Great Satan lunatic link and condemn both the Jews and the USA for just about everything in the entire world they can think of (and probably things they can't), while the Establishment blames Israel because that's been official Foreign Office policy since the end of WWII, when Britain was humiliated by the new Israeli state into very kindly buggering off.

Allied - or maybe alloyed - to these unsavoury truths is the role of a highly partisan and blinkered media, whose journalists fall into one of the two above categories: leftwing dogma on Israel (BBC, Channel 4 etc.), or Establishment dogma on Israel (Telegraph, Times and so on). I've ignored the Far Right anti-Jewish dogma because as far as I'm concerned, it's fundamentally so far beneath contempt that it's not worth contemplating seriously. Suffice to say, however, it does complete a rather ugly picture. And then there are the Arabs!

But both the key positions in Britain, Left and Establishment, are equally corrupt when it comes right down to it because both are motivated by the same thing: prejudice. And this grows from shared characteristics of basic dishonesty, ignorance and/or malice. Without fully appreciating the entire history of Israel and Palestine unadorned with propaganda, from the late nineteenth century onwards, for instance,and Britain and America's roles in the creation of the new state post-war - America leading, Britain marginalised - then no possible resolution of the situation is remotely possible today. Furthermore, it would be wise not to forget the events leading up to and during WWII that directly led to the creation of the state in the first place. The Jews certainly haven't. Nor should we because when nutters start talking about wiping Israel off the face of the earth, Israel takes it deadly seriously; she will defend herself, as would we if we were in the same boat. They have every right to do so. They will not just quietly go down to the gas chambers this time around.

Finally, a note about the moderate, objective, professional media voices who always make me think there might be hope for truth in this country, and, therefore, hope for Israel after all. Today, the two Iains, Martin and Dale, deserve a special mention. Their writing on the subject of this unfortunate incident has been right out of the top drawer so far, and both should be commended for showing the rest of UK MSM journo-land what real unbiased reporting and commentary looks like.

(Incidentally, I don't "do" unbiased because this is my blog and these are my thoughts. If you don't like them, or how they are presented or expressed (or punctuated, grrr), then vote with your feet, do, there's a good punter.)

Alexander Avoided Capital Gains Tax

2010-05-30T22:44:00.004+01:00

Next!

You really couldn't make it up if you tried. Now Danny Alexander, bad (very bad) choice of replacement for trougher David Laws at the Treasury, has been caught avoiding Capital Gains Tax - you know, the tax he'll be responsible for ramping up as part of his new job. Sorry, but Cameron has set a precedent, has a principle he must (and I think will) follow, and so has to fire Alexander too. There'll be fewer tears over his loss I imagine than there were for 'rising star' and 'genius', David Laws.

Some will be asking why this is happening. It's very simple really and it has nothing to do with homophobic witch-hunts, Labour sting operations (lol) or right wing, anti-coaltion smear conspiracies. That's loony stuff. The reason is that while they were the no-hoper, hotchpotch third party that generally behaved like weasels in a sack behind the scenes (still do), during the expenses scandal they were basically ignored by the Telegraph in what was a target rich environment. There were only so many pages in the paper each day, and the editors rightly preferred to focus on the major players and the yellows got away with it, even to point where Clegg actually thought he could boast about it in the Commons! This is the hubris. Now that senior Lib Dems, to their huge surprise and thanks to a rare general election outcome, have found themselves doing real government jobs, they are subject to that delayed scrutiny. Moreover, it is all the more intense because they are being picked off one by one instead of en masse, as the Tories and Labour MPs and ministers were. So much the better.

It goes without saying - for me at least - that the Lib Dems fully deserve everything they get, and so the sight of senior MPs and some well known mainstream political bloggers defending one of them, often on the most ridiculous of grounds, is damn well nauseating. One good thing will come out of this new wave of expenses revelations, however: pretty soon, the Conservative government will run out of Lib Dems to put in the vital Treasury Chief Sec. role (they'll be on the Sarah Teather human mouse pretty soon).

Then maybe the country will get the person it really needs in that job - John Redwood - and, I predict, with the coalition still more or less in tact.

Every "cloud" as they say...

Danny Alexander's Challenge

2010-05-29T21:17:00.005+01:00

This is the global lending merry go-round as explained for the general public by two leading Australian economists, wisely employing a variation of the Socratic method.

There is an answer to all this, you know, and it's called 'cuts'. I wonder if young Danny Alexander is up to the challenge. Ha! Fat chance.

Remember John Redwood? We might have had a chance with him.

Hat tip: Tangled Web

Laws Gone

2010-05-29T19:47:00.010+01:00

Iain Dale and others are reporting that David Laws has gone. One thing: if true, it is important to establish the precise reason for his 'resignation' (sacking by Cameron). Having said that, it is also important to establish what were not the reasons too. For instance, certainly not the reason would be the one David Blackburn has just supposed in a uncharacteristically shoddy and pretty wrongheaded piece for him:

According to Con Home and several other sources, Laws has resigned. This is hugely regrettable as Laws is a star performer and I feel he has been the victim of a media gay-hunt that belongs to a bygone era. The sums of money involved are slight in comparison to some, and there are arguments that other ministers should resign for having committed similar or worse offences and for having shown markedly less contrition. But it is refreshing that a minister would resign over a personal transgression with haste and dignity.

This is wrong on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin. First, Laws has had little or no chance to demonstrate he was a 'star performer'. He was starting to look promising and seemed to be grasping the wisdom of the Tory policy on the debt and structural deficit. Well done for that, but stardom it hardly warrants. Second, to 'feel' that he was the 'victim' of some mythical 'media gay hunt' is arrant nonsense. His sexuality had nothing to do with it, aside from the fact that he was clearly embarrassed about it and this provided him with a motive for being so incautious with his expenses and then concealing this potentially damaging fact from his new boss. There was and is no 'media gay hunt'. Outrage about his public/private hypocrisy, yes - bigotry and prejudice, no. That is in Blackburn's imagination and, I think, was uttered because of some kind of personal disappointment rather than any genuine understanding of the sequence and significance of events [like I have, lol]. Again, I've got to say that I find that surprising from this writer.

Third, and most significantly, Blackburn makes some sort of point about the relative scale of previous incidences of irregular expenses arrangements with a frankly childish 'they didn't so why does he?' argument. Well, if he thinks that that false equivalence will wash with anyone then he hasn't understood idea-one of what's been going on here. Cameron stood on a ticket of cleaning up parliament and being tough with his ministers if they step out of line in principle. The amounts involved (and 40k seems like a lot to me) are not important. The way the money was channeled is. Laws bent the rules in a deeply suspicious way, far more even, if we are to entertain Blackburn's relativist argument for a moment, than your average trougher who simply took advantage of those rules but did so by the book, i.e. without adding their own, personal interpretation that advantaged them, or, indeed, a loved one, even more.

As to his mention of 'other ministers', who, I wonder, does he mean? Cameron? Labour ministers? Cameron can hardly fire Labour ministers who've already lost their jobs, for heaven's sake, so what on earth does he mean? Your guess is as good as mine. Suffice to say, it's the most muddled-up post of his I think I've ever read.

So much for the Blackburn gay witch-hunt theory. The real reason why Laws had to go is because Cameron is keeping his word. He has always understood the scale of anger at the expenses scandal. He also realised that Laws could not be talking about painful cuts in public spending one second and defending his own venality another. That's called an 'untenable position'.

In other words, the only thing Laws' sacking has demonstrated to me is not that he is dignified - I'm sure he is - but that David Cameron really does mean what he has says and that, dear readers, is the really 'refreshing' thing about this new government and about this incident.

But what follows is crucial. A sound, imaginative replacement must be found. Blackburn says, alarmingly, that it might be the lunatic Huhne. That would be a disaster not just for this government but for the entire country and Cameron must intervene to stop it instantly.

The only man with the gravity and intellect for a job like CST in a time of economic trauma and dislocation is John Redwood. Whether the Prime Minister likes it or not, Redwood is the right man for the needs of this country at this parlous point in its history.

What the Libdems want simply doesn't matter.

Update:

Well, they've got it badly wrong and given Danny Alexander the job according to ConHome. That is a disastrous decision and it will come back to haunt this coalition. You cannot compromise on the economy for the sake of the coalition and certainly not with someone as wet behind the ears, untested and lightweight as 37 year-old Alexander (yes, I know, he's been bigged up over the past few weeks because of the negotiations. Big deal).

Too many Tories are going to be too pissed off too quickly with any more appointments like this one. This may even be the one that tips them over. I think this is the first real sign that this coaltion cannot and will not last long. For one thing, unlike the corrupt Labourists, as amply demonstrated by Brown, Conservatives do not believe in the idea of clinging on to power at any price. The coalition could soon be toast.

Quite frankly, after the promotion of another Libdem lightweight to a cabinet role for which he is most certainly not qualified, especially at such a crucial moment for the British economy, I'm not sure how I feel about that prospect yet. Maybe, after all, it wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Friedman Wisdom

2010-05-29T01:28:00.003+01:00

You can find the rest of this dazzlingly wise, vitally significant interview by clicking on the video.

I truly hope it provides you with as much optimism as it's inspired in me. We haven't lost yet.

Who Will Fire David Laws?

2010-05-28T23:37:00.008+01:00

Shaping up as a half-decent, expensively-educated, millionaire Chief Treasury Secretary though he might have been, I'm awfully sorry, but David Laws' political arse is grass. He can't argue the case for public spending cuts when he, apparently, has been pretty happy to sponge off the state on behalf of his partner for the longest time.

So the only question to me is: who will fire him? His party leader, Clegg, or his boss, the Prime Minister?

My view? Cameron must pull the trigger immediately because what Laws did particularly is just the sort of troughing, fiddling, pocket-lining, venal rule-bending Cameron has been condemning in principle and often for over a year. He fought the election on that platform, for heaven's sake!

Frankly, Laws fired himself the moment he chose not to reveal any of this as being a potential problem to his boss before he was appointed (I do not for one moment believe he didn't realise or didn't understand the rules - in fact it's surely hard to believe that of a double first Cambridge economist - and it won't wash regardless, even if he sticks to that lame line).

But who to replace him? Well, how about John Redwood? I think it's high time Cameron picked someone like him for the cabinet anyway. Besides, he's much smarter and more experienced even than Laws in many ways, and genuinely believes and can explain the Friedmanite solution to Labour's debt crisis that we now so desperately need. He'd also be a handy bulwark against the economic mixed brew that is Saint Vince and his presence would vastly help to shore up the Tory back benches. A win-win scenario potentially, then, both for the party and, in my humble, for the country.

Oh, and sucks to the bloody Lib Dums. They can either suck it up and stay in government, or they can destroy this blessed coalition in a fit of indefensible pique.

I just can't wait to see how Deputy Nick decides to handle this one.

New BBC Weather Plans Cause Uproar In Newsagents

2010-05-28T19:50:00.003+01:00

I was informed by a reliable source today (my dad) that the BBC's new plans for recruiting weather presenters could well be in breach of every employment and equality law ever made. He told me that he heard from a friend he bumped into while he was getting his newspapers this morning that the BBC is planning to employ only Muslims from now on to present the weather - and no one else. When he asked the bloke what prompted this hairbrained decision, he was told:

"Because sometimes the weather is Sunni, but more often than not it's Shiite."

Naturally, I was outraged. Jokes really don't come much worse than that.

Question Time: So Here We Are Again

2010-05-27T22:38:00.006+01:00

Hey guys, unsurprising news: the BBC decide to defy with self-righteous Dimbledonian indignance the reasonable request of the government for a Labour front bencher to be on the QT panel and not, repeat not, the hideous denialist, contaminated, corrosive, bloodstained liar Alistair Campbell. So the BBC, with infantile predictability, nails its colours to the Labour mast once more, and drags the burnt out Campbell monster in anyway.

Not sure I actually need to watch the programme now. The BBC's agenda is pretty clear, with Campbell and Piers Morgan (would you believe) pathetically shoehorned onto on the panel for cheap, student-activist political reasons. Both men are basically worthless in themselves, seeking to justify their failed public existences through some sort of loudmouth hyperidentification with causes about which they have, and never have had, any comprehension. Ignore their lies and ruthless, utterly corrupt, insatiable vanity.

My absolute, incandescent fury at the ongoing hypocrisy of Labour and its nabobs, even in opposition (after they've been brought to democratic book!) and of its corrupt, lightweight mouthpiece that is the BBC, is really the only thing that's keeping this blog going these days.

You know, I think I'm finally starting to get my mojo back, after the deep - and deeply felt - disappointment of no overall majority, a hung parliament and the coalition.

Well, I'm glad about that even if noone else is likely to be :)

RIP Ray Allen - And Lord Charles

2010-05-24T18:58:00.001+01:00

Widely regarded as the best ever ventriloquist - and the funniest - Ray Allen passed away yesterday at the age of 79. Part of my childhood sadly gone, but not forgotten. Gottle o' geer!

Guardian Journalist Praises The Guardian - And The BBC

2010-05-24T10:26:00.002+01:00

Nick Davies, a quick bit of Wiki-ing reveals, is a 57 year-old Oxford-educated, Mirror-trained, former Guardian and now a freelance journalist who contributes to the Observer. He wrote a book a few years ago much loved by some of his peers in the professional media called Flat Earth News that basically rubbished 76% of journalism in the United Kingdom and beyond (he was that precise) . I'm not going to plug it. I thought its basic premise was weak (pretending that the underlying purpose of journalism, particularly newspaper journalism, is some sort of crusade for originality and not merely to sell news, recycled or otherwise, is ridiculous and naive). I also thought it was boring and did not finish it.

Anyway, the upshot of his interview this morning on Radio 4 was, simply, that having gratefully been given the chance to plug once more his dated tome, he merely repeated his feeble assertion (now equally dated) that only the Guardian and the BBC do real news. There was no alternative view in the interview, just some American fembot from the Washington Post giving almost exactly the same views, but in 'Murcan. I nearly blew my horn in disgust (see how mad I was?). Aside from the fact that the BBC hasn't broken an original story in, I would say, oh 26 years ( that would have been the Ethiopian famine in 1984), its journalist standards are non-existent. It does not so much report news, vastly over-resourced and over-staffed thanks to its generous taxpayer-funded budget though it is, as filter it through a BBC lens, which itself can be broadly deconstructed into three primary layers: obsessive Political Correctness, social statism and left wing political orthodoxy. There are other layers, such as climate change orthodoxy, but while they are just as significant in how they form the BBC's editorial stance and its recruitment policy, they are secondary ones. And woe betide anyone who does not toe the BBC line, and who has slipped through the recruitment sieve. They will not be working there for long (pack your bags Andrew Gilligan and Jeff Randall. You're fired!). The Guardian is sort of the newsprint arm of the BBC. The less said about it, the better. I'm surprised it doesn't think it's entitled to state funding, just like its TV sister, the Beeb. Perhaps it does!

There are one or two other things to say about the Graun, actually. Compare and contrast, for instance: in 2009, with the expenses scandal, the Daily Telegraph broke the biggest story of the decade bar none. All its many stories - and there were dozens - were sourced from completely original material - the most original you can get as a matter of fact: raw data. The Telegraph's expert, highly professional coverage then rocked parliament to its very foundations, and rightly so, and very nearly brought down a government. It has led to six prosecutions so far, and rising, and the retirement of scores of MPs. This story, which drove the entire news cycle for nearly two months - and still is to a certain degree over a year later - has to all intents and purposes changed the political face and historical direction of the United Kingdom, perhaps forever. It could well have saved parliament from permanent and long-term decline and forced a new government to ring the changes and call time on the last rotten government's (whom the BBC and the Guardian supported) institutional corruption, venality and dishonesty. What the Telegraph achieved there was not just a spectacular piece of classic scoop journalism a la Watergate, complete with their own Deep Throat, they did this country a service on a scale that will not be repeated for a long, long time. I wonder what kind of a dent that put in Nick Davies' bravely unverifiable "statistics".

And now, by comparison, let's ask what the Guardian did in 2009 to further the cause of investigative journalism which, one assumes, is not driven by any political agenda. Ah yes, it tried to get Andy Coulson fired from his new job because of something he wasn't responsible for (a court said) in his old one, glossed over the Damian Green arrest, virtually ignored the other big scandal of last year (Climategate) - or tried to spin it away - and spun around like a headless chicken editorially as it tried to work which loser to back. The BBC did much the same thing, though in its case it's unnecessary to come out and actually back someone or misreport stories it doesn't like. Oh no. It can be far more cunning than that with its spin. Its editors can simply cover what they feel like covering, invite whatever guests they like on talk shows to gloss over distasteful 'badthink' news, ignore political stories that might place the Tories in a favourable light and emphasise ones that might not, and do the reverse for their buddies in the Labour party. They can manipulate public opinion by generating it (do you know how easy it is to splice together four punters in the street saying they agree with something and leave out the four dozen who said they didn't?) and they can be openly hostile or dismissive of anything or any one they don't like (like the Israelis). Simply put, they test the limits of what they think can get away with all the time, everywhere. And believe me, they can get away with a hell of a lot.

I've hardly scratched the surface. But now, I hope, you can at least see why I thought Nick Davies' nonsensical comment on the BBC, about the BBC and the Guardian and journalism generally, was worth a mention. Whatever his journalistic credentials - and he is well-regarded by his colleagues from across the spectrum of the MSM apparently - he is not very honest and he's not at all right.

Still, though, I suppose we can let him off. He was only trying to sell his book, after all.

News Flash: This Coalition Is A Joke

2010-05-20T23:35:00.002+01:00

I'm absorbing Question Time reluctantly and all it's (predictably, these days) generating in me is an intensifying mood of futility, especially after the pathetic Clegg/Cameron long grass double act earlier today. This 'strong and stable government' nonsense is a dangerous misunderstanding on the part, particularly, of the Tories of what the general election result really meant.

People have had a bellyful of 'strong and stable governments' that are basically all mendacious mouth and no trousers, having had 13 years of a catastrophic version of 'strong and stable' Labour government. We're through with elected dictatorships when they're actually elected. But this increasingly disconnected, disingenuous, dysfunctional Libdum/Tory stitch-up version of a 'strong and stable government' certainly wasn't voted for - by anyone! It's the wittiest form of 'strong and stable government' I think I've ever seen. And the joke's on us.

People, if anything can be read into the outcome of the general election (and not a lot can), did not vote for a 'strong and stable government' that would carry on for five years as if Cameron's and Clegg's convenient interpretation was the only one that mattered. What people actually 'voted for' (if a mass ballot really can have a mind and character of its own, which itself borders on insulting inanity) is a weak and unstable government that would have to make policy according to principle, be answerable to the people every day of its existence, and would have to rely on pure guts and political nous just to get through one parliament.

A minority Tory government would have delivered that, and would have shown the country that the party still had a soul and some real courage. It would have earned them a proper victory down the line, too, possibly with a new leader who genuinely represented those erstwhile traits of the Conservative institution.

As it is, forget what I've said before, (although I've been pretty consistent in the post-election propaganda landscape), the middle class Richmond/Notting Hill shits are in charge again (this time with a bluish-yellow hue rather than a red one). They've welded Parliament's doors shut to the likes of me and you, and are now talking to themselves while really, honestly imagining, laughably, that they are running the country.

It did not take long, but the consequences, as the world economy tanks - this time for real - will be awe-inspiring and devastating. We could have had a weak but principled and determined government. Instead, we don't even have a 'strong and stable government'. All we really have is weakness, fudge, paralysis and hot air.

Not impressed. Plus ca change, right?

Ming The Merciless Strikes Again

2010-05-18T13:26:00.000+01:00

The taste for the blood of human prey must be pretty overwhelming for a grizzled political werewolf like Menzies Campbell. He can't get enough of it. Certainly Charles Kennedy's 80 proof claret clearly wasn't enough to slake a thirst like Ming's, even though it did poison his leadership. Now he's stalking little Bercow, too, and seeking to replace him, just like he did with Kennedy, as Iain Dale reports.

I'm suggesting there must be some sort of political bloodlust at work here, because he certainly can't be doing it consciously. He who wields the knife seldom wears the crown and all that. At least, not for very long. You would have thought he of all people would have learnt that lesson pretty comprehensively. It seems not. So no, Ming must be driven by some kind of supernatural desire to decapitate colleagues, even those that pose no threat to him - though perhaps do represent an obstacle to his ambition. Target and destroy.

Even so, I would not be sorry to see that duplicitous little git Bercow ousted, even by a fresh-brains-addicted political LibDum zombie like Menzies Campbell. But it's just worth remembering now and then that the ends seldom justify the means. Whatever the outcome, however joyful, the "means" have a habit of coming back and biting you in the ass.

Letters From A Tory, RIP

2010-05-16T04:51:00.003+01:00

A few days ago, discreet - and now defunct - blogger "Letters from A. Tory" posted what I think is one his finest bits of commentary, among many fine bits of commentary from that individual over the years. We'd come to expect it, value it, even.

It's worth noting, at least on my diary of political angst - for personal posterity, in other words, you understand - that I'd been reading the Letters blog for a couple of years or so already, long before I'd thought about the idea of an online diary of my own. But it was his efforts that finally convinced me to have a crack at it myself - at the start of last year. I have to be grateful for that, not least because it's more or less kept me sane.

Well, now he's gone, sadly. But his last post doesn't just resonate as much as all his others, it's a perfect warning to David Cameron, a man who, so far, has done pretty well as coaltionist Prime Minister, but he's also ignored, alarmingly, his people.

Anyway, here's the quitter's last post:

Dear David Cameron,
This is the final letter that I will ever write, as this blog will sadly be closing down tomorrow (along with a final goodbye from me). I appreciate that this salient fact may have escaped your attention due to some rather important events in your own life and career over the past few days. Even so, regardless of the election result, you were always going to be the last person that I wrote to, as there is so much that I’d like to say.
When you became leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, I had barely heard of you. Along you came, with a superb leadership campaign and a genuine belief that the Conservative Party had to change in order to win an election – which was, of course, entirely correct. Over the following months and years, we saw the environment take centre-stage, euroscepticism get quietly tucked away and centre-ground political thinking forced onto a somewhat reluctant group of MPs. It was necessary, but it was a bitter pill to swallow. Nevertheless, the Conservative MPs on the benches behind you in the House of Commons soon realised that you could deliver a Conservative government, and for that reason alone they kept their mouths shut (most of the time). However, your inner cabal of strategists, image gurus and modernisers did not have it all their own way. On several occasions, including the election campaign itself and the election that never was in 2007, your closed circle came under huge pressure from the electorate and your own party. Yes, they survived, as did you, but only just. As we approached the recent general election, voters were still unsure about who you were and what you believed in, which is staggering after five years of leading the opposition. Your desire to keep your cards close to your chest and deal purely in intangibles and soundbytes almost cost you a place in 10 Downing Street. The public don’t like feeling uneasy about potential Prime Ministers, yet they were fed uneasiness in spades. Despite all the funding you could have asked for and a crippled government, it so nearly went horribly wrong.
Here we are, just a few days later, witnessing a truly historic coalition between you – a liberal conservative – and the Liberal Democrats. Ironically enough, everything is completely different yet little has changed. You still have a group of MPs who will be sitting behind you, watching, waiting, holding their nerve for as long as possible in the hope that you can deliver a truly successful and admired Conservative government. Common sense tells them to keep quiet rather than voice their anger and irritation. You will have your inner cabal with you in government as they were in opposition, making decisions that affect everyone and everything despite having shown their incompetence on more than one occasion. Moreover, the coalition deal has put many of your favoured issues – social justice, a green economy, civil liberties – at the heart of your plans for government. You didn’t hide your disappointment at not getting a majority in the House of Commons, yet you have gracefully and seamlessly organised a historic coalition with another party. The question on everyone’s lips now is, naturally, will it last? I have no idea what the answer is to that question, but then again neither do you. What I find interesting, though, is not that things could go well or go badly – that is just stating the obvious. The most incredible element of this coalition is the breathtaking gulf between the best case scenario and worst case scenario for you and the Conservative Party.
The best case scenario for 2015 is simple enough. The economy will be growing at a healthy rate and both unemployment and economic inactivity will be reduced. The welfare state will have been transformed by supporting people into work and punishing those who chose not to get a job. Our broken society will have begun its long healing process through stronger families, good schools, lower crime and genuine localism taking hold. Government waste will have been largely eliminated and the state will be much leaner and fitter than it is now. British people will be put first, civil liberties will be untouchable and immigration will be severely curtailed. People’s faith in politics and politicians will have been mostly restored. The Lib Dems will have kept their end of the deal, leaving themselves with absolutely no electoral appeal relative to the Conservative Party and facing annihilation. The Labour Party will be rife with infighting and weak leadership, making them virtually unelectable given your strong performance as Prime Minister and with the memory of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown fresh in many people’s minds.
The worst scenario, however, is nothing short of disaster. The coalition falls apart within months as the Lib Dems walk away, accusing you of ignoring them and not delivering on promises. You look weak and indecisive, with your own party demanding tougher action on any number of issues. The Conservative grassroots refuse to campaign because you and your inner cabal leave them disillusioned with pointless platitudes and non-traditional policies. The economy staggers along, still badly wounded, and public sector cuts push unemployment in the wrong direction. The voters ignore your pleas over the necessity of cutting government spending while every policy announcement is met with scorn and cries of ’spin’. Your school reforms and localist agenda stumble and fall. Your welfare reforms leave you branded as abandoning the poor and needy. Uncontrolled immigration continues unabated and the anger spills over onto the streets. Your pro-EU stance forces some backbench MPs to break ranks and speak out against the party line. Labour regroups and, as the only strong opposition party, lap up your failures and convince the floating Lib Dems and disgruntled Conservative voters to join them. Electoral defeat is little more than an inevitability.
My political crystal ball is of no use. For the life of me, I just cannot see where this will all end up. Neither the best case scenario nor the worst case scenario are implausible, outlandish or inconceivable, yet the two scenarios are a staggering distance apart. The only thing that I can say with any certainty is that the future is very uncertain. The history books will remember the next five years of British politics as one of the most incredible periods in living memory. I just can’t decide whether that will be for better or for worse.
Good luck, Mr Cameron. You’re going to need it.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory

Wise words, wouldn't you think?

I'm not going to link through to the source site of this article because it's now officially (so I've been told) dead.

Strange Days

2010-05-15T01:36:00.004+01:00

We must avoid conflict in the name of stability (rather than unity). Right?

Hmm.

PS: I guess if we're doing a bit of 90s East London mellow vibe peace rap, we might as well have this one too:

I agree, but the new routine is starting to look just as bad as the old one. Go figure.

And have a nice weekend.

Day 3: WithThe Best Will In The World

2010-05-15T00:37:00.007+01:00

Yesterday was too irritating to blog about. Besides, I was busy with real, crust-earning life.

But it was an excruciating day politically. The vain Huhne's inability to be ministerial in any sense of the term, preferring his own agenda regarding what he seems to think is the minor issue of nuclear power over policy, thus undermining on Day 2 his own party leader's sworn coalition commitments, was just too much for me to take without crashing my car.

So I let it go, calmed down, made it home and stayed silent. That was healthy. And hey, I've been ecouraged to be a quiet supporter of this stupid marriage anyway, not least by the Conservative Party's central spin machine. "Give it a chance, Den, it's the new politics," they've said. Well, sure. I'm game.

Bullshit. Day 3 and while we have the hangoever of Simon Hughes' Tory-hating performance on Question Time to mull over, a new revolt - from Tory backbenchers, no less, not LibDums - over the 55% Cameron "stability" proposal (which smacks of Day 2 desperation to me), dominated the political news.

But that's been trumped now. Coalition Day 4 will be all about Saint Vinny Cable's (he's now Britain's Business Minister, laughably) desperate calls to Gordon Brown (remember him?) to discuss ways of keeping the "Tories out".

Sorry, fellow moderate Conservatives, but you should understand now why I am measuring this hopeless coalition's lifespan in terms of days rather than months or - and this bit of political confection amused me the most when I heard it from the two leaders involved - in years!

The best will in the world, which is what David Cameron has delivered - and he demonstrated that again, impressively, today in Scotland as his defining, wonderful feature as a genuine leader - cannot alter the potentially perverse motives and vile appetites of the partner you choose to bed.

The Liberal Democrats are appalling bedfellows, not because of the Tories, or even because of their natural woolliness, but because they have no idea of unity in the name of higher purpose, and absolutely no genuine party unity anyway.

Cameron has had a wonderful, heavyweight start, and so has the Tory part of his team. That bodes well.

In contrast, the LibDems look like total lightweights - and totally divided lightweights at that (where's the leadership from Clegg? Why hasn't he slapped Huhne down? Because he can't).

They are, in short, complete jokes - and Cameron, as his stock price rises as he pops up on the world's radar and is recognised as a sound man with a view who seems to be listening, has no need to take any shit from any of these idiots at home.

I feel an ultimatum is actually pretty imminent. It should be. "Hey, Clegg, Mr Deputy Prime Minister. Shape up or sod off."

Well, someone has to say it.

Things fall apart/The Centrists cannot hold...

Day 1: The Freedom Bill

2010-05-12T18:54:00.005+01:00

Philip Johnson has just perfectly framed one of the major priorities for this new Conservative/coalition (CC for short) government. It's a Great Repeal or, the alternative, which I prefer, Freedom Bill which will, when enacted, move us forward in the titanic task of repairing the damage that thirteen years of Labour has inflicted on Britain's tradtional rights and liberties. He is, in fact, a champion of the cause:

As someone who has written countless articles, and a recently published book, Bad Laws, about Labour’s excessive legislation and the erosion of our civil liberties, the new government’s programme for tackling this through a Great Repeal Bill is greatly encouraging.

For this who have not seen the list of laws and databases set either for the axe or for review here it is. I can think of many more to add, and any suggestions are gratefully received. But it is a start.

The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.

This will include:

A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill.

The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.

Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.

The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.

Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.

The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.

The restoration of rights to non-violent protest.

The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.

Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.

Further regulation of CCTV.

Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.

A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences

Excellent stuff, and in Ken Clarke there is a true heavyweight who can get the job done. But this should be just the beginning. After Labour's wicked assault on our freedoms is tackled, more repeal bills will be required to heal the deep wounds of every other area of British public life Labour mauled with their nightmarish authoritarian statism and hyper-interventionism - most of all but certainly not exclusively in education.

This is a positive initiative that stops dead the previous government's sinister ideological legal and social manipulation and simultaneously will help to bring them firmly to book for their actions while in office.

Forget all the photo opportunities, it is this that says to me loud and clear: the CC government has made a good start on Day 1. It bodes well for the future.

A Happy Queen

2010-05-11T21:16:00.004+01:00

No, not him, you fool. Her Maj. Seems we are amused. The Prime Minister will be relieved.

Well, him and the two sensible thirds of the country both.

HE'S GONE!

2010-05-11T19:18:00.006+01:00

Three years - or thirteen years. You pick. It amounts to the same thing: this is the end of the worst government this country has ever had inflicted upon it. It is the moment this blog was mainly started for: to bring that moment a little bit closer. If it did (which I doubt) then at least it has served some sort of a purpose aside from channeling my anger. I suppose I'll have to turn it into a 'defend' blog now - or something.

But, my god, the most poisonous advisors finally did for him didn't they? Mandelson, Adonis, Campbell, Balls - they were all there. A sad collection of Wormtongues who finally killed the corrupt old leader off. And never was such an ignominious end more richly deserved.

But, in the end, who cares. HE'S GONE!!

The Past

A FUTURE

He's Almost Gone...

2010-05-11T17:56:00.011+01:00

Brown has almost gone and the deal with the Libdems is almost complete, according to Bareknuckle Boulton on Sky.

Me, I have grave misgivings about this whole shoddy arrangement. But at least Cameron will be where he should be, in Number 10 - elected - and at least the cuckoo Brown will finally be out. For good. That'll do for now.

==Update==
Sky has just reported Brown is going to resign tonight. I am very glad I kept that bottle of vintage bubbly on ice. Toasting his exit will be one, sweet moment of gladness.

==Update 2==
Oh dear, the lecturn's out again.

Good grief, do the dignified thing, Brown: just get in the Jag and go to the palace. We really do not want yet another self-justifying, self-pitying speech. We've had thirteen long years of those, all equally as bad, or worse, than the last one.

He shall not be missed.

Con-Lib Back On

2010-05-11T16:25:00.006+01:00

According to Sky News sources, the talks between Labour and the Liberals have "failed". After all that, who'd have thought it would be a few Labour MPs - a mixture of Scottish veterans, bitterly opposed to the SNP, and some promising young thrusters, who would inject some reality into Labour's mad ambitions, themselves driven on by the likes of Mandelson (unelected), Alistair Campbell (unelected) and Gordon Brown (unelected - as PM - and now comprehensively defeated - as PM)?

Mind you, after the way the Liberal Left and its old guard have behaved over the past two days, David Cameron would be well within his rights to conclude that a party like Nick Clegg's outfit is unfit for office and declare that for the long term, political good of the country, he's going it alone - and then dare the Lib Dems to side with Labour in bringing down his government. Cameron would be thinking "bring that on" - and the mauling Labour and, especially, the Liberals would receive at the general election that was triggered. The Lib Dems have been that bad over the past few days; they've been that shabby.

Others have already posted this idea for an outcome in the comments on this blog and on their own blogs at one time or another. At first, my own naive good will must have clouded my judgment. However, the veil has been lifted, but not just from my eyes: if the Lib Dems are that treacherous when they're engaging in coalition/cooperation talks, just what would they be like with a bit of power? It doesn't bear thinking about, not least because maybe, after all, such a coalition would be worse than treacherous, it would be futile. It could hardly be the 'stable coalition with a working majority governing in the national interest' now, would it? It would be toxic, and the Tories might actually be mad to contaminate themselves with it just for the sake of a few months of ineffective governing.

Still, having said all that, I certainly don't blame Cameron for any of this, unlike some on the Tory right and a few heavyweights of yesteryear, like Norman Tebbit. Cameron had to try, and he's conducted himself with magnificent integrity all the way through. And people will notice that. They have noticed it. Whatever happens, he is the winner from here on in. And besides, you don't blame the victim for being stabbed in the back, unless you prefer a particularly bloody brand of Machiavellian politics. The perp always takes the wrap (ask Menzies Campbell).

The British people will not be forgiving. They're the real 'victims' of the Liberals' two faced, self-interested double-dealing, and the Labour delusionals who just can't accept that they lost the argument and just can't take 'no thank you' (or words to that effect) for an answer.

So perhaps we will have to ask the question again after all. Well, if so, the sooner the better. So be it.

Moore's Crusade

2010-05-11T10:41:00.004+01:00

The treatment of its captive audience by the BBC has long been a total scandal, especially in the area of funding, where its behaviour, especially over the past ten to fifteen years, has become beyond sinister and threatening to the point where it could well be - and probably is - illegal according to international law.

But I had no idea just how big an impact the BBC's licence fee collection army has on the entire legal system until, that is, I started following Charles Moore's protest of disobedience at the handling of the Ross-Brand outrage in 2008. Today, he's written what I imagine will be his last piece on the now-resolved case (which he lost, naturally) in which he reveals some truly chilling facts, especially towards the end, about just how massive a drain on the nation's resources the BBC has become, in every sense:

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing I have discovered over the past 20 months is the vast tide of small-scale human misery which the licence fee causes. In 2008-09, there were 168,800 prosecutions for licence-fee evasion. That is nearly 15 per cent of all prosecutions. Almost all the people charged are poor. The telly is one of their few pleasures, and they tend not to watch the BBC on it. And yet, for want of £142.50, tens of thousands clog up the courts every year.

Yesterday in Hastings, a young single mother was tried for the same offence as mine. She had a baby in a pushchair, and I agreed with the clerk to let her case go first, so that she could get out in time to fetch her other children out of school. I can see no justice and no humour in a situation where people like her are punished, so that people like Ross can get his £6 million.

The BBC is a parasitical organism, draining life out of our culture, our society, our politics and our economy with its PC anti-intellectualism, its decadence, its political bias and its greed.

It's time this particular disease of the body politic was cured.

The Liberal Left Take Over

2010-05-11T09:41:00.005+01:00

Having seen Simon Hughes, with all his suspiciously Bennite vocal characteristics (you're telling me they're not related!) on BBC News this morning, talking up the Lib-Lab pact, and then hearing Paddy Ashdown on Radio 4, he of the 'progressive coalition' obsession, talking about 'his' party entering a minority arrangement with Labour - (he had the temerity to say the Tories wouldn't 'dare' vote it down. They wouldn't have to, Paddy. They could leave that to the nationalists - or even the unionists) - having seen and heard all that, one thing is now surely very clear. Nick Clegg has lost control of 'his' party's agenda - if he ever had control over it in the first place, which I doubt.

Whatever the outcomes of this little Lib Dem mini-coup, that party is now in grave danger. It is important to remember that the history of the SDP-Liberal Alliance is a jolly turbulent one. It seems to me to be a party, being, as it is, really two merged though still fairly discrete political identities, that is quite capable of tearing itself apart over this. One of its own supporters seems to think so too. Mike Smithson, of Political Betting, writes:

Could this end up splitting the Lib Dems?

This is my 64th birthday and I’m fearful that it could go down as the day that parts of my own party took decisions that could have a lasting and possibly even destructive effect.

The election arithmetic and the harsh economic reality for the nation leaves the party with one choice - but one that large parts of it appear to be unable to accept.

To be seen to be propping up a government that secured just 29.6% of the vote just five days ago and to reject what appears to be a reasonable deal from the seat and vote winners is taking it into very dangerous territory.

I don’t know where this will end up but passions are running very high and all players have to detach themselves and look at how it appears from the outside.

The events of these few days will define the Lib Dems for generations if it survives that long.

I think it's becoming obvious now that a war is going on inside the Liberal Democrats for what some clearly see as the identity of that party. At the moment, it would appear that the Euro-left of PR-obsessed, Labour-sympathisers are almost certainly winning.

The Tories should walk away from this lot now. It's no good waiting for some sort of childish propaganda victory. The Lib Dems look toxic to me. Better out of it while the election performance, so close to a majority, is still uncontaminated by non-manifesto commitments, never required but made public nonetheless. I could live with AV, burdensome though it would be. But for many Conservatives that was a step too far already. It should really be the dealbreaker, if there is any deal to be broken (which I now doubt).

As for the Lib-Lab coup: huh, let it happen. Let Ashdown's dare be tested. I can guarantee that a Lib-Lab minority pact is truly the lemming option. Never mind that it destroys the idea that the Lib Dems (or Labour - but we already knew about them) are remotely interested in 'stable government in the national interest', it would be extraordinarily bad for the reputation of parliament, too. But hey ho. If Labour really doesn't understand what losing an election, or, at the very least, the authority to govern, means, then they must learn the hard way. And they will, as others have said, at another election - which will happen a lot sooner than even I'd thought - in August of September.

As for the Lib Dems. Well, unless Clegg does something remarkable today and proves that he is in charge of a unified party - 'his' party, not Paddy Ashdown's - then I firmly believe that they are finished. Every hour of secret talks and double dealing that passes, they come off looking worse in the eyes of an impatient nation. What's more, every hour of secret talks and double dealing that passes, the case for proportional representation in a nation with a tradition of and an appetite for strong government looks weaker and weaker.

Why, I wonder, do the Lib Dems think they only ever win 18-24% of the popular vote? Well, if they don't know then I'll happily spell it out: because 60-80% of the electorate doesn't like their policies and never has. The Tories should remember that.

One other thing: so much for Guido's "Change Coalition". Good. One thing I could never have stomached was that slimy toad Chris Huhne in a cabinet post. He sounded far too much like another Hoon to me.

Lib Dems In Process Of Signing Their Own Death Warrant

2010-05-10T18:19:00.001+01:00

The Lib Dems have always been a pushmepullyou party with a 'progressive' wing (leftwing, that is), and what I would call a woolly wing of failed Tories like its current leader. Well, while the Clegg end has been talking to David Cameron, we now find that the Simon Hughes end of this most unnatural of animals has been quietly talking to Labour at the same time. And now they've secured a vague promise from the man who lost the general election, Gordon Brown, to stand down - when it suits him, though, naturally not the electorate who just told him to piss off - and in the process, judging by the sudden outpouring of new soundbites from Labour ministers, - who are, incredibly, and thanks to what increasingly looks like a stitch-up - still 'ministers' making policy and spending money but without a mandate to do so - given Labour a sniff of a chance to seize back power.

Well, they're jeopardising any chance of a deal with the Tories, the only legitimate outcome possible save a Conservative minority government. They're also jeopardising economic stability and the legitimacy of this parliament before it's even begun. I'll tell you something else, if they keep on down this path, the Tories will (rightly) just walk away. It's grubby stuff, this. Judging by the comments of Alistair Campbell (yes, old potty mouth is still there, plotting and scheming) which nearly led to a fight on live television between him and Adam Boulton, what we could be seeing here is effectively a slow motion coup and it is impossible to see how it can be stopped.

I feel I'll be getting bloody angry very soon. You should be planning for that possibility too. This can only get worse. For instance, should the defeated Labourists get the backing of the Libdums, by bribing them with whatever they want, they could deliver PR in a shotgun bill, without consulting the electorate. The next election would lead to a permanent Lib-Lab coalition. It would be as though this election had never happened, which is exactly what Brown would love. You can imagine the left salivating away right now with him at the prospect. But not all of them. Tom Harris spoke a lot of sense on Radio 4 this evening, saying that on the Labour side, there are truly 'honourable' members who do not support PR and would not vote for it. He also said a deal with the Yellows would not work. Let's hope he's right on both counts.

For the Liberal Democrats, if they do carry on down this path, they will be signing their own political death warrant. Already, it is crystal clear that there are forces in Clegg's party he can't bring over, and who care far more about their own party than they do for the national interest. But Clegg cannot have his cake and eat it, or he will choke. He has to get tough with the Simon Hugheses and Don Fosters of his party and tell them to shut up - in the national interest. You know what? I don't think he's strong enough after his rubbish general election. So he might not have a choice in the end. But if the left of his party ends up victorious, and installs Brown/Labour in power, and keep the winners of the general election out, they will never be forgiven. There'll be another general election eventually and they will be obliterated.

Last thing, does Gordon Brown actually understand what an election is? All evidence thus indicates a negative answer to that question. Don't trust a word that comes out of his gawping gob. Go in September? You are having a laugh. I told you, he would have to be removed at gunpoint.

We took a step closer to that unthinkable scenario today.

Take Me To Your Leader

2010-05-08T20:04:00.004+01:00

Not sure how Matt manages to be so damn funny - and spot on - every day, but he's done it again.

The Change We Need

2010-05-08T02:07:00.010+01:00

While the cuckoo Brown parasitically remains in the Number 10 nest, and the country's real Prime Minister, David Cameron, gallantly waits and, with refreshing integrity, allows the defeated demagogue a window of opportunity through which he can choose to leave with some semblance of dignity intact, on the near horizon the storm clouds gather.

The country, and the economy, cannot wait on Gordon Brown's - and Labour's - wake-up call. He and they are now so divorced from reality that, so the left press seems to be reflecting, they imagine there is some way they can remain in power without a democratic mandate by doing some sort of deal with the Lib Dems. They are deluded if they think that will work, even if Cameron rejects the Yellow party's demands. They are even more deluded if they think, as the equally unelected Mandelson does, that a change of leader will sweeten the pill. It won't. If Labour wants to commit final suicide, that would be one of methods.

But this is all equally devastating for the hard core Tory right. They can't enter into a deal with anyone, on principle. They think Cameron has failed, so he must be punished. No, Heffer-types, you irrational, Thatcher-fetishists, Cameron triumphed. Not by quite enough, but he triumphed.

So I'm one of those people who believes that, yes, with hindsight, Cameron might have stuck to the tax-cutting guns a bit more. But I also believe that what was more important is exactly what Cameron has delivered: weaning the country off the lies, spin, bribes and decadence of New Labour, a horrible cocktail of expensive deceit to which it had become addicted. He's achieved that, so he's done what we needed and what he promised.

So now I will bow to his judgment on the final strategy for removing the cuckoo incumbent, including, if necessary, a deal with the Liberal Democrats and, if necessary, a well-equipped army detachment to get the job done on our behalf at gunpoint. It might yet come to that with a lunatic like Brown.

But that deal with the Lib Dems. What, precisely, is worrying about it? If you are an honest Tory, then the answer is "nothing", including a voting reform referendum (as Iain Dale explains) and cabinet posts for the likes of Cable. If you think the Conservative Party belongs, somehow, to you, then you are hyper-identifying (like Heffer) and need to move out and along. Join the Heffer Party for all I care. Just don't pretend you're a Tory, or that you're a grown-up.

As Michael Portillo says (he who seems to be a bit of a last-minute convert to Cameron, amazingly):

If the result is that the party gains power, the internal argument is over before it starts.

True Conservatives need to get real if they want Brown gone once and for all time. Otherwise, that Scottish criminal will exploit the self-indulgence of the leading, Tory party, ignore the fact that he has just devastated his own party in Westminster, and continue to "lead" - squat - by some miracle (also known as "constitutional loophole"), from/in Number 10. Cameron understands the change we need, and he's about to deliver it (he's going to eject Brown once and for all, one way or another. First principles!)

In other words, priority one is to kill this Brown zombie. And what Cameron is doing now with Clegg will achieve that core, common aim. Criticise this, and you are either a world-class numbskull (like Heffer) or a political fetishist who thrives on discord.

Only, while you're deciding, do remember your country. Cameron seems to have.

But if you can't do that, then next time just vote Kipper and be done with it. Only don't expect anyone to take you seriously - being the over-starched, self-important Hefferite that you clearly are - ever again.

Satisfactory, Not Spectacular

2010-05-07T09:48:00.011+01:00

Well, putting to one side all the nonsense for once, I'd say I'd pretty much got what I wanted, or very nearly: if not the end of Labour, then the end of Brown. A satisfactory outcome - just about. And a relief.

You have to ask the question, though: why wasn't this a spectacular victory for the Tories? There are tons of possible answers to that. Here are a few of them:

1. The weather.

Coupled with the general feeling of disillusionment with Westminster politics, and the steady decline of turnouts under Labour, was the rain. It was a miserable day where I am and I gather it wasn't much better anywhere else. All that's a recipe for a lowish turnout, and for a tighter race.

2. The swing.

Lots has been said about 'the swing' so there's no need to add much more beyond a reminder: thanks to the way Labour's rigged it, the Tories needed to break records to gain that overall majority they were after. I honestly thought they would. I was wrong! But they did bloody well, nonetheless.

3. The Lib Dem effect.

Even though they've done dreadfully in terms of seats, in terms of splitting votes in key constituencies, they've done precisely what I had hoped they wouldn't do and narrowed the margin of Labour's defeat. I hope they're very proud of themselves.

4. The media.

The media, especially Sky and the BBC, decided early in the game that the hung parliament theme was the one they liked, and they pushed it absolutely relentlessly from day one. They deliberately generated uncertainty in the country, and kept on blurring the dividing lines between the parties. The thing that was most unforgivable, however, was their massive and utterly disproportionate coverage of Nick Clegg and his Lib Dems. I think that has had a massive impact if not in directly splitting the vote, then in causing people actually not to vote. I am guilty, too, therefore - of underestimating the power television still has in swaying public opinion. But never again must TV be permitted to have such liberty during an election fight that it can pretty much do what it likes.

5. Labour

What damage these evil parasites have done to our democracy is, at the moment, difficult to quantify. But damaged it they have, massively and, possibly, irreparably. They have been trying to rig the system using any and all means at their disposal, including benefit dependency and even electoral fraud since the first day they conned their way into office. As far as I am concerned, they're a bunch of criminals. One thing looks certain, if we are to have our country back, Brown will need to be forcibly removed from Number 10, at gunpoint if necessary.

6. The economy

This is the real killer. Neither Labour nor the Tories have really been honest about the scale of the threat facing us by the sovereign debt crisis and the future of the nation's prosperity. People are not stupid, and they are seriously spooked. I was explaining the situation as objectively as I could to a foreign student the other day. I was surprised by what I heard myself saying, broadly that on the one hand, you had a fairly honest party that was hinting at immediate cuts (which would not go far enough) and on the other you had a completely dishonest party hinting at delayed cuts, (which would not go far enough). The people in general seem to be sort of trusting the party that's kind of hinting at more immediate action - sort of - rather than the party that put us in this shit in the first place (I didn't use the word 'shit' at the time).

In other words, an awful lot of floating voters are still out there, still floating, because no one gave them clear enough signals, or any real leadership. Cameron needs to grow a pair, show some steel and start leading. Now that he has won some sort of a mandate, and the moral right to govern, he can get tough with whoever wants to stand in his (and our) way, and at the very least try to avoid the meltdown that is coming.

Look on the bright side, though: Brown is finished.

Oh, and that bottle of vintage champagne is still in the fridge, unopened. Well, I don't think we're done with elections this year quite yet so I'm saving it for the outright Tory win.

There's gonna be a lot of fun before that moment, though. Don't stray too far from your radios!

Tory Win

2010-05-06T22:37:00.004+01:00

Just bet my brother a brownie that the Sky News exit poll is a joke and this'll be a Tory majority. Mind you, looking at the third world-style fiasco in Sheffield, I'm beginning to doubt whether this election is clean, (unless the Tories win it, naturally ;).

Anyway, Tory win - I firmly believe it. If it's a simple win, I get a tenner off my fickle lefty younger sibling.

If they win by 60, I get 200 sovs off Paddypower (a very old bet).

Wish the country (and me) luck.

Meanwhile, In Other News...

2010-05-06T20:56:00.004+01:00

Dow crashes 1000 points in 15 minutes on Greek/EU debt crisis. Wall Street thought it was a computer malfunction. It wasn't.

Um...

Source: CNBC

Election Quote

2010-05-06T18:59:00.006+01:00

"One day the 'don't knows' will get in and where will we be then?"

Spike Milligan

Hat tip: Inside Out: a jaxxland perspective

The Hopefuls - And One Other

2010-05-06T18:19:00.004+01:00

Lol. Peter Brookes is a top 'toonist.

Doctor's Mandate Is Not The Medicine We Need

2010-05-06T16:03:00.004+01:00

Brian Reading (perhaps he should be called 'Brain' Reading), the economist who coined the term "stagflation" and popularised the Laffer Curve, has written a terrific piece for the Speccy on the history of the 1970 election, which turned for Heath at the last moment possibly because of a Reading speech. If you haven't already read it, then give it a look.

It's quite nice that no campaigning is allowed on election day and no political coverage is permitted in the media. It feels like I'm living next to an airport but all the planes have been grounded because of a phantom ash cloud: you hear noises you'd forgotten existed and the pace of life is altogether more sedate. I wish it could be election day every day. You also read and hear stuff that wouldn't ordinarily make it into the programme, but does because there's an awful lot of dead air and virtual column inches to fill while uz ordinary folk get their democratic duty over and done with. There were examples of these on the radio this morning, and now there's this wonderful article by Reading.

For instance, in it he says:

Like Gordon Brown, Harold Wilson wanted a doctor’s mandate. He claimed to have the best poop-scoop to clear up the mess the dog had made – the international dog, not his. I started the speech by blaming him for the mess – he had devalued before and would devalue again.

Among the many other magnificently, almost exquisitely efficient statements ("He asked whether his shadow chancellor, Iain Macleod, had approved it. He had not but did that day.") this one caught my eye. The main reason for that, I suppose, is the mention of the name "Gordon Brown", but there were others. Probably because I'm really a novice I'd never heard the term "doctor's mandate" before, and it, and the "poop scoop" for the "international dog" perfectly describes what Brown's game is and it's put more succinctly than anywhere else I've read. And I've been reading a lot lately.

Let's hope he hasn't been allowed to get away with it. His kind of medicine we don't need. We've already had 13 years of the Dr Brown treatment. I'm praying that we're not going to be killed off for good with five years more!

Polling Day

2010-05-06T09:07:00.007+01:00

Blimey, I was just going to post something about the weather, which is miserable and wet here, possibly suggesting a lower turnout. But Guido is reporting that chief Kipper Nigel Farage has been involved in a plane crash in Buckingham.

I do hope he's OK. Kind of puts things in perspective somewhat, that sort of thing.

==Update==

Guido is now saying that Farage walked away from the crash but the pilot was being cut from the wreckage. Good news, on the whole.

DECISION DAY

2010-05-06T00:04:00.003+01:00

Whatever you do, avoid Brown's economic armageddon and

VOTE CONSERVATIVE

(Too much? Hey, you know, just do the right thing!)

Hat tip: London Spin

May 6th: Do The Right Thing

2010-05-05T22:45:00.008+01:00

If you live in England or anywhere else where they exist as a serious force, then:

If you live in a brainwashed Welsh Labour "stronghold", as I do, then give them the shock of the century, and vote:You might call me cynical for what might seem like "tactical" voting. Don't. This is the best way to deliver the thing that Labour generally, for their lies, their arrogance, their deceit and, above all, for their disastrous, ruinous incompetence - and Brown, for his lies, his arrogance, his deceit and above all for his disastrous, ruinous incompetence - deserve.

Nothing more and nothing less than obliteration at the hands of an electorate that has had a royal bellyful of them will do.

Do the right thing tomorrow, and not only return a Tory government for Westminster so that the rebuilding can begin, but send Brown-Labour into political Hades for a generation or more so they can't menace the work of reconstruction.

Under the Tories, we have a chance. In Wales, the same applies but with a slightly different technique for escaping the Labour disaster. But the upshot for the entire Union is exactly the same: five more years of Brown-Labour, (if Greece hasn't escaped your notice), and we're finished. Done. Over. Dead.

So whatever your reasons, this May 6th, just do the right thing!

Will Heaven On Freedland

2010-05-05T20:09:00.008+01:00

I never thought I'd say this because I haven't really 'got' Will Heaven so far in my relatively short blogging journey (maybe I'm jealous of his relative youthfulness and palpable cleverness - I certainly apologise if those are the reasons!), but he's just posted a piece answering that desperate Freedland thing that caused a bit of a stir in the leftwing media today of such dazzling brilliance that I'm afraid I've caved-in to the temptation to cut and paste it here so that you don't have to venture into its natural habitat to read it:

Emails from my Lefty friends have been pinging into my inbox this afternoon.Their subject lines have all been similar: “What do you think about Jonathan Freedland’s article in the Guardian on life under the Tories?” Hardly surprising, since it has been trending on Twitter all day. But I thought I’d take a closer look at what’s really worrying the brilliant Left-wing columnist.

Freedland writes, à la Kinnock: “I warn you that a chance some have waited for all their adult lives will slip away, perhaps taking another generation to come around again: the chance to reform our rotten, broken electoral system.”

But do the voters really want Labour sharing power after 13 years in government? Surely not, judging by recent polls which suggest a Labour collapse worse than one overseen by Michael Foot in 1983. They’ve had enough. And if you won’t listen to the electorate, at least read Boris Johnson on the problems with PR:

With PR, you end up with two types of MP and two types of democratic mandate; you promote the rise of extremist and fringe parties, such as the BNP, which has exploited PR to capture a seat on the London Assembly; and you end up with a system that is not remotely proportional. As Clegg knows full well, the effect of PR is greatly to magnify the influence of the third or fourth or fifth party – at the expense of the first or second. Look at Germany, where the FDP was able to hold the balance of power, and retain the foreign ministry for decades, in spite of winning only 5 per cent of the vote. Look at Israel, and the disproportionate influence of the minority religious parties.

All these are grave defects, but there is one final and overwhelming reason why Britain should not and will not adopt PR – that it always tends to erode the sovereign right of the people to kick the b––––––s out. Look at Belgium or Italy and see the disaster of coalition governments, endlessly forced to appease their constituent parts, chronically unable to take the decisions necessary for the country.

Freedland knows this first-hand. The only time I have met him was on a trip to Israel during the last Israeli election, when he explained to me and other students – in crystal clear terms – why Avigdor Lieberman, a Russian Right-wing nut (and former nightclub bouncer), was about to be made the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs despite his extreme party, Yisrael Beiteinu, only receiving about 11 per cent of the popular vote. PR – and a weak coalition government – was to blame.

Freedland continues: “If Cameron wins, he will not only thwart any move to fairer voting, he will act fast to rig the system in his favour. Even neutrals agree that his plan to cut the number of MPs by 10% – presented as a mere cost-cutting measure – will be one of the grossest acts of gerrymandering in British political history.”

The above link – to an Independent story – was a curious one to include. The so-called “neutrals” are David Blunkett, some unnamed “Labour officials”, and – finally – there is some research from the University of Plymouth which concludes: “The geography of each party’s support base is much more important, so changes in the redistribution procedure are unlikely to have a substantial impact and remove the significant disadvantage currently suffered by the Conservative Party.” Right, so that supports Freedland’s argument, does it?

Thirdly, he calls for “reform of our absurd, unelected second chamber” which, he writes, “will be postponed indefinitely, enabling Cameron to pack the Lords with his mates and sugar daddies, including perhaps a few more of those businessmen who so obligingly sided with the Conservatives in condemning Labour’s plans for national insurance.”

Why not acknowledge the fact that the Conservatives have themselves pledged to reform the House of Lords? Here’s the key quote from their manifesto:

We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the current House of Lords, recognising that an efficient and effective second chamber should play an important role in our democracy and requires both legitimacy and public confidence.

Freedland laments the Tory plans for the economy, saying, “I warn you that the economy could slide back into despair… A sudden shut-off of the public spending tap could well send a frail recovery staggering back into recession: the dreaded double-dip. It’s happened elsewhere and could happen here.”

But, as I blogged earlier, the argument that swift debt reduction could endanger the British economy is wearing thin, as Greece’s debt crisis shows worrying signs of impacting Europe as a whole. As one influential financial journlist (who until 48 hours ago was planning to vote Lib Dem) put it to me: “There is only one way for the UK to avoid a Greek-style crisis, and that is to reduce the country’s deficit as quickly as possible. The Tories’ economic plans have been vindicated.” The Economist and the Financial Times – both of which have backed a Conservative government – seem to agree.

Freedland is suspicious of Cameron’s wicked, wicked plan to ringfence NHS spending and of the Tories proposed inheritance tax cut, which is unlikely to happen soon. He is also anxious that single mothers and widows will receive £3 a week less than married women, because the Conservatives believe that the tax system should promote the family.

And he is sceptical about fusty old Tory backbenchers, while failing to note that half of them are about to be elbowed aside by a new intake of younger, more progressive, Conservative MPs. He is worried by David Cameron’s friends in the EU – but I think Daniel Hannan has answered that claim effectively on his blog, pointing out that “the ECR is more respectable than either of the two big blocs, the EPP or the Socialists.”

Finally, Freedland wishes he had time “to make a positive case for Labour, echoing its promises on a living wage and a cap on predatory chargecard interest rates or its plans for green jobs.”

But the truth is that – after 13 years in power – there really is no positive case for Labour. Tomorrow, the electorate will show they know it.

Superb. And here here!

Telegraph's Gaga Swingometer

2010-05-05T16:22:00.008+01:00

Someone please tell me I'm wrong, stupid or crazy (or all of the above, if it makes you feel better), but isn't this swingometer belonging to the Daily Telegraph broken? It says a 20% swing from Labour to the Tories, with the Tories gaining 52% of the vote, would result in a 69-seat majority for Nick Clegg! And he'd only have to win 18% of the vote to do it, according to the hatstand Telegraph software. So hang on just a second, let me get this straight...

...that would mean that the Tories can't win whatever happens and under any circumstances, doesn't it? Does the DT know something we don't? Call me paranoid, but rather than trust the Telegraph's gaga swingometer, I think I'd demand a recount. Clegg gets 356 seats with 18% of the vote. I know the system's constituency centred and therefore can appear imbalanced, but please. Someone's algorithm's gone off the reservation.

Don't take my word for it. Try it out for yourself. Have I gone wrong somewhere with this highly sophisticated flash gimmick for kids? Or is it just broken?

++Update++
They fixed it (as in mended it). How dull. But what if they're all as buggy as this one? Can we really trust any of them? They've had years to develop this stuff so it's not exactly on the hoof. Anyway, we'll see in about 48 hours or so I suppose.

Brown Implodes Mandelson's Campaign

2010-05-05T13:20:00.009+01:00

Been reading a few hand-wringing blogposts around and about reinforcing the idea that after that truly appalling rant at the weird, "Citizen UK" rally, Brown had somehow found his voice at the eleventh hour. Of course, it's in the nature of the media that these things become self-reinforcing narratives leading, usually at breakneck speed, to some sort of settled view or consensus, however totally detached from the truth - or reality - it might be. In fact, you could argue that the general election battle is a battle not just for a vote, but to influence that mercurial, flowing media narrative and try to alter, if you like, the course of the discourse - so to speak.

So in one sense - this sense - one could say that Brown sort of succeeded. He has shifted the narrative slightly - maybe - with the BBC on this morning's Today programme being willing accomplices, typically, or even the initiators of this latest little change of tack. But we know that the whole narrative, whichever way it is leaning, is generally nonsense anyway; that the reality is rather different, regardless of whether it influences people's minds or not.

The reality is that Brown, with his back against the wall and his campaign leaders pulling in three different directions, telling their own voters to vote for other parties (David Blackburn was pretty amusing on this in the morning), has decided unsurprisingly to get all atavistic on our butts; to go back to the old irrational, deceitful, Tory-hating, prehistoric Balls-Brown fake dividing line that Mandelson and Darling worked so hard to move away from and onto less toxic, less risky ground. They tried to decontaminate brand Brown. It seems they failed.

But they at least could see the bigger picture that concerns the whole future of Labour. I figure they calculated that if they allowed Brown to lie about phantom Tory cuts/ equally phantom Labour spending, won the election and then proceeded to cut everything in sight having been ordered to by the IMF, they would lose the next election (which would probably come soon afterwards anyway) by a country mile, be truly obliterated this time by a livid electorate, and secure 25 years of Tory government into the bargain without David Cameron even having to break sweat.

So, the upshot is that, despite the direction in which the media narrative is currently veering, apparently and irrelevantly, the fact is that Brown has got it disastrously wrong. He's not only reverted to type (who could have doubted that he wouldn't - that's all he is, after all), but he's actually going to lose the election on the back of it too, so we can skip the brief period of the total turmoil of a Labour government winning on a lie and collapsing within months as the economy tears itself apart and move straight onto the Tories.

All in all, the couple of more rational members of the former Labour cabinet must be tearing their collective hair out (that doesn't include Liam Byrne, naturally) gnashing their teeth and generally wailing a lot. Thanks to Gordon Brown, the whole, elegantly triangulated (and exquisitely dishonest rather than brutally deceitful) Mandelsonian election campaign strategy has now totally imploded and will suck the party down with it.

As I've said before, they only have themselves to blame. They could have removed Brown a long time ago. Hell, they never should have taken the piss out of the electorate by giving the auld wrecker a coronation in the first place. But that's all history now, and so is Labour. The one silver lining is that if there is any justice left in this world, or, indeed, sense left in this country, then even if Labour aren't kicked into third place and kicked into touch for a generation - even if they manage by some miracle to keep Cameron down to a minority government - Brown will be gone.

Even I, ever the optimist who still firmly believes in the clear Tory triumph - if by some horrible, perverted twist of fate I'm wrong, even I would happily settle just for the end of Brown if I can't have anything else. That outcome would be by no means satisfying, or even satisfactory, but it'd be one hell of a relief.

Thirteen Years Was All It Took...

2010-05-05T09:53:00.003+01:00

...for New Labour under first Blair, then Brown, to ruin Britain. It's worth watching this again just to remind yourself why you're not voting for Labour - and why you shouldn't risk voting for the Liberal Democrats.

The only party that can be trusted to make a start on rescuing the British economy, and securing genuine recovery, is the Conservative party.

Clegg: Unpatriotic And Unfit For Office

2010-05-04T23:51:00.007+01:00

Whatever Nick Clegg's chancer's instincts are telling him about whether he can go in for what, for him, would be the 'big win' of a ministerial role in either a Tory or (God forbid) a Labour government after this general election, all evidence thus far, in terms of his infantile campaign conduct and his hideously ignorant, arrogant attitude towards the country he thinks really desires his leadership in some form or another, points to the absolute certainty that this individual (just like the party that installed him as its leader) is totally unfit for any form of office.

Don't believe me? Nile Gardener, on his Telegraph blog, explains why:

Nick Clegg’s sickening disdain for both the military and intelligence communities was openly on display yet again earlier today in an interview on GMTV. In reply to a critique of his foreign and defence policy in The Times by three former senior national security officials, Clegg responded in typically condescending tones:

“I am not going to take lectures from a bunch of retired establishment figures about the security of this country.”

“Some of them actually made the biggest mistakes in the run-up to the Iraq War. I am not going to apologise for calling, for example, for a proper inquiry into the allegations that somehow the British security services made us complicit in torture.”

There is something breathtakingly arrogant about a party leader who feels he can sneer with impunity at highly distinguished figures that have served their country and dedicated much of their lives to keeping Britain safe, including a former chief of defence staff, Lord Guthrie, who fought as a squadron commander in the SAS. He can disagree with their views all he likes, but to mock them in derisive terms is highly insulting. At the same time Clegg seems obsessed with dredging up the spectre of the Iraq War, which has barely featured in this election despite his best efforts, and accusing Britain’s intelligence services of complicity in torture, which only serves the interests of Britain’s enemies.

As I wrote in my op-ed piece earlier today, Nick Clegg is the first major party leader to run for Prime Minister on an anti-British ticket. He is filled with a self-loathing for his nation and its institutions, which came across in spades in his response to The Times letter. I cannot think of a candidate for Prime Minister in recent memory who has accused his own country of involvement in torture. That is a damning indictment of both Nick Clegg’s leadership and his vision for the future of Britain.

Forget tactical voting. If you vote Lib Dem, maybe you'll get Lib Dem! That's strong enough reason on its own for any wavering voters tempted to turn to the Yellows to think again and do the right thing. If you want Brown out, you have to vote Cameron.

But if, for some peculiar reason, you honestly want five more years of Brown, then vote Brown - if you really have to. So be it - you are who you are and it's a free election.

But to vote for any years of the unutterable faker and Labour-lite cypher, Nick Clegg, is to betray your ideals and beliefs and to betray, if the evidence of Clegg's own spiteful, anti-democratic, anti-British words are anything to go by, your own country too. Who the hell does this idiot think he is?

So do not vote for a man like Clegg just because you still doubt David Cameron or because you've been told it's somehow a smart tactic. It isn't.

Whatever your political inclinations either way, you'd never forgive yourself if your actions resulted in any form of a Clegg-tainted government.

I wouldn't.