New Word: "Turcophile"

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.

Brown's Cronies Still Delusional

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.

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

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.

Obama's Anti-British Venom

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

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.

Brown's Death Rattle

No matter what the increasingly irritating (is that possible?) Nick Robinson might think, quoting himself as usual - always a very bad sign - this was yet another trainwreck interview from Gordon "give me a chance to finish the job of destroying the country" Brown this morning. (Just remember, for instance, that when he growls that ridiculous phrase "continue the stimulus" he really means "continue adding to and Britain's, titanic, horrifying debt mountain".)



You cannot believe word one of a man who thinks that by saying he's 'cutting the deficit', he'll fool people into thinking he's actually tackling the terrifying debt explosion that he, personally, created. They are not the same thing, and this appalling man, who caused the recession in Britain to be far worse thanks to years of hopeless economic mismanagement, is doing what he always has done: telling the country - and the world - a pack of absolute lies. If he does somehow hoodwink - or even bribe - the people of this country into letting him sneak back into power, the rest of the world will deliver its verdict in short order. The economic crisis that would follow would make Brown's first, record-breaking recession look like the good old days.

But I'm pretty confident that, thankfully, the British electorate won't be fooled again. Far from the twit-Robinson's idea that this was somehow an 'assured' performance by a man pretending to be some kind of latter day Churchill, this is Brown's political death rattle. It was the last, desperate diatribe of a very desperate man clinging on to office for dear political life. I'll give him this, he doesn't sell it cheaply. The unelected fraud, who, so it goes, 'thrives' in a crisis - and therefore causes one wherever he goes and with whatever he touches - will soon be gone, gone, gone, thank God.

Hard though it might be to take for some, it is time for the Tories to come back, once again to clear up a Labour government's economic catastrophe. It's time for the medicine.

And it's way beyond the time for us to be able to say 'good riddance' to the remorselessly dishonest, politically and nationally corrosive influence that has been and will always be James Gordon Brown, the worst prime minister ever to have been inflicted upon this nation.

The UK's Future: Social Unrest - and Better Music

I thought this conversation was fairly interesting, especially the parts where American former trader, Max Keiser, talks about the free market capitalism/democracy relationship and the major disappointment that is Barack Obama ("he's not a politician, he's a celebrity"). He's pretty good on the impact on our purchasing power of the explosion in money supply, too.

Whatever happens, 2010 will be one of the toughest years the UK has ever faced. The only silver linings, at least to me, are that Labour and the evil Brown stain, who caused the catastrophe in the first place and then prolonged it with a fake recovery (which has yet to materialise), will be kicked out of power, preferably forever - and popular music is likely to improve in inverse proportion to the social dislocation caused by the ongoing deterioration in the British economy, (otherwise known as The Clash Coefficient).

The Best They Can Do

Shockingly pathetic though this laughable thing is, that's actually very positive, Tory wise.

Is it true that the best Labour can do is this lamest of the lame attack vids?

Watch it, be embarrassed and then realise that with this dead Labour government you are dealing with people who, because of an unhappy accident of democracy, don't care how much damage is done - in the "Labour" name.

Before the election, in their pathetic, tired, desperate search for re-election takes place, the people will have their way.

In Swansea, Labour is a busted flush.

But Labour doesn't really give shit one about anything apart from their own jobs. The local Labour boys care only about the prospect of losing the jobs they no longer deserve.

They had better watch out: the world is gunning for them.

Why Labour Must Be Defeated

Superb, important post from Sharpe's Opinion which spells out some reasons why it is vital that Labour are defeated at the next election. It's not an advert for the Tories and rightly so. That would diminish the force of its argument.

WTF.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t swear. I don’t rant. That’s my thing. Other bloggers, they rant. I don’t. I don’t write as an outlet for my rage, I just do it because I enjoy it. I keep my cool and try to write calm and collected opinion pieces. So the title of this post, and the rant which follows, I hope shows just how furious I am right now.

Deep in the ancient annals of political blogging history – last May, I think it was – I wrote a post about the BNP which started with what I thought was quite a funny joke:

I know they’re racists. I know they’re fascists and totalitarians. I know they’re liars and frauds. I know they’re criminals. Enough about New Labour, though, I’d like to know what exactly is so scary about the BNP?

I was, of course, lightly mocking the growing number of superficial similarities between Labour policies and BNP ones. “British Jobs For British Workers” being a classic example – a BNP slogan which Gordon Brown took as his own. The Labour Party and the BNP share ideas on a fair range of areas, in fact, particularly their generally redistributive economic stance. It’s oft-noted by better political commenters than I that the BNP tend to do well in strongly Labour areas.

It used to be something we all poked fun at, and pointed out to Labour supporters to get them all irritated. Gradually, though, the joke started to wear thin. Now it’s past its breaking point.

The thing is, what was ‘British Jobs For British Workers’ has now degenerated into the Dickensian idea, also a BNP policy, of sending teenage mothers to ‘poorhouses‘. And to add mocking insult to grievous bodily harm, this bright spark idea is going to be compulsory, according to Ed Balls, not optional as Brown and his media lobby would have us believe.

Seriously. Putting teenage mothers into care for re-education. Is that what we’ve come to? Is that the Britain we live in?

No, it turns out, it’s worse than that. That was yesterday’s news and, whilst anger me it did I have relaxed about it a little bit now¹.

Because today we learn (and can we please get this to a wider audience) that somebody in New Labour’s government thinks they can determine somebody’s nationality using their DNA. That out there somewhere there are people with Kenyan DNA and Somali DNA.

Seriously.

I mean, can we take a moment to step back and discuss this a bit further, because I really hate false accusations of racism. It drives me round the bend when people use the word ‘racism’ as an argument ender, or worse as a straw man. That no politician can talk about immigration or multiculturalism without being bombarded with accusations of trying ‘to keep the darkies out’. I don’t care whether you agree with them or not – let them make their argument and challenge it on its own merits, not using some racism straw man. I can’t tell you how much it irritates me.

But this is something different. Because hidden behind the ‘DNA tests for asylum seekers’ story is somebody with a deep-seated misunderstanding of the concept of nationality, and of genetics, and of race. This is somebody who believes that a persons ‘Kenyanness’ is measurable, quantifiable, testable, based on their DNA. Does this same person believe that you can measure ‘Britishness’ by genetics? That there exists some model British DNA, distinct from the DNA of the French, or of the Pakistanis or the Irish or the Germans?

That, in essence, we are all different species to each other, and can be distinguished as such.

I’ve been racking my brains, but I can’t think of any other way to interpret this, or any other logical conclusion to the line of thinking which attempts to separate peoples’ nationalities based on their DNA. Either this is the way they think, and they are indescribably racist, or it isn’t and… Well, what? What else could it possibly be? Presumably, this isn’t a single person making this policy, either, but a committee. Presumably there is an entire working group at the UK Border Agency devoted to solving this ‘Kenyan problem’ and who probably don’t even realise that their natural impulses are walking them straight into Godwin’s nightmare.

And where’s the defence? Where’s the person willing to put forward the Labour Party’s side of this? These measures were announced near enough in silence. It’s almost like the Home Office are embarrassed about this, which I’d believe if I thought they were capable of feeling such human emotions as embarrassment. The only reaction I’ve seen from anyone so far is the one which adorns the top of this post – three simple letters that say all that’s needed.

The dying days of this Labour government are galling enough for those of us who see socialism as an inherently bad thing, who disagree that putting people in boxes will help them understand each other, who don’t think that state intervention in markets makes markets work more effectively, and who don’t think fairness means what Gordon Brown thinks it means. If it’s bad enough for us, how bad must it be for those disillusioned folk who voted for Tony Blair in 2005 and got this?

How bad must it be for those people who had faith in the Labour Party to help the needy and cure the sick. How bad must it be for the honest people who voted for Labour because they thought the Tories were the ‘nasty’ ones? How sick would it make you feel to know that you supported a moderate, centrist Government who promised you front line services, and you ended up with this.

This is a democracy, and we have a choice. Consider it your civic duty to remove your Labour MP from office. From this day forward I advocate voting for anyone who stands a chance of ensuring Labour cannot win another term.

Please. Please God.

Anyone. But. Labour.

Brown To Obama: Call Me FDR

The Loony Labour narrative on Brown just keeps rumbling on, getting increasingly bonkers as Brown's already weak grip on reality continues to loosen. But I think we've reached a new degree of separation - and a new low - with this latest piece of Ballsian spin from deep within the Bunker.

You can listen to it in the embed below, complete with tons of the usual Brownite cliches, scaremongering, double vision, grandstanding and outright lies (he's saved four million jobs worldwide, apparently. Er, no you haven't Gordo. That's what people on planet earth call a 'lie'). The only difference here is that it's all read in this creepy, disembodied voice of doom with a Scottish accent.*

(*You can hear that weird little inappropriate smile come into that growl of a voice he has in the recording. Can you tell where?)

The BBC, predictably, has reported the bonkers Balls/Brown press release on its website - probably verbatim. (That's another row, though.)

Here's a bit of it:

Gordon Brown has used a "fireside chat" podcast to warn fellow leaders against "switching off life support" as the world seeks economic recovery.

In an audio message on the Downing Street website ahead of next week's G20 meeting in the US, the prime minister urged a renewed focus on the economy.

He said: "Now is not the time to lose our focus on the economy - we must not switch off the life support.

"People are still losing their jobs, their hope. And we must not fail them."

Mr Brown's message was recorded in an audio-only broadcast - unlike the YouTube video in which he said he was dealing with the MPs' expenses scandal.

That performance was widely criticised, while then-communities secretary Hazel Blears said videos were no substitute for knocking on doors.

'Tough choices'

Number 10 is likening this message to US president Franklin Roosevelt's "fireside chat" broadcasts in the 1930s and 1940s.

You what?



This frankly desperate appeal - ostensibly to us, I guess - but in reality to the leaders of the G20, to let Brown play the messiah again just so he can save his political bacon at home will not go down too well, particularly because his abject, flagrant dishonesty about the state of the UK's public finances has been discovered, blown wide-open - and yet still goes on and on and on. This time, the Tories have got him bang to rights about his secret plans for massive income tax hikes to the tune of £15Bn quid. That's about 3p in the pound to you and me - on the basic rate.

In the end, this Ballsian economic narrative has had so many holes blown in it, not least by George Osborne, but mainly by excellent journalists and bloggers like Fraser Nelson and many others, that Brown just sounds like a fool when he keeps on repeating it regardless, rambling on about how he saved the world from ruin and wants to keep on saving it. It's incredible he imagines he can still go to Pittsburg and seriously believe he has the credibility to lecture the French or the Germans or the Canadians or the Australians or the [pick a country] on anything other than the best way to destroy their own economies. He's that bad - and they know it.

Brown is simply the all-time biggest hypocrite and pathological liar in the entire world. Odious. Just odious.

NO2ID Update

For those of you who aren't yet part of the fight against the most chilling assault on our freedoms in the history of our country, here's the latest news. Please click on the link in the sidebar of this blog to find out where to join the struggle to stop the forces of socialism's relentless, all-out attack on our definitive liberties. This Labour government must be removed for so many reasons, but this one is the most urgent of them all.

++ NO2ID Supporters' Newsletter No. 131 - 10th September 2009 ++

*Contacting us:* Call or email the office - 020-7793-4005 or
(office@no2id.net). Please do not reply to this email. (The from address
is not a working email address)

+ MANCHESTER ALERT - DON'T BE A GUINEA PIG +
The Home Secretary's summer re-launch of ID cards targeted Manchester as
a "beacon area" for the roll-out of the first cards. Having backed down
from a fight with airport workers and pilots threatening industrial
action over compulsory ID registration, the Home Office is now trying to
solicit volunteers.
Of course, people don't always read the small print - so we need to
ensure that any 'volunteers' realise that registering for a card means
being tagged and tracked for the rest of their lives. And paying for the
privilege of being Whitehall's guinea pigs.

The fewer that sign up, the easier it should be to scrap the whole scheme.

NO2ID is launching a rolling campaign to alert and inform the people of
Manchester and - as the National Identity Scheme's net widens - the
North West, starting with a day of action on Saturday 10th October.
NO2ID groups and supporters from around the UK will be heading to
selected locations in Greater Manchester to hold street stalls, leaflet
and spread the word.

The following Saturday, 17th October, we shall be running more street
stalls in central Manchester and holding a public meeting at the Friends
Meeting House in Mount Street. Further activities and events will be
announced in due course.

If you or your organisation would like to get involved in either of
these events or the ongoing campaign, please contact
manchester@no2id.net. And if you would like to start your own local
group to help spread the word across the North West, please contact
local.groups@no2id.net.

*+ Making the case against the ID scheme +

*Many people tell us they would like to tackle that minority of friends.
neighbours and work colleagues who still think that 'ID cards' are a
pretty good idea, but need a little help feeling confident of their
ground to do so. NO2ID has plenty of stock of our 24 page practical
booklet on How to Win the argument against the ID scheme. If you would
like a free copy, either for yourself or to pass on to someone else,
then just write and ask to NO2ID, Box 412, 19/21 Crawford St, LONDON W1H
1PJ or email office@no2id.net. (Don't forget to tell us the postal
address to send it to.)

We did not vote for this. We don't have to let it happen to us.
We can stop it, but only if we're truly united.

Hear Hear!

For the incurable optimist — of which there are no doubt several in the Downing Street bunker — there are signs that Britain is starting to recover. The stock market is booming once more, confidence is returning to the housing market and the recession may soon be over. Is it possible Gordon Brown really has saved the world — even if it is too late to save himself? Or, as Labour used to warble, might things only get better?

If only. The bleak truth for UK plc is that after 12 years of stupefying Labour incompetence, the worst is yet to come. Britain is once again on the slide towards the margins of economic influence and military clout. We have the worst public finances of any comparable western economy. The British Chambers of Commerce warned this week that the UK faces a ‘grim’ economic future, with a high risk of a relapse. Unemployment is not just spreading but setting like concrete for years to come. And our shabbily treated troops, once a match for the world’s best, will soon be driven humiliatingly out of Afghanistan.

This is not the slow, managed decline of an empire looking for a role. It is a sudden, embarrassing discovery that we don’t count on the world stage any more. Thanks to our lumbering Prime Minister, we have been given the unwelcome gift to see ourselves as others see us. And it ain’t pretty.

I am writing this from New York, whose citizens once saw Britain as a staunch economic, diplomatic and military ally. It is only a few short years since they hailed Tony Blair as a 9/11 hero and awarded him the Congressional Medal he was so embarrassed to collect. That was the high-water mark for New Labour.

Today, thanks to the Oil-for-Megrahi fiasco, we are a bitter disappointment to America. Newspapers from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Daily News are still running every fresh turn in this tawdry story.

It was perfectly summed up by a devastatingly editorial in the News: ‘Gordon Brown has given grounds to believe today’s British are a cowardly, unprincipled, amoral and duplicitous lot. Because he is all of those.’ Those are cruelly exaggerated words, but they put the finger on a single identifiable cause of Britain’s collapse. The new decline in Britain’s standing on the world stage is not just about Lockerbie. Nor is it even the decision to trade a convicted mass murderer for Libya’s vast oil reserves. It is about the shifty, furtive and ultimately disastrous management of a country which, in 1997, had every conceivable chance of becoming great again.

Labour strode to power with a huge Commons majority, the goodwill of the British people and the prospect of at least two terms in office. For the first time, Labour could ride an economy which had just taken off on a long and sustainable boom.

Tony Blair could have done one or two truly great things. His government had the cash and clout to transform a welfare state in which almost three million were on incapacity benefit. Instead, it left them to rot while importing migrants to fill almost all of the three million new jobs created. It could have performed drastic but urgently needed surgery on the lumbering National Health Service. Instead, it poured truckloads of taxpayers’ money into a giant bureaucracy, entrenching inefficiencies that will cost us up to £40 billion a year, every year.

And so it goes on. Read it!

If I'd known how to say it, that's exactly what I would have said - and many others besides me, I strongly suspect.

Fantastic.

What Is 'A Tough Choice'?

It is finally beginning to dawn on people that national bankruptcy is now a real possibility, thanks to the gargantuan levels of public debt generated by the so-called short-term 'stimulus' packages and vast budget deficits designed to mask the effects of the recession. It seems our own government, incapable as it is of running an economy in a period of apparent, relative plenty let alone during a downturn, now that it has decided to cling on to power till the bitter end needs some urgent lessons in what constitutes a 'tough choice'. Janet Daley points out in her typically clear-headed article this evening that people are clammering for some fiscal and monetary conservatism. I fear her call will fall on the prejudiced and therefore deaf ears of a left wing government.

So which kind of "tough choices" do you fancy? The ones that involve spending – as in, which bits of government expenditure would you choose to cut – or the ones that mean tax rises? You may as well start thinking about this because those will be the options available to you at the next general election.

The outlines of the parties' campaigns have now become clear. Labour, whoever is leading it, will be fighting the last war: trying to revive the demonic vision of "Tory cuts", as if they were somehow more fearsome than the Labour cuts that are already in the pipeline simply by virtue of being Conservative and hence inherently evil. But what even Labour spokesmen will be forced to admit, as indeed some of them did last week, is that – in the absence of serious spending reductions – the only way to fill the cavernous hole in the public finances will be through substantial tax rises. So while both parties will talk of having to make "tough decisions" – which is to say, of you having to endure some unpleasantness – they will mean rather different things by it.

She carries on by pointing-out (rather better) what yours-truly said a few days ago: Labour are being utterly dishonest in suggesting they are not going to have to cut spending - indeed have planned to do so already, but wish to fudge the issue by cutting spending stealthily. Brown's nail-chewed gnarly fingers are all over this approach. It's certainly not his second choice (and second rate) Chancellor's desire to hide from the public the scale of the problem the nation faces, as his consistent drift away from 'the message' has amply demonstrated, something that very, very nearly cost him job. But Brown and his stealth cuts are what we will have to endure. The problem is, they will not go far enough and will not be managed properly.

Daley then turns to the issue of tax rises, which is what this is fundamentally all about. Spending cuts, whichever way they arrive, as far as I'm concerned are a fait accompli. Even with the outlandish 'trampoline recovery' suggested by Darling, cuts are inevitable. As the budget deficit spirals to 110% of GDP and total debt liabilities rocket to upwards of $10 trillion-plus (380%+ of GDP) there is no alternative: you just can't sustain that level of borrowing because the likelihood of the plug being pulled by the bond market and the whole rickety framework coming crashing down increases with every new sale. It's got to be paid down at some point no matter what happens. Without aggressive spending cuts, tax rises are inevitable but their impact on an economy in recession will be to kill a fragile recovery in 2010/11. Another downturn - the dreaded double-dip recession - will become a forgone conclusion. Unemployment will begin to shoot-up even further and tax revenues will decrease even more in spite of the higher rates. It would be a disastrous course to pursue, and yet Labour in their folly seem set to do just that. Hopeless.

It's perhaps better to look at a less partisan publication, then, for a bit of guidance on this subject. There's no better or worse place to look than The Economist. In this article of June 11th, the alternatives not just for Britain, but for the US too, are made crystal clear. It's worth a read, but here's the key part:

Broadly, governments should pledge to clean up their public finances by cutting future spending rather than raising taxes. Most European countries have scant room for higher taxes. In several, the government already hoovers up well over 40% of GDP. Tax reform will be necessary—particularly in places, such as Britain and Ireland, which relied far too much on revenues from frothy financial markets and housing bubbles. Even in the United States, where tax revenues add up to less than 30% of GDP, simply raising tax rates is not the best answer. There too, spending control should take priority, though there is certainly room for efficiency-enhancing tax reforms, such as eliminating the preferential tax treatment of housing and the deductibility of employer-provided health insurance.

The next step is to boost the credibility of these principles with rules and institutions to reinforce future politicians’ resolve. Britain’s Conservative Party cleverly wants to create an independent “Office for Budgetary Responsibility” to give an impartial assessment of the government’s plans. Germany is poised to pass a constitutional amendment limiting its structural budget deficit to 0.35% of GDP from 2016. Barack Obama’s team wants to resurrect deficit-control rules (see article). Such corsets need to be carefully designed—and Germany’s may prove too rigid. But experience from Chile to Switzerland suggests that the right budgetary girdles can restrain profligacy.

Yet nothing sends a stronger signal than taking difficult decisions today. One priority is to raise the retirement age, which would boost tax revenues (as people work longer) and cut future pension costs. Many rich countries are already doing this, but they need to go further and faster. Another huge target is health care. America has the most wasteful system on the planet. Its fiscal future would be transformed if Congress passed reforms that emphasised control of costs as much as the expansion of coverage that Barack Obama rightly wants.

All this is a tall order. Politicians have failed to control the costs of ageing populations for years. Paradoxically, the financial bust, by adding so much debt, may boost the chances of a breakthrough. If not, another financial catastrophe looms.

Can anyone imagine Gordon Brown, the man who destroyed pensions in this country in the first place, with his phantom 'moral compass' and his precarious standing within his own party, being the right man to take such radical action as raising the retirement age in Britain to, say, 70? There is no way, either, that he can be the right man because he is incapable of opting for what is, to socialists at least, the counterintuitive move of boosting output by actually lowering tax rates, thereby increasing tax revenues. Neither is he the man to cut spending aggressively across the board for a couple of years in order to lend the country some sort of financial credibility again, after he encouraged with pathological self-righteousness a credit-driven boom to overheat beyond the limits of sanity and for the economy to fly apart as a consequence. It seems there is no way he can be the 'right man' in any sense whatsoever for any job associated with the UK economy.

You can't employ a wolf as a shepherd. We need a change of government - and how!

Incidentally, if you think Britain's debt levels are catastrophic, spare a thought for the poor old Yanks (who've just hired a wolf of their own). According to this article, the true figure for US debt liabilities is now so large once 'off balance sheet' numbers such as pensions and healthcare are taken into account, it has long since overtaken the capacity of metaphorical hyperbole to illustrate its scale. US debt levels have now transcended the space-time continuum and blasted off into hyperspace. The figure is so large now, it's forming its own gravity well and everyone and everything is being sucked into it.

According to Richard W. Fisher, the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the unfunded liabilities of the US Social Security and Medicare system stand at $99.2 trillion today. That figure is not a misprint. If the US government plans to keep operating the Social Security system and the Medicare system, then the official federal debt really is $11.3 trillion plus $99.2 trillion, or $110.5 trillion. Why does our government state that its federal deficit is only slightly north of $11 trillion (with the term “only” a relative term, given that the true US deficit is about ten times greater than the “official” government figure)? Over the years, the US government has stated several reasons why they don’t include unfunded obligations in their official debt figures, with one of the most common reasons being that these programs are optional and can be cut at any time.

However, this practice is tantamount to a corporation omitting the cost of its health benefits program from its operational expenses even though it has promised its employees health care benefits. If the government is omitting the expense of the nationwide Social Security and Medicare programs from its budget, is this an admission that these programs will soon be history? Given the fact that a $110.5 trillion deficit puts every American family of four on the hook for more than $1.45 million, it seems unlikely that those of us that have paid a lifetime of Social Security taxes but are still many years away from eligibility will actually live to see the benefits of doing so.

This article's conclusions ring true for a UK facing problems just as grave - if not moreso because our economy simply does not have the capacity, flexibility or the potential for rapid growth that a superpower like America still most certainly does.

The government may attempt to implement the tax solution but it is probably more likely that when push comes to shove in the political arena, they will have to axe either the Social Security and Medicare programs, or maybe even both. If you think this outcome is unfathomable, consider that for these two programs and their associate benefits to survive, $99.2 trillion either has to be raised through taxation or cut from programs that have already promised funds. There is no other solution to this problem, other than to attempt to inflate the $110 trillion deficit away. Furthermore, when debating the realm of discretionary spending cuts to refill the government’s coffers, this avenue, in reality, is not viable either, simply because cuts from any other programs other than from those of national defense and national security won’t be large enough to make an impact. In the end, it seems as though most of us still believe that a bankrupt government can provide the backbone for an economic recovery.

"Axe social security and health care. Are they mad?" you hear the Labourists cry. No, not mad, my delusional lefty compatriots. Just broke.

As a friend wrote me the other day, summing-up the lunacy of our respective governments pretty neatly:

10 trillion dollars here, 10 trillion dollars there, pretty soon you're talking real money...

It's worth remembering, folks, historically things have turned out very badly over a lot less than a massive international debt crisis. Someone somewhere needs to get a grip. David Cameron must be the first.

They Know How You Vote

"They" meaning this government (naturally) who, for some reason, quietly decided to end secret ballots at some time during its tenure between 1997 and now. Established by Gladstone in the Secret Ballot Act, 1872, (and reinforced with the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of 1883) it goes without saying that the motivation for the legislation was to solve the problem of intimidation or bribing of voters and/or to ensure that no data could be gathered about individuals' voting choices within constituencies by central government, guaranteeing any vote is genuinely free.

But a letter to the Mail today pointed-out to me by a family member casts serious and shocking doubt on whether that guarantee is still in force. A member of the public in High Wycombe (a town very near my childhood stomping ground, incidentally but irrelevantly) brought to our attention that ballot papers for the recent local and EU elections were each identifiable by a unique number which was then ticked-off against the voters' individual polling cards by an official. I have to admit, I didn't even notice this when I voted last week but apparently it is now national practice. Previously, there was no way polling cards and ballot papers could be connected whatsoever - the vote you cast was anonymous because ballot papers were identical with no distinguishing marks. Why is that not the case now? Why should the government know (or even want to know) the names and addresses of the people who vote for them, or, more sinister, of their political opponents? Not so long ago, this was illegal.

The letter-writer makes the point about this fresh assault on our fundamental liberties quite well:

This subtle change, apparently introduced in the underhand manner to which we have become accustomed since 1997, compromises the secrecy of the ballot and spells the end of British democracy as we have known it since 1872. I was not reassured by being told that my vote could not be divulged without a court order. Public servants have a poor track record in confidential matters.

This is, of course, true - there is ample evidence to support the view that the government cannot be trusted with extremely sensitive information. But that's not really the point of principle. The point of principle is that no official, elected or otherwise, should possess or have access to the private, secret vote cast by individual members of the electorate. That there could be a database of such information is truly chilling. It suggests we have not had a secret ballot possibly for years in this country and that your government quite possibly now knows how you vote. Today, there is no such thing in Britain as the secret ballot. Labour has compromised the very soul of British democracy: the free vote.

I didn't know anything about this. Perhaps you did. If so, forgive my ignorance. But if this was known widely and I somehow missed it, then why aren't people up in arms? Where are the protests? My suspicion is that hardly anybody realises just how compromised liberty and democracy have become in Britain since Labour took power. Now we have an unelected Prime Minister clinging on to office without a popular mandate surrounded by unelected peers parachuted into government, lawmaking without legitimacy. We have demanded the general election - God knows, I have enough times here - but now we can't even guarantee it wouldn't be rigged even if those demands had not fallen on deaf ears. How? Well, if they have information on a database about who voted which way in previous elections, in a general election in, say, key marginals (which means just about every Labour seat now) how hard can it be to delay the posting of polling cards to what are deemed 'anti-Labour' households, for instance?

I know, I know: paranoid! Well, I'm not suggesting a desperate Labour party led by what amounts now to little more than a demagogic tyrant and faced with the prospect of total wipeout in the next election would resort to such banana republic measures. No, really, I'm almost convinced they wouldn't.

All I am saying, and this is the key difference between 'Before Labour' and 'Since Labour', is that if they really wanted to, now they could.

(If anyone has any more information about the piece of Labour legislation that ended the secret ballot in Britain, I'd be grateful to hear about it.)

Update:
Interesting exchange recorded on Freedom of Information helpsite WhatDoTheyKnow.com. The key part for me was this reply from the Electoral Commission about vote tracing:

James Pack
Electoral Commission

3 April 2009

Thank you for your query,

By vote tracing I take it that you mean occasions where a ballot paper
cast at an election has been traced back to the elector who is supposed
to have marked that ballot paper. This can only occur on the order of a
court.

There is no central database of such applications or cases however we
are aware of some cases where this has occurred.

Two of these related to election petitions that have involved the
scrutiny of ballot papers by the Court in camera where electoral
malpractice is alleged to see who the allegedly fraudulent votes were
cast for. We are aware that it was done in the Slough 2007 election
petition as it allowed the court to show that fraudulently registered
voters had cast their vote for one particular candidate. We are also
aware that it was done following the local elections in Birmingham in
2004 where postal votes that had been fraudulently applied for or
completed were checked to the same effect. The third case was where West
Midlands Police obtained the necessary court order following a failed
election petition relating to the 2007 local elections in Coventry. One
person was subsequently convicted of two cases of Personation at two
separate polling stations.

Kind regards,

show quoted sections

Senior Adviser (Electoral Practice)

In other words, the Electoral Commission only knows about a couple of cases of vote tracing taking place for whatever reason, and these both happened in the last five years. Curiouser and curiouser. It's 'unaware' of any others because there is 'no central database' (ie: no central file) of occasions when these (new?) powers have been used. The whole letter implies, however, that it is possible to trace any voters from 'their' ballot papers, which is outrageous given this government's record on security and its abuses of anti-terrorist legislation etc. This kind-of confirms my previous point: if Labour wanted to shaft Britain in a general election, they definitely could.

Still no joy on the new law which over-rode the Secret Ballot Act, 1872 and permitted this parlous state of affairs to emerge. Anyone know anything about it? Guess I'll have to keep looking...

Update 2:
The Electoral Commission's advisory document for the design of ballot papers in 2003 makes for very curious reading on the subject of vote tracing. For instance (and sorry it's such a long quote):

4.5 The human rights organisation Liberty has argued
that the use of serial numbers or any mark whereby
vote-tracing can take place after an election should
be stopped. They also point out that other countries
manage their elections without the use of vote-tracing
mechanisms. Liberty’s concerns are based on the fear
that some voters have that security services can trace
their votes; they acknowledge that while the fear may
be unjustified it is an understandable one. Liberty also
recognises that a consequence of the discontinuation
of the vote-tracing provisions would be the need to
re-run an election where personation was proved
where the number of personated votes was greater
than the winning candidate’s majority. However,
Liberty argues that this happens extremely rarely.
4.6 Liberty takes the view that vote-tracing does not help
to deal with allegations of personation, rather it merely
enables the result to be corrected afterwards if personation
is proved and that the discontinuation of vote-tracing would
make no difference to the prevention, detection or proof of
offences of personation. In its opinion, a real safeguard
against personation would be to require voters to provide
some proof of identity when they go to vote and Liberty
has expressed its support in principle for such a measure.
4.7 The Commission acknowledges the concerns that
underpin the case put forward by Liberty and others
against the use of serial numbers. However, we also
recognise the arguments that vote-tracing can prove, and
has proved, a valuable instrument in tackling electoral
fraud. We believe there have been six cases where vote
tracing has been ordered by the courts in the last 10
years. The key judgement is whether the benefits drawn
from the ability of the courts to trace a vote outweigh any
possible concerns held by some electors that security
services may be seeking to identify individual voters’ ballot
papers to ascertain for whom they have voted. In making
this judgement, we also recognise the wider issues of
principle about the use of serial numbers (or any other
mechanism). Many international observers of UK election
practice are astonished at the use of a mechanism
designed to allow – even in controlled circumstances –
for a link to be made between a vote and an individual.
These issues need to be considered in relation to both
traditional voting processes and the new electronic
voting methods being tested through pilot schemes.
The Commission will consider separately the wider issue
of whether providing for the possibility of vote tracing in
the event of allegations of fraud is a necessary feature
of our electoral system, given the anxieties of some
voters over the possible misuse of serial numbers to
trace their vote.
4.8 As long as the present system continues, it is clearly
important that polling station staff are able to explain to
any concerned voters how the serial numbers are used,
and the exceptional circumstances in which any link
might be made between the ballot paper issued...

Fine. So here we have a mystery about "six instances of vote tracing" between 1993 and 2003. The Commission apparently declined to comment on the 'six instances'. They haven't a clue about them, in other words, presumably because cases specifically where serial numbers were used to trace votes didn't exist before 2003. Why? Because serial numbers, as my mother (who's voted for 40 years too, anon in the comments) quite clearly recalls, were not in use. She also remembers, as she says in her email to me "saying to your father in 2005 after voting in the general election that there were numbers on the ballot papers. There were never any numbers on them before, so far as I remember."