Raedwald

Goodbye Dubai (maybe)

2009-11-27T07:28:00.004Z

Dubai brings out the worst aspects of both the Anglian Puritan and the man of taste in me. Vulgar, vulgar, vulgar. Kitsch. A shameless whore. A female colleague who holidayed there earlier this year plummeted in my estimation; megawatt air conditioning in interiors designed by Saddam Hussein's decorator, waste and conspicuous consumption, Filipino slaves, tacky Jimmy Choos and footballers' wives; I don't think there's a single book in the entire Sheikdom - Dubai is not the sort of place for people who can read without moving their lips. My personal Hell would be an eternity spent in an air-conditioned Dubai hotel with nothing to read. You can tell I don't think much of the place, can't you?

So it's with a certain pleasure that I read of Dubai's current financial problems. Even though Dubai owns a fifth of the Stock Exchange, P&O and Travelodge. And even though its unlikely to become a ghost town, with the waters of the gulf and the sands of the desert reclaiming, covering and purifying all that ghastly vulgarity, it doesn't stop me imagining the fate of these American towns that grew overnight on the back of the silver rush, with opera house but no sewers.

Hiding the State won't work, Liam

2009-11-26T07:35:00.002Z

The Guardian carries details of Liam Byrne's wizard new plan to counter criticism at the size of Labour's State - he's going to hide it. Anonymous office blocks in Slough, Swindon and Croydon will be used to shelter thousands of Whitehall civil servants disguised as commercial sector staff, and the use of PO box numbers and 0845 numbers will hide the whereabouts of the rest of the central State.

Labour hopes that by dispersing the State's functionaries, the degree of power held by the State will be less apparent.

Um, it won't work, Liam. You see, people judge the intrusion of the State into their lives by its effects, not its town of origin. Choke-off the powers of the central State, and the machinery of the State will wither on the vine. Wherever it's located.

Comrade Ashton's future lies in Moscow's hands

2009-11-26T07:12:00.003Z

As Comrade Ashton sizes up her new office suite in Brussels and contemplates her potential £250k package, the questions about her time as Treasurer of CND keep rolling in.

The answers to these questions lie not in the hands of the Brussels bureaucrats but in the Kremlin. Just suppose the FSB decided that now was the time to make public details of the funding channelled by Soviet bloc nations to seditious Western networks such as Comrade Ashton's CND? Or just suppose they decided to hold the evidence back until they needed to gain an advantage? Can the EU really ratify the appointment of a woman now so open to blackmail from Russia?

There is little doubt that Soviet money was channelled to CND; if not from Russia then from East Germany, the Czechs, the Hungarians or others. Comrade Ashton's future lies in Russia's hands.

Brown and Cameron will ignore reform ....at their peril

2009-11-25T07:37:00.002Z

There is broad consensus outside of our main party leaderships as to what lies at the heart of the rot in our political system; A Parliament dominated and bullied by the Executive, central party organisations corrupted by foreign bribes and influence, self-serving narcissists as MPs with no sense of morality grasping after political power, distortion and manipulation of the truth and suppression of evidence by party and State bosses, the foetid stench of the political class fouling the waters of democracy.

I've said before that a healthy democracy needs both a strong Parliament and a strong government, and that strong government and weak Parliament over the past decades have been disastrous for the interests of the British people.

Yet one of the most significant Parliamentary reports of the past ten years has gone almost unremarked by both the MSM and the blogosphere; the Reform Select Committee's report.

It's measures can be implemented by the House immediately. It will radically curtail the powers of the whips and boost the powers of backbenchers. It will transfer power from the Executive to Parliament and redress the present imbalance. The Commons will become stronger and more independent. MPs will become less reliant on central party structures and more responsive to their constituencies.

And for all these reasons it probably doesn't stand a chance in Hell of being supported by Brown, Cameron or the Squeaker. Shame on you all.

DNA harvesting allegations

2009-11-24T09:55:00.003Z

If allegations made by a senior police officer that arrests have been used to 'harvest' DNA are proven, then government action is urgently required to rein in the antidemocratic excesses of the secretive ACPO cabal.

There is one figure that these seditious conspirators refuse to provide, and it is this; how many convictions have resulted primarily from the DNA records of unconvicted persons? The true answer must be negligible - even infinitesimal - otherwise they would trumpet it. That police officers choose to ignore evidence when it doesn't suit them will be no news to many, but that they do so on an issue of fundamental liberty for tens of thousands of citizens is almost criminal.

We really must grasp this monster firmly and slice off its head.

One poll doesn't make a summer election

2009-11-23T07:46:00.002Z

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the latest poll showing Cameron's lead down to single figures, but what's clear is that the British public are still against Labour rather than for Cameron. And every week seems to expose some new uncertainty, some new flaw, that hurts Cameron. His despicable photo-op at the crosses for the dead, his ruling out (as Ben Brogan points out) of an In-Out referendum because the Outs would win, and the slow leaking of central Statist policies that leave his trumpeted Localism nowhere, together with rumbling dissatisfaction in the shires, now from the 'Suffolk Swedes', will all serve to erode the Conservative vote.

Iain will no doubt deliver another homily on the importance of 'discipline' on the right, but if Dave continues along a manifesto path that many of us can barely distinguish from Labour's, how long can this last?

Clang of cell door a step closer for Blair

2009-11-23T07:07:00.002Z

Sir John Chilcot will formally start his inquiry tomorrow, on terms of reference which exceed the narrow non-judgemental remit wanted by Brown's government. At some time before the election, Blair himself will be called to give evidence. A year ago, observers poo-poohed the idea of Blair ever facing legal charges over his lies and deceptions, but notes of uncertainty are creeping in.

The leaking over the weekend of detailed evidence from senior military officers and others that directly contradicts the mendacious assurances given by Blair to the Commons are damaging beyond doubt. And there will be more of the same to come.

I've just read Robert Harris' 'The Ghost' in which Blair - Adam Lang in the novel - faces war crimes charges from the International Criminal Court; the Jack Straw / Peter Hain character who eventually leaked the killer document demands remorsefully;

'Name me one decision Adam Lang took that wasn't in the interests of the US' .. He held up his thumb. 'One: Deployment of British troops to the Middle East, against the advice of just about every senior commander in our armed forces and all of our ambassadors who know the region. Two' - up went his right index finger - ' complete failure to demand any kind of quid pro quo from the White House in terms of reconstruction contracts for British firms or anything else. Three: Unwavering support for US policy in the Middle East, even when it's patently crazy for us to set ourselves against the entire Arab world. Four: The stationing of an American missile defence system on British soil that does absolutely nothing for our security - in fact the complete opposite: it makes us a more obvious target for a first strike - and can only provide protection for the US. Five: The purchase for fifty billion dollars of an American nuclear missile system that we call independent but which we wouldn't even be able to fire without US approval, thus binding his successors to another twenty years of subservience to Washington over defence policy. Six: A treaty that alows the US to extradite our citizens to America, but doesn't allow us to do the same to theirs. Seven: Collusion in the illegal kidnapping, torture, imprisonment and even murder of our own citizens. Eight: A consistent record of sacking any minister - I speak with experience here - who is less than one hundred per cent supportive of the alliance with the United States ..'

In the novel Blair faces exile in the US, one of the few nations that hasn't signed up to the ICC and its extradition arrangements. I won't give any more away - except that Harris captures with absolute accuracy Blair's reaction on the news of the ICC charges. Well worth a read.

With no EU post to protect him, and his co-conspirators facing losing power next year, with no diminution of the British public's appetite for a trial to bring 'closure' to this disastrous episode, and with evidence increasingly emerging, Blair has every reason to feel nervous.

Goodbye and good riddance Hugh Orde

2009-11-20T07:05:00.003Z

Hugh Orde's comment to the BBC that chief constables will resign if the police come under democratic control is good news. The current crop of police bosses ill-serve the nation and our democracy. Whilst Orde and his ilk imagine a police service accountable to no-one but 'the law', a priestly caste divorced from the society that employs them, free to determine their own priorities whilst swallowing our taxes, this vision is a million miles from the sort of police most of us want.

Hugh, my dear; our nation is a democracy. That means that the people have control. We will not sede power to an unaccountable cabal of State police bosses. So go.

My own preference is for the return of local Watch Committees, mostly directly elected but with local magistrates co-opted, that directly employ and direct local forces for bread-and-butter policing. Cameron's plans are flawed, I think, but even they are better than the current arrangements. I want to see local communities 100% behind their police, to see the police back living in those communities, and beat officers free of the cloying Blairite micromanagement from old monsters such as Orde and his Home Office puppetmasters. This will never happen if Orde and his ACPO cabal get their way.

A liar's programme

2009-11-19T07:46:00.002Z

Had Gordon Brown called an election after sneaking into the Labour leadership, and had his first Queen's speech been that delivered yesterday, we would now be facing a further eight years of Labour government. As it is, the British public has become so inured to Brown the coward and Brown the liar that those bold promises will bounce off the sceptical carapace of public opinion. It was all too late.

~~Mandelson's~~ Brown's Queen's speech was the last desperate fling of a doomed government. It was Brown's Ardennes Offensive, with all his remaining Panzers and all his remaining fuel flung into one last-ditch offensive to break Cameron's advance. The counter attack came almost immediately, with Sir Christopher Kelly launching a devastating and unexpected attack on Brown's exposed flank that left Labour stumbling for more lies and excuses. In today's news it has already been supplanted by a blown-down tree in Cumbia.

For hundreds of MPs this will have been their last State Opening; this Rotten Parliament already consigned to the obloquy of history. Next Autumn, next State Opening, offers the chance for a new age for Parliament - if Cameron finds qualities in himself that have not so far been apparent.

Correct diagnosis, wrong prescription

2009-11-18T07:56:00.002Z

In a leader this morning the Times reminds us that every time we meet a police officer our confidence in the police falls;

When Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police in 1829 he defined nine principles of operation, of which the most important was “the police are the public and the public are the police”.

The police have not always lived up to this precept. Only 3 per cent of crimes now end in a conviction. We spend more on the police in this country than any developed nation and yet detection rates are not improving. The chances of being a victim of crime are at the lowest level for two decades but three quarters of the British public believe that crime is going up. The police force is the only service in which public confidence declines on contact with serving officers, from 57 to 41 per cent. Something is amiss in policing.

Hugh Orde's presciption, featured elsewhere in the same edition, is for fewer and larger forces under central command and control, a new 'general staff' replacing the unaccountable and shadowy ACPO.

It takes some chutzpah for one of the men responsible for creating a police force remote from the people it serves and which has lost their confidence to recommend more of the same as the solution. And it's risible nonsense in every way.

Yes to a Royal Commission - but Orde will find the way forward is smaller forces under local control carrying out 90% of policing, with specialist squads at national or regional level, reporting to the Home Secretary or London Mayor, leading on terrorism and organised crime. The needs of these niche law and order challenges cannot drive the organisation of the vast bulk of day to day policing - which must be local. The police are the public, and the public are the police.

Miss Truss, Peter Oborne and the Jews

2009-11-17T07:31:00.003Z

Two not unconnected stories from yesterday illustrate the stark choices now facing both Labour and Conservative parties.

Firstly, the candidate taken in adultery. Miss Truss broke one of the ten commandments that underlie our bedrock of social morality. Local associations are quite within their rights to expect both morality and probity from their candidates; if Miss Truss were a practising adulteress, I could not fault them with rejecting her. As it is, it seems, she went and sinned no more; the stones of the Turnip Taliban under those circumstances fell to the ground un-thrown and she continues as her local PPC. Good. We can count this both a victory for common sense, Christian morality rather than Squirearchical Sharia and the primacy of local associations.

Secondly, Peter Oborne's measured and restrained 'Dispatches' on C4 last night on the Conservative Friends of Israel and the influence of the shekel in determining Conservative thinking. I won't repeat the evidence he presented, but I think it's fair to say he established that the Jewish lobby has an unrepresentative influence on Conservative policy.

One of the consequences of the ruthless centralisation of party power that started under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and has since seen over a million members leave the Conservative party, is that the rump local associations remaining are quite often not only unrepresentative of local Conservative consensus, but the lack of challenge and scrutiny at local level allows corruption and nepotism to flourish. In the Truss case, the usual four-members-and-a-labrador local quorum was overturned by the exhausted body of the local association rising from its sick-bed to vote.

The change of both Labour and Conservative parties from mass-membership organisations to centralised national commercial 'brands' has brought with it the danger of the parties being hijacked by small groups of significant donors. Money is drawn to power, and power to money. Better perhaps that Israel buys British political power rather than Russian oligarchs or Chinese generals, but without a mass membership our national parties have no alternative but to open themselves to such influence.

Local associations allege, with some justification, that Eric Pickles and CCHQ have too much power, even with open primaries. CCHQ privately excuses its interference, with some justification, on the grounds that local associations are neanderthal and can't be trusted.

The stark choice facing both Labour and Conservative leaders is that the only cure to this corrosive corruption of our democratic institutions is mass popular involvement at local level; State power must be wrested from Whitehall and devolved to local level, with power will come public involvement and a million local party subscriptions, with money will come the pre-eminent role of local associations in formulating policy and pushing it upwards, crowding-out the corruption of bought influence, whether Israeli or otherwise. You know it's true.

The rocket's red glare

2009-11-16T08:16:00.002Z

A horrifying story in the Mail that will now doubtless lead to a knee-jerk reaction from the MCA and the government but which may actually be the fault of the MCA in the first place.

The red distress rocket commonly sold reaches a height of about 350m before ejecting a bright flare that descends slowly on a parachute for about 40 seconds. It's saved countless lives at sea, and forms part of the standard kit of coastal sailors on about a quarter of a million vessels.

The problem is, they have a 'use by' date beyond which the manufacturers won't guarantee their performance. So every five or six years, many of us buy a new set. And they're not cheap - a red rocket is about £20. Disposing of the old ones is the greatest headache; as it's illegal to fire them on land, you'd be ill-advised trying to work them into a bonfire-night firework display. You can't dump them in the wheely-bin. In the old days, both the RNLI and the Coastguard would accept them, and the army and navy bomb disposal folk would regularly collect them from marina offices. No more. Guidance from the HSE prohibits the transport of 'time expired' flares in anything but specialist armoured military vehicles. Now only the Coastguard will accept small quantities, handed in by appointment at Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre. The consequence is that thousands are being improperly disposed of.

Now we're paying road fuel duty on our boat diesel, you might imagine a flare disposal service in return wouldn't be too much to ask. But don't hold your breath.

Eyetie talks bollocks - EU listens

2009-11-16T07:28:00.003Z

Italy's foreign minister is something of a prat. Calling for a new European army, he says;

It was a "necessary objective to have a European army", Mr Frattini said. "Take Afghanistan: at present President Obama asks Poland, or Italy, or Great Britain for more troops. If there were a European army, he would have a 'toolbox' to draw from. He might need 30 aeroplanes: he would be able to ask if the European army was in a position to provide them."

Mr Frattini said that at present "every country duplicates its forces, each of us puts armoured cars, men, tanks, planes, into Afghanistan. If there were a European army, Italy could send planes, France could send tanks, Britain could send armoured cars, and in this way we would optimise the use of our resources. Perhaps we won't get there immediately, but that is the idea of a European army".

Thus proving why the dear Italians are better at making pasta than war.

An army is an administrative unit, coming at the top of a scale that goes battalion, brigade, division, corps. An army is a mixed formation, with infantry, mechanised infantry, armour, artillery, engineers and air and logistic support. British military doctrine used to call for the UK in peacetime to maintain strength for two armies; now we have about one. So does Italy.

Frattini seems to confuse military organisation with white-goods manufacturing. "Italy can make fridges, Germany can make washing machines and the UK can make boilers" makes a sort of sense when the minimum economic scale of a white-goods maker is the markets of about 1.5 nations, but he's away with the fairies if he imagines the same sort of logic applies to armies.

The deeply worrying aspect is that this fool is Italy's Foreign Minister, and there will this morning be scores of other important and influential fools in Brussels who will listen to him.

When was the last time anyone 'laid an information'?

2009-11-15T08:57:00.003Z

I keep meaning to email The Magistrate to ask him if anyone's ever come before him to do so, but as a sort of continuation of the previous post I'll throw this out in general.

My own legal training, some years ago, was concentrated as you might expect on civil law; contract and tort chiefly. We passed through criminal law like someone skirting a disreputable neighbourhood, our Chancery barrister tutor raising a metaphorical nosegay to anything that strayed too far from equity and trusts.

But I paid attention to a lecture on magistrates, and in particular to the right of access of all persons directly to the court, to 'lay an information', or swear before a Justice of the Peace a criminal complaint against a named person. Magistrates could also issue arrest warrants from the bench, and accept charges. Thus it was then possible for a shopkeeper to arrest a shoplifter, march them down to the magistrate's court, lay an information and for the bench to charge the accused under the Theft Act, all without involving either the police or the CPS.

Though I can find a form on the Justice Ministry's website, I can't seem to find any cogent summary of whether these powers still pertain; your comments and advice are welcomed.

Why police bosses oppose citizens in uniform

2009-11-15T08:23:00.003Z

In what must be a continuation of the longest petulant whinge in history, disgraced former Met boss Ian Blair has now condemned the use by residents of private security firms to police their streets. I, on the other hand, applaud every move to residents either paying directly for the policing of their streets, or doing it themselves on a rota basis.

The vice-chairman of the Police Federation has chipped in, saying "I understand the public's fear of crime but actually it's the police who patrol public space and we should be very wary about giving those powers to private security companies."

Actually, Mr Reed, I'm happy for all those private citizens not to have the 'special powers' given to the police. The authority given by those 'special powers' to the police to stop and fine drivers under the Road Traffic Acts, fine smokers for dropping a fag-butt, search pensioners for terrorist weapons or shoot tube passengers is best confined to the smallest possible number. No, I'm happy for us - us and our security guards - just to use the power we already have under the law - that every single one of us already has - to arrest any person without warrant for any indictable offence being committed if there is no police officer immediately at hand.

So we can already arrest rapists, arsonists, murderers, muggers, robbers, thieves including shoplifters, anyone trying to vandalise a railway line, burglars, anyone with a weapon or imitation weapon, persons outraging public decency, persons damaging boats and ships, drug dealers, persons handling stolen property or obtaining property by deception and any other persons caught in the act of committing a few hundred other indictable offences. That's enough.

We'll leave the police to deal with the serious stuff - eating an apple whilst driving, calling a police horse 'gay' and the like. We can arrest the real street crims ourselves. Without any extra special powers at all.

And as we increasingly rely on our private security firms to do the real policing, directly accountable to those that pay for them, in time we'll ask why the heck we're paying for all those folk in full body armour with tazers working for the Home Secretary, and ask exactly what value they're adding. And that's what the police bosses fear more than anything.

The truth about the Slave Trade

2009-11-15T07:47:00.004Z

When, a couple of years ago, I exploded in indignation at the folly and ignorance of dunderhead political figures who apologised 'to Africa' for the Slave Trade the reaction from certain quarters was as though I'd denied the holocaust.

The truth is that if the West was a willing buyer of slaves, Africa was a willing seller. Of the 11m - 15m African slaves transported across the Atlantic between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, all but a few thousands had been captured and enslaved by fellow Africans in a cultural practice that pre-dated by centuries the first sight of a European on those shores. Their pre-European market had been the Gulf and the Arab states. Right up until abolition, Europe hardly had a foot ashore in Africa; the vast continent was only colonised post-abolition, when Quinine prophylaxis, the breech-loading rifle and steam gunboats made it possible.

Yet a distorted teaching of history in our schools has left a generation with the impression that it was chaps in Pith helmets and khaki drill who rounded up the natives and packed them off to Virginian tobacco plantations. And dunderhead politicos breathe it all in and apologise 'to Africa'.

And of course apologising for the behaviour of our ancestors prior to the effects of the Second Enlightenment makes about as much sense as apologising to elephants for our ancestors having hunted their tusked woolly cousins.

And although there is now an interesting suggestion from Nigeria that Africans ought to apologise to the Afro-Americans and our Afro-Carib population for the Trade, the idea of a Nigerian village girl apologising to Shirley Bassey or Michele Obama for having brought them to their present state seems a little incongruous.

Retailers fail to talk-up Christmas 'must-have'

2009-11-13T07:37:00.003Z

It was a brave effort by toy retailers last week to persuade the public that what every family needed this Christmas was a Chinese-made robotic hamster. A few newspapers, desperate for the seasonal advertising, obediently did their best to talk-up the market, but the British public hasn't bitten.

Those containers from Chinese ports that should now be crammed full of Christmas goods remain stubbornly empty. The Harpex briefly dipped to a new low last week. The prospects of a March election look more likely than they did a few weeks ago when Brown was claiming his action had ended the recession in the UK.

Hey ho.

In praise of immigration

2009-11-12T08:46:00.003Z

I wholly support the immigration of skilled, qualified and economically productive persons of prime working age and of whatever ethnic origin into the UK; they increase per capita GDP, they pay for their own housing, and in many cases for their own healthcare, they don't drain resources from the criminal justice system, and one of the great delights of London is the cosmopolitan mix of French, north American, antipodean and other advanced cultures that enrich and enliven our capital. Intelligent, imbued with the virtues of the middle class, fluent in English and respectful of our culture, they are welcome.

What utterly escapes me is the reason Labour has opened the doors of our nation to so many of the other kind; the lazy, the thieves, the sick, the dependent, the criminal, the homeless, the illiterate who depend wholly on out taxes for food, housing, healthcare and education, who compete directly with our own feckless underclass for menial and unskilled work, who decrease per capita GDP, who crowd-out the underclass from social housing, who fill the maternity wards and who to a large extent hate us and our culture.

It's a no-brainer, isn't it?

So I'm against immigration quotas - why damage ourselves? But I'm 100% for shutting the door to any immigrant who can't maintain themselves and their family and make a positive contribution to per capita GDP. And 100% for combing-out all those still clinging to our purses and wallets and bidding them adieu.

So what's the issue, Gordon?

Let's hope this inappropriate letter writing will cease

2009-11-11T09:17:00.003Z

There should be only two sources of 'official' condolence letter received by the next of kin of those fallen in battle; a short, formal letter signed by the Sovereign and a longer hand-written letter from the man's platoon or company commander or c/o. Neither will ever be held accountable by next of kin for the particular circumstances of the death.

I'm not sure when this fad for politicians writing letters started, but let's hope it stops. All politicians are liars, many are venal and corrupt, many are incompetent. Not a class of person from whom a grieving widow or mother would welcome a communication. Add to that an entire government and opposition front bench without a campaign ribbon between them.

Brown's savaging at the hands of Mrs Janes may strike many as unfair, but it arose from his own hubris and vanity in penning the damn thing in the first place. Let's hope this inappropriate letter writing ceases.

Cameron's 'Big Society' needs local ties

2009-11-11T08:15:00.002Z

Though Cameron has grasped the germ of the idea that central Statism is an unequivocal evil for this nation and its people, he is resisting any real commitment to Localism. Dave's vision seems to be a sort of State Lite; individual volunteers with vertical ties to a smaller State taking the place of Socialist functionaries. Ministers will still hold budgets for local functions and direct policy, albeit through leaner and meaner mechanisms.

Cameron's National Volunteer Corps, as outlined in a major interview with the Guardian, demonstrates that he still doesn't trust people to manage their own lives and communities. Yes, there is a volunteering gap - in areas in which volunteering is part of the central State's agenda. There is no shortage of volunteers in areas prioritised by people themselves. Individuals will engage easily enough when they feel they have a real measure of control, and this means devolving tax raising and spending decisions to local level.

The radical change that's needed is not another variety of vertical tie, but the freedom for local, horizontal ties to form and bind. For a member of the political class, which is what Dave undoubtedly is, giving away any measure of power whatsoever is like having a tooth wrenched out. They hate it. Cameron has also grown up in a party structure ruthlessly centralised under Thatcher - and has shown recently a tenacious opposition to allowing his local associations any real autonomy.

Within a few weeks, the days will start to lengthen again and one hopes the increased light will start to illuminate the detail of Cameron's manifesto as we crawl closer to May. I haven't given up on him yet - he may still astonish us with an act of real vision and leadership - but he'll need to do a great deal better than this sort of dishwater 'keynote' speech.

Good Oh! Technology for a Fortress Britain

2009-11-10T07:34:00.002Z

It's not often that the Comrades cheer me up, but this announcement from Leeds ~~Polytechnic~~ Metropolitan University has done so;

The Copenhagen conference is rich in the number of technical issues covered including migration. However, what is less explored is how states will respond if told they could be facing over a billion people being forced to migrate if the world’s temperature rises by more than three degrees.

This workshop will, therefore, examine how the current revolution in military affairs has financed a new generation of weapons and control technologies in the "war against terror," and how these will become rapidly reoriented toward area denial and for border exclusion purposes.

Good Oh!

Global amnesia; let's forget derivatives

2009-11-10T07:03:00.003Z

In a globally collective mass act of amnesia, we have all decided to ignore the fact that somewhere out there are $1,500 trillion of derivatives, constructed from our global GDP of just $55 trillion. We can't afford to write them off, we can't easily deflate them and our governments refuse to divorce themselves from the casino banks that own them. So what the heck, we say, let's just blow up that bubble a bit more - what's to lose?

So the world's banks suck up the billions that governments are pumping into the system and hold onto them as they repair the slight tears in their balloon balance sheets, fire the gas and gain a little altitude, with bumper bonuses for all.

Except I think it's far from over. That derivatives balloon will burst before it deflates away harmlessly.

And your share of the debt won't be the comfy £4,000 each that the press quote all the time. £4k is a very reassuring figure for most people. "I can take a £4k hit" we say; "it's not that much."

No, your share of the balloon burst will be around 27 times your annual income if those derivatives prove completely worthless; if they are only 20% over valued, your share will be around five and a half times your annual income. A long way from that comfy £4k, anyway.

Ok, so let's all put our fingers in our ears and all together ... "la la la ..."

Labour fatally compromised our national security

2009-11-08T08:54:00.003Z

The Times carries a lengthy piece this morning on how, as Labour so easily shed the blood of our young men in Afghanistan 'to protect the UK from terrorism', they were bending over backwards to encourage as many Pakistani terrorists as possible to emigrate here. And by abolishing exit controls, deliberately lost all track of all those Jihadists from Bradford and Luton who travelled to the tribal areas to train in bombs and terror.

The 'chain of terror' that Gordon Brown draws between Afghanistan and the streets of Britain links Al Queda directly with the Labour Party. For dross, for sleazy electoral gain, for gerrymandering and political corruption, the Labour Party have fatally compromised our national security. God rot their souls.

At least we're spared the sickening stench of Blair at the Cenotaph

2009-11-08T08:15:00.003Z

If there was any greater blasphemy of Blair's misrule, it was his nauseous presence at the annual ceremony at the Cenotaph. His patently contrived facial set, as false and dishonest as all else about him, used to rouse a wholly inappropriate ire in me at a moment of national remembrance. His betrayal of our nation and of our army have earned him ignominy and disgrace even in death; if his perfumed corpse is dug from the grave and flung into the common sewer-pit it will be no less than he deserves. Like one of Graves' despoilers

The white hem of a winding sheet
Draws slowly upward from her feet;
Soon it will mount knee-high, then to the thigh.
It crackles like the parchment of the treaties,
Bonds, contracts and conveyances,
With which, beggared and faint and like to die,
You signed away your island sovereignty
To rogues who learned their primer at your knees

Instead, today we will have Brown, as dead as any Zombie, pale and phosphorescent with the corpse-pallor, stiff and mechanical as he clutches a wreath that surely stains his wrist scarlet to the cuff, a stain beyond all great Neptune's ocean's ability to wash.

Where are the Statesmen?

2009-11-05T08:01:00.003Z

There are few modern politicians to whom one would accord the dignity of Statesman. Thatcher was, Blair isn't and will never be. The idea of Brown as Statesman produces a risible snort even amongst Labour Party ranks. Cameron has done a fair job of fitting his foot in the glass slipper as a credible domestic PM but trails in the chorus on the international stage. In time, who knows, Cameron may grow into Statesmanship, but that time is not now.

His speech yesterday was about as good as he could make it but the glaring fatuities could not be disguised. The next time we face losing our virginity, he declared, we would not surrender it so lightly. In the real world, of course, once it's gone it's gone. The ~~Constitution~~ Treaty, like 'going all the way' is the end of the process, not an intermediate step. Secondly, he said, he would secure the co-operation of all 26 fellow Federal authorities to allow the UK a whole series of opt-outs. No doubt he will also demonstrate equal proficiency at herding feral cats.

The United Kingdom must now engage in a level of European diplomacy unseen since Versailles or Potsdam, and must do so with pygmies at the helm, with hardly a seasoned Statesman in sight. Pitt the Younger faced issues of similar scale, but Dave is no William Pitt. The only credible choice now facing the United Kingdom is In or Out; is Britain to be a European Satrapy, our laws, unique justice system, foreign and defence policy and economy to be subject to foreign diktat, or are we to remain as we have been for a thousand years a part of Europe, with indissoluble cultural bonds, a common Christian heritage, but with free trade and in open co-operation with our fellow Europeans?

And as for Cameron's plea that he hasn't got time to deal with correcting both Labour's pillage of the British economy and Europe during his first term, I rather think the next Prime Minister's agenda is a matter for the British people to decide, not Dave's vain and self-centred comfort zone; if Dave doesn't think he's up to it, he must stand aside now. For we must demand much of our next government - to deal with not only Europe and the economy but with whatever other crises may arise. We must be ruthless in our expectations; we will exhaust and discard spent politicians in the process, and like Alanbrooke throw another fresh division into the breach. We will demand of our Parliament self-sacrifice, unremitting toil and legendary tenacity; political reputations will perish on the altar, and the cleansing fires of the forge will bring forth a nation renewed.

Prepare for battle.