Berlusconi: the enemies circle

Perhaps we might say that Silvio Berlusconi is not scared who he chooses as his enemies. There seem to be a few, now.

The Church is not happy with him, in particular because he fought back; but he was right, if clumsy, to do so. Dino Boffo, the editor of l’Avvenire, the newspaper of the Bishops’ Conference, was not in a position to lecture people on their moral peccadilloes and has rightly resigned.

There has been some rough and tumble, if not exactly a rift, with Gianfranco Fini, the former leader of Alleanza Nazionale which has merged with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia into the PdL. It would appear Fini, effectively Berlusconi’s deputy, was anticipating the great man's demise and positioning himself, a little early, towards the centre. Il Giornale, the Berlusconi family paper, has advised him to get back to the right if he doesn’t want to appear any more ridiculous than he already does (their words not mine). Fini says he will sue Il Giornale.

Lastly, Berlusconi is being sued by Rupert Murdoch. Amidst great complaint from Rupe, Berlusconi increased the VAT rate on subscription TV, saying it was a requirement of the EU and that it would hit Berlù’s pay channels as well.

We now learn that Murdoch is behind much of the Berlusconi smearing that has been going on. His new York papers have been most outrageous, claiming for example that Silvio was the father of Noemi Letizia, the young model whose birthday party he attended. Murdoch has even got the classics academic Mary Beard, who writes for the Times, to pen a comparison between Berlusconi and the Emperor Tiberias.

Now there are rumours that the Mafia is turning against him. A little known member of the coalition is Movimento per l’Autonomia, regarded almost humorously in that, in a mirror image of the Lega Nord, it seeks more autonomy for Sicily and the South. But the MpA is suddenly making fantastic gains in the polls. Berlusconi has hitherto expected a clean sweep of the Sicily electorate; increasingly it is being said this is no longer on offer.

So is the great man toppling? We shall see. His goal is to become president, and Napolitano’s term expires in June 2011, at which time there must also be general elections. The president is elected not by the people but by Parliament. Some are apparently whispering in Berlù’s ear that if he were to call a snap election he would win it. He would promise Fini and the rest that he would step down to become President when Napolitano leaves. I think he would like this reasoning: it is dealing with stronger enemies seemingly from a position of power.

Whether he is the right person to become President is another matter. Still, Napolitano was a former comunist and we seem to have been happy to forget his earlier life. Why not?

UK Health: the risks

The latest horror shock from the medical fraternity is a survey of the fate of some 19,000 civil servants, aged 40-69, set up in the late 60s. The researchers concentrated on smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol, those being the high cardiovascular risk factors, and found that the main cardiovascular risks were, yes, smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol.

The subjects were followed up some 40 years later by which some 13,501 had died.

I should have thought that the remarkable thing about the survey was that 5,500 of these smoking, low exercising, cholesterol ingesting heroes were still alive aged between 80 and 109, comfortably past the average life expectancy.

UK: postal disaster

It seems the UK is heading for a postal strike, something contemplated by the majority of citizens with a degree of equanimity. Why? Because for most of us the product Royal Mail are offering is outdated and expensive. Now the company haemorrhaging cash. Our cash.

I remember the Tories having the chance to rid the taxpayer of this burden, but they (in particular Michael Heseltine) chickened out. We shall have paid a high price for his yellow streak by the time it is all over.

But having decided to keep it (there was some nonsense about it being a meeting point for old people) governments took their eye off the ball. In the 1990s, with a buoyant economy and the internet still something new, Royal Mail made a surplus of something like £2.5 billion. This figure, however, masks a number of problems which might have been seen even then, in particular a weak management and short sighted unions. Three things have happened more recently to turn a failed industry into a national disaster:

1 The EU has forced Royal Mail to open up to competition (ie foreign competition) for letters weighing more than 50g (about two ounces).
2 Gordon Brown’s raiding of the pension funds in 1997
3 the coming of the internet

Now not everyone can use the internet and it is not ideal for all forms of communication (enclosing a fiver in your letter to your grandson for example) but here is an indication of what should have happened.

Mrs Jones of Cornwall goes into her nearest sub post office with a letter she has written to her sister on the Isle of Skye. She feeds it into the scanner (the employee cannot read it), and gives her sister’s name and address. The letter is then faxed to Skye, arriving within one second, is printed and automatically enclosed in an envelope. Her sister can collect it or for a small extra charge have it delivered (about 2 miles). Quicker, greener, better in every way. The reason we haven’t got this system is the government failed to hand Royal Mail over to the private sector when it could have. A condition would have been providing a universal service and this, utilising simple technology, would have been what the new owners would have come up with.

Now we are left with a lunatic workforce which doesn’t realise it is in an industry on its last legs, and a massive underfunding of the pension commitments (socialists never fix the roof when the sun is shining). This shortfall is said to be some £10 billion, a sum we haven’t got. And they want to go on strike.

European Parliament: Babel

Splendid scenes in the European Parliament as Enzo Rivellini, an MEP from Southern Italy, addressed the chamber in the Neapolitan dialect. This completely floored the translation team, who were unable to do their job and even Italian members were left scratching their heads.

Unfortunately we shall never know what he said.

UK: Cuts, cuts, cuts

Mr Brown has finally uttered the ‘c’ word, without actually saying he will take any toys away. He said he will cancel ‘unnecessary’ expenditure. I do hope Mr Cameron asks him to outline how much ‘unnecessary’ expenditure he has authorised over the last 12 years.

In the meantime, Irwin Stelzer in the Telegraph warns Mr Cameron that he will need a clear mandate to cut expenditure, and that means putting detail in the manifesto.

The Liberal Democrats’ spokesman, John ‘Vince’ Cable, has to his credit set out some examples of possible cuts, amounting to £50 billion. Not enough, but a start, and interesting to see the sort of stuff which will have to go. They are on the excellent Reform site.

Sweet dreams

As I go to bed the BBC newsflash says 'A ship that may contain nuclear waste has been allegedly blown up by the mafia off Italy'.

That's OK then. Sleep tight.

Keith Floyd

So much has been said about Keith Floyd, who has died, that it needs little from me.

He made cookery OK for blokes. Not just males, but guys who drank, smoked and enjoyed themselves.

Thanks, Keith, from this bloke.

Lehman, the crisis and the politicians

I have been listening carefully to the TV, radio and blogging media about the first anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse. I don’t know about anyone else but I have found vagueness, confusion and wordiness as a substitute for knowledge to an extent almost unprecedented.

I should like to mention first, in passing, that if you had asked anyone in the financial markets before the crash which firm they would like to go bust ignominiously, they would have said Lehman. It had an arrogance, a class-based superiority which is less uncommon in East Coast America than most people think but which was out of place on Wall Street. At the time I and others were warning about the moral hazard of giving banks a bailout and Lehman was a perfect answer of ‘pour encourager les autres’.

The questions people seem to be asking a year on are ‘Can it happen again?’, and ‘Why didn’t we have regulation to make sure the banks had enough capital?’. The answer to the first question is yes, and it will, but not for maybe a generation. The second is more difficult, and more interesting.

Regulation is done, either at first hand or second, by politicians. Someone has wisely said that come the next collapse we will be rushing around imposing the regulation we should have had for the previous ones, as they say of generals always preparing for the previous war. Some of it is bad. The Clinton administration wanted everyone to have a house. So it told the two state bank/reinsurance companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to do most of their business with high risk poor people. It wasn’t all Lehman’s fault.

But there was some regulation on capital and in retrospect it is fairly easy to see why we were all wasting our time. Let us say a bank has £10 of capital, and, looking solid, it borrows £90 and lends a total of £100. That is a leverage of ten times: its loans are ten times its capital, so it only takes ten percent of them (£10) to go bad and they have wiped out their capital and can’t repay their borrowings. Many of the banks were leveraged 30 times, which means it only takes around 3% to go bad and they are in trouble. Given that in the States, thanks to Mr Clinton, they were lending to insolvent Mississippi farmhands to buy a property and you can see there will have been problems.

Some years ago, in the early 1980s if I recall, the chaps from the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, came up with a formula for regulation. Naturally not all loans were the same. Lending money to the farmhand unsecured was highly risky, whereas secured against a property meant you were likely to get something back. So they made a table of different types of exposure, secured, unsecured etc, requiring different amounts of capital. Then what to do about guarantees? If the bank guarantees A’s loan to B there was the chance that B would pay it back, or part of it, so it should need less capital put by. Then suppose Barclays Bank asked Natwest to lend money to a company called Barclays Bank (Dodgy Lending) Ltd. Natwest didn’t get a guarantee but look at the name! A guarantee in itself! Then suppose BB (DL) L floats on the stock exchange, sells shares and we start selling options on their share price? Wow! Or make a market in the future price of those options? Or give the options futures away to enhance the risk on even dodgier stuff, like toys in the packet of cornflakes? Wow Wow Wow!

So as soon as the regulations appeared, banks started to devise ways to get around them, to take more profit-generating risks without having to provide more capital.

And if you put more regulations in place there will be more people paid million dollar bonuses to get round them. The solution is what we had before Gordon Brown became Chancellor. The Bank of England had its nose in every banking pie and could understand what was going on and occasionally warn that it was too much. Brown’s socialist mentality couldn’t cope with this so he split this responsibility between the Bank, the Government and the Financial Services Authority. Three times the people doing the same work but no one was responsible and no one knew what was happening. Northern Rock, which should have gone under for imcompetence, was rescued for the simple reason its base was in Labour heartlands and it had been a donator to the Labour Party. If it had been Cheltenham and Gloucester (Tory), Labour would have laughed its head off and we would have been saved billions.

That’s the problem with regulation. It’s done by politicians.

Football

I have learned something interesting about football (something interesting! At last!), which I shall pass on to you. I expect you already knew it.

The length of a pitch must be between 100 yards (90m) and 130 yards (120m) and the width not less than 50 yards (45m) and not more than 100 yards (90m).

So the pitch could be a square, something I don’t recall ever seeing, or it could be a rectangle measuring anything between 90m x 45m and 120m x 90m, ie between 4,050 sq m and 10,800 sq m, over two and a half times the size!

They ought to introduce the same idea with tennis.

EU: claim more holidays!

In a new decision relating to the interpretation of the Working Time Directive (the diktat which makes you a criminal if you work longer hours than they want you to) the European Court of Justice has ruled that if a worker falls ill during his holiday he can reclaim the time from his employers. He just reclassifies that period as sick leave.

But don’t worry. Obviously nobody is going to try to fiddle this and claim by email from Lanzarote that they have a tummy upset. Are they?

Norman Borlaug

I don't suppose more than a tiny fraction of people have heard of Norman Borlaug, who has died aged 95, but he is credited with saving some 245 million lives, an almost incredible figure.

Borlaug developed disease resistant wheat, the principal characteristic of which was that it was short and so in heavy rain the tops didn't fall over into the water. This revolutionised production in Mexico, Pakistan and India, doubling yields when combined with modern growing techniques and staving off certain famine.

245 million. Quite an achievement.

UK: car workers, crooks and the Phoenix Four

Interesting goings on over the ashes of Rover, what was left of Tony Benn’s British Leyland by the time reality had begun to creep up.

In 2000 BMW, which had bought the group, decided it was beyond saving (something any British taxpayer could have told them several millions earlier). BMW had received government support and knew it would have to leave decently (ie tossing some more cash in). There were two bids. One, from a private equity firm called Alchemy, said quite openly that the only part worth saving was the MG sports car group and gave its proposals: the rest would be abandoned and the workers laid off.

Alchemy’s proposal was too much (ie too honest) for the then DTI Secretary, Stephen Byers, who was brokering the deal using our money. He went for the only alternative, a bid by the ‘Phoenix Four’ led by John Towers who had previously run the group (not, you might have thought, a great thing to have on your CV). The Phoenix bid claimed to save mass production of cars in England. Anyway Byers, terrified of the response of the unions, and in the middle of an election campaign adopted the bid, seemingly without looking at it too closely. Of course taxpayers’ money went in - £6.5 million was the last instalment but there had been many more before that.

We knew three or four years ago that these people took out around £40 million in cash and pensions while the company went under. While we are on the subject of overpayment for work done or not done, it should be mentioned that we seem to be no further on now after a report which took four years to write and cost £16 million. Peter Mandelson delayed the publication of the report, again for party (or personal) poitical reasons.

The Government is not criticised by the report, due to its terms of reference (these people aren’t fools). What we need is a report (costing a fair bit less than £16 million) to determine whether Stephen Byers made the right decision (the workers would have been laid off 5 years earlier but would have got their full redundancy money and pensions which they didn’t in the end), whether he was negligent in not preventing asset stripping of the rump of the company for private gain (don't forget it was our money which went into this) and whether he made that decision in the interests of country / economy / workers or for narrow party political reasons.

Naturally no such report ill ever be commissioned. Labour Party politicians have saved their necks and the people who have suffered are the workers they claimed to represent.

Health: they're at it again

The British medical Association want a ban on the marketing of alcohol. In a report made by the BBC, another organisation which seems to think its métier is to tell people how to behave, it says over a third of adults are drinking over recommended amounts. Two thirds, or a clear majority, aren't, we may conclude. They want minimum pricing, a ban on happy hours and two-for-one purchases and higher levels of tax. A spokesman for the British Liver Trust (did you know there was such a thing? Guess who pays for that!), said the report put a "compelling case for change".

The guidelines for these people ought to be clearly defined and they ought to know them. If the National Health Service believes that it could save money (that is if we would have to pay less into it) by advertising or informing the public on a matter of health (fewer GP treatments and hospital admissions because of the adverts) then it should go ahead and that money should come out of its budget. If it is trying to tell us how to live (and what a lot of people we are paying to do that) it should shut up.

Literacy Day

Someone at the UN (actually I bet it's a large committee with undersecretaries, sub-managers and interns) is charged with naming days for whatever is the current preoccupation (non-smoking day is some time in May, I think, and there's bound to be a 'wearing cycle helmets' Day soon). But here is one which seems to be of some value if, as I suppose, the aim is to get us thinking about it. Today is International Literacy Day.

Some West African countres have literacy rates at only 15%. The average for South and West Asia is under 60%. And of course without literacy these people cannot make progress and will remain poor, barbaric and increasingly subsidy dependent. The figures for female illiteracy in some places are appalling.

A useful one, for once.

Cadbury

I think the only time I have been in agreement with one of those Papal Bulls which emerges from the Eurocracy with such regularity is when they tried to stop Cadbury calling their Dairy Milk product 'chocolate', on the grounds that it contained so little of the stuff as not to qualify.

I should be glad if the company were bought by Kraft, which owns Tobler Suchard, and could teach them how to make a bar of chocolate. Start with Lindt 70% and work up to their 85%, is my advice. There is also a 99% if you are barking mad, as I am.

Libya: the compensation struggle

The silence, excuses, volte-faces and dithering which passes for the Government’s policy on Libya seems to have taken a rather strange turn.

Victims of IRA bombings, noticing that our own terrorists bought their explosive from Libya, are asking for compensation from Colonel Ghaddafi. Notice that no one thinks that Ghaddafi was involved in the bombings, just that he sold them the kit. This is a new and disturbing development. Britain is one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world. Will we pay compensation every time someone is killed using British made arms? Can the bereaved families of Falklands victims claim compensation from the French who made the exocet missiles?

The victims’ families would do as well to contact the Kennedy family in America for its support for NORAID (the IRA had to get the money to pay Ghaddafi). And I note that Britain has just sold Ghaddafi some riot control gear. I hope we are ready with our compensation money when he turns this stuff on his own citizens.

Alan Turing

There is a petition on the Downing St website for an apology for Alan Turing, the famous mathematician and computer genius (one of those few occasions where the use of the word is not an exaggeration).

Turing, from his work at Bletchley Park, helped win the war by decrypting enemy messages. After the war he began to work on computers. In 1952 he was convicted of gross indecency, involving a homosexual relationship with a young man. He took his own life a year later.

No one has more respect for Turing than I (inasmuch as I can understand his work) and I do not believe in persecuting homosexuals. But I have to say I am tired of this continual apology business. We have been urged to apologise for Britain’s actions in all manner of fields, recently soldiers shot for cowardice and the slave trade.

But why apologise? Why should Gordon Brown apologise for something that happened shortly after he was born? What effect would an apology have? To say we're not against homosexuality? Of course we're not: it's been legal for over 40 years now. The people who persecuted Turing are long since dead and were they still alive might or might not regret their actions, we'll never know.

Homosexuality was not legalised until 1967. Turing was breaking the law and knew he was breaking the law. If a law changes do we have to apologise to everyone convicted under the old law? Why?

This would be just an opportunity for Brown to wallow in his comfortable beliefs assuring the Guardian readers that he was on their side. An apology would do nothing to help poor Turing and would demean the Government. Not signing the petition doesn’t mean you hate gays and doesn’t mean you don’t respect one of the country’s greatest ever mathematicians. It means you’ve got common sense.

Jonathan Ross

Interesting news of the foul mouthed celeb, who, you will recall, was found to have left vulgar messages on the answerphone of a 70 year old actor, while earning £6 million a year from the BBC (ie the taxpayer).

The Sun newspaper reports that the BBC are busy renegotiating his contract, and that they are terrified the independent ITV would like to have him.

Let us monitor this. I think the BBC would be well advised to lose this particular race and that the market price of the performer will turn out to be a fair bit less than £6 million. The BBC, and I think it has forgotten this, is supposed to be a public service provider, maintaining all that is good in broadcasting (much of it is) and not competing for ratings with the private sector which does not have state support.

Berlu and the Bishops (2)

Boffo resigns. The extraordinary story of Silvio Berlusconi’s relations with the Roman Catholic Church – I was going to say ‘deteriorating relations’ but things seems to have passed that point – has taken a new twist.

Dino Boffo, the editor of l’Avvenire, the newspaper of the Bishops’ Conference, has resigned, citing the attack on him by Bruno Feltri, editor of Il Giornale which is owned by Berlusconi’s brother. In his statement Boffo said that whilst it was true he had been convicted of harassment and paid a fine, it was not he but a former drug addict to whom he had given shelter who had made the harassing calls on his mobile phone. This is really the most astonishingly stupid thing to say: that, accused of homosexuality (a sin in the world he inhabits), he denies any wrongdoing and says there was a bit of rough trade staying with him and using his mobile ‘phone.

Boffo has denied suggestions of a homosexual relationship in this case – although does not appear to deny being a homosexual. It seems the Catholic Church, given its attitude to homosexuality, has some questions to answer here. It is inconceivable that they did not know Boffo was gay, and actively so, and must have known that he had been convicted of harassment. How come he was allowed to stay in his job, particularly making moral accusations against a public figure? Pictures of a smiling Boffo shaking hands with the Pope are only gong to make things worse.

This will look as if it is Round 1 to Berlusconi. But this is the wrong enemy to take on. He must settle matters with the Church soon, it is too influential to fight.

Italy: hunting

The Italian hunting season has started, and from 6am our house sounds as if it were in a First World War battle zone. Italians take this very seriously and are beautifully kitted out: imagine male catwalk models where 'paramilitary' was the style of the day. Their guns are often sophisticated multi-round pump action repeaters and their sunglasses more Schwarzenegger than Lennon.

They don't hit much - to be fair there isn't much left to hit. Last year some people were fined for shooting thrushes but there is little policing. If it moves they shoot it, be it squirrel, hare, blue tit or whatever. They have the right to walk all over your land in pursuit of this slaughter and many is the domestic dog or cat fed poisoned titbits to prevent it from disturbing the game.

About 20 years ago there was a referendum on whether these hunting rights should be restricted and the voting was about 15:1 in favour of stopping it. But unfortunately the turnout at under 50% did not constitute a quorum and the attempt failed.

This is one of the very few areas of Italian life which is crude, selfish and unlovely. Apparently a new attempt is in the offing to stop it. We shall see.

The Spectator

It seems Matthew d'Ancona is leaving as editor of the Speccie, after a very successful few years. New editor will be Fraser Nelson, who is quite a good egg.

Berlu and the Church

I can't help wondering if Silvio Berlusconi, normally politically sure-footed, hasn't picked the wrong enemy. He was due to attend the annual Celestine Pardon, as part of a rapprochement with the Holy See, but has pulled out, after Cardinal Bertone the Vatican Secretary of State, cancelled a dinner due to be held afterwards. The Vatican is concerned about the stories surrounding Berlusconi and an impending divorce, although to be fair to Silvio it is his wife trying to divorce him.

Berlusconi is suing La Repubblica, the Italian equivalent of the Guardian, for presenting innuendo as fact and suggesting he could be open to blackmail (it was La Repubblica who paid the prostitute to bring a tape recorder with her) but it isn't that which is the problem. The case will take so long to come to court that the matter will be forgotten.

What looks like an uncharacteristic strategic mistake from the normally cunning premier is that Vittorio Feltri, editor of Il Giornale which is owned by Berlusconi's brother, has made an attack on Dino Boffo, editor of Avvenire, the bisops' newspaper, saying he was unable to make moral judgments because he was a homosexual who was accused of harasssment and paid a fine in a plea bargain to avoid going to jail. The paper claims to be in possession of the court documents and, just to make it more complicated, it is the harassment if a woman in Terni he was accused of - he was having a relationahip with her husband. But whatever the rights and wrongs, Boffo has important friends.

Berlu has already dissociated himself from the piece but I think it was ill advised. The Church is widely respected here and the deal is that the people are allowed to criticise it privately but their leaders must show respect.

Let us see how Berlu gets out of this.

Adair Turner - turn him off

Adair (Lord) Turner, the head of the Financial Services Association (FSA) has made perhaps the most stupid speech I have heard this year, against some pretty stiff competition. He has said that bankers are socially useless and that the financial sector is too big and needs to be cut back.

I have been trying to imagine how it must feel to be a hard working person and be told you are socially useless, and told that by a bureaucrat ennobled and handsomely rewarded by the taxpayer. Suppose Lord Turner decided that gardeners were socially useless, or bricklayers or politicians? One wonders who has authorised him to make this judgment.

More serious is the idea that the financial sector should be cut back. It’s not just the facts of the case – every year I can remember Britain has run a trade deficit with the world, wholly or partially recouped by a surplus on invisibles – largely banking. The financial industry has been bailing us out of the mire for ages.

But I could agree that banking is so strong an industry for Britain that there is perhaps an imbalance. What should we do? What should a country do if it had one very strong industry – say agriculture or oil or electronics? The liberal adviser would say encourage other industries to grow. The illiberal bureaucrat says hack the successful industry back down to size.

Turner is new to the FSA but he must be aware that it was charged with regulating the financial industry and yet failed to notice the banks were leveraged to 30%, failed to understand what was going wrong at Northern Rock. Let’s remember this when we talk about people being ‘socially useless’.

Ted Kennedy (2)

I railed against Kennedy's knighthood earlier this year. Now the old charlatan is dead. This is a man who has occupied public office since the 1960s and seems to have done nothing except let down his family and his country.

Fitting, I thought, that one of his last pronouncements should have been to complain against the release of Megrahi while having been an active supporter of the IRA for years. Some terrorists, you see, are beyond redemption whereas other terrorists are a useful political bandwagon.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum, I should have mentioned, does not apply to this blog. Let the blighter be judged by a higher court.

The lottery

I should have mentioned that it might be seen as obvious that the Malaspina (bad back) should have chosen Bagnone (big bath) as their home but, as I said, they were swine.

Incidentally, the Malaspina were in some large part responsible for the Salic Law on inheritance being maintained, that is that an estate should be divided amongst the (male) children, which led in France and Italy to smaller farms than in England and these were less efficient when mechanisation arrived and this meant that they got a greater subsidy than British Farms when the EU came into being.

I don't think we can blame it all on the Malaspina (Salic Law was much earlier adopted by Charlemagne). But the lottery ticket can be seen as their final curse.

The lottery: and the winner is...

Bagnone is a Tuscan hilltop town above La Spezia and has suffered two misfortunes in its long history. The first was to be the chosen home of the unpleasant and warlike XIV century Guelph family the Malaspina, and the second is to be the home of the lottery jackpot ticket. The newsagent who sold the winning ticket (himself in for around €7 million) said three people bought tickets. One man, a tractor driver, was seen to be behaving strangely while watching a football match shortly before the result was announced (the Superenalotto, needlessly complicated as only the Italians can make it, depends on football matches, selected towns, and numbers).

I felt genuinely sorry for the man. To win €1 million, or, given the price of houses and low yield on pension investments, €5 million, would be a great good fortune. But €148m? It looks to me as if it can only bring bad luck.

The sensible thing, and what I like to think I would do myself, is to give away €140 million. But if I actually had the cheque in my hands......

The Ashes Series

I posted in July that the First Test had been a compulsive listening experience and so it has been throughout. That draw to begin with, our last two batsmen holding out almost impossibly, the incredible win at Lords for the first time in three quarters of a century, the rain-affected draw at Edgbaston, the appalling surrender to Australian supremacy at Headingly, from which many thought a disheartened England could never climb back, and the dramatic finale at the Oval, Australia’s top batsmen blown away in their first innings by a young man thought likely to lose his place in the team.

Even with an unprecedentedly high score to chase it looked, on a couple of occasions, as if Australia might just do it. But it was over abruptly, around the time of the aperitivo. I felt empty and purposeless for a while, wondering what it was I did before the Ashes started. Ah yes, something about a book.....

EU: the increasing rip-off

The Sunday Telegraph points out that in the UK Treasury’s European Union finances document, cunningly slid out after Parliament had risen for the summer, the net contributions to the EU of £4.1 billion are due to rise by more than half to £6.4 billion next year.

Just what we want in a recession. In large part it is because Tony Blair and Gordon Brown gave up Mrs Thatcher’s rebate. This rebate was because the Common Agricultural Policy favours inefficient (French) farmers. Blair and Brown came back from the summit saying it was a great deal for Britain because they had secured a reduction in agricultural payments overall. What they had in fact secured was the promise to look at agricultural payments, which the French have now decided are about right.

But unfortunately it is only half the story. Next year we are forecast to pay over £15 billion into the European Union. What we get back (ie the £9 billion which makes the net £6 billion) is dependent on their whim. If they want it to be spent on infrastructure projects it has to be. What the UK government would like is to use this £9 billion to reduce debt, but that is not permitted. And much of this money is dependent on 50/50 financing so we would have to spend £9 billion to get £9 billion back.

The figures can be seen at

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/european_community_finances_2009.pdf

on page 29.

No. Our payment to the EU is £15 billion. That is the amount we could save by leaving.

Megrahi: best forgotten

I rather admired Kenny MacAskill’s statement on the freeing of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber. It was to the effect that whilst Megrahi had shown no leniency to his victims, we, a higher form of life, would show mercy and that mercy would be irrespective of the heinousness of the crime.

But I didn’t believe a word of it.

Megrahi suddenly appeared before the courts eight years ago, handed over by Colonel Ghadaffi. It is inconceivable that he could have done the job without help, but his was the only name put forward by a man notorious for his instability who had suddenly decided, in the wake of Islamist uprisings threatening his dictatorship, to seek a rapprochement with the west. I found the trial a farce and I find Megrahi’s freeing a farce. If it depended just on medical certificates, why did MacAskill visit him in prison?

Whilst it has been put about that dropping his appeal was a condition of his freedom, I find it equally likely that his freedom was a condition of dropping his appeal. It is a regrettable comment on such an important person in public life, but I find that evidence of Lord Mandelson's involvement is further reason to suspect trickery.

This has been a shoddy business, best forgotten.

Italian news August

August is a difficult month for you news vultures so here is the Italian news, condensed for your convenience.

Security guards have occupied the Colosseum, in protest about having to work in the private sector. There are rumours the mayor will let the lions out.

The Superenalotto jackpot is now 135 million euros. The lucky winner would be able to hire Silvio Berlusconi at a party.

A seven year old girl has swum the 3.5km Strait of Messina, proving that no bridge is necessary.

70 endangered loggerhead turtles have hatched at Capo Bruzzano, Calabria

The Coldiretti farmers union have withdrawn an instruction that tomato pickers must drink water during the day or will be sacked, after Muslims claimed it was not permitted in Ramadan.

A man who found a way of retrieving cancelled text messages from his wife’s mobile ‘phone could face a year in jail.

After Silvio Berlusconi said he would offer sanctuary in his homes to the people of l’Aquila, Antonio Bernardini, a resident made homeless by the earthquake, has formally applied for a place, saying he doesn’t mind whether it is in his palazzo in Rome or his converted convent in Sardinia. I’ve heard the parties are better in Sardinia.

Investigators are looking at the estate of the late Gianni Agnelli, president of FIAT, suggesting that as much as 1 billion euros may have gone missing from the tax authorities.

The church in Caltagirone, Sicily, has forbidden the performance of Mascagni’s opera Cavalliera Rusticana during the festival of the town’s patron saint on the grounds that the story line is immoral.

Some 750 nuns of the order of St Clare will be praying for an improvement in Italian television. The nuns do not themselves have television sets.

The healthcare fog

Mr Obama is to be applauded for trying to improve the healthcare system in America but the inevitable strongly opinionated debate about his proposals seems to have thrown up more heat than light and has now regrettably moved to Britain. Our own ignorance of the US system – I was surprised to learn that 50% of healthcare in the USA is provided by the state and that since 1986, federal law has required all hospitals which receive federal money (just about all of them) to provide emergency care to any patient who turns up – and their complete ignorance of our system has meant unwarranted criticism flying across the Atlantic and a peculiar nationalism, even describing itself as patriotism, growing in defence of our own, 60 year old healthcare system.

All this seems unfortunately to have obscured any useful debate. Despite the fact that I don’t want the American system in Britain – Obama doesn’t want it in America, either – I don’t think the NHS is without room for improvement. I had always been brought up to believe the NHS was the best system in the world and that foreigners were unfortunate not to have it. The first time I went abroad, it was to Switzerland, I was understandably nervous. But far from there being children with rickets and tubercular beggars wheezing in the streets, the Swiss looked healthy and prosperous, without the aid of a state owned healthcare system.

We should look at what other countries do. I think the government could farm out much of its own risk. For example, we pay monthly (through our wage packets) to cover an indeterminate healthcare need. That is insurance by any other name and insurance is best handled by insurance companies. I don’t see why the state needs to own almost all of the hospitals – they should be run by private hospital companies. I think it absurd that a millionaire gets the same free treatment as a pauper: anyone who can afford to pay should be pursued for the money.

The government should confine itself to the principle that everyone gets treated, irrespective of income. It should leave healthcare to healthcare professionals. And if we can improve our system by borrowing from other countries, let's do it.

The minimum wage

There are whisperings in a couple of right wing think tanks that we ought in these difficult times to be having another look at the minimum wage, currently £5.73 per hour.

It has been said that a minimum wage is either useless or dangerous and there is some truth in this. Imagine it were 57.3p per hour (about £23 per week): it would have no effect whatsoever. No one works for that kind of money any more. But imagine it were £57.30 per hour, that is to say it would be illegal to employ anyone for less than £2,300 per week: huge swathes of British industry would be wiped out, millions on the dole.

What proponents of a minimum wage say is that a happy medium can be found which doesn't reduce employment but does help people. Whether this is true or not (and I think it is not true), that figure would be different in bad times to what it was in good times. There is a good argument for saying it is now too high and that we shall emerge from recession more slowly if companies cannot employ people for what they can afford to pay them.

Perhaps we can chip away at the minimum wage by creating more exemptions, for young people, for certain industries etc, and committing ourselves not to increase it. Some politician needs to show the courage to raise the subject. Mr Cameron? I think not.

The 'phones

We have been constantly reminded that it is the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, but it is worth thinking about that it is also the 40th anniversary of President Nixon talking to the astronauts on the telephone. He clearly wasn't using Telecom Italia equipment. The 'phones here have been out for the second time in 2 months. As I said to a new expat recently, the best thing is to assume that the 'phones aren't going to work when it's raining, and occasionally you may be pleasantly surprised.

Back up and running now, however.

The BBC: from worse to better

The BBC seems to be making the headlines for all the wrong reasons recently. There was the villa in the south of France where they entertained, George Alagiah having to step down as patron of Fairtrade because of conflict of interest (more about Fairtrade in a later post), senior managers profiting from contracts their family companies have with the Corporation, Jonathan Ross’ viewing numbers plummeting, the list goes on. Russell Brand does not of course work for the BBC any more but the other day some enlightened licence fee payer pushed him into a fountain.

In the midst of all this we have Test Match Special, a safe haven of decency, humour and peace. Which ever executive came up with the idea of having Phil Tuffnel as a commentator deserves a lucrative family contract.

Jackpot

The top prize in Italy's SuperEnalotto, for which you have to guess six numbers correctly, has not been won since January. The pot is now €115 million, the second highest ever in Europe.

In the Sicilian town of Ficarra, the mayor and his cabinet colleagues stumped up €115 to buy tickets on behalf of the town, saying the winnings would be spent on public works. They didn't win, despite having chosen numbers connected with the town's patron saint, the Virgin Mary of the Assumption.

The odds of winning the jackpot are thought to be 622million to one, but Ficarra's mayor, Basilio Ridolfo, said that was better than the odds of receiving funds pledged by the state.

The new Italy?

Der Spiegel asks us in which European country

- a soft porn starlet is being considered for a cabinet post,
- labour representatives jet off to company-paid visits to brothels,
- a media mogul crazy about music controls 80% of the tabloid press
- according to a World Bank Report, the red tape required to start a company is more inscrutable than Rwanda or Kazakhstan, business executives run their companies into the ground and then expect bailouts from across the Alps, and the population, despite catastrophic economic data, wants none of the economic crisis and instead insists on living la dolce vita as if nothing had happened.

The answer is Germany (the starlet is Dagmar Woehrl, currently a secretary of state in the economics ministry, the media mogul is Mathias Doepfner and the World Bank quote is from their report ‘Doing Business’, 2009).

The BBC: the future?

The excellent Frank Field MP (I am so glad he didn't become Speaker of the Commons, we would have lost the benefit of his extra parliamentary work) has come up with a paper on the future of public service broadcasting. It goes under the title 'Auntie's Dying: long live public sector broadcasting'. You can link to it here.

Field's thesis is that 'Because public service broadcasting is paid for by a poll tax licence fee the BBC feels compelled to spend most of this money in delivering entertainment which by no stretch of the imagination could be thought of as public service broadcasting.'

'Public service broadcasting is too important to be left largely in monopoly hands. Now is the time to free the glory of this idea from BBC shackles.'

His idea is the BBC should be reduced to BBC 2 and 4 and Radio 3 and 4 and the World Service, and that there should be created a new body, The Public Service Broadcasting Corporation which would allow companies - anyone - to bid for finance to make their own programmes, which would go out on any of a variety of formats. The rump of the BBC would exist largely off PSB money (although the World Service gets some from the Foreign Office) but others could be involved in the scheme. An example he gives is that he is a trustee of the 2011 Trust which celebrates the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible and he would be able to bid for licence fee money to make TV or radio programmes.

I think this an excellent idea, although with so many people now not listening to public service braodcasting I would prefer to turn the licence fee into a trust so people don't have to shell out every month for something they don't want.

But this should be the start of a national debate.

Italy: it's the economy, stupido

The thing to remember about Silvio Berlusconi is that no one ever says he lacks intelligence or that he is out of touch with the people of his country. He is probably the best politician Europe has seen for 50 years (although certainly not the best leader). You have to think about this when looking at what has made the news in Italy this year: his social life, his divorce, his parties; his success with the Naples rubbish, with Alitalia, with l'Aquila. Now talk has started again of the Messina bridge. And all this has diverted attention from the real problems facing the Italian people.

The graph shows the long term moving average growth of the economy, that is to say the average of the previous 10 years. So in 1980 the average for the previous 10 years (ie the 1970s) was nearly 4%. In the 1950s and 1960s it had been over 5%. By the end of next year however it will have been zero, meaning that the economy will not have gone forward since the turn of the century. Retail sales have been falling steadily for over 2 years. In the first three months of this year the economy contracted at an annualised rate of nearly 10%.

Many of the problems will be familiar to anyone following the UK economy, only worse: the state is too large and the debt burden enormous. The regional disparity between the wealthy north and the impoverished, corrupt south far greater than the difference between, say, Glasgow and London. The native population is falling, and whilst this is offset somewhat by immigration, immigrants can go elsewhere when there is no work. The country cannot afford its pension system as too few productive people support a long lived population, with an unaffordable requirement for healthcare. The scale of organised crime is so great that it is best not to think about it.

When the banks started to crash in America and Britain the government announced that Italy was largely exempt from these problems. The Italian banking system, barely emerged from the 1950s, had not got around to considering these new CDOs and SIVs. Italian banks are among the best capitalised in Europe, but this is at least in part due to them not using their capital efficiently. Firms find it difficult to borrow from these sleepy monoliths who in any case charge vast fees for the simplest of transactions. The system has been allowed to continue only by a policy of refusing entry to foreign banks.

The industrial system, a post war marvel, consists in large part of small family businesses, often with loose associations and geographical specialisation. It is little suited to the modern world. As The Far East and India expanded on the back of lower labour rates, western nations have had to climb the quaity chain, creating new technologies their emergent competitors could not rival. The very structure of Italian industry precludes this: the family companies shoud have merged years ago, economies of scale financing research and development. But they didn't. There is no stockmarket to speak of, only a few of the largest firms being floated, and there is no venture capital / start up market. The procedure for setting up a company is one of the most time consuming in the western world, and the appalling over regulation keeps entrepreneurs away and consumer prices high.

All this will have been going through Berlusconi's mind, which is why he isn't too troubled by the news being obsessed with a couple of starlets and a hooker or two. He knows, too, that the political will does not exist in the country to effect the required change and that the people have, by and large, accepted the fact that theirs is a nation in decline. He probably also knows that whilst they can accept the slow debasement of their reputation, when it filters through to living standards it will be a different matter. That will probably be a problem for his successor.

Berlusconi: I've seen the light

The Times reports that Berlusconi is going to sell his Sardinian home Villa Certosa, and at the end of the summer make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Padre Pio.

This story gets better and better, and conveniently means no one is talking about the Italian economy, on which I shall post later.

Defending our borders

I think most of us feel there are too many laws being passed with too little thought going into them and here is a prime example. The Government seems to have given up on its plan to impose immigration controls on travel between the mainland and Northern Ireland and the Chamnnel Islands.

I am grateful to the following summary from the excellent Samizdata blog:

'You can basically sum up the UK Government's dilemma as either they are going to have to tell Gerry Adams he has to have a British ID card to live in Northern Ireland or tell Ian Paisley he's going to need a passport to travel from Belfast to London.'

Or, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Lord Kingsland 1942 - 2009

G.K.Chesterton remarked that journalism was saying 'Lord Jones is dead' to people who didn't know he was alive, and I suppose many people would have passed over the news of the death of Lord Kingsland without curiosity.

A man of many talents, he will be remembered, unfortunately, for one thing: before he was ennobled he was Christopher Prout, the leader of the Conservative MEPs.

He was known as Brussels Prout.

The Berlu tapes: new shocker

I have not heard the tapes published by l'Espresso (do hookers usually carry recording equipment or did she just happen to have it about her person?) and I have no real enthusiasm for doing so, but an important and unexpected fact seems to have emerged.

Whatever you thought might happen next - the hooker paid by a newspaper (check - not hard to guess), Berlu boasting of his manhood (check - he's Italian), the bed donated by a Russian politician (check - is this where the recording equipment was hidden?) - you did not expect this:

Berlusconi seems to have revealed, as a chat up line few of us could equal, that some thirty Phoenician tombs from the 3rd century BC were discovered on his Sardinian lovenest. The Opposition, outraged, are demanding to know why he didn't inform the Ministry of Culture, as is required by law.

Life, as an American oilman once observed, is one damn thing after another.

The NHS: our moral guardians

‘A face that should haunt a generation’ wrote Liz Hunt in the Daily Telegraph, referring to the unhappy tale of Gary Reinbach, a 22 year old man who has died of cirrhosis of the liver. His doctors recommended a liver transplant but the rules did not permit it; to qualify for a liver transplant you have to show you can lead an alcohol-free life and Mr. Reinbach was too ill to leave hospital and show it. So he died.

There seems to me to be a number of ways in which this is picture should ‘haunt a generation’. One is Mr. Reinbach’s mother Madeline (sic) Hanshaw who did nothing to stop her son drinking heavily at age 13, before he had reached the age of legal responsibility, much less that when you can drink legally. Her conduct as a parent, whilst not unique, would seem to be sufficiently reprehensible as to excite comment, but the papers report her blaming her divorce, and now starting a campaign to make sure, yes, you guessed it, that Gary didn't die in vain.

Another thing which makes this story unforgettable is the attitude of the NHS. Mr Reinbach was sick, and if the NHS is to mean anything at all he should be entitled to rely on it to treat him without making moral judgment on his behaviour at age 13. Let us return to the Telegraph’s Ms Hunt: ‘A liver wasted – and I use that word deliberately – on a chronic alcoholic, whatever his or her age, is a chance of life denied to a more deserving recipient.‘ She compares the story with that of a young girl who asked not to be treated (for a heart transplant) and then changed her mind ‘Her illness, unlike Gary's, was not self-inflicted.’

It must be nice to feel so sure of yourself that you can sit in judgment of others as Ms Hunt does, and as do the bureaucrats who draw up the regulations. You have to be worthy of treatment, and even though money is deducted from your pay packet to pay for that treatment, they reserve the right to deny it to you on moral grounds.

I have two questions:

1. How did George Best get a liver transplant? Surely nobody thought he would, or could, go on the wagon for the rest of his life?
2. Will we now be refusing AIDS treatment to promiscuous homosexuals on the grounds that their illness was self-inflicted?

The answer to the first question is that Mr. Best was famous, whereas Mr. Reinbach was a statistic. The answer to the second question of course is no, and nor should we.

Cricket: The Ashes Second Test

I have listened to almost every minute of the commentary for four days and I confess I still can't work out how England got into the position of declaring at 521 runs ahead with two days to go, or how Australia clawed back 313 of those for the loss of five wickets.

So England need to take five wickets today for less than 209 to beat Australia at Lords for the first time in three quarters of a century, and Australia need to hold on to stage easily the biggest rescue in Test history.

Either side could win; it could be a draw; it could be a tie. I don't bite my nails but if I did, I would.

UK: Of Statues and Statutes

We British seem reluctant to honour our great men and women, as the absurd farce surrounding the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square tells us. Presumably with the approval of the mayor, Alexander ‘Boris’ Johnson, it was thought appropriate to give a succession of people a brief time alone on the plinth to celebrate some crass pseudo concept like people-awareness, something which could be gained in concentrated form travelling on an underground train in the rush hour. There are many appropriate candidates for the empty plinth, my own favoured one being Edward Jenner, who invented vaccination and of whom there is a statue in London which, oddly, was once in Trafalgar Square. This is a man who has saved literally millions of lives and deserves our adulation. He won’t get it.

Here in Italy almost every street is named after someone, and not just Italian heroes Garibaldi, Mazzini, King Umberto and Queen Margherita (famous for her pizzas). Near me there is a via Marx, via Lenin and via Gagarin (it has been of old a communist area) but a also via Molière, via M.L.King and via M.Buonaroti.

In Italy, in America and in France they name laws after the parliamentarian who first promulgated them. In France a man called Toubon put forward a law making it illegal to use English words. It is known as ‘la loi Allgood’.

So it should be in England. The new law making it possible to resign a peerage (and therefore for a pensioned off minister to return to front line politics and even party leadership) should be called the Mandelson Law.

Europe: last gasp of the nation state?

The Bundesverfassungsgericht, Germany’s constitutional court, has ruled that before Germany can ratify the Lisbon Treaty new legislation must be enacted, strengthening the national parliament's involvement in any major decision-making. It would be nice if some MP asked if the British Parliament is going to insist on the same rights.

But there is more to this than a bit of Lisbon-bashing (on which I am as keen as anyone else). The major European treaties are gradually ushering in what some political scientists are referring to as the post democratic age, and this utterance of the BVG may just be the last gasp of the nation state. Plans are being made to promulgate a new politics for the supranational state.

Federalists in Germany, led by the loathsome Joska Fischer, have thrown their arms up in horror at the idea that the directly elected representatives of the people should seek to control what is taking place on their behalf in Brussels. The new philosophy in Europe is called ‘Output Democracy’ which means that the executive doesn’t need to be told of the wishes of the people, but that its legitimacy depends on its output. As Der Spiegel puts it ‘In other words, the Brussels bureaucracy no longer needs to ask itself: What is the interest of citizens? Instead, it can ask itself: What is in the interest of citizens?’

The problem with this system, which looms large for anyone with a taste for ‘old fashioned’ democracy, is how to you get rid of them when their output is no good? What exactly is the procedure for the people of Europe sacking a European Commissioner? (Don’t bother looking, there isn’t one).

When you factor into this the fact that the executive controls the propaganda – Brussels multi-million euro ‘information’ departments - you have a self-perpetuating political elite, a dictatorship of people who know what’s best for you.

And if you are horrified that this should be happening, well, I'm afraid we wished it on ourselves. As for me I congratulate the Germans on being able to look squarely at this while the rest of us have looked the other way, and hope we can learn from them.

Cars and greenhouse gases

While we're on the subject of my not being too hot at science, here is what, to me, is a conundrum. The world's least green car, the 8.3 litre Dodge Viper, is said to do between 13 and 22 miles per gallon and according to the US Environmental Protection Agency produces 11.4 tons of greenhouse gases when driven over the American average of 15,000 miles in a year.

Now, even at the worse end of the consumption figures, the car will have used 1,154 gallons of petrol which weigh 8,424 lb or 3.76 tons. The law of conservation of mass tells us that if 3.76 tons go in, no more than 3.76 tons can go out.

Aha! you say, but it has mixed with air (nearly 8 tons of it). But air is harmless. This is like saying that if you dilute your wine with the same amount of water you have drunk twice as much alcohol.

So what is going on here? Anyone know?

A new element

I never showed much promise at what in my day were called 'Science' lessons but it now seems that I may have shown an unlikely streak of genius, aged around 14. I asked the Master how they knew there were only 111 elements - I mean, they could stumble on another one, surely?

Don't start causing trouble, Hedges, came the reply; it has been scientifically proved that there can't be any more.

So I was delighted to see that No.112 has been added to the list, and will be called Copernicus, after the 16th century Polish astronomer. So now there can be Copernicate acid and Copernicus dioxide and the cartoon characterish Copernicus Chloride. And who knows what else is out there? Makes it all far more exciting.

The Daily Telegraph

I have despaired sometimes at the editorial line taken recently by the Daily Telegraph. For years it was known as the Torygraph, but now, just as the Tories seem certain to win the next election it prints seemingly unchecked and unchallenged submissions from the Labour Party spin machine and is known popularly as the Labourgraph.

Despite this I have been copying this blog into the Telegraph blog service for a couple of years, for the benefit of those people who follow newspaper blogs. Now however they have deleted the post below on the BNP and refused to tell me why. Accordingly I have stopped posting there.

If anyone can see anything wrong in the thread, let me know.

France: le jour de gloire est arrivé

Bastille Day, or the Fête Nationale, as it is properly called, and this blog’s best wishes to the French Nation.

When I reflect on France, as I sometimes do, I think that the thing which most impresses me is its PR. The country projects a level of self-belief which, although very occasionally shattered, gets it through with a coherent image shared by outsiders as well as natives. For example, the vast majority of economists think that French political-industrial policy is wrong (Sarkozy recently declared a yoghourt manufacturer as being one of the commanding heights of the economy and, in promising to stop foreigners buying it, made its shares less attractive). But I have yet to meet a French person who doesn’t think that this is more or less the right approach.

As well as producing some of the best wine in the world, France produces some of the worst, a fact that is conveniently forgotten, and despite the inhabitants clearly loathing foreigners France attracts more tourists than any other country.

I think it is in part having such a central constitutional figure as the President, perhaps the most powerful man in he developed world. Giving so much power to one person I also think wrong, but it gives France a guidance, a symbol, almost a brand. ‘L’état c’est moi’ said the great Louis XIV and Sarko probably whispers it into his pillow.

Somehow, it works. Grenouilles, les rosbifs vous saluent.

BNP: it matters what he said

There still seems to be a lot of fuss about BNP leader Nick Griffin’s having said that the boats carrying illegal immigrants from North Africa to Europe should be sunk.

I’m not sure we should be analysing in intricate detail each utterance of Griffin, but I think it worthwhile here just to consider whether he is talking about sinking the boats with the immigrants still in them or removing them to safety first. According to the Guardian he said ‘I didn't say anyone should be murdered at sea – I say boats should be sunk’

I should have thought there was a rather good case for sinking the boats of people traffickers, so they can’t do it again. This seems to be another case of the British press dressing up a political utterance to conform to its political stereotyping, and it is as unfortunate when done to Griffin as it would be to Brown or Cameron.

Cricket: the Ashes first test

At the end it was easy to forget that the pitch had been rubbish and the match uneven. It seemed we were chasing a great victory, not merely trying to get as many runs in two innings as the Australians had in one. But it was as compulsive a listening experience as I have ever had. Here in expat-land it can’t be got on a transistor radio and I suddenly found I was stranded with the gin, twenty-two yards from the tonic, and I had to scramble a Collingwood-like two to get back in time.

This was test cricket at its best, in terms of entertainment rather than cricket. It is a failing of cricket lovers to believe that all the great stuff was in the past, but truly there was no greatness on the pitch, except for Ponting, and occasionally Flintoff, who puts so much sinew-straining torque into each delivery you fear he cannot be far from the knackers’ yard. We desperately need a bowler with the easy rhythm of Courtney Walsh.

This, then, was a game not of exceptionals but of exceptions: well done Cardiff, except for the awful pitch; well done England, except it was only just a draw; well done Test Cricket, save for the sight of England sending on the 12th man and the physio unrequested in order to waste time: better to lose the match than to cheat.

Oh – and well done Test Match Special which will have gained another couple of years’ reprieve from the eager axers of the BBC.

USA: Palin at the prospect

A minor illness and a complete failure of Telecom Italia to repair a line struck by lightning on 26th June have prevented me from blogging recently. Things seem to be working now.....

One thing I missed was the resignation of Sarah Palin. She is a figure I find interesting, if only because she is still making news. The left dismiss her as barking mad, a stupid housewife, and this in itself is enough for sensible people to look for some qualities to associate with her, often without success. But there may, just may, be more.

The Republican Party in America seems for some time to have lost the plot. I remember Reagan saying that the most terrifying words you can hear are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’, but the size of the state increased during that administration, as it did under George Dubya. There is no one really carrying the torch for smaller government and lower taxes in America, even though opinion polls show people increasingly in favour of reducing the size of the state. And it is without doubt this battleground the Republicans must adopt if they are to return to power.

And yet, in a confused ramble, rich in basketball analogy (and therefore unintelligible to most people) we hear this: ‘I keep my eye on the on the ball that represents sound priorities.....energy independence and smaller government and national security and freedom”.

You could wish it were said better, and you could wish it were someone else saying it, but until that happens I believe Sarah Palin will be seen as the Republican front runner. It just might be better if later on in the game, to use her analogy, she passed the ball to someone more likely to get it in the basket.

Berlusconi: riding the ripple

One of the few commentators who understand that Berlusconi is not being judged by an Anglo-Saxon Protestant electorate, but by an Italian one, is the author Tim Parks, who wrote a sensible piece in the Guardian this week. In it he says 'I have yet to meet an Italian who thinks Berlusconi should resign over this.' Nor have I encountered one either.

More bad news for the lefties: Berlusconi's approval rating is 61%. Compare that to Brown (!), Merkel, Sarkozy and the rest. And he is also about to welcome the great and good for the G8, in the earthquake torn city of l'Aquila, a political masterstroke.

Michael Jackson

I keep a list, which I look at from time to time, of famous people who died at an age I have already passed: Christ, Mozart, Shelley, John F Kennedy etc. It serves both to bolster confidence that things could be worse and to remind one of one’s own ineffectuality.

My first thought about Michael Jackson was that I wasn’t in the least surprised to be writing his name on it. Whereas the deaths of other much older people in the music business – Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, would cause you to stop and think, with Jackson it seems, with hindsight, just obvious.

His many fans must hope that he will be remembered for his music, but it is his life and lifestyle which has too often been the story: the strange pallor, the children, the bankruptcy. Unlike, say, Elvis Presley or David Bowie there was nothing about Jackson’s lifestyle that anyone would have wanted.

And now the stories will run, the unauthorised biographies will be written and the money will flow in and pay off the debts. Hey-ho.

Europe: something new

Have a quick read of this

1. Free enterprise, free and fair trade and competition, minimal regulation, lower taxation, and small government as the ultimate catalysts for individual freedom and personal and national prosperity.

2. Freedom of the individual, more personal responsibility and greater democratic accountability.

3. Sustainable, clean energy supply with an emphasis on energy security.

4. The importance of the family as the bedrock of society.

5. The sovereign integrity of the nation state, opposition to EU federalism and a renewed respect for true subsidiarity.

6. The overriding value of the transatlantic security relationship in a revitalised NATO, and support for young democracies across Europe.

7. Effectively controlled immigration and an end to abuse of asylum procedures

8. Efficient and modern public services and sensitivity to the needs of both rural and urban communities.

9. An end to waste and excessive bureaucracy and a commitment to greater transparency and probity in the EU institutions and use of EU funds.

10. Respect and equitable treatment for all EU countries, new and old, large and small.

Doesn't sound too bad, does it? It is the declaration of the new Euro-parliamentary grouping formed around the Conservative Party, which has left the EPP, containing the ruling parties of France and Germany, where they couldn't have even whispered point No. 5.

Let's hope they all mean it.

Italy votes (2)

Thought so. The turnout appears to be well below the 50% required, although the polls are open today as well. In my area it was 9%.

It has been said in one paper that if you want a low turnout, have the vote when people have recently voted on something else, and time it for the start of the holiday season.

Er, Silvio......

Italy votes

Italy is at the polls again today, for the second time this month. This time it is a referendum on the voting system, which would get rid of the coalitions that have governed since the war, and award the largest party with a few more seats to enable it to govern. The referendum would also abolish the practice of party leaders standing in multiple seats and then choosing one of them, leaving the representative of that seat to be chosen by the party hierarchy.

Word has it that most of Berlusconi's party would vote yes, whilst the noes complain either that their party would be eliminated or that it doesn't address the real problem which is the list system anyway.

Chances are however that the turnout will fall below the 50% of eligible voters required and Umberto Bossi of the separatist Lega Nord, which will never be big enough to form a government but which has a big say in the coalition, will breathe a sigh of relief.

France: beyond reality TV

Anthony Brocheton, Marie Adamiak and Arno Laize, participants in the French reality TV show Ile de la Tentation (don't ask) have successfully sued the TV production company, claiming that their presence on the show amounted to employment. They are therefore subject to the 35 hour week, and entitled to paid holidays, and can claim unfair dismissal when voted off the show.

You really couldn't make this up.

Gaddafi and timing

He’s just left, after four days. The old fraud appeared, accompanied by his bodyguard of buxom females in matching lipstick, in a Mussolini uniform, sunglasses and a Phil Spector wig; attached to his left breast was what looked like the I-Spy book of World Flags and to his right a monochrome picture postcard, wilting in the damp warm air (it turned out to be a picture of a Libyan anti-Italian freedom fighter). He stayed in a tent and signed business deals with whoever came in, looking as if he might swoop on Emma Marcegaglia (chairman of the Italian Business Confederation) and carry her off on his charger.

It was all great theatre, worthy of both the Italian and Libyan political stage. One thing I took issue with, though. Franco Frattini, who until now seems to have made a very good fist of being foreign minister, cancelled appointments when the great leader was two hours late. I insist he was just trying to be polite. The rule in Italy is that 20 minutes is acceptable in Milan and Turin, 40 minutes in Bologna and an hour in Rome. South of Rome it is anybody’s guess if your appointment will be kept on the same day or at all. These rules apply to business meetings, speeches, ceremonies, everything except where there is free food, in which case it pays to be early.

I love the Italians dearly, but when they clean up their own timing they will be in a position to criticise others.

Pizza: the real thing

The Pizza Margherita, recognised by pizzaphiles as the true Neapolitan pizza, is 120 this month. It was created to commemorate the visit to Naples by Queen Margherita of Savoy, the wife of Italian king Umberto I.

To get the real thing the base must be made of durum wheat flour, fresh yeast, water and sea salt. The topping consists of olive oil, San Marzano tomatoes in slices less than 8mm thick, fresh basil and buffalo milk mozzarella, in the red, white and green of the Italian flag.

It is then cooked for a very short time at 350C which means you need a proper bread oven.
But it’s worth it.

The BBC (yet again)

No. No, no nonono.

Sir Alan Sugar cannot front a major television series at the same time as being, effectively, a minister.

I myself don't agree with celebrity politicians but if that's what Gordon Brown wants, he is entitled to elevate him to the peerage (why do we pretend that the Queen has anything to do with this?). Soon to be Lord Sugar (fitting as deputy to the honey-tongued Lord Mandelson) his new job required him to be in the Lords. That's because it is a political job, whether you call it minister or tsar or nabob.

The new series of The Apprentice will run over the likely date for the election, and every time his programme appears it will show a favourable light on a government minister, even at a time when appearances by politicians are regulated by law.

The BBC really must force him to choose between one and the other.

Truth by any other name

What do you think about this?

'he said that the British public were angry about the "many ways the liberal elite have transformed this country."

"For the last 50 years, more and more of the people of Britain have watched with concern, growing dismay and sometimes anger as an out-of-touch political elite has transformed our country before our very eyes," he said.

Perfectly true and unexceptional?

WRONG! For the words were spoken by Nick Griffin, and therefore must be an insane fascist rant.

Europe votes

I have often been critical about the EU (and rightly so) but one aspect needs to be flagged up as more or less good. It is the rule that residents of an EU country, who are nationals of another EU country, can vote in the country of their residence.

Thus it is that I have had the pleasure of voting in my town of residence (Rome). It was bloody hard work with all the paperwork (which Italians love), and I had to go down to the electoral office an hour away to get my voting card, but voting in a strange country under a strange system was a real pleasure. Something like 15 parties, each with a colourful logo and smiling face, fielded hundreds of candidates, and you could vote either for the candidate or the party, in which case they would allot your vote.

I don't agree with the proportional representation system, believing it entrenches the parties and the political class, I didn't agree with what almost all of them had to say, and I didn't agree that the election was conducted more or less on national lines (as it was in England). But I did get that frisson of being a part of a democratic system and participating in it.

Good fun.

Airbus

Airbus have been having some bad luck of late, what with the one ditching in the Hudson River and the recent disaster just off Brazil. So I was sorry to receive this from a usually well informed source.

A brand new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sits just outside its hangar in Toulouse , France without a single hour of airtime.

Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine run-ups prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi . The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft. Not having Read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 really is. The Takeoff Warning Horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all four engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to take off, but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc..) Then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm. This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air. The computers automatically released all the Brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward.

The ADAT crew had no idea that this is a safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on. Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, so the $200 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling it. The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown due to the news blackout in the major media in France and elsewhere. Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Muslim Arabs. Finally, the photos are starting to leak out. Airbus $200 million aircraft meets retaining wall and the wall wins.