The Face that launched....

A thousand ships and boats will assemble on the River Thames and sail downstream tomorrow.

Britain is in festa for four days to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Queen's accession to the throne. The anniversary was in fact in February but it doesn't pay to hold celebrations in Britain in the winter months; indeed it seems likely it will rain on the flotilla tomorrow, but spirits are so high it won't matter.

The only other monarch to have a diamond jubilee was Queen Victoria. In those days a diamond jubilee was 75 years but it was reduced to 60 years because they needed to hold a trade festival.

Best wishes to Her Maj.

Ireland

Ireland voted yesterday on the Fiscal Pact - the only country in the Eurozone to be given a vote.

Only 50% of those eligible to vote did so. I think it was that most people simply didn't understand the arguments. This is not that they were badly explained; the ruling elite don't want the likes of us understanding the arguments.

The deciding factor appears to be that they might have need of the European Stability Pact in the future, which I suppose is fair enough. The other side of the coin is that they give up their financial independence.

Depressing.

Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, has been sentenced to 50 years imprisonment at the International Court for aiding and abetting rebels in Sierra Leone during the  10 year civil war which ended in 2002.

I wasn't going to comment on this but by popular demand (Dave Phillips in Reno Nevada) I shall do so.

I say 'at' the International Court because Mr Taylor cannot be tried by them, his misdeeds having taken place before the Court was created. Instead he is being tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up by Sierra Leone under the aegis of the United Nations. The rules of this court state that the trial must take place in Sierra Leone, but in this case it was thought proper to ignore that.

I can't say I feel comfortable about all this.

Britain and America often supply arms and assistance to rebel groups - the recent overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya is a good example. The trick is to be on the winning side, which Charles Taylor was not. America, by the way, has withdrawn from the ICC, as has India.

Taylor was not present in Sierra Leone, indeed for all I know he has never been there, but has attracted the stigma of war criminal.

Doubtless there was some nasty stuff in the Sierra Leone civil war - there usually is - and doubtless Taylor is a nasty piece of work, but is what he was up to worse than our involvement in Libya or Russia's involvement in Syria? One day Assad will be ousted; will Putin and Medvedev be dragged before the court in the Hague? I don't think so.

Then there is the problem of imposing western values on other people (I have written about this before). Suppose some African tribal leader is hauled before these unelected judges, from such places, by the way, as Nigeria and Uganda, and indicted for eating missionaries. His people have always eaten missionaries, he says, indeed it is an essential tribal ritual. But no, he is guilty because British and Americans don't eat missionaries.

Mr Taylor is being tried essentially by Sierra Leone where, let's face it, they want a guilty verdict. None of this is such as to leave one feeling comfortable.

Taylor is not the sort of person you would want your daughter to marry and not the sort to invite to a dinner party. But should we have the arrogance to allow his former opponents to condemn him? My vote is no.

Assad: still there

'Diplomatic pressure on Assad mounts' says the FT. I'm not sure that a man who can order the systematic slaughter of children is going to be too upset by having his chargé d'affaires sent home from Portugal. He is still there, and his opponents must be wondering what it would take to dislodge him.

The West cannot intervene militarily. It's not just that we are tired of war, it's that it would be opposed by Russia and in all probability China. Equally we can't arm the opposition because it would start an East-West proxy war.

The only people who can do something, whether it is intervention, assistance to the rebels or diplomatic pressure, are the Saudis and the Qataris: nations that are sufficiently strong in energy-wealth not to fear the Russians, and for whom Syria is their back yard. The people of Syria are largely Sunni, like them, although the Assad government is Alawite, a branch of the Shia sect.

The Saudis and Qataris will be nervous of a Sunni-Shia conflict, and nervous of arming the rebels but I fear if they don't the butchery will continue.

The one thing the British can do is cancel the citizenship of his wife. We certainly don't want the expense of her taking up residence.

Tax Freedom Day

Today is Tax Freedom Day in Britain. Calculated every year by the Adam Smith Institute, it takes the proportion of our incomes we pay in taxes as a percentage of the year, showing the date on which we stop working for the State and start earning for ourselves.

Today, 29th May, is two days later than last year. Australia's Tax Freedom Day was on 4th April, America's on 17th April. France's will be some time in July.

This seems a good time to consider the benefits of small government, with this useful presentation by the Centre for Policy Studies:

Greek Cyprus

I call it thus because this blog, unlike the British Government, also recognises Turkish Cyprus.

In the middle of the euro-fiasco we seem to have forgotten them.

For a long time the political class in Brussels refused to contemplate the possibility of Greece leaving the euro, saying the process was irreversible. The Greeks, taking them at their word, have said they won't administer the austerity package, so that the Eurocrats have been forced into a U-turn, saying Greece would have to leave the euro if it didn't take the medicine (or das Medikament, as it's known in Berlin).

Of course we don't know what will happen and won't until a day after the 17th June elections in Greece. But we have all been advised to do a bit of contingency planning and I expect quite a lot of that will be going on in Nicosia.

You see, the Greek Cypriot economy is inextricably linked to the Greek one, and if Greece leaves the euro, Greek Cyprus will have to as well.

So what will it be? The New Drachma? Actually Cypriots have a rather interesting alternative. Their currency has never been the drachma (in my opinion Cyprus isn't Greek) but following its long period of Ottoman Turkish rule was run by the British from 1879 (annexed in 1914) and the currency was the Cypriot pound.

The Cypriot pound was divided into 20 shillings and each shilling into 9 piastres, making 180 piastres to the pound.

In 1955, sixteen years before Britain, the Cypriots decimalised, with 1000 mils to the pound. This excellent system subsisted until 1st January 2008 when they joined the ill-fated euro.

The solution is simple: they just revert to the Cypriot pound.

Incidentally the British bases on Cyprus, Akrotiri and Dekhelia, which are sovereign territory, are the only instances of  British territory using the euro. Poor things. I hope we are doing something to protect them.

Not this time, Silvio

Silvio Berlusconi is trying to start a movement to make the President of Italy electable by the people. Nothing wrong with that - a popular mandate would be far better than him or her being elected by the corrupt, time-serving envelope receivers that constitute the Italian parliament.

It's just that you don't have to read too deeply between the lines to realise what Silv is up to: he wants to be President himself and reckons he could get the popular vote.

No, caro. This blog never thought the man's private life made him unfit for the job of Prime Minister - the problem with Silvio is that he never actually did that job, his tenure being characterised by ineffectual posturing.

But the job of President is a different one to that of Prime Minister: it involves the non-political representation of 60 million people. The President is a figurehead and an example and Silvio's past life excludes him from the position.

Also he is a voice from the past, and the people want something new.

Berlusconi should retire to his girls and his villas and his yacht. If he wants to campaign for an elected President, he should undertake not to be a candidate himself. It was fun while it lasted, ma basta!

A Scoop!

This blog has succeeded in obtaining the menu for the next European summit:

Crudités (raw vegetables)
Pasta Povera (poor man's pasta with garlic and oil)
Kleftiko (Greek robber's mutton)
Crème Anglaise (to remind them that some countries are not in the euro)

Mrs. Merkel to bring her own cheese.

Er.... in your dreams.

Menu before the crash

The menu for the last dinner on the Titanic recently sold for £76,000. What would the menu for the last Euro-summit fetch?

Last week's was not the last, time for a few more tuck-ins before it goes down, but the excellent Marco Zatterin of La Stampa has discovered the menu

Lobster with asparagus
Fillets of San Pietro with vegetables
Chocolate mousse
Coffee

He says nothing about the wines, but describes the meal as 'moderately sober'.

Double your money?

Thanks to the excellent people at Zero Hedge who have followed the announcements of the rescue of the Spanish Bank Bankia

Bank Of Spain Formally Nationalizes Bankia, Says Insolvent Bank Is "Solvent", Adds There Is No Cause For Concern, Zero Hedge, May 9

Spain is taking over Bankia by converting its 4.5 billion euros of preferred shares in the group’s parent company into ordinary shares, BusinessWeek, May 21

Spain said on Wednesday its rescue of problem lender Bankia would cost at least 9 billion euros ($11 billion), as the government tries to clean up a banking system that threatens to drag the country deeper into the euro zone crisis, Reuters, May 23

Bankia SA will have to ask the Spanish government for more than 15 billion euros as part of its effort to restore its financial health, state-owned news agency EFE reported Thursday, citing financial sources, Dow Jones, May 24

Note that the cost more than trebled in three days. Almost as bad as the Olympic Games.

Bankia is a conglomerate of seven banks which include the wonderfully named Caja Rioja.

I can add to all that today's FT:

Spain to inject up to €19bn into Bankia.

Any more for any more?

Eurovision

The Eurovision Song Contest final is tomorrow, and looks to be about as much fun as everything else with the prefix 'Euro'.

Spain has reportedly told its entrant Pastora Soler not to win, because the winner has to hold the next contest and Spain can't afford it.

The UK also can't afford it, but our solution is to field jowly septuagenarian crooner Engelbert Humperdink (formerly Arnold Dorsey).

Let's hope it works.

A Liberal Haiku

This blog has received a transcript of a speech to be made by Nick Clegg, described as Deputy Prime Minister, to the lucky people of Berlin.

The full transcript is here, and I should give a health warning: it's ghastly stuff.

But amidst such tosh as

Management of financial risk, fiscal discipline, labour market reform; these are not just different chapters in an economics textbook. They are closely connected problems with consequences for us all. (getaway, Nick)

This is a European crisis. It must be solved at the European level.

We cannot let this crisis shake our commitment to Europe’s big idea – that union is worth pursuing as a means to peace and prosperity alike.

I found this gem:

The tree is falling, and we are pruning one leaf at a time.

This is so poetic, so beautiful, that I leave it to you in the form of a Japanese Haiku

The euro tree falls

But Nick Clegg is pruning it

One leaf at a time

Just think about that, the next time you wonder why this fool hasn't yet apologised for suggesting we join the euro in the first place.

Growth

To celebrate the new millennium European leaders agreed to make Europe 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion' by 2010. Having agreed that, they all breathed a sigh of relief, shook hands and sat down to lunch to celebrate the great things they were doing for their people. It was called the Lisbon Agenda because that is where they had the lunch were meeting.

Of course by 2010 Europe had actually slid down the list of competitive nations or areas of the world.

Why? The reason is that for most politicians in Europe, growth means government spending (you remember Gordon Brown used to call it 'investment'). Growth means more government not less.

Of course in the places we are competing with, the Far East, America and increasingly the Third World, growth means a refreshing absence of regulation and political interference. Perhaps the key words in the declaration are 'better jobs and greater social cohesion': someone slipped those in so it wouldn't matter if governments simply borrowed more money and handed it to the special interest groups in their countries in return for votes - that's how European politics works.

Now growth is back on the agenda. Leaders met in Brussels, some of them having just met at the G8 in America, and decided....er....to make a decision in June. Yes! A success!

I don't think we'll get a decision on anything in June, either. What they'll do is agree more infrastructure, more grands projets. Europe will become a dystopia of superb motorways and no trucks to drive on them.

And the money for the grands projets? Yes, borrowed of course. Greece will be invited to borrow money for high speed trains while being made to cut back on the health service.

This is Europe today: a dithering, self-important, corporatist political class which just hustles to stay in power at the expense of the poor.

Mouthy

David Cameron has made a couple of speeches lecturing the Eurozone on its plans, and offering warnings to Greece. His predecessor, Gordon Brown, was much the same and earned a reputation for hypocrisy.

I must say if I were a Greek or other Eurozone voter and found some mouthy youngster, who had made a complete cock of his own country's economy, telling me what to do, I should do the exact opposite.

This is a good time to shut up, Dave.

Robin Gibb

We mourn the death of Robin Gibb, far too young at 62

Earthquake

Sympathy to the people of Emilia - in the Bologna region - for the earthquake which has killed seven people. The aftershocks are still being felt.

I was there the day before. Strangely, when there was an earthquake at my home in Umbria, I was in Rome; and when there was a 'quake in Rome, I was in Umbria, so I have never experienced the phenomenon.

Not that I'm sorry.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Being away for a few days, I missed news of the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the greatest exponent of German Lieder, aged 86

Donna Summer

And the sad death of Donna Summer, pioneer of disco music, aged 63

Referendum trick

There has been a bit of talk about the possibility of a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. What is being said is that the Labour Party will support the idea so as to try to expose the Conservatives’ differences on Europe, and that the Liberals will approve it thinking that the answer wil be yes and it will put the matter to bed. Thus Cameron will be bounced into offering it in his manifesto. Most people assume I am a supporter of the idea, but I’m not so sure I am.

I start from the basis of the conclusion I came to in 1991, that Britain would be better off, both financially and democratically, if it left the EU. Nothing that has happened since then has made me reconsider: if anything I feel it more strongly.

And it is hard to dispute the legality or constitutionality of a referendum. The matter is important enough to be put to the people, and there is the precedent of the referendum held in 1975 – so far the only nation-wide referendum ever held in Britain – when we decided to stay in.

So: important and constitutionally defensible. It is only then that the problems start.

First is the question, which will be asked by the government. Now, David Cameron has tried to spin himself as a eurosceptic, but in my view all his actions since coming to power and even before, point to a man who is quite comfortable in the EU. He wants us to trust him to be fair on this, and I, frankly, don’t.

It’s not just the nature of the question. I don’t suppose Cameron will try ‘Do you want us to leave the EU, with all that that will entail in terms of lost jobs and being politically isolated, or do you want to pursue the broad sunlit uplands of prosperity and peace with our partners, our European brothers?’ – although with most of the administrations since 1975 that is roughly what you would have got.

No, it’s the practicality of the matter. Cameron won’t call it ‘leaving the EU’ – he calls it ‘renegotiating the terms of our membership’. But every time we have asked for changes, the answer has been ‘Non’. The only difference this time is that it will be ‘Nein’. They don’t want Britain to become more efficient and prosperous by opting out of the ugly bits.

So the only occasion we can renegotiate is when they have something to lose. If Cameron had held his nerve on the Fiscal Pact, rather than giving in immediately and allowing them to use civil servants, partly paid for by Britain, to draft its terms and put it into practice, if only he hadn’t rolled over, we could have had that as a bargaining point: if you want your Fiscal Pact Britain opts out of the Common Agricultural and Fisheries policies, the working time directive, the health and safety nonsense which they pretend is part of the single market, the common policing, the European Arrest Warrant, European Army and all the rest.

Now, we can only have a negotiating point, a point d’appui, if they decide to have another grand treaty. And they aren’t likely to in the foreseeable future.

So Cameron reckons he can negotiate something simple and easy – cheaper biscuits in meetings and an undertaking the European Army won’t invade Norway -  and then put it to the people as the best that could be negotiated, thus silencing debate on the subject for a generation.

He has to be exposed and resisted. The only suitable question is ‘Do you want to stay in the EU or leave it?’.

Anything else is a con-trick on the British people.

Default

An interesting little tale reaches me.

When Greece did its 'restructuring' (which ordinary people call a default) it told private investors that they had to take a 75% hit on their holdings. These amounted to some €177 billion. However a small amount, we think around €6bn, was written not under Greek law but under English Law (the one used internationally for these instruments).

€450 million, a small amount in the context of things, of these 'foreign law bonds' became due today.

It is thought, but not known, that these bonds were held by the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund,
Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM). This outfit is worth $600 billion, and owns something like 2% of all the shares in Europe - ie pretty chunky. Now NBIM was annoyed at the Greek default, thinking the eurozone should look after its own affairs, and that it was disgraceful that the European Central Bank should remain immune from the default: the ECB, despite holding a lot of the paper, took no loss at all - everyone else paid for it.

So, it is rumoured, the NBIM said if it wasn't paid today, it would sue Greece in the London courts, which would have defaulted everything.

The Greeks have paid up. A Greek spokesman said it 'would not have any bearing on future decisions regarding other similar bonds'.

This is of course nonsense. The other €5.5 billion who have held out against the limited default - for most people it is a cardinal rule that you treat all similar creditors equally - now know they are in with a chance.

And every other investor knows that if the Eurozone pull this kind of stunt again they shouldn't go along with it.

And Mrs. Merkel knows that now if the ECB makes a socking great loss on a defaulting country's bonds, it is the Germans who are going to have to pay.

It's going to have a big impact, in my view.

The new team

Much was reported about the governing duarchy of Germany and France, named Merkozy. What are we to call the new pair? Merlande? - it sounds too much like the French for the fish, whiting.

Holkel?

No. I prefer the simple, but eloquent......

Merde.

Each silver lining has a cloud

Hate bankers' bonuses? Here's some good news for you. According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research bonuses have fallen from their 2007/8 peak of £11.5 billion down to £2.3 billion this year.

Like spending on health and education? Here's bad news for you. Because of the drop in the bonuses the government's income is down by £4 billion.

More Greece

My thanks to the Telegraph's incomparable MATT.

The latest wheeze - I'm sure you guessed it - is to have an unelected government in Greece, or rather one elected by a German woman who knows what's best for them

Israel

Israel is 64 years old today.

I don't suppose many people hearing David Ben-Gurion read the declaration of independence in 1948 seriously believed it would last this long. And of course many people wish it hadn't.

This blog is broadly (but not unconditionally) supportive of Israel although it acknowledges that the Israelis make it as difficult as possible to be so.

My advice would be for Israel to try to stay out of the news, although this will be hard. The West may need Israel to attack Iran this year, just as it needed Israel to initiate attacks on Suez in 1956.

Let's hope not.

German Hollandaise

A bad night for Mrs Merkel, with her CDU having its worst result in Nord-Rhein Westfalia (NRW) since the war. NRW is the most populous region in Germany.

Norbert Roettgen, CDU leader in NRW, fell on his sword. He had been regarded as heir apparent to Mrs Merkel. The region, or Land, is now governed by a clear SPD-Green majority, led by Hannelore Kraft, who is now being openly described as a competitor to Mrs Merkel in next year's national elections.

Other fallout has been that the Greens in Germany are saying that the austerity must end, and the PdL and IdV in Italy are warning Mario Monti that he too must change.

This is rather as forecast. Hollande-ism is sweeping Europe, and we haven't seen the end of it yet.

Greece

Beginning a discussion of Greece in the euro one thinks of the proverbial Irishman asked for directions, who says 'I wouldn't start from here'. Ollie Rehn, the Budget Commissioner, has stated that they knew at the time that Greece had fiddled the figures to get into the euro (by the way, documents in Helmut Kohl's office confirm that they also knew Italy had fiddled its figures). What you have to remember is that the euro was and is a political, not an economic project. It has no grounding in economics at all.

Equally, one can say that Greece (and Italy), having been let in, should have been told that it had ten years to sort out the corruption, failure to collect taxes, the inflexible labour market and of course its borrowing levels.

But that is what should have happened. Events are now running their course.

As I have often mentioned, the European project is at its worst when it comes up against democracy: the two don't mix. No one, for example, would have come up with the daft system of the civil servants presenting laws to a tiny group of the uninterested if they hadn't been terrified that the populations simply couldn't be trusted to pass them. Now the Greeks have come up with an unsatisfactory election result (unsatisfactory, that is, to the bureaucrats). Their system is that in order of the number of votes cast, the parties can try to form a government, and the top three have failed to do so. Greece should proceed to another election.

However, the President, Karolos Papoulias, has summoned them all to last ditch talks today to try to form some sort of administration. Mr. Papoulias has the look of a man who has received a one-sided 'phone call from Angela Merkel. The latest word is that these talks have failed. Those opposed to the austerity programme pointed out that the majority of voters had opted against it, so they would be letting the people down if they conceded it (it's a bugger, this democracy business, isn't it?).

Two things can happen when there is a big, abnormal vote for one political wing or another, and it goes to a second vote: one is that people, worried about upheaval, vote for the traditional parties again. The second possibility is that people who voted the traditional way now perceive that there is an option, it is OK to vote for the extreme, and so the balance is forced further away from the norm. Opinion polls suggest the latter: the Far Left, who are opposed to austerity, will gain dramatically.

We suppose now that Greece must leave the euro, and that, once the markets know that this can happen, the spotlight will move to Spain, Portugal and Italy. For Mrs. Merkel not to allow Greece to leave, she would have to stump up a lot of German cash, and she comes up for election next year. To leave, Greece would have to default on its debts (which, to a small extent it has already done). I hope there is a plan B to allow this to happen as quietly as possible.

To Merkel, Schaeuble and the unmourned Sarkozy, we must say that their dithering and their blind reliance on dogma have earned them this result. Their unwillingness to change tack has been as damaging as the Greeks' unwillingness to modernise their political system.

As a footnote, let me say that you will hear on the BBC that there is a danger that the Far Right will gain influence: this is a party called Golden Dawn which makes funny salutes and hardly gets any votes. Ignore the BBC: the danger to Greece is the Far Left. Greece is in for a very difficult time whether it leaves the euro or not: what is needs is a party which can guide it on the road to financial rectitude, albeit at a pace it can stomach. And that is not the Far Left.

Democracy: a lesson

Democracy prize of the year so far goes to the village of Cimolais in the northern Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, population 507.

The mayor, Gino Bertolo, found that he was the only candidate for his re-election and was concerned that if he stood unopposed he wouldn't get enough votes, so he persuaded his best friend, Fabio Borsatti, to stand as well.

I’m sure you are ahead of me: Borsatti won, despite all his relatives having voted for Bertolo, by 160 to 117. ‘I never wanted to be mayor’, he said.

By the way, as a broad average, 70% of the population are of voting age, so that looks like a turnout of 78%. In the recent UK local elections it was 32%.

Celebrate!

Today is Europe Day, when we celebrate..er..

See the post below.

Europe: the state of play

Now seven eurozone governments have been toppled since the crisis: France, Italy, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands. There is a palpable move, not just to the left, but to anti-austerity. What will be perceived as the Hollande effect is sweeping its way across the continent.

In Greece, the two main parties, centre left and centre right, had clung together in a coalition led by a Brussels nominee. Following the election they can no longer form a majority. The axis of Greek politics is no longer left - right but pro austerity - anti austerity.

In Italy people are asking why they must have austerity if France has rejected it. The PdL, the party started by Mr Berlusconi, which did badly in last weekend's regional elections, has said that it cannot support ratification of the fiscal pact unless the powers of the European Central Bank are widened to intervene in debt auctions and issue eurobonds. They have said they will force out Monti's government by the autumn.

Spain has said it has to do something about its banks, which have fantastically high bad debts, but of course hasn't the money to do it.

Ireland, seeing the Hollande effect, could fail to ratify the fiscal pact in a referendum.

So what are the mathematics? If we move from austerity to fiscal expansion, who will pay for it? The German economy is showing signs of slowing down, Merkel's coalition is weakening and they are unlikely to be in the mood to offer more generous terms to Greece or anyone else. Nor are they keen on printing more money, allowing these countries to pay their debts with devalued euros. Volker Kauder, one of Mrs Merkel's closest allies, has said 'Germany could end up paying for the Socialist victory in France with more guarantees, more money. And that is not acceptable. Germany is not here to finance French election promises.'

The majority view in Southern Europe seems to be that they want to stay in the euro but want to behave as they always have and the Germans to pay the bills. It may become clear quite soon that this is no longer an option.

It doesn't look good.

Marlene

What with all the politics yesterday I forgot that it was the 20th anniversary of the death of Marlene Dietrich.

Here she is singing the original of the song the British stole from the Germans

The results

The elections went more or less as forecast below: Hollande, fiasco in Greece, minor headache in Schleswig.

Hollande made a speech saying members of the eurozone who were fed up with austerity could take their lead from France, which sent the markets into freefall.

Good start, François.

Elections elections

The polls are open today for the people of Schleswig Holstein. British Statesman Lord Palmerston is reported to have said 'Only three people have ever understood the Schleswig Holstein business: the Prince Consort, who is dead, a German professor, who has gone mad, and I, who have forgotten all about it.'

A bit simpler this time and the vote may cause some minor headache for Mrs Merkel's coalition, but not as much as the other two votes today, in France and Greece.

Hollande still seems the favourite in France and has vowed to overturn the fiscal pact. Whilst in practice he is unlikely to be so revolutionary, there will be trouble, no doubt about it.

In Greece people are flocking away from the two traditional parties, neither of whom is likely to gain any kind of majority. Together they might have enough votes, but they are, we had thought, opposed to each other. Probably one of those occasions where fundamental beliefs come second to keeping power.

By the end of today there will not have been a revolution in Europe but the political map will have altered and the ruling class will have got the jitters.

UK vote: the fallout

Only one of the ten cities decided to have an elected mayor, the Conservatives fared badly (not appallingly, but badly) but won the London mayoral contest, just. Turnout was very low.

Mr. Cameron is in the doghouse with his supporters. Doubtless he has plenty of advisers, but here is my take on the thing.

I think he should man up a bit.

Not many people like these metrosexual types who change nappies and erect flat pack furniture, and nobody wants one as PM. Now, more than ever, he needs to look decisive. He chickened out of holding a second election two years ago, nearly looked good when he vetoed the fiscal treaty, then gave in almost immediately and allowed them to use EU resources for something which wasn't an EU treaty. Since his election he has blamed everything on the previous government or his LibDem partners, and it won't wash any more.

The first thing he needs to do is sack Jeremy Hunt, for the simple reason the man is a pest. You can't open a newspaper without reading something negative about him. I learned the other day that he is an expert ballroom dancer. Dave: these people are all right in their way but as politicians they are not sound. Look at Vince Cable.

Having sacked Hunt he should maintain balance in the government by sacking Cable as well, eliminating both of their departments (Culture and Business) which are a waste of resources. He should tell the rest of the cabinet that anyone else who looks as if he can swing his hips to the lambada will be viewed with suspicion.

After that he needs a success: as any batsman will tell you, to gain confidence against the bowling you need to hit a six over the long-on boundary. I would suggest withdrawing from the European Court of Human Rights, but any decisive move against any part of Europe will be popular.

But he needs to do something.

Election fever 2

This is how it's done: the French Presidential run-off debate lasted for an extraordinary 2 hrs 50 minutes and was seen by 17.9 million people. Wow!

Whether this includes people who turned it on for the first two minutes, went to the Café des Sports for a couple of stiff Ricards and returned for the end, I don't know. But it is impressive, nonetheless.

The election is on Sunday (as is the Greek one).

Election fever (not)

A fair bit of voting going on in Britain, with local council elections, mayoral elections in London, Liverpool and Salford and ten cities voting as to whether they want an elected mayor.

I think they should be asking how much the mayor would cost. Is it another layer of bureaucracy or would he or she actually do something useful for the city? I'd want to be fairly certain about this, but I rather expect most people don't care too much and will stay at home.

Boris looks as if he will edge Ken in London, which is good news if you like double decker buses.

In the meantime, today is the 33rd anniversary of Margaret Thatcher becoming PM, and tomorrow will be the 15th anniversary of Tony Blair getting the job.

Fit and Proper

I have grave doubts abut the Murdochs, as I have outlined in previous posts, but we are now producing a raft of quite uninformed criticism of them which I believe may be counter-productive.

The Culture Committee, a concept so absurd it could have come from the pages of Orwell, has decided that Rupert Murdoch is not a ‘fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company’.

Of course none of these people has been even within a large sniff of the head of an international company, and, having had a look, seem to be careful not to list any former business positions they may have held (probably none).

They are not authorised (nor qualified) to judge whether someone can be the head of a company. They may (just) be authorised to pronounce on whether someone should hold a broadcasting licence.

Here we get to the nitty gritty. For myself, I would have approved the News International bid for the equity it did not hold in BSkyB, for the simple reason that the broadcasting market already contains a quasi-monopoly player – the BBC -  and a bit of competition from a medium sized player would be good for the consumer and good for the market.

The only caveat I would have made to this approval is if the Murdochs were deemed not fit and proper people to hold a UK broadcasting licence. This isn’t completely easy: there has been ‘phone hacking (my guess is that this was more common among the other tabloids than we yet know) and it seems clear they have lied to a commons committee about their investigations into it.

I think it possible that Murdoch and his son James did not know precisely what was going on but that the hacking was a result of the pressures to produce results in a culture they introduced, and that they failed to install the management systems to prevent their employees’ activities from becoming illegal.

But....I think the hacked people – who had their messages hacked by News International staff knowing their ‘phone numbers and guessing the password for messages – have only themselves to blame if they were public figures or people in charge of secrets. This does not of course include the family of Milly Dowler the murdered schoolgirl, but we now know that incident was not nearly as bad as it was initially made out to be.

So the Murdochs are guilty. Exactly what they are guilty of is another matter.  Hugh Grant not changing his password regularly is like someone leaving his house unlocked who is subsequently burgled. The burglar is guilty, of course, but the victim is an idiot.

Against which we have to set the obvious good that Rupert Murdoch has done for the British Press. People with long memories may remember that it resisted all new technology, that jobs were passed from father to son, that no one could say a bad word about the union: all these things were the signs of a very unhealthy free press, and Murdoch, single-handedly, saved us from that.

I would have allowed the BskyB bid probably 70/30, the caveat being unless Murdoch were to be found not a fit and proper person to hold a broadcasting licence. For me the second matter – the fit and proper issue - is closer, but I would have let him carry on 55/45.

Between two stools

A most enlightening article in the New York Times tells the story of Fotis I Antonopoulos, who tried to launch a business in Athens called OliveShop.com, selling olive oil and other products over the Internet. The wall of bureaucracy meant that it took him ten months to get started, having to collect forms from all over the city.

The banks professed themselves unable to process credit card payments - he set up a system with the American PayPal in ten minutes. A law says he could not have a warehouse in Athens, so he took a shop front and boarded up the windows. Hoards of Inspectors called, two of them unable to agree on the legality of having a spiral staircase, and finally telling him to decide himself.

Inspectors said parts of the website had to be written exclusively in Greek, and the team vainly tried to explain that hardly anyone outside Greece was able to read the alphabet, and that the site was intended for foreign customers.

Finally they insisted that since it was a food business, Anonopoulos and his partners should submit lung X-rays and stool samples.

Of course, Mr. Antonopoulos had refused to pay what is known as the 'speed tax': the bribes needed to bypass regulations, even necessary ones.

Humorous though it is, there is a lesson here for all of us. Greek unemployment is 50% and getting worse, yet regulations mean that new businesses find it difficult or impossible to get going. The same is true in Italy and Spain, and true to a smaller extent in all other European economies. Encouraging growth, which is the buzzword at the moment, is not just a question of government spending and the money supply.

It is a question of making your country an attractive place in which to do business.

Wind Farms

Reading that a new study has been published, by the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of New York, would send the average person into a fit of depression - usual stuff, climate change, we are all guilty etc.

But this time it is cause for amusement.

It appears that whilst at night the earth cools and temperatures fall, in areas with a lot of wind turbines this cold air is mixed with warmer air higher up, warming the atmosphere. It is estimated from a study in Texas that over a decade temperatures increased by 1deg C, a dangerous amount.

So windfarms are actually causing global warming, while we have to pay to subsidise them.

It's started....

Citizens in East London have been told that their block of flats may have surface to air missiles placed on the roof, as 'security' during the Olympic Games to be held there this summer.

This will encourage them to wonder what might be flying through the air towards their homes which requires advanced weaponry to down it. What if that weaponry fails? What if, as on 9/11 in New York, it is an airliner full of passengers?

Is this really what we want, that people go in fear of their lives just so we can hold some games, which we anyway make them pay for (and, oh yes, they'll be paying, rich and poor)?

I said at the start when the fool Blair went for this that we'd regret it. We are only beginning now to see how much.

DSK horror

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, DSK to his friends, which don't include this blog, former head of the IMF and former favourite for the French Presidential Elections, claims that there was a plot, managed by Sarkozy's allies, to discredit him.

Imagine that.

Mein Kampf

Mein Kampf is to be published in Germany for the first time since the war. Hitler's book - it is hardly an autobiography since it was written in 1925 and therefore misses out some of the important bits - has hitherto been banned.

What really disappoints me is that its re-publication is subject to its containing notes, critical of the wannabe fuehrer's philosophy.

I have bought two copies of mein Kampf (it means 'my struggle'), one, in English, in London in 1972, another, in German, in Stuttgart in 1974 (and it wasn't difficult to find) and have lost both, probably not given back by people I lent them to. Their loss has caused me no grief because the book is an incoherent, self-justifying rant and very hard to get through.

The attitude of the German authorities is too patronising: you are far less likely to be a supporter of Fascism if you have read this drivel than if you haven't. Leave out the worthy commentary and let people read it for themselves.

Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor of Liberia has, after a five year trial, been convicted by a specially constituted court of aiding and abetting rebels in Sierra Leone to commit atrocities. It is accepted that he had no command responsibility for these atrocities.

This verdict has been welcomed by the British Government, although I should have thought we were on slightly shaky ground having aided and abetted rebels in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, none of whom, I expect, committed any atrocities. It is the first time a head of state has been convicted, and it must be giving Her Majesty the Queen some food for thought about any future military adventures.

Amongst other things Taylor was accused of using child soldiers as young as 15.

My father joined the British Army in peacetime in 1930 aged 14, and I am awaiting the compensation for this appalling breach of his, and my family's human rights.

Roop

Just been listening to the testimony of Rupert Murdoch to the Leveson Inquiry. Marvellous. It was like watching a mature actor at the height of his powers – Judi Dench, Diana Rigg, Anthony Sher, Tony Blair -  going through for a masterclass the various emotions an actor can convey. At times Roop was a handwringing Uriah Heep, almost tearful, ‘I admit that I, I Rupert, was wrong’. Then he was the jokey successful man, then the senior figure to whom it was vulgar to put such questions.

At times he played the pitiable elderly man, bullied into the publc eye, who couldn't keep up with the younger man's questioning. Moments later he showed he has a mind like a laser.

It was a wonderful display. I have never met Murdoch, although I have come across a few of his subordinates, but the impression I was left with, based on just what I have seen and heard, was that..

I wouldn’t trust him with the change for a parking meter.

At some stage, when the hurly-burly’s done, we are going to have to decide whether he and his folk are fit and proper people to run media organisations.

For me, the burden of proof is going to lie with the Murdochs.

Dutch trouble

Wilders

The government of the Netherlands, which is what we had better call it now that someone called Hollande is likely to occupy the Elysée Palace, has resigned.

The government was a coalition which incorporated Geert Wilders' Freedom Party, which cannot accept the austerity measures required by the new Fiscal Pact: The Netherlands would have to cut some €15 billion to get down to the maximum 3% figure permitted. There is increasing talk that The Netherlands will be downgraded from its AAA status.

Elections will probably not take place until the autumn.

So, on a good day for Hollande, a bad day for Holland. 

St. George's Day

Today is St. George's Day, that of the patron saint of England (as well as of quite a few other countries - he was a popular guy).

Whilst St. Andrew's Day is a holiday in Scotland, St. David's Day a holiday in Wales and St. Patrick's Day a holiday in N. Ireland, there is no lay celebration in England, largely because, whilst the other bits have regional assemblies to declare a national holiday, England, with more than 80% of the population, does not.

Today is also supposed to be the anniversary of both the birth and the death of William Shakespeare.

A Question of Identity

Preliminary results of the first round of voting in the French Presidential Elections are in: Hollande 28%, Sarkozy 26%, Le Pen 19%, Mélenchon 12%, Bayrou 9% + 5 others.

For many people this election was about the unpopularity of Nicolas Sarkozy, that is evident. For others the result is an astonishing level of support for Marine Le Pen, gaining nearly one in five votes with strong support among young and unemployed. Others see it as a weak support for the Far Left: Mélenchon, who was supposed to shake the edifice to its foundations, gaining less than Le Pen.

Something has been going on in France, but what? The first thing to remember is that the labels 'left' and 'right' mean nothing here. There was only one candidate amongst the ten who could have qualified as even a wishy-washy member of the British Conservative Party and he got 2%. Le Pen is to the right on social policy, certainly, but splattered her campaign with Left-Wing economic rhetoric which would have embarrassed the British Labour Party in 1970.

It was not just about voting Sarkozy out, though he is highly unpopular personally, and the political upheaval in my view did not, as some are saying, come from 1789. I believe it came from the 1950s.

After the war Britain, nominally on the winning side, was exhausted and depressed. The string of leaders, most too old fashioned to understand that anything had changed, failed to ignite the popular morale. We watched the Empire gain its independence, the pound devalue and the economy decline as if it were fate. In France, by contrast, which could not seriously lay claim to being a winner (but was not a loser), De Gaulle's staunch evangelical nationalism made people think France was a great country.That greatness resided in the bones of France itself, in its quirky cars and terroirs, in that indefinable Frenchness which some love and some hate.

The instrument of Gaullism was not to be an Empire but the European Union, which France dominated intellectually and politically from 1957 until 2010.

Now France is beginning to ask itself questions. The 'Merkozy' concept, that the EU would be run jointly by France and Germany was in itself a climbdown but now that parity has also been lost. With France's debt downgrade (more important for morale and status than many think) and its obvious economic underperformance, France no longer ranks alongside Germany. It is as if it had lost one of those tiny 19th century battles which somehow changed the established order.

So whereas you could have told Britain - at least any time up to the Falklands - that it was a third rate country and the population would have accepted it, France is left wondering what has happened. It has been left asking itself who it is.

And the answer? The future is not, I fear, bright. Those of us who wish the country well are dismayed by the almost Trotskyite tone of some of the candidates, the anti-trade, anti-competition speeches made by most of them, the depressing, mercantilist isolationism of the whole debate.

Hollande should have a comfortable mandate on 6th May. But it does not augur well, for France or for Europe.

Bahrain

The Bahrain Grand Prix takes place today, or at least it will unless the police lose a running battle with the protesters, and this is unlikely: the Bahraini government has Saudi support, British weaponry and a former British police chief to guide them.

Of course it would be nice if Bernie Ecclestone and the Formula 1 team bosses stood up and said they don't like what is going on and that the ruling family are shits, but this isn't going to happen. More than any other sport, F1 is a business, and businessmen don't bite the hand that feeds them.

I am sympathetic to the protesters and to their worldwide support but I would like to know one thing: why was there none of this international protest when the race was held in China last week? Can anybody point to something the Bahrainis have done which the Chinese haven't?

Let's bear it all in mind.

Beware of Greeks

An extraordinary story in the FT a couple of days ago, one of those where you automatically check that it is not April Fool's Day. I waited to see if other newspapers took it up but they haven't. Nevertheless the FT is a sober newspaper and the piece deserves to be given air.

It appears that the organisers of the Olympic Games, due to take place in London this summer, had arranged for a copy of a Greek trireme to be rowed down the Thames.

The boat is a part of the Greek Navy (shows the sort of trouble the country is in, the rest of us have frigates and destroyers and the like).

However, having spent £150,000 doing the thing up (it appears the Greeks can't even keep their triremes in good shape) it was decided that it might be too popular. The FT intercepted emails (I hope that's not the wrong term) to the effect that there was a danger that as the trireme went by, the riverbanks would be packed and people might throw themselves into the water.

Martin Green, the head of ceremonies for London's Organising Committee, appears to have written 'Clearly a vessel such as the trireme has the potential to draw large crowds and it is a risk we are just not able to take at this time.'

I don't know how many instances there are of people seeing a trireme and throwing themselves off a bridge but there it is: you can't be trusted.

Bert Weedon

We mourn the passing of Bert Weedon, aged 91. I was a Bert Weedon student, having got hold of a copy of his self teaching manual Play in a Day and from there became a non-star.


He pioneered the idea of the guitar being the lead instrument, rather than a part of the rhythm section, which continued for years, from the Shadows to the great Rock Bands.

Weedon was a great giver to charity. Wonderful talent, good egg.

Levon

We regret the passing of Levon Helm, drummer and vocalist for The Band.



The Band were a group of highly talented musicians, perhaps more respected by musicians than by the general public. They backed Bob Dylan in the late 60s / early 70s and were the subject of Martin Scorsese's film 'The last Waltz'.

EU spending bonanza

The draft EU budget for 2013 shows increased contributions of 7% - for Britain an extra £900 million.

This is, of course, quite ridiculous when individual countries are having to make savings, and, more to the point, this is something that is quite easy to explain and to understand.

Mr. Cameron, widely acused of dithering and incompetence, should welcome this as a chance to be seen saying 'NO' to Europe, boosting his flagging reputation among his own supporters.

Elephant and Castle

Much hoo-ha in Spain as the King is found to have gone elephant hunting in Botswana, while his subjects are suffering under the austerity package. The licence apparently cost $15,000.

Juan Carlos also enjoys bear hunting, but unfortunately not the sort of bears who are selling Spanish bonds at the moment.

Perhaps of more interest is that he is the honorary president of the Spanish branch of the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

Guilty already

Italy's senate has approved by a two thirds majority the proposal that a balanced budget should be a constitutional requirement in Italy.

Apart from this being a dangerous hostage to fortune, the news (see below) that Italy won't balance its budget before 2017 means the government knows it will be in breach of the constitution as soon as the bill is signed into law.

It's a different world here.

Europe: how are we doing?

Well.....

Greece seems unlikely to survive without a further bailout: even if the population were to accept the pronounced austerity measures proposed, they still don't add up. The economy is contracting and that means lower government income which means more austerity. There is an election on 6th May which looks likely to be indecisive, bringing in some sort of coalition, bringing further uncertainty.

Portugal seems likely to need a further bailout in 2012.

Spain will fail to meet its target budget deficit. The banks are in serious difficulty and the Germans won't allow the bailout fund to target banks. Two of them are major shareholders in the Argentinian oil producer YPF and are likely to lose further sums. The property market has further to fall, bringing more trouble on the banks.

Italy has admitted that it will no longer be able to get rid of its budget deficit by 2013 as promised by Mario Monti. 2017 looks like a more probable date but in the meantime the economy is contracting (see above). The proposals to alter the labour laws, making it easier to invest in Italy, have been watered down and are scarcely worth fighting for.

France has had the spotlight turned on it in recent days. The first round of the election is on Sunday. François Hollande, the front runner, has threatened to veto the economic pact if it doesn't contain growth measures (it doesn't, on the insistence of Germany). Meanwhile Sarkozy has said the ECB should discuss with the various countries the euro exchange rate; Germany will never permit this tinkering with the ECB's independence.

It looks like Merkozy have divorced.

Meanwhile effective inflation in Germany has reached 3.5%. As the economy overheats the ECB will be forced to raise, not lower, rates.

€1 trillion of liquidity injected by the ECB seems only to have bought them a couple of months, and they did nothing with this time.

Things are going from bad to worse.

Majorana

Scientists claim to have discovered the Majorana fermion, a particle which contains as many negative ions as positive (if I have got that right).

The existence of the particle was posited by Ettore Majorana, a hugely gifted theoretical physicist who worked with Fermi and Heisenberg and Bohr, sometimes, it is said, making dramatic discoveries and refusing to take credit for them.

In 1938, aged only 31, he disappeared from a boat travelling from Palermo to Naples. The body was never discovered.

Various reasons for his disappearance have been suggested, and in particular the celebrated writer Leonardo Scascia suggested, in his book 'The disappearance of Majorana' (La Scomparsa di Majorana) that he hid in a monastery; others say that he fled to Argentina, in order to avoid having to work on an atomic bomb.

Anyhow, it is important that these people are remembered. It has taken three quarters of a century for his ideas to be shown to be correct.

The Grand National

If I had been going to give betting advice on the Grand National I might well have chosen Synchronised, winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup. In fact the horse unseated its rider on the way to the start, delaying it for several minutes, then fell at Becher's Brook, unseating the poor blighter again. Synchronised, however, got up and started running down the course again. Then he was captured and put down. Another horse was put down, having broken its neck.

Last year two horses were also put down, and at the Cheltenham Festival in March five horses were put down.

I am not an expert on this, and therefore sometimes distrust my own opinions, but I do believe this has to be looked at, and pretty carefully. I have the impression, perhaps wrong, that horses are being put down because they can no longer race, rather than 'putting them out of their misery', and I'm sure other people have that impression, too. In part, a civilisation can be judged on how it treats its animals, and Britain prides itself on scoring very highly in this category.

Let's hope that pride is not misplaced. Full investigation, please.

Burma looks forward....

Good news in Burma, where the regime appears to be pursuing a policy of gradual relaxation. Analysts say they don't know why this is happening, but I think it clear that China has told them to. The regime was kept in power by China, and Burma supplied it with raw materials but now that colonialism is beginning to look counter-productive for Beijing.

David Cameron did well to be the first Western leader there, and has invited Aung San Suu Kyi to Britain. I think I am right in saying she has never seen the grave of her husband, Michael Aris.

The British, meanwhile, seem more interested in some Spitfires that are buried there. As if we didn't have enough WWII memorabilia.

I propose that the Spitfires be left where they are and that we start trying to live in the 21st century, looking forward, not back, as Burma and the rest of the Far East are doing.

Titanobore

Titanomania - well that's what I call it. For the last month or so the Press have begun milking the story. Then 10th April was the 100th anniversary of the ship setting sail. It called at Cherbourg and Cork and then hit the iceberg around midnight ship's time on 14th, ie early morning on 15th GMT.

I often wonder why this is a subject of such fascination. It is the world's 7th worse peacetime maritime disaster, and nobody knows the other six (the worst was the Dona Paz in 1987). But many people, called Titanoraks, are obsessive about it. And despite the assurances of American Film Directors that access to the life rafts was a class struggle, we really know hardly anything of what went on. Legend had it that Benjamin Guggenheim, despite being a supposedly classless American, felt too posh to get in the lifeboats and made his valet drown with him. Now we know for certain (ha!) that his valet being of mixed race wasn't allowed in the lifeboat and Guggenheim drowned with him. Got to be a story there, nudge nudge. Or not.

Not long after the Titanic sank, the First World War began which claimed nine million lives and after that the Spanish 'flu claimed even more. But still they go on and on about the Titanic, bore bore bore.

Let's hope the circus is over soon.

 

Sporting with the baddies

Debate on the holding of a Grand Prix in Bahrain is confusing. Some say it is about the safety of the teams, some about whether we should be encouraging the pernicious regime of the Al Khalifa family.

As to the first, the Bahraini people have a supportable grievance: they began Arab Spring-type uprisings against the regime but these were brutally put down with assistance from Saudi Arabia (Bahrain, connected to Saudi via a causeway, is a place for wealthy well-connected Saudis young and old to buy cocaine, get drunk and find a prostitute). This uprising needs the oxygen of international publicity and so it seems quite likely there will be some trouble at the event, and equally likely that it will be brutally put down by the regime.

Formula 1 is, more than any other sport, a business, and I rather think that it can look after itself on security matters. If they want to go and the teams agree, that's that.

The other aspect is whether we look complicit in all this (we, the West, and we, the British since several of the teams are located in England).

I remember the 1980 Olympics in Moscow which America boycotted and Britain wanted to boycott, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (times do change, don't they?). The unpleasant dwarf (I knew him at university) Colin Moynihan was a government minister but insisted on going to the Olympics (being only 2ft high and having a loud voice he was cox to the rowing VIII, or possibly the mascot). In the end Mrs Thatcher let him.

What we thought then was that a sporting event bestowed kudos on, or at least acceptance of a regime and we shouldn't participate with Russia (or, of course, South Africa at the time, as you will remember). I'm not sure I do think that, now. It looks as if Bernie Ecclestone just wants to make money out of the Bahrainis, not endorse their government.

And I am quite sure that this is no business of the state. The British Foreign Office should make it clear to Bahrain and Saudi what we think of what is going on there and that's all.

Not that it will make any difference.

The Republican Race

Sadly, Rick Santorum, the second ranked Republican challenger, appears to have pulled out of the race due to a child being ill. I don't want to ascribe any cynical motive to him, because obviously he is a decent man, but he could hardly go on anyway, as the family candidate with a gravely ill child; and he was losing in any case. Possibly the way is now open to him to stand again. And being the family candidate is not such a bad thing to be.

He may well get the opportunity, since Mitt Romney is all that is left (this blog's favoured candidate, Ron Paul, isn't going to be nominated, and choosing Newt Gingrich would be absurd). One analyst pointed out that Mitt Romney has showed he can win against underfunded, badly organised opponents. Now he is up against the united Democratic Party.

As so often, I am left wondering where the Americans find these people. Anyway, in 2016 Obama will be finished and the Republicans know what they need to do: find someone that everybody can accept and that some people find inspiring.

It ain't Mitt.

Budget Relief

Bit of a scare at a concert in Rome: a chap came on to announce the programme and you'd have sworn it was George Osborne, with the same strangely inappropriate haircut and a whiny voice, as if he were about to deliver an amendment to the budget ('free pasties for all!'). It was only after a few seconds I realised he was speaking in Italian.

If anyone saw me weeping during the Massenet, they were tears of relief.

Shame about the boat race

I am indebted to the Daily Mail for the above photos (actually I nicked them). Today the annual boat race between Oxford and Cambridge was staged and for the first time in 158 contests it was interrupted by a swimmer. The man, believed to be an anarchist called Trenton Oldfield, was arrested.

I find all this very curious. Around 1900 everyone was worried about anarchists all the time, conservative Britain thinking they might upset the established order. But we don't hear much about them now: we are quite capable of screwing up the established order ourselves (jolly good thing too).

And the chap's name. Trenton Oldfield is a delightfully British name, suggesting old school charm and manners, dependability, derring-do in a right-thinking cause. People's characters are often  suggestive of their names: the first man to be arrested for air piracy (pinching a stewardess' bottom) was called Audrey Bumguard. But a Trenton Oldfield would be rescuing the plane as it hurtled to the ground, as well as comforting the hysterical trolley dolley.

And then, why was he arrested? If a gentleman (I may be stretching the meaning of the word here) wishes to go swimming in the Thames, why shouldn't he? I have rowed the Tideway many times (the race is tougher than it looks, by the way) and the rule then was that if you fell in you were given a tetanus injection, whilst if you swallowed any water you had your stomach pumped. But perhaps it is cleaner now.

And have a look at the policeman who has arrested him. He looks like he was dressed for an armed insurgence: the French CRS riot police on a bad day. Now I and my friends have occasionally been lively at the boat race, particularly afterwards - high spirited, even noisy, but there has never been any need for the heavy mob. Have things changed? Were they expecting Trouble? Had an anonymous tip-off from what we would now call the Oxbridge Community warned that there there would be anarchists about? Swimmers challenging the established order? My God, Watson, the devils!

And why is Mr Oldfield not carrying some message to the world's viewers, some slogan from Fathers for Justice or the David Cameron is a Pratt campaign, so neglected in our Press? Was it just a pure anarchistic act, designed to make Parliament tremble and petty dictators shiver on their gilded thrones?

There's a lot more we need to know about this, but I can say this: sometimes, in my quiet middle-class life, I feel that a little bit of unfocused anarchy might be a good thing.

The Panda

Tian Tian and Yang Guan, two pandas on loan to Edinburgh zoo, have failed to mate in the limited breeding season. I shouldn't have thought it that attractive an activity in the glare of publicity but I suppose the keepers know best.

The BBC brought out some expert who said that pandas were perfectly viable creatures who had only come to difficulties when humans started to invade their space (we are all guilty, as I am sure you know).

Actually I think the opposite. Pandas were originally meat eaters but became too incompetent to catch their prey. They now live on bamboo which, with its lack of protein, means they are even lazier, and amble around like an 80-year old with a hangover. The breeding season is about 36 hours per year, so that's it for 2012 - back to eating bamboo. This species is not viable and should have been allowed to go extinct years ago. Instead huge sums of money are spent on them which could have been used to preserve some useful creature.

Good Friday

I have always felt Good Friday to be one of the telling differences between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Here in Italy it is not a holiday; a Roman Catholic would say 'what are you doing having a holiday on such a sad day?'. A Protestant would say 'what are you doing earning money when you should be at home pondering the sacrifice made for you?'

The Italians have a good party on Easter Monday (Pasquetta) when it is all over.

Cheesy gaffe

The French elections are turning into a long-running comedy. François Hollande, the Socialist candidate, who has proposed an insane 75% tax rate, is losing ground to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Far-far left candidate, who proposes a 100% tax on incomes above €360,000 a year.

In the meantime, Nicolas Sarkozy, in order to thwart Marine Le Pen, of the Far-far right, has proposed a crackdown on immigration. M.Sarkozy is the son of immigrants. Now the diminutive contender, who embarrassingly admitted a while back that he does not drink wine, says he does not allow cheese on his table. Surely this makes him unelectable?

Greek Pizza

Jurre Hermans is a young economist living in the Netherlands. When I say young he is in fact 11 years old.

Young Jurre has submitted an offering to the Wolfson Prize, which offers £250,000 to the best idea as to how, if one or more countries leave the euro, the matter can be resolved comfortably.

Jurre says he is very worried about the euro, as he should be because when he becomes a taxpayer in 10 years' time they will still be paying off the debts.

The Jurre plan is for the Greek government (he seems to feel Greece is the only one at risk) to monopolise the repayment of euro-denominated debt, coupled with strong exchange controls. He has been sent £100 for his entry.

Interestingly, the lad compares Greek debt to a pizza, which I don't suppose any of the other entries have done. Unfortunately he does not say whether that would be an uncooked pizza, which looks good but is still rising, a pizza undergoing cooking, where it is all bubbling up and quite a lot of red appears, or a cooked one, which is a topic too hot to handle for the average European.

Well done, though, Jurre! I hope the world hears more from this young chap, perhaps using his fast food skills to solve Mr. Cameron's pasty tax.