Diplomacy Doubles

The Russian team of Putin and Lavrov easily outclassed the Americans Obama and Kelly, the British Cameron and Hague and the French Hollande and whoever to register a remarkable victory.

In the last minute of play the Russians produced a staggering gambit whereby the Syrians hand over their chemical weapons to international control.

Now the Americans can't attack (the plan came out just as Obama was honing his speech to the American people suggesting he does just that), they have to give the Russian plan a go.

Of course the plan won't work - that's the beauty of it. 'International' must mean the UN, which would take a long time to gear up. The last time the UN was in Syria the team was shot at and they don't know who by; it was equally likely to be one side or another. Syria is undergoing a civil war and you can't just ask the protagonists to down weapons. And there will be confusion as regional approvals are not sought, inspectors turned away with a 'sorry, we didn't mean it' the week later (remember Saddam?), lost weaponry (now where did we put that Sarin gas?) and the 'discovery', true or false, that some are in the hands of the rebels, who haven't done a deal to hand them over.

The American and British peoples (Hollande wasn't going to bother to ask the French) are tired of war. Parliament refused Cameron permission to wage one. Then Hague hinted that if things changed there might be another vote. Things changed but not the way Hague wanted: if there were a vote now that there is a chance of mediation, it would go even more horribly against the Government. The Americans will pause.

And Putin will sit back, comforted that the war can continue as normal, just supplying a little more weaponry to make sure his side wins.

Gibraltar

Today is Gibraltar Day, where Gibraltarians celebrate the 1967 referendum to remain part of Britain.

Mr Cameron has said that he will never agree to any transfer od sovereignty without the consent of the Gibraltar people.

That's good. Let's leave it at that and let's hope for no sabre-rattling from either side.

The BBC and global warming

The BBC predicted that the Arctic would be ice free by 2013.

Today we learn that there is 60% more ice than at this time last year.

It's cooling, like the rest of the planet.

Doubtless the BBC team, I believe it is led by Roger Harrabin, will wish to apologise for causing an unnecessary scare tactic on the back of insufficient and inaccurate data it did not, in any case, understand.

Don't hold your breath, though.

Olympics again

Yes, the Olympics have raised their ugly, corrupt head again, this time to decide who will hold the games in 2020.

I could have sworn I heard the BBC announcer connect to our man in Istanbul, who said 'everywhere there are people waving flags, cheering...' and I assumed the games had been awarded to Turkey. But no, they went to Japan. Perhaps they were cheering because they wouldn't have to build useless stadia everywhere and take on mountains of debt.

Meanwhile Japanese professor Yasuo Hazaki suggests that hide-and-seek might be a good sport to include.

That's the stuff: games people actually want to play. Away with the  synchronised diving and dancing horses; hide-and-seek, hopscotch, skipping.

And cricket.

David Frost

David Frost has died of a heart attack aged 74, which is young.

He will be remembered, I hope, for the wonderful satire, which characterised the 1960s as much as the clothes and the music, and for the TV interviews, of so many people, which were lessons in the interviewer's craft.

I hope he will not be remembered for 'Through the Keyhole', a programme as crass and trivial as any you could find on TV.

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize winning poet, has died.

I've read a bit of his work and it struck me as banal, ineffective pay-per-word stuff, like someone who had never written poetry pretending to be a modern poet.

And I can't understand why, born in the United Kingdom to parents who were born in the United Kingdom, he wasn't British.

But he said he was Irish.

Greatly exaggerated

It seems that George H Bush, that is to say Bush père, not Dubya, has announced on Twitter the death of Nelson Mandela, even though he is still with us.

I can't work out which I think the sillier, the 41st President or the social medium itself.

Policy making

According to the Telegraph, Downing St admits that David Cameron's wife, Samantha, influences some of his decision making and she was behind getting him to attack Syria.

Good grief.

I mean, good ****ing grief. Is this what we have come to?

der, die, das

A new law in Germany enables you to register yourself as Male, Female or 'not telling'.

I suppose this may be normal for a nation where the words for knife, fork and spoon are three different genders, but it does seem odd. I think Germany must be the only nation where this is possible.

Useful Idiots

I don't have much time for Ed Miliband, and don't think he is the right man even for his own party, but there is no doubt he has played a blinder on the Syria debate.

First, he said that we should wait a couple of days for the UN Inspectors' report. Cameron had been ready to attack without seeing it. I don't know if you remember this with Iraq a decade ago, but there was never any time for the weapons inspectors; we had to go in now, now now, and Hans Blix was pulled out. I smelled a rat then and I smell one here.

So the debate, no longer being about authorising the Government to unleash tons of sophisticated ordnance on an already terrorised people, was about the principle of our fighting in Syria, and Miliband's Labour Party together with 39 coalition rebels voted it down.

There is much talk of this being a heavy defeat for Cameron, and Nick Robinson, the BBC politics editor, said it showed he was not on top of the foreign policy of his own party. In my opinion he will get over this fairly quickly.

What this has been about is Britain's place in the world. Many of us were getting fed up with the idea that we have to join every war. The spurious logic inflicted on us appears to be that we have to have a huge military because of our international role, and then, given we have a huge military, we have to use it. At the time of the Gulf War the Conservative Opposition, led by Ian Duncan Smith, followed unquestioningly the rather dodgy antics of Tony Blair, taking the attitude that 'if there's a fight, we're up for it'. And it's better if the whole thing is near some oil, have you noticed?

Many people don't want this. We never seem to use our superb military for humanitarian reasons; we didn't intervene in Rwanda, we didn't help Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, a former colony, we didn't stir a muscle when Mugabe was starving his own people in Zimbabwe, another former colony. But anything America decides is strategic and we're sharpening the blades on our bayonets.

Another thing I must mention is that it makes even less sense slavishly following Obama than it did Bush. Dubya genuinely liked and respected us. Obama hates Britain, and as discussed in these pages, has gone out of his way to show it. We would have been nothing more in this adventure than what Lenin called 'useful idiots'.

In my view it is not too much to say that the burden borne on British backs since colonial times has suddenly been lifted, and the British people can look forward this morning to a bright new future as an independently minded nation.

And, remarkably, it is largely due to Ed Miliband.

Nice work....

Steve Ballmer, the head of Microsoft, is going to retire.

When he announced the news, Microsoft shares shot up, making him instantly $1 billion richer, for promising not to work.

Syria again

All the signs are that David Cameron is about to embark on an insane military intervention in Syria without the approval of the United Nations.

Many MPs are demanding that Parliament be recalled and this is quite right. Cameron should be allowed to mobilize the military without consultation if the UK is threatened with attack, but that is not the case here.

The effect of a successful intervention in Syria would be to put into power a motley group of rebels some of whom, doubtless, are secular and sensible, others of whom are mad terrorists. Who will that help? The people of Syria? I don't think so.

Obviously every compassionate person will be very sorry that chemical weapons have been used. But that is no reason to compound the problem with Western missiles, which kill just as many people.

Let the MPs be recalled and let them put a stop to this nonsense.

Syria

Would you rather die by a chemical weapon or by a machine gun? For myself I'd just rather not die.

It is worth remembering that the business of chemical weapons use being some sort of red line is a construct of Obama who had been talking tough on Syria while unable to back it up.

Now that chemical weapons have been used, and we still don't know by which side, remember, he seems to want to do something. He has let it be known that he is repositioning his Mediterranean Fleet.

For Obama to attack Syria without United Nations' approval, which means without Russian approval, would be utter folly. And on which side would he intervene? This is a civil war between a murderous autocrat and some murderous islamists.

Sometimes it's better to remain silent.

Pulling the rug

Italian factory owner Fabrizio Pedroni sent his employees off on their annual holiday and quietly moved the entire operation to Poland. His business was being strangled by high salaries and low productivity. An employee on €12,000 a year in fact cost €30,000 due to social security and pensions provisions.

'If I had told the unions I intended to transfer production to Poland they would have had my property confiscated.' he said.

This is an all too common tale, which Italy needs to sort out if it is ever to emerge from the economic doldrums.

Incidentally the factory is called Firem.

Brave New World

The Snowden affair has been more interesting in the whereabouts of the leaker (who has now successfully sought asylum in Russia, a country which will have giggled at America's peccadilloes) and the more recent story of the Guardian journalist and his partner than in the actual details of the case.

It's probably worth remembering that Edward Snowden, a former operative for the American security services, revealed a comprehensive network of surveillance by the Americans and British (and others) covering private conversations over the phone, email and text.

I can't say I was very surprised about this. We knew years ago that GCHQ  would trawl the airwaves for key words. A computer technician used to send me emails finishing 'bomb, guns, explosion' and so on just to waste their time.

And I can't see that we can get along under the present islamist threat without doing something of this nature. It's not easy to put a limit on one's own rights but I believe I am entitled to know what they are looking at, but not entitled to know how they do it. As regards Mr Snowden, of course, he just released gobs of information without filtering it in accordance with these criteria (perhaps without being able to).

I have tremendous respect for the likes of Mr Snowden, and of course Bradley Manning who has been sentenced to 35 years for releasing fairly low-level information. I have no respect, however, for Mr Snowden's seeking asylum in Russia, as if it were some bastion of openness (glasnost, meaning openness, went out with Yeltsin, and there hadn't been much of it then). I rather think that these people should follow their consciousness if they believe this sort of stuff should be broadcast, but that they should accept the consequences of their actions, as Manning has done.

Then came the affair of the journalist and his partner. It emerged that the partner of a Guardian journalist who had released the Snowden stuff (the Guardian being the organ de choix for this sort of thing) was stopped at Heathrow en route from Berlin to Rio. The partner's name is Miranda, a nice name, although in this case it is the second name of a man rather than the first name of a woman.

Mr Miranda was questioned for nine hours under the Terrorism legislation and the Guardian screamed that this was attacking the innocent partner of a journalist in order to warn him off. If you had gone on holiday at that moment - to Russia, say - that is what you would have believed. However it then emerged that Mr Miranda was travelling on a ticket paid for by the Guardian, which insisted he wasn't a journalist. So what, then, was he? The Security Services thought that he might be in possession of classified information which he had couriered to a film maker in Berlin. It would be illegal to be in possession of such stuff, so they confiscated his laptop. Seems fair.

Then two things came to light. Firstly Miranda was not suspected of terrorism so they say he shouldn't be questioned under the terrorism legislation. There is espionage legislation, which wouldn't have allowed him to be questioned for quite so long. The second is that the police told senior figures in government they were doing this and the government told the CIA.

Funny name Miranda, although I repeat it is the man's surname. 'To be wondered at'.

I don't know if it is relevant, but Bradley Manning has decided to live as a woman, which presumably means he will be getting his own way all the time.

What do I think?

I want our security services intercepting things in order to protect me.

I want to know what they are allowed to intercept, what the rules are and I want to be satisfied that there is some oversight to make sure they don't overstep the mark.

I want whistle blowers to tell me things I don't know in respect of the above, and I want them subsequently to defend themselves in the Court of Public Opinion. I shall be on their side.

I don't want British Police automatically to reach for the terrorist legislation because that is the law which gives them most freedom of movement. Some 140,000 cases have existed over the last two years and without any detailed knowledge that seems excessive. And I want the police disciplined if they misuse these laws.

The Guardian, which also put up a smokescreen about laptops being destroyed by Security Services (also untrue, in that they were destroyed by Guardian staff in order to avoid an expensive legal case) has gone down in my estimation.

Oh brave new world, that hath such people in it
                                      Miranda, The Tempest

Consult the omens

I fear I shall never completely understand Football but occasionally one gets little glimpses.

Before their match Shakhter Karagandy of Kazakhstan sacrificed a sheep, whilst their opponents, Glasgow Celtic, did not.

Shakhter 2 : Celtic 0

Joy in death

It is reported that Germany is concerned about British plans to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War.

I can't see that there is anything to celebrate in the outbreak of a war, even a war which we eventually won (at the cost of millions of lives).

Why don't we save up for a jolly great party in 2018, to celebrate the end of the conflict, or, better still, not celebrate it at all.

However, Cameron yields

What do you think about Russia? I think most people don't much like the idea. Many of us have grown up with warnings about what to do if they showered some of their many missiles on us. I don't like Putin, who seems a cross between a third world dictator and a Tsar, with enormous powers to wipe out opposition. And I didn't like the communism and don't like the aftermath. There's plenty more.

What the celebrity Stephen Fry (once described to me as 'a stupid person's view of what an intellectual is like') dislikes about Russia is the way they treat homosexuals, although it doesn't seem as bad as some Muslim countries that he never complains about. He wants us not to be allowed to enter the winter Olympics in Russia.

There's nothing wrong with this view or this prioritisation, except that Mr Fry is a celebrity and people, unaccountably, think his views important. For myself, I am not interested in Mr Fry's opinions, be they on Accounting standards, football or agriculture.

But David Cameron agreed to meet Mr Fry to discuss this, in a pub in the East End of London. This is naivety in the extreme. If I wanted to meet Mr Cameron in a pub, would he? Or you? Is his criterion, therefore, for meeting people to hear their views whether they are a celebrity? Is this the way we want government managed?

Cameron, or some very junior aide, should have told Fry that you don't get to exert personal influence on the Prime Minister just because you have been on the telly.

Footer

Oh dear. The football season has started, in the middle of August, if you please. Already we are seeing managers ashen faced with disappointment, men with impenetrable Scots accents celebrating their win, the whole lot united in taking themselves very seriously indeed.

For those who can't stand it, the fifth Ashes test starts on Wednesday, and there is still full five-day coverage on the BBC (even though the metropolitan trendy lefties in the Corporation have been trying to stop it for years). Listen to Aggers and Blowers and tell yourself that football is played in winter, and by some pretty silly people.

I yield to no one

I suppose it was inevitable that the test drilling in Sussex by a company involved in fracking would bring out a few 'C' list celebrities - the sort of people Joan Collins said would go to the opening of a root canal - but we are now treated with the views on drilling techniques of the designer Vivienne Westwood.

I yield to no one in my admiration for Ms Westwood's work in bringing modern fashion to the short sighted and colour blind, but she should stick at that. Neither she nor it would appear any of the other protesters know anything about this even though the BBC reports their uninformed opinions uncritically.

Egypt

Perhaps because of its size, Egypt seems to have replaced Syria in the consciousness of the West, even though the death toll in Syria is far greater and UN inspectors are going down there to investigate claims that both sides may have used chemical weapons.

Estimates of the Death toll in the latest violence in Cairo and Alexandria vary widely: the Muslim Brotherhood says thousands, the regime some 500. But it is clearly bad. The question before us is similar to that in Syria: what should we do?

The first thing is to call a spade a spade. Calling what is going on 'events' or 'regime change' is to ignore the facts. The elected government was rounded up by the military and replaced with one of their own. the military is funded at least in part by America so this is a Western-funded military coup.

That isn't to say that Mr Morsi hasn't deserved his fate. A coup can be justified if it is for the benefit of the people. Morsi lied in his electoral promises, fiddled the constitutional negotiations to suit his sharia based ideas, and put religious fervour ahead of the welfare of his people. Morsi was Egypt's first attempt at government after its Arab Spring, and it was a botched one.

What can happen now? The Army-backed government must present a new constitution to Egyptians, a secular one permitting all kinds of worship (10% of Egyptians are Christian) and it must conduct open elections on this. All we can do is tell them that we regard the present arrangement as transitional.

Discrimination

The American chat show hostess, Oprah Winfrey, says she wanted to look at handbags in a shop in
Zurich and the assistant refused to let her look at a particular one, sayng it was too expensive.

Naturally, she has claimed it was racial discrimination (she is black).

This is to misunderstand completely the nature of Switzerland. The assistant is probably trained to look at the way customers dress, and the girl probably thought Winfrey had previously confined her patronage to charity shops.

The only discrimination you find in Switzerland is against poor people.

They can't stand those.

Priceless Publicity

The other thing that has our lefty friends foaming at the mouth is a remark by UKIP MEP Godfrey
Bloom about foreign aid, to the effect that if you give money to 'Bongo Bongo Land' it ends up being spent on sunglasses, Ferraris and fighter jets.

Yesterday a particularly idiotic interview on the Today Programme conducted by Left-wing Jim Naughtie began with 'where is Bongo Bongo Land?' and later suggested that the British Aid Programme had helped eliminate an outbreak of polio in Sudan so it was OK.

Today the Guardian splutters away; Zoe Williams: 'Bigots like Bloom must not be tolerated'.

90% of listeners to the Today Programme, if not Readers of the Guardian Comment Pages, know exactly what is meant by Bongo Bongo Land: a third world country, quite possibly in sub-Saharan Africa. James Naughtie should try to get out more. It is not racist to suggest that, even with the excellent polio eradication programme, some of the money might have been creamed off by some princeling or warlord, nor that he might have enriched himself to the tune of a Ferrari and some sunglasses or indeed some military hardware to help his cause. That's what most people think happens to some (not all ) of the aid programme. And it is not racist to suggest that the aid programme should not be kept so high at a time of financial exigence.

I have met Godfrey Bloom a couple of times. He is blokey, the sort of person you would meet at the golf club, and I remember forming the impression that he was harmless, albeit not as amusing as he thought he was. What has happened here is the lefties taking themselves so seriously that they couldn't spot that Bloom was taking the Mickey, and getting some priceless publicity for his own party.

Predatory

Neil Wilson pleaded guilty to having sex with a child and owning images of child abuse. It is a story regrettably only too common.

But this one is different. During the course of the trial a barrister said the victim, a thirteen year old girl, was predatory and sexually experienced. The judge also described the victim as predatory and said there had been sex but that it had been instigated by her. He gave Wilson a suspended sentence.

Naturally the bien pensant left-wing media are up in arms.

Interestingly the barrister who said this was representing the prosecution. This hs been widely reported but not cmmented on. If a defence barrister thinks he has to attack the victim in order to help his client (this is not a defence, but can be mitigation) it may be regrettable but we cannot stop it, otherwise we are tampering with the law.

But why would the prosecution barrister say this? Unless he thought it, and felt it his duty to say it? And why would the judge repeat it? What if she was, in fact, at 13 years old, sexually experienced and predatory?

One doesn't like to think some things but they must, nevertheless, be thought.

Spain & Gibraltar

This year marked the three hundredth anniversary of the Treaty of Utrecht, under which Spain permanently ceded Gibraltar to Britain (it was following the end of the War of Spanish Succession). At least they can't claim, like Argentina with the Falklands, that they never gave it up.

Now the Spanish are threatening to charge £85 for a border crossing. So a European country is charging for the movement of goods and people but only to one nation - The Portuguese and French get in free of charge.

If this is permitted surely it marks the end of the European Union. Surely?

Silvio

I outline the disaster for Silvio Berlusconi in The Commentator.

Any Citizen would surely think he has to disappear from politics. Any lover of the spectacle of Italian politics will miss him.

But he's not quite finished yet.

Nice work

The Birth of the Young Prince George has been registered and his mother has described her profession as 'Princess of the United Kingdom'.

Nice work if you can get it, but is she a princess? And if she is, why go by the lesser title of Duchess?

All very mysterious.

The Beeb

Is it my imagination or is the BBC Sports department grossly overstaffed?

'And now it's time for Sport. Here's Roger Spode'

'Thanks Derek. And there's some exciting cricket. Here's John Snoad'

'Thanks, Roger. England are to play Australia in the third Test at Old Trafford. Here's Brian Toad'

'Thanks John, and we go over to Jason Wode at the ground. How's the atmosphere Jason?

'Thanks Brian, here's Bill Hoad who's been talking to some of the crowd....'

EU threat

The EU, without any consultation with member states, has declared it wants to operate spy drones, surveillance satellites and aircraft, under the control of mad-or-useless Baroness Ashton.

Britain can of course have no part of this, but it is still of concern that there is an undemocratic state on our borders willing to pose this sort of threat. Will we be paying through our taxes for the EU's bureaucrats to spy on us?

We clearly need to try to put a stop to this blatant usurping of power from member states. Ashton can no more be trusted with a drone than any other unelected self-aggrandising leader, such as Kim Jong-un.

égalité

Following the riots in French cities against the ban on the burqa, there is a strong political movement to go further and ban the headscarf.

Some people won't be amused.

JJ Cale

I was saddened to hear of the death of JJ Cale, a prolific songwriter and collaborator with just about everyone who matters. He was 74 and still had a lot to give

Jagger

Mick Jagger is 70 today and this blog sends its best wishes.

A interesting fact about Jagger is that he once wrote his autobiography but it was deemed too boring and he had to give the advance back.

The Commentator

After a short hiatus the Commentator is back. There's an article from me about Italian austerity and lots of other interesting pieces. Read it. It's free.

The barbecue

Central Italy, July. It had been 35C during the afternoon and by early evening it was just beginning to cool down. There wasn't a breath of wind. I had some lamb steaks marinading in herbs and at such times everything just tells you 'barbecue'.

Perhapas it's that little bit of the caveman in every male - because it's a man thing, isn't it?. It's only a very little bit of caveman in me, and usually well-hidden, but there I was with the raw meat (I hadn't actually killed the lamb, but, you know, I might have done). There's the fire you have laid yourself, the flames dying down to a satisfactory white heat, the fact that you attend to it standing up, looking competent. Yes, there's definitely something about it.

But now, today, I am emerging from the non-barbecue closet. I am coming out. I can't do it.

We usually only have one barbecue a year because it takes me 11 months to forget the personal humiliation of the exercise, but there comes a time, usually in July, when last year's events have been excised from my conscious mind and I'm up and at it. Like a caveman.

Finding the barbecue proved to be an early, confidence building success. It was underneath the strimmer. I brought it out and began the assembly procedure, as complex as the launch preparation for space travel. The pan or holder is round, it fits on to a tripod and the grill fits with a spigot into a hole in the bottom of the pan. But why only three legs? Every time I set it up it fell over on to the side with no leg. My partner, a mere girlie, what View from the Boundary would describe as 'someone of the female persuasion' fixed it. She's an engineer. It was probably something about the angle of incidence or reflection, or something.

Now the top, or business end. It wouldn't come out. The spigot on the grill thingy simply would not come out of the hole in the pan. Whilst for cooking this was how you wanted it, I knew I wasn't going to be able to get the charcoal in, which is, of course, a sine qua non. I pulled and twisted, twisted and pulled. I put it on the ground and, placing my foot on the pan, pulled with all my strength. No joy. I paused for breath. This was getting personal but I knew that the solution lay with brain rather than brawn. Did I tell you I went to Oxford? Holding the handles to the grilly bit, I wedged the circular pan under a stone table and jumped upwards. Some disturbance to the table and an unexpected pain in my right shoulder but no result. Then, perhaps injudiciously I gave the thing a hearty buffet against the trailer to the tractor (I am nothing of not rustic).

I should have told you that underneath the pan there is a sort of metal bar with a knob, for the technical, which regulates how far down the spigot can go and thus the height of the grill off the charcoal. I bent this, or rather the trailer did. So it was that when the girlie engineer, tired of the worsening invective, came to remove the grill and its spigot from the pan (probably something about Newton's third law) and I got the charcoal in, the grill would only descend to several inches off the charcoal. Tant pis. Charcoal, firelighters, matches and the caveman was ready to go.

Evening was descending by now and with it a slight breeze, so I can scarcely be blamed for not being able to light the firelighters. But I persisted and after the better part of a box of long matches I had a merry little blaze going. Of white, petroly things.

Obviously there are two types of charcoal: the regular sort and another which they have made non-inflammable. This was what I was using. So, more firelighters, more of a different type of charcoal, another box of matches and we were off. After the firelighters had expended I could see there was some action here, with the occasional spark illuminating the by now darkened sky. We just had to wait for it to be ready to cook. At least we wouldn't be disturbing the neighbours who would have gone to bed long ago.

I had been nibbling bits of bread to mop up the wine I had been pouring down, and we sat down, tipsy, at what seemed like the following day. And, do you know?, the food wasn't bad.

But I had lost my appetite.

Linguistic Correctness

I am indebted to the artist Robert Tilleard for pointing out that it is Brooks's Club of St. James's, not Brooks' Club of St. James'.

Checking with Fowler's Modern English Usage (1926 Edition) I find that leaving the extra 's' off was the early form, but it is only these days (or at least in 1926) done in Poetry and in reverential style. I distinctly remember being taught to leave it off, but then my old Headmaster, Walsham Temple Crewe Maynard, dated from pre-1926.

Incidentally, the spell-checker on the blog allows Brooks' but not Brooks's. But Fowler rules.

I like a bit of pedantry and have accordingly changed the blog title.

What's in a name?

Paul Harrison of Sky News: 'The Duke and Duchess will have had lists of girls' names and boys' names, so they'll have dispensed with the girls' names quite quickly.'

Phew! So it's not going to be called Mildred, then.

What about Eric? We haven't had a King Eric, even though it's an old and distinguished name.

No, Timothy. That's better. It means God fearing which keeps you on the straight and narrow, I can tell you.

Sorry, getting over-babied already. Let's get it over with.

Congrats

Only one item in the news today. Congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

The Daily Mail, predictably, virtually gives up the entire paper to it whilst the Guardian, perhaps equally predictably, has a Republican button to avoid all discussion of the matter.

I am still trying to find out why Catherine, married to a Prince and now the mother of one, is not a princess.

Trouble in the banlieue

The outskirts of Paris and several other French cities are in ferment after some heavy handed police

action against women wearing burqas.

In truth, as this blog pointed out at the time, this is an idiot law. The relationship between individual and state is of course different in France, it must surely jolt some long-relaxed French synapse that the state is now telling you what you can and can't wear.

People feel strongly about this, deeming it, wrongly I understand, part of their religion that women should be covered from head to toe. Westerners regard this as an imposition on Muslim women, but it scarcely helps the woman if, because of the ban, she is not allowed outside by her husband.

When they tried the first prosecution, the indicted woman turned up at the court wearing a burqa and was not allowed in because it was a public building.

Hollande should drop this, and blame it on Sarkozy.

Tortoises and hares

Violence continues in Northern Ireland, three days after what they call the 'Glorious Twelfth' (anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690).

Sometimes I think of the people of Northern Ireland as tortoises, creatures which have failed to evolve into the requirements of our times, unfitted to modern life without outside protection. And sometimes I think of them as hares, normal, viable creatures who go crazy only at a certain time of the year.

The present battles with the police (I am not talking about them fighting each other) were because the Protestant contingent wanted to march through a catholic area, an act of pure provocation. They make tribal signs and are aggressive, even to children, hoping to start a fight.

The police rightly banned this, so they are chucking petrol bombs at the people risking their lives to protect them.

I'd ban all marches as incitement to violence, but they claim it's tradition.

It will be the same next year.

Mandela

Congratulations to Nelson Mandela who is due to be discharged from hospital.

I shudder to think what it must be like in a hospital bed, with scores of reporters and cameramen outside waiting for you to die. I can only say it would give me a renewed will to live.

The news sleuths will presumably now depart for the UK to annoy the Duchess of Cambridge, who is due to give birth around now, and Mandela can depart this vale of tears in privacy.

Enfants de la Patrie

Today is La Fete Nationale, known as Bastille Day everywhere except France. It used to be that the President would give a sort of State of the Union address but that seems unlikely from Hollande, and indeed his predecessor didn't do it either.

For things are not good. Hollande is the most unpopular president ever, and the stories are that his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the face of weak leadership of his UMP party, may be making a comeback. France is back in recession and the populace seems increasingly unsettled.

In truth I think the problem is that France doesn't know who it is or what it is. Is it a part of the modern world or the old? And, perhaps more important, is it part of Northern Europe or Southern Europe?

The response to globalisation seems to have been to ignore it, but it is not going away. The response to Europe's economic  crisis seems to have been to spend more. Hollande lowered the retirement age when every other country is raising it.

I think a period of national self-examination is needed but that nobody wants it. Things are not that bad and others - the UK - are having difficulty too.

Despite it all, this blog wishes the Grenouilles well

Human Rights

The continuing hoo-ha about life sentences is obscuring the real issue.

For myself I am not at all sure that we should be sending people to prison without the hope of parole - I always imagine it might be me - and I don't think we would lose much if, as the European Court of Human Rights says, the sentence had to be reviewed every 25 years.

The big question is this: who do we want making laws in the UK? The Court is staffed by judges from such rights-observing countries as Bulgaria, Turkey, Serbia and Moldova, and they have overruled a decision by the British Parliament.

We don't want this, surely?

2000 today

This is the 2,000th post on my blog. It has received just over 91,000 page views.

Thanks to everyone who has read it
Tim

Wimbledon

The nation was so obsessed with the performance of Andy Murray that you could have started a war without registering interest. In fact I am sure I spotted the smiling face of Abu Qatada on Henman Hill, come back for one last freebie.

David Cameron who, despite appearances, is hoping to be re-elected in 2015, predictably said that Murray should be knighted. He is 26 years old, plays tennis all day, has never risked his life for anyone or saved anyone else's life, and is remarkably well paid for such a trivial existence.

The British honours system has been turned into a political plaything, one of the prime examples being the Olympic Games last year. In my view it needs to be cancelled and then re-evaluated. No one should get any kind of honour for doing a paid job well (particularly civil servants who are largely lazy and surplus to requirements). Also excluded should be sportsmen and pop stars (Sir Elton John, Sir Cliff Richard! Please! Bruce Forsyth!).

Mr Murray should be encouraged to continue his glittering, multi-million pound career. Nothing more.

Another cold one

30C in southern England today, and it was only about 3 weeks ago that the Met Office was predicting a cool summer.

This blog proved more accurate (see here). Our forecasts are made by looking at what the Met Office has to say and assuming the opposite.

Human Rights

What would it take for you to don tight trousers, a stripey T-shirt and a straw hat and punt a narrow

boat full of vulgar Russian tourists along a smelly canal while singing 'O sole mio' for the seventh time that day?

For me it would be a skin full of liquor, I don't mind telling you.

However Venice's gondoliers are to face alcohol and drug tests, following a naked initiation ceremony in the Grand Canal.

Poor blighters. I think I see a human rights case here.

PS when I say alcohol tests following a naked initiation ceremony I don't mean that as a routine there will be a naked initiation ceremony then an alcohol test (although it's scarcely something you'd do sober), I mean there were reports of such an initiation and the do-gooders thought there should be tests.

IOR

Not Eey-ore, although it is a bit of a donkey, but the Vatican Bank Istituto per le Opere di Religione. find out what's happening there in my article in The Commentator (it's free).

Not many affected

The prime example of a headline affecting most people the least used to be 'Earthquake in Chile, not many dead' but I am sure 'Belgian king abdicates' is up there with the best of them.

Apparently the old boy - he's 79, eight years younger than our Queen - thinks he's too old and infirm to carry on. He will hand over to his son Philippe, Duke of Brabant (which is in Holland).

Actually Albert II remains famous for one thing: the opening paragraph of the European Constitution contains the list of signatories, so the first words of this bogus document are 'His Majesty, King of the Belgians'. How he thought he was helping his subjects by signing it, God knows.

Anyway, happy retirement, Albert. Bring on the next one, who I reckon will be the last monarch of this quite unnecessary country.

Land of the Free

The fourth of July and America celebrates..er..whatever. Oh, getting rid of us Brits.

Sometimes I wonder if they made the right decision. The President failed to achieve any of his targets in his first term and, as soon as he was re-elected, became a lame duck President, which must be some sort of record.

Obama has still not got his troops back home, has not closed Guantanamo Bay and has financed a coup d'état in Egypt, although he is not allowed to refer to it as a coup because that would mean he had to stop the money going to the Egyptian army. In Syria he has refused to rule anything out and refused to rule anything in.

His sole success appears to be stirring up public opinion against Britain in the form of BP. One cannot help thinking the leader of the free world desperately needs a leader itself.

Happy holidays to the Home of the Brave!

Number 28

Croatia is the new member of the European Union. It joined Yesterday, 1st July, so it has had a day to get its begging letter written.

Croatia has a population about half that of London, and it is poorer than the average in Europe, so it will be expecting some handouts. In fact I hope all this was sorted a while back because there isn't much left.

Croatia has had an interesting history. It waited 400 years for the Austro-Hungarian Empire to implode, and now after an unpleasant period of ultra-nationalism during WWII followed by the quasi-communism of Tito, and the unpleasant Balkan conflict,  it now wants to hitch its star to another fading, bureaucracy-ridden wagon.

It shouldn't have to wait 400 years for this one to go belly-up, though.

The Brussels files

News that the USA has been spying on the European Union has caused widespread concern. Not here: this blog believes the USA has every right to spy on its enemies, and there is no doubt which category the EU is in. It's just that it isn't worth the effort.

Fortunately we have been able to obtain a transcript of some of the intercepted proceedings:

A secret room in Brussels

Jean-Pierre Dampierre (FR): under rien circonstances can the detested Anglo-Sassons be allowed to destroy the European social model

Humphrey Eurobloke (UK): we're Anglo Saxons

Dampierre: France is in solidarity with its European brothers but you have only yourselves to blame

Ent van der Plonke (Netherlands): isn't the social model making our people poorer? Isn't it true we can't afford it?

Gianbattista Bastardo (Italy): Il social cohesion, bravissimo!

Splot Splot (Romania): can we have just a little guarantee for our banking system?

Split Split (Slovenia): and perhaps some more social funds

Heinrich Turdfelde (Ruler): Nein nein! We believe in compromise here in Europe. We will keep the social model and you will all starve!

Fighting breaks out, and the Commission issues an Emergency statement promising to surpass North Korea in economic efficiency by 2025.

Really, the Americans needn't have bothered. 

Egypt

Events in Cairo seem particularly worrying. I think it is a long way from some commentators' suggestions of looming civil war, but the violence seems to have no end in sight at the moment.

What should one think? I don't much like the look of the Muslim Brotherhood and its crony Mr Morsi, who last year issued a declaration preventing anyone from challenging his decrees, if you please. I don't like the regression into Islamism and the loss of women's rights that entails.

At the same time one has to take a step back and remember that Mr Morsi was elected, and only a year ago. Without a doubt, in my mind, the Egyptians have made a mistake and elected the wrong man, but we have plenty of examples of that in the mature democracies (My God, don't we?). Morsi would seem to have more legitimacy than, say David Cameron's coalition, which did not present itself to the electorate and for which no one voted.

Another good example of a Middle Eastern problem we should keep out of (before Cameron and Hollande decide we should invade).

Brady

Most people of my age remember the Moors murders in the 1960s. Five children were kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. It was all the more shocking then because no one had ever heard of this sort of thing. Perhaps we're now used to it.

Hindley died ten years ago, and it is said that they opened champagne at the Home Office where they had received regular appeals for her release, having to refuse on grounds of society's revulsion at the crime (any Home Secretary releasing her would have been hounded out of his job).

Ian Brady was declared insane in 1985 and is being held in a mental institution. He is on hunger strike (some evidence denies this) and being fed through a tube. He says he is not insane and wants to be transferred to a normal prison where, it is reported, he believes he would be able to kill himself.

I don't know if Brady is insane. There are some crimes so awful one would have thought you would have had to be insane to commit them and this is surely up for consideration on that ground. They made tape recordings of the tortured children and a chap I knew had spoken to a barrister who had heard the tapes, who said it would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Brady has never disclosed the whereabouts of Keith Bennet's body, although he has confessed to the crime. It is believed he is withholding the information in order to manipulate the proceedings.

The deal I would make is that if he discloses information leading to the recovery of Keith's remains, for which the family have been waiting for half a century, he should be transferred to an ordinary prison and, yes allowed to die of that is what he wants. No remains, no transfer, and until then I believe we have a duty to keep him alive.

Ignorance

The news broke a couple of days ago that 21 British and Irish had been given suspended sentences in Albufeira, southern Portugal, for conducting or witnessing illegal gambling.

The event took place in The Yorkshire Pub, and it was claimed that the gambling was a bingo game, being played for biscuits. There was a report on the matter on the Today programme on BBC Radio, with the guffawing presenters clearly taking the side of the Brits and Irish.

I thought it very silly of 'Today' (I think it was Sarah Montague and Evan Davis, but I may be maligning them).

What had happened was this: Portugal is in very severe economic difficulty and its people are suffering. There is a foreign pub and people, speaking English, playing a foreign game which is illegal. All forms of games of chance in a public place are illegal in Portugal without a licence, which is not much different to Britain, where you also need a licence for singing. The police were not to know, and we still don't know, whether the biscuits won were quietly exchanged for money later on, like chips in a casino.

One of the landlady's complaints was that she had to wait in the police station until the interpreter arrived. She had lived and worked in Portugal for nine years without having the common politeness to learn the Language.

This was a piece of common, ignorant barbarism by mulish, rude people who, as guests in a country, make no effort either to integrate or even understand the feelings of their hosts. It is, alas, all too common here in Italy. As far as I'm concerned they're lucky the sentences were suspended.

Mark Harper

It is reported that Mark Harper, the Conservative Immigration Minister, has broken a foot while dancing on a table in Soho.

He says his wife was with him, but she did not break any bones because she is a better dancer.

This blog will be keeping an eye on Mr. Harper, who may well turn out to be the only interesting person in the entire government.

Snowden

In most cases containing the words 'shocking revelations' this blog is on the side of a free press and of openness. I found it important recently, for example, that the world should know the extent to which Britain and America spy on their own citizens, and important to know that the clever British have managed to bug the fibre optic network and even listen to the conversations of international leaders who have come for a conference.

What we do about it is another matter, but it is important to know.

This does not mean that Mr Snowden, for example, should be exonerated. We cannot have a blanket amnesty for anyone who betrays his country; I suppose even Klaus Fuchs' betrayal of our nuclear secrets to Russia could have been described as 'in the public interest'.

No, Mr Snowden must, if arrested by the US, be dealt with by the law. This blog salutes him, however, as being someone prepared to risk his life - or at least life imprisonment - for what he believes in.

One aspect of the story I particularly liked was that it was leaked that Snowden would be on a particular flight from Moscow to Cuba. The world's press booked tickets on the same flight only to find he wasn't on it. As it took off the tannoy announced there would be no alcohol served on the flight.

Just imagine: dozens of journalists on expenses on a long haul flight with no booze. Someone must have a sense of humour.   

Silvio's woes

Last week Silvio Berlusconi failed to have struck out a conviction relating to his Mediaset empire which involved a four year conviction for him and a five year ban from public office.

He is appealing a one year sentence for publishing an illegally obtained wiretap and is about to be tried for buying a senator (sic).

Today the Ruby case pronounced a sentence of 7 years' imprisonment (the prosecution had only asked for 6) and a lifetime ban from holding public office.

Another day at the office for Silvio.

Follow the Berlusconi story in more depth in my articles for the excellent Commentator internet magazine.

The NHS 2

Further to my previous post on the NHS, here is a good example of what is wrong.

The Guardian's headline screams 'Doctors vote no confidence in Hunt' (Jeremy Hunt, you will remember, is the Health Secretary. This blog had no confidence in him here.)

When you first read this you think it is awful for the Government. The Doctors, who know things, like how to cure a cold (oh, sorry, no they don't) or what to do about your cancer (send you to a specialist) must surely be right in their judgment.

But no, I'm afraid this is completely irrelevant. Mr Hunt is not answerable to the doctors, nor even to the patients, but to the general public (ie not just people who are ill, but people who might be ill in the future but are nevertheless paying for it all). It is not hard to conceive of a circumstance where the interests of the doctors and the public are at odds with one another (continuation of the NHS in its present form is an obvious example) and so it would serve the interests of the public if Hunt were behaving in such a fashion that the doctors had no confidence in him whatsoever.

Let's drop the politicians from all this and get down to who is doing things, good and bad. There's some good. But plenty of bad.

The NHS

I have often written about the disaster that is our National Health Service. I should stress that the problem is not a technical or funding issue but a structural one.

The latest symptom to confront us is that the Care and Quality Commission, the body established to oversee standards in the NHS and to publish any lapses in those standards, has itself been concealing information, covering up a case where several infants died unexpectedly in a hospital the CQC had approved.

Here is one example of where it needs to change: accountability. When questions are asked about what is going on up pops the Health Secretary, a politician. There should be clear managerial lines, visible, and the sole task of the Health Secretary, other than approving the budget, should be to hire and fire those managers. Instead the Health Service has become a political football, the politician expressing shock that things could be like that, but nobody questioning the managers.

And I've said it before and I'll say it again, the public gets what it deserves. Promulgating the nonsense that it is the best in the world just perpetuates the system under which these disasters happen. And the next time you hear someone say 'our NHS' they need to be vilified, publicly and noisily. It is not ours; we pay for it, of course, but it is an organisation run chiefly for the benefit of its employees.

We need to close it down and start again.

Who are you?

Boris Johnson

Apparently at the recent G8 summit President Obama three times referred to the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer as Jeffrrey (Jeffrey Osborne is a soul singer).

Serves the little blighter right: his name is Gideon, not George, which is instantly recognisable and if he hadn't tried this new one I'm sure the President would have remembered.

The same goes for Robert Johnson, mayor of London

James Gandolfini

Naturally one sympathises with his loved ones on James Gandolfini's death, but we are getting all

kinds of quasi-obituary tosh about him being a great actor.

We bought the DVD of the Sopranos and I listened to him mumbling his way through his lines for about ten minutes. I altered the volume and the tone but for all I could grasp it could have been in Suahili without subtitles.

Perhaps it was good, but I threw it away.

Expect the best

Apparently the Meteorological Office is forecasting years of wet summers for Britain.

Time to invest in the new shades and the Factor 50.

On we go

In Istanbul it is said that the Government has put chemical agents in the water cannon.

Perhaps Mr Cameron is going to arm the rebel Turks as well.

Txts Dn Gd 4 Rd sfty

Incredible, but usage of the text message in Italy has declined, by 4%, for the first time ever. Italians send nearly 100 billion texts a year, around four texts per person per day. Apparently they are using message apps on smartphones.

Or perhaps they are doing less driving.

Drop the military

Most countries have a national day, when they became independent or the new constitution was
signed or whatever. Britain of course doesn't; the nearest thing we have is the celebration of the Queen's official birthday which took place yesterday (her real birthday was in April).

With it goes the trooping of the colour, soldiers dressed in camp uniforms marching up and down, riding horses and setting off antique cannons.

And I just want to ask: why?

Why do we have to have soldiers at every bloody event - royal weddings, funerals God knows what? Is the military the only thing we have to celebrate? We lost the last two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is there nothing else from centuries of culture and industry that is good, that we can be proud of? Why are all the royal family in the military, and not doing useful things in industry or commerce? In the picture even Princess Anne is in uniform (the only one who thinks the same way as me is Andrew who looks like a Swiss hotel manager*).

Let the national celebrations centre on art, music, literature, industry. Let's show the rest of the world that we are not just a military force which conquered most of them but a civilised, modern nation. And let's stop living in the past.

*Nothing wrong with that, of course

A moderate

The election of Hassan Rouhani as President of Iran will be treated by many as good news; he is described as a moderate.

But what does 'moderate' mean, in a country run by raving nutcases? The only people allowed to stand in the election were those approved by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was quite happy with former President Ahmadinejad's statement that they intended to wipe Israel off the map, which would cause a nuclear holocaust.

And Khamenei is going to be there for a bit. He is a sprightly 74, younger than Berlusconi and a lot younger than our own Queen.

Rouhani may be what we would call a moderate, he may be what Khamenei would call a moderate (no nerve gas to be used in Israel, just a nuclear warhead or two) or he may be playing the long game. The West must treat him according to his deeds: if he says that whilst disagreeing with Israel he has no plans to destroy it and allows full inspection of the nuclear facilities, we should withdraw our sanctions. Until then the Iranian semi-democracy must be taught that aggression does not pay.

PS It is being said that he doctored his CV, and that rather than going to Glasgow University he went to the Polytechnic. Let's hope he is a little more accurate about his country's nuclear capability.

The BBC

The Greeks have closed down their public broadcaster ERT because it is too expensive. Oh.

They say it is 'a unique example of extravagant spending and lack of transparency'. OH.

The Greeks pay £43 per head for ERT. Oh?

The Government says that a new broadcaster will emerge, dramatically slimmed down. Ohhhh?

Number of resignations at the BBC after it blew £100m on a useless computer project: 0. Oh.

It all sounds like an attractive idea, doesn't it? A new slimmed down BBC would have its newsgathering operations intact, but have only 1 TV station and 2 radio stations, for which, apart from news, it would commission programmes.

What isn't right about Greece is that it is going off air completely, albeit, they say, for a while. ERT wasn't terribly independent or terribly good but losing the state broadcaster has democratic implications. The Troika, of the IMF, EU and European Commission should immediately move to deny that this was anything to do with them (assuming it was nothing to do with them). Otherwise they will get the blame in Greece.

Cameron

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, is reported to have said in a speech that Britain's membership of the EU is in our national interest.

Now, he is entitled to his view, although I, like the majority of the British people, don't share it, but where he is a complete bloody idiot is that he is supposed to be negotiating a new set of arrangements with Europe. They know from this and other pronouncements that he is in favour of the costly undemocratic shambles and are therefore unlikely to concede any points to him: unless he can say 'We will leave if we don't achieve the following' they will just roll him over.

Imagine his speech as we move towards the referendum in 2017, with his reasonable tones: 'Through difficult negotiation, standing up firmly for Britain's interests, I have managed to obtain an opt-out for Britain from the Length of Courgettes Directive, 1982, and I do think this is a good basis on which to go to the British people and say "Let us go forward together with our European partners...." '

What worries me is that some people might fall for it.

The Chookie Enbra

The Duke of Edinburgh, this blog's favourite royal, is in hospital today for his 92nd birthday.

We wish him well.

Europe again

Latest news:

Bad debts at Italy's banks are 22% worse than last year.

President Hollande says the euro crisis is over.

Well, that's all right then.

Bad taste crime

The first I heard about the ghastly murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, a couple of weeks ago, was that a man wearing a 'Help for Heroes' T-shirt had been beheaded in an attack in Woolwich.

At that moment Deyka Ayan Hassan, a 21 year old student, tweeted that 'to be honest, if you wear a Help for Heroes T-shirt you deserve to be beheaded'.

Now, the best that can be said of Ms Hassan's remark is that it was in dramatically poor taste. She received, understandably, a barrage of complaints, some, less understandably, threats of violence. She complained to the police and was herself arrested. In passing I would mention that also in today's papers is the story of a father turning in his son's drug dealer to police and being arrested for kidnapping the aggrieved pusher. The best thing with the British police is to have nothing to do with them whatsoever.

Anyway, Deyka Hassan has now been convicted and sentenced. Note that the magistrates did not dispute the timing - that she did not know that it was a soldier - and she was not accused of or charged with inciting violence.

Ms Hassan was convicted of 'sending a malicious electronic message'. Can you be malicious to someone who is dead? Did you know that this was a crime? Is bad taste a crime? Or rank bloody stupidity (how many could we catch with that one)? Can I call the British Foreign Secretary a dangerous fool to his face but not send him an email to that effect?

I think we need to have a look at this.

Ninety plus

In hospital in their respective countries are Prince Philip, 91 and Nelson Mandela, 94.

Seems you just can't trust these nonagenarian public figures to look after themselves.

Silly

The Tory MP Nadine Dorries is being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner for
appearing on a TV programme called 'I'm a celebrity, get me out of here'. She was earlier banned temporarily by her party.

Here is my analysis of the rights and wrongs of the matter:

Silly woman, silly programme, silly treatment by her party, silly investigation.

The Standards commissioner could suspend her from parliament, which would mean the people of mid-Bedfordshire were without representation, hardly a plus.

Let's just call her Silly.

Syria

The news from Syria continues to be grim. Government troops aided, some say led, by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, have retaken Qusair. France says that there is unassailable evidence that the Syrian Government has used nerve gas, but the UN delegation say that both sides have used chemical weapons. Both sides.

The protagonists are now: the Assad regime, Lebanon, Iran and Russia on one side; assorted rebels, al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other. It is said that the Gaza terrorist group, Hamas, is supporting the rebels, largely on sectarian (Sunni) grounds, even though they get their armaments from (Shia) Iran.

It's a hell of a mess.

At Prime Minister's Questions David Cameron was at pains to point out that there has as yet been no decision taken to arm the rebel groups. Let's hope this is a bit of back-tracking from his trigger happy Foreign Secretary, who seems determined to get us involved in a war which really is none of our business.

Even handed

Congratulations to Francesco de Salazar, who in last week's local elections in Rome stood in the Second Municipality for the Centre Right and in the Twelfth Municipality for the Centre Left.

He won both seats.

You might think that a political system which is capable of producing such an outcome (it is not illegal) had a means of resolving it, but no. De Salazar could have carried on, collecting two salaries, but admitting what he called 'an error committed in good faith', he has resigned both.

De Salazar's statement suggests that he candidated himself accidentally for one of the parties. Alas, we shall never know which.

The last days of the Empire

Recent news from Europe:

Britain is to be taken to court for not giving arriving migrants the same benefits as people who live in Britain and have paid taxes for them. Countries which do not offer any benefits will not suffer in this way.

Next year vacuum cleaners are to be less powerful, for energy saving reasons. Of course if you are slovenly and only use a vacuum cleaner once a year you will not be given any credit.

And we are paying them to come up with these rules which govern us.

I just ask: how long are we going to put up with this?

The Rule of Law

Eighty or ninety Afghan nationals are being held without trial, without even being charged, at the British base at Camp Bastion. They wouldn't even allow the detainees to be represented by a lawyer until a British lawyer threatened to take the British Government to court.

To have any effect whatsoever on the prospects of returning this benighted country to the rule of law we must first show that we understand it ourselves.

This puts us down on the level of the Americans (Guantanamo) and the terrorists themselves.

And our trigger happy Foreign Secretary wants to have a pop at the Syrians.

The meaning of loyalty

Tesco, the supermarket chain, has announced an anti-obesity campaign. I'm sure I don't have to remind you, but this is a supermarket. Not a government department.

The idea is that Tesco uses the information available to it on its loyalty card to look at what you are eating and....what? There have been hints that it might post healthy recipes to its 'loyal' customers who have been eating the 'wrong' things: 'Hi! You've been buying quite a few cupcakes recently. Would you like a recipe for grilled courgettes with lettuce?' Or will there be a little hiatus at the check-out as the cashier announces 'I'm afraid you're limited to two pizzas a week at the moment - getting a bit tubby aren't we?' Or the registered letter to your home 'YOU FAT COW! YOU'RE STUFFING YOURSELF WITH CALORIES AND YOU HAVE AN ARSE LIKE A HIPPO! DON'T COME BACK UNLESS YOU'RE GOING TO BUY SOME SALAD!'.

So you shop at Tesco and sufficiently regularly to have one of these loyalty cards, then they use some of the profit they have made out of you to tell you what to eat.

This looks to me very much like one of those occasions where it would have been better to remain silent.

News from France

Hundreds of thousands of people protested in Paris against homosexual marriage, some, presumably feeling strongly about the subject, fighting with the riot police. A popular slogan chanted by the crowds was 'Hollande, your mother isn't called Robert'.

The top prize at the Cannes Film Festival went to a three hour saga about two lesbian lovers which includes an explicit 15 minute sex scene.

I suppose it's all right as long as you don't want to get married. Let's think about that.

The way the money goes

It is reported that the BBC has lost £100 million on a computer project, trying to digitise its programme content. I expect this was run by one of those organisations which calls itself a management consultant but which is in fact just a group of programmers and slick salesmen. They use language like 'driving change' and 'optimising outcomes' and I expect the BBC trendies fell for it hook, line and sinker. Even so, it's hard to see how they got the sum up to £100 million without any checks to see if just some of it might conceivably be being wasted.

This is another disaster for the BBC, and just look at the sackings!...oh...in fact, none.

They have however managed to spend money hiring left-wing Lord Hall as Director General, left-wing Ian Katz, former deputy editor of the BBC's favourite newspaper, the Guardian, as editor of Newsnight, and left-wing James Purnell, former Labour cabinet minister as head of 'strategy and digital' on a salary reported to be around £300,000 a year. Mr Purnell doesn't seem to have resigned his post following this calamity on his watch.

Tedious

You may have heard about an extraordinary piece of nonsense, even by the standards of the European Union, concerning olive oil.

The practice of restaurants offering you little bowls or jugs of olive oil is to be banned, just in case it isn't very nice olive oil, even if the menu didn't say whether it was nice or nasty, Italian or Algerian. All olive oil will have to be in single disposable bottles which can't be tampered with so you know what you are getting. This is great news for the big producers but terrible for the small ones, where a restaurant might choose to put out its own or a small local artisanal product (I am just such a producer myself).

Here's what our Prime Minister David Cameron said: 'This is exactly the sort of area the European Union needs to get right out of, in my view'.

Fair enough, but it now transpires that many countries were going to oppose this and could have stopped it but that Britain, among others, abstained at the last minute, letting it through. Yes, Britain. Mr Hypocrite Cameron said 'Our argument was bound up with a whole set of  arguments we were having about rules of origin and the rest of it and I won't go into the tedious complexities.'

Thanks, Matey, but I should like you to go into the 'tedious complexities'. I should like to know why this happened that we approved something even though the Prime Minister was against it (it is being said that it was some junior civil servant who, I bet, hasn't been sacked). And I should like to know why the PM allowed himself to criticise it when he had nodded it through.

Is this how most of our laws are passed?

Good grief.

PS I now learn that the European Commission is withdrawing the measure on the grounds that it is unpopular. Suggestions that they are considering 1,429,532 other measures on similar grounds are probably wishful thinking.

Tory splits

The party Mr Johnson wants to lead, The Conservatives, seems hopelessly divided. Last night Mr Cameron had to rely on the Labour Party to get his legislation, on gay marriage, through.

I don't think it is impossible for the Tories to recover - they have emerged from such schisms before - but nor do I think, as some newspapers have suggested, that they are 'split down the middle'. It seems to me that the activists and supporters, the party in the country, know pretty well where they stand, on marriage, Europe, immigration and so on, and that their representatives in parliament are by and large in the same place (it should be noted that whilst there have been rebellions of around half the parliamentary party, the large numbers of cabinet and junior ministers, PPS's and bag carriers, known as the payroll vote, aren't allowed to rebel, even if they think the same as the rebels).

What is splitting the party is Mr. Cameron and a small coterie of advisers who are closet social democrats. Cameron was doubted by many in 2005 but made leader because they thought he was a winner. In the 2010 General Election he missed the greatest open goal in political history and seems to be celebrating this feat by going off on a frolic of his own, employing as party chairman an old university friend who thinks the party's supporters are 'swivel-eyed loons'.

There is, just, time to get rid of Mr. Cameron, although I suspect that his obvious replacement, Mr Johnson (see below) might be found out within a few months. Probably their best bet is to go into the election with their fingers crossed and afterwards have a good clear-out. Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, is my tip.

Alexander....the truth

No, not the Macedonian warrior king but the politician Alexander Johnson, who calls himself Boris.

For some time now newspapers have wanted to publish news of a child he fathered with an art dealer, but they were subject to a gagging order. The Court of Appeal has now ruled. The Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Dyson, said:

‘The core information in this story, namely that the father had an adulterous affair with the mother, deceiving both his wife and the mother’s partner, and that the child, born about nine months later, was likely to be the father’s child, was a public interest matter which the electorate was entitled to know when considering his fitness for high public office.’

'It is fanciful to expect the public to forget the fact that a man who is said to be the baby’s father, and who is a major public figure, has fathered a child after a brief adulterous affair (not for the first time).

‘The mother accepted in cross-examination that any woman who embarked on an affair with the father was “playing with fire” and that such an affair was bound to attract “very considerable media attention”.’

Now, I don't want to be too old fashioned. I know that people stray; relationships, which once seemed watertight, fall apart, but I do think that a person's conduct of his or her private life is relevant when the electorate consider 'fitness for public office' (and Johnson wants a much higher office than that he currently holds). I might think, in fact I do think, that a man who treats his marriage vows in such a cavalier way might treat in similar fashion the undertakings he makes to me as an elector. This is at least the second time he has done this, on another occasion, it is said, paying for the woman to have an abortion. We are not talking about him sitting down with his wife and deciding that they should go their separate ways (despite having children of their own); we are talking about him cheating. His horrified wife threw him out of the family home when she discovered. It is as if Mr Johnson, like Leona Helmsley who said 'taxes are for little people', thought these vows were something for others, perhaps his wife, to obey. It looks as if he thought it was beneath him.

That is why it is right that this has come out and that is why I would not vote for Mr Johnson, or a party led by him.

Euro-rubbish

I have often thought that 'Eurovision' suggests that there is a common TV channel which we all, Estonians, Bulgarians and Maltese, are listening to together. Of course there isn't and we're not. It is just a singing competition which usefully, for a Eurosceptic like me, highlights our differences.

Many countries do their best not to win this ..er.. prestigious event because the winner has to put the show on next year and it is expensive. British voters are unlikely to want public money spent on anything beginning with 'Euro'.

Our technique for not winning, which distinguishes us from other nations, is to field a has-been. Last year Engelbert Humperdinck, a septuagenarian who wasn't even good listening in the 1960s, came triumphantly last. This year I thought we were taking a bit of a risk putting up Bonny Tyler, who used to have a powerful, smoky voice, like a female Rod Stewart. But....she is in her sixties, not many people remember her and the voice has gone a bit. She came 19th, which was a bit too close for comfort. Denmark won it, with a pretty 20 year old singer and a bland song.

Who should have won? No doubt about it, Greece, with the attractively named Koza Mostra and the intriguing 'Alcohol is Free'.

 

But the Greeks can't afford to stage the competition, either.

I yield to no one

Angelina Jolie, the actress, has written a letter to the New York times outlining how and why she has had a mastectomy.

I don't want this.

It's not just that it's too much information (although it is), it's why she did it. Ms Jolie sees herself as a role model who can help other women in similar circumstances.

i don't see it that way. For me it is all of a piece with Bono, a singer, shouting at politicians about children in the Amazon rainforest, or George Clooney demanding to address the United Nations (in one of their only sensible decisions in decades, they refused to hear him).

I yield to no one in my respect for Ms Jolie as an actress; perhaps she is a good one (although I have a suspicion she isn't) and she must, of all people, realise that there is a difference between Mother Theresa and the actress hired to play her in a film (I'm sure Ms Jolie is too attractive to get the part, I am speaking figuratively).

I want Ms Jolie to be an actress, nothing more. If she uses some of her income to help women with breast cancer, that is excellent. We do not need as a standard bearer for a serious problem someone who for a living pretends to be something she is not.

Game on!

With regard to the Prime Minister's in and out running in respect of a referendum on Europe, a memorable quote from Michael, Lord Forsyth

'David Cameron's position is that he is trying to persuade the golf club to play tennis, but that if they refuse, he will continue to play golf'

I expect that's clear, isn't it?

Helpful friends

I have mentioned several times in this blog that President Obama does not like the United Kingdom or its people and that we should act accordingly.

Now he wants us to stay in the EU. We remember Henry Kissinger saying 'when I want to speak to Europe who do I call?' It is convenient for America to have all these allies and semi-allies (I am thinking of the French here) grouped under one umbrella.

What I often say to Americans who promote this is, OK, imagine America as part of a large grouping, say, including Canada, Central and South America. The grouping is run by unelected bureaucrats (because no one trusts local politicians; people like congressmen and senators, they're biased in favour of their own nationality) and the whole thing is managed from a neighbouring small country, let's say Guatemala. America has to show the Federal budget to Guatemala before it goes to Congress, and it may be returned with restrictions on what it can spend its own money on. Hot dogs have to be of a certain size (no bigger than in Mexico, no smaller than in Peru) and have a controlled amount of mustard. Oh, and America has to pay billions each year to be a member of such a club.

Don't like it, Barry? then remain silent.

Another one!

The cabinet minister Michael Gove has said in an interview that if there were a referendum on the subject tomorrow, he would vote to leave the EU.

I came to this conclusion in the autumn of 1991 and was branded a swivel-eyed xenophobe.

By people like Michael Gove.

Avoidance and the duck

At a sort of pre-meeting of G8 finance ministers prior to the G8 summit there has been an undertaking to do something about tax avoidance. The meeting was in Aylesbury and no one will be surprised that they look as if they are going to duck the issue (sorry).

I get confused and alarmed at all the nonsense spoken about tax avoidance, which is of course perfectly legal (when it is illegal it is called 'evasion'). So it's rather like being persecuted for driving at 69mph in a 70mph limit. 'And to cap it all the swine Hedges had a particularly accurate speedometer on his car. If that isn't cheating I don't know what is'.

We pay the amount of tax the Treasury tells us to pay or we are subject to the criminal law. Sometimes big companies do a deal with the Revenue before setting up. Recently the Chancellor did a deal with the makers of the new Star Wars film, so that it can be made in Britain. Are they tax avoiders? Is someone evil f he pays a little bit more into his pension scheme, thereby paying less tax?

One of the common schemes for avoiding tax is transfer pricing. This is one of the accusations against Starbucks coffee. The coffee is owned by a company in a low tax area and sells it into Britain for a high price, such that the profit accrues in the low tax area. Sneaky? Then why does the government allow it? Several countries, including Germany, I think, don't allow this. We do, because we want these multinationals trading in our country.

Now the multinational always has the threat to trade elsewhere, just as the Star Wars people threatened to film elsewhere. So for a co-ordinated action we are going to have to standardise the rules, between Germany, America, France, the Netherlands Antilles and so on.

Not really likely. An Aylesbury duck.

Joy in Heaven

Two dramatic changes of heart. The first from former German Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine, one of the architects of the euro, who now declares it ought to be broken up.

The second is from Nigel Lawson former British Chancellor, who believed Britain could never conquer inflation unless it joined the euro. He now states not only that we shouldn't be in the euro, but that we should leave the European Union.

'Joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth'

Syria warning

In my post on Syuria a few days ago I mentioned that there was evidence that chemical weapons had been used but no  proof as to who had fired them. Now, a UN human rights observer says there is some evidence that they were fired by the rebels, the people the British and French are determined to give more weaponry to, and who contain among their number groups affiliated to al-Qaeda.

Really, we must keep out of this, before it gets even worse.

Andreotti

There is something about elder statesmen that everyone seems to respect. When, say, Dennis Healy
dies, people will remember his good points, not the fact that we had to go begging to the IMF to bail us out.

With Giulio Andreotti, who has died aged 94, this may not be so easy. He was Prime Minister of Italy three times, for a total of around six years between 1972 and 1992. As a Christian Democrat, he was close to what we would now call the worst side of the Catholic Church, the side Pope Francis is determined to get rid of. He was also close to the Mafia. A number of inconvenient people disappeared or died on his watch, including former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, kidnapped by the Red Brigades in 1978, whom Andreotti was accused of doing little to help; also disgraced banker and member of the P2 masonic lodge Michele Sindona (Andreotti was also a member of the lodge) who died of a poisoned coffee in the Voghera prison in 1986. It was said later that Sindona simply knew too much and Andreotti supplied the sugar for his coffee.

Andreotti tells us much about Italy today: he is the low point of where it has been since the war and the rise of Beppe Grillo is due to Italy's failure to kill off the modern day Andreottis.

Margaret Thatcher said of him 'He seemed to have a positive aversion to principle, even a conviction that a man of principle was doomed to be a figure of fun.' One of my local farmers said simply 'He ate us.'

CCHQ

The Conservative Party is looking for new premises after students broke in and took control of it so easily that the insurance premiums have rocketed.

A wag from UKIP suggested they might be looking as far afield as Holland, the best place to find a disused windmill with a licence to perform gay weddings.

Let Them Go

It seems that an American citizen, Kenneth Bae, has been arrested in North Korea (where he worked as a tour guide) and condemned to 15 years' hard labour. We cannot even be sure what crimes he has committed.

So, will America be rallying the Free World in condemnation of the treatment of its citizen? I don't think so. Poor Mr Bae may well be forgotten because America is in no position to protest against the arrest and locking up of people without a proper trial.

During the course of his first election campaign Obama promised to dismantle Guantanamo Bay. He did nothing about it, and got re-elected without even mentioning it.

Now most of the inmates are on hunger strike. You can't blame them. They have been imprisoned for years without being properly charged or tried before a court. In Guantanamo Bay America has lost any claim it had to be the leader of the Free World or a force for good. Its behaviour is morally the same as that of al Qaeda; or North Korea.

And now, before one of the prisoners dies, Obama has promised to do something about it, but without being specific.

Here's what you can do, Barry: send them for trial or let them go.

Italy has a government

Two months after the general election, Italy's new government will be sworn in today. It will be headed by Enrico Letta, 46 (it seems that even President Napolitano decided his first choice, Giuliano Amato, 75, was too old).

The average age of the government will be 53, which is very low by Italian standards, and of the 21 ministries seven will be held by women, which is very high. The new Integration Minister is a female doctor born in the Congo, whilst the Minster for Equal Opportunities and Sport will be a German born Olympic Gold Medal canoeist.

In my piece for The Commentator on Thursday I shall be analysing the prospects for this administration, given that it contains no one from the Lega Nord, Nicki Vendola's Left, Ecology Freedom party and no one from Beppe Grillo' 5 Star Movement.