Offensive

A charming tale from Northern Ireland. A golf fan in Holywood, Co. Down, was holding a party to celebrate the European win in the Ryder Cup. He flew the EU flag in celebration and a neighbour complained to the police.

All very straightforward and normal, you might think.

But the complaint was to the effect that the twelve Golden stars on a blue background was an Arabic symbol and offensive.

I have never been to Holywood, but I salute its inhabitants. 'Oh brave new world, that hath such people in it!'. Life must be bliss where you have no idea what this flag means.

But the Europe Team in the Ryder Cup has nothng to do with the EU, an undemocratic tyranny of bureaucrats.

And the flag is offensive.

Tory resignations

No one will have really been surprised at the resignation of Mark Reckless, who has joined UKIP. Reckless explains in some detail how he came to the conclusion. Principally, he doesn't think Cameron means it.

Cameron has been relying on his promise to hold a referendum if the Conservatives win, and it is tempting to vote Conservative just for this. But increasingly people are believing it to be a sham. Cameron will do very little to renegotiate our deal with Europe (and be allowed very little by Europe) and will then lead the 'staying-in camp', pretending his reforms are the best that can be achieved.

Reckless points to the European Arrest Warrant which Cameron at first opposed then has quietly brought back. A corrupt judge in Romania or Slovakia can order your arrest by British police without your being able to contest it. They don't have habeas corpus in Europe so you can be locked up for a long time without charge, and, except for murder, none of these countries have trial by jury.

So Reckless went. Others will too unless Cameron looks as if he isn't cheating us.

More interesting is the departure of Brooks Newmark. Firstly, what was he doing for a living? Why do we need a Minister for Civil Society? Is it as opposed to military society or to those in religious orders?

Anyway, this bogus minister, who is filthy rich and married with five children, got a message on social media from 'Sophie, 20-something Tory researcher' saying she'd like to ask his advice about becoming an MP and he, sensing the possibility of a shag at the Party Conference, purred along.

It is almost inconceivable that a grown man could be so stupid (Sophie was, of course, an undercover reporter) but he fell for it hook, line and sinker.

And then, good gracious.... Ask yourself, gentlemen, how you look at your best, which outfit makes you most attractive. I have known women who favour the cords and brown shoes casual look, but most I have known think a decent suit and tie. Some women find cufflinks quite sexy.

Mr Newmark sent 'Sophie' a picture of himself in paisley pajamas, naturally with his penis hanging out. Paisley pajamas! Good grief! and this is a minister of the Crown!

Cameron appointed this man a minister, even though he had been in trouble before about stupid posts on social media and had to resign, and Cameron must take the blame.

Mr Newmark's constituents now need to hand him the pistol and the bottle of whisky. He is too stupid to be an MP.

Surely....

As the world prepares for war in the Middle East and the Ukraine, I see there are photos in the newspapers of Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham) addressing the United Nations.

Fortunately it's 1st April

Oh

Softened up

I first began to think we were being softened up for a war when ISIS was described as 'the biggest threat the United States has faced'. That's the United States of America, with its fast jets and stealth bombers, its ships and Aircraft carriers, its drones, its hundreds of thousands of soldiers. ISIS at the time numbered 10,000 (it's probably now around 20,000) and was equipped with the sort of weaponry an American could buy in a hardware store.

ISIS are Sunni muslims and largely Syrian. They were rebelling against Bashar al Assad in their own country and we, if you recall, were trying to help them.

Then we imposed our own man to lead Iraq next door, and he, a Shia, like the majority of Iraqis, was being unpleasant to Sunnis and the Sunnis in Syria crossed the border to fight him.

None of this fighting has taken place in Kent, or New York.

Where the Sunni bandits are a threat to the West is that they might send suicide bombers to our shores. Why would they do that? Because they perceive us as being involved in what they perceive as their country. So what would be the effect of us bombing the hell out of them? Exactly: they will respond in the only way they can.

Now David Cameron has adopted the usual mantle of the Tory Right: 'If there's a fight anywhere, we want to be involved'.  It is a demonstration of national and personal machismo.

Cameron has already told one porky pie to support the idea of British involvement: he said ISIS had already plotted an atrocity on British soil. That was the so-called 'toothpaste bomb' threat but it wasn't by ISIS, it was by an offshoot of al-Qaeda. ISIS have so far killed, what, four westerners? Five?

And yet Cameron has recalled parliament to discuss going to war: another war in which no way out has been suggested and none will be found and which will put not just our service personnel but our civilians at risk.

If instead of vast resources being devoted to a foreign campaign, we simply strengthened Britain's borders we would defend ourselves more effectively.

Scotland: the fallout

The Scots have voted and the nonsense level has reached what surely must be its peak.

The Spectator (and many others): 'we are in danger of dissolving the most successful political union in history.' No, think America, think Germany, think Switzerland. If ours was so successful 45% of one of its constituent parts wouldn't have voted to leave.

Cameron: 'the Scots have voted for a new constitutional settlement'. No, Davy, they voted to stay in the UK, the old settlement. Other leaders tried the same sort of tosh, aimed to cover up their spectacular own goal during the campaign.

Now the vote is over, Britain finds itself not at ease with itself, but in a rather difficult predicament. No one who knows the man will be surprised that the source of its predicament is Gordon Brown, disgraced former Prime Minister and the man with the anti-Midas touch.

Towards the end of the campaign, when people thought the Yes vote might win, Brown announced that he had been having a chat with some of his constituents (he didn't name them and we can be sure this was a lie) and there was support for a new constitutional settlement. The three party leaders in Britain all gave it their full support. It involves what is called devo-more. At the start of the campaign we could have got away with devo-lite, a modest amount of devolution if the Scots stayed in, then the price went up to devo-max and now it's even worse than that.

The three leaders and Mr Catastrophe had no right to offer what they did - the way we do constitutional change in Britain is through a vote in both houses of parliament then approval by the Queen - and now we are in the do-do.

The Scots can fairly say (even if it's not true) that they voted 'No' because of this offer. They will insist on it being fulfilled. But parliament won't approve it without equally generous terms for England. Of course that scuppers the timetable: it's going to take at least two years, whereas Catastrophe promised it for Burns' Night (25th January).

But if this looked like a bad night for Alex Salmond and David Cameron, think how Ed Miliband must be feeling. When Parliament insists on only English MPs voting on purely English matters, he is going to find that every time Cameron wants something done he just needs to say it's an English matter and he will have a majority. Miliband is frantically backtracking, but his Agreement to Catastrophe's plans have effectively meant the end of the Labour Party for the near future.

And while we are on the subject of who has done well or badly, has anyone in Britain come out of this feeling that our politicians and our media are fit for purpose?

I don't think so.

We have a long and difficult time ahead. The people don't like not knowing where they stand.

Our NHS

David Prior, head of the Care Quality Commission, says that up to 10,000 people a year die because of poor NHS care.

Ten  thousand  people  per  year.

At the same time we see that staying with an unreformed NHS is the principal issue in the Scottish Referendum campaign. The Yes side are concerned that the evil English might allow private money and private health standards to contaminate the service they are getting.

I should have thought one of the main benefits of Independence would be that you didn't have to have the NHS.

Still going

A week away and I return to find the Scottish referendum debate still going on. I wonder that anyone has anything new to say, although I suppose Gordon Brown's promise to have more devolution if they say no, hastily backed up by the party leaders, is new. It is new constitutionally, that a former (disgraced) prime minister could start making promises on a constitutional settlement without reference to parliament.

Anyway, it's nearly over.

One interesting point: I saw that Bob Geldof had addressed a 'No' rally. Geldof is Irish. Is he saying that he thinks being a part of the UK is so wonderful that he'd like it for his country?

Reversing the 1922 constitutional settlement would be a change indeed.

The Great Negotiator

Finally, as many commentators (not me) foresaw, the polls show that Scotland's Independence vote is in the lead.

If the UK breaks up - indeed whether it does or not - we are going to have to have a look at how we got into this mess.

Scotland voted for an SNP majority, and the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, came down to London and demanded an Independence referendum. He must have been staggered when he got it. Any normal Prime Minister would have said 'OK, you set out how it would be like, Independence, and we'll set out how we think it would be like. After that we'll start talking about referenda.'

But Cameron, who wants to be seen as a modern, all-inclusive sort of moderator, rather than leader, rolled over immediately.

Then the question. Again, any normal leader would have devised it as 'Would you like Version A (complete independence) or Version B (some sort of independence light)?'. But Salmond saw the danger of this and insisted on a straight 'in or out'. Again Cameron rolled over.

The problem is that this is the man we've got negotiating for us over whether we stay in Europe. I suppose it's possible that Cameron wants Scotland to leave (his Labour opponents would lose a lot of MPs at Westminster), and that he wants Britain to leave Europe. But I don't think so. I think he's just a weak negotiator.

This is quite worrying.

All you need to know

On Monday, the most searched for internet items in the USA were the nude photographs of celebrities which had been hacked from Apple.

In Britain it was news of football transfers.

The Commentator

See my piece covering the appointment of a new EU Foreign Minister in The Commentator. It's free.

Equality

Apparently someone has hit the MP George Galloway, breaking his jaw and damaging his ribs. Stop laughing at the back there, this is serious.

A man has been detained by police.

I assume that the events which follow will be the same as they would be if a pro-Israeli MP had made a vehement and intemperate attack on Hamas and had been assaulted by a Muslim.

Explain please

You may have heard the appalling news that in Rotherham, northern England, some 1,400 children have been raped and abused over a period of several years.

The independent report into the matter said that no one on the council could claim ignorance over what had been going on. Yet only one has resigned.

One said that the workers on the case were 'waiting for guidance'. I don't know what guidance you need if you find out children have been systematically raped.

The truth of the matter is this: with a couple of exceptions all the attackers were Pakistani Muslims, and with a couple of exceptions all the victims were ethnically British (white). I know this sort of discussion is difficult for some people but it has to come out for it to be properly investigated. Why did the Pakistanis want to destroy the lives of white children but not those of their own ethnicity? We have to know the answer to this.

And this was their defensive shield: the council, the social services, the police did not prosecute them, because they were Asian muslims.

And we need to ask this: what is it with the Labour Party (for they were all Labour, bien sur) and child rape? Not long ago we had the story of Harriet Harman, currently deputy leader of the Labour Party and Patricia Hewitt, a former front bencher, back in the days when they were at the National Council for Civil Liberties. They were using taxpayers' money to help the Paedophile Information Exchange on the grounds that being a paedophile was a valid lifestyle choice.

Now Labour permit it to go on, the rape of children for God's sake, on the grounds that to make a fuss might seem racist.

Can we have an explanation, please?

Surely..

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, is under formal investigation in France for misuse of her position (Finance Minister) by 'resolving' a dispute in favour of a friend of her boss, Nicolas Sarkozy, costing the French taxpayer hundreds of millions.

Of course she will resign her post while she clears her name.... er....no?

Space Shuffle

Imagine you are a bank manager and someone wants you to invest a huge sum of money in his new factory.

What does it make? Clothes pegs.

A new design of clothes peg? No, same as the old one.

Er....a cheaper clothes peg? Nope. They cost very little as it is, these will be a fair bit more expensive.

So the world is well served for cheap clothes pegs. What is the point of this new one? He just wanted his own clothes peg factory.

Some years ago the American military developed a mapping system which can position an object within... well it's probably a millimetre by now. And they offered this system - not quite as good as the military's but down to a metre - free. You pay nothing for satnav, it's a gift. You just pay for the gizmo which works it.

So what did Europe do? Started their own of course (they're bureaucrats, not bank managers). Firstly with the Chinese, then when the Chinese got tired with the indecision and bureaucracy and developed one on their own, they continued alone. It has cost billions - we'll probably never discover quite how much - of our money.

Yesterday the satellite launched - years late and massively over budget - and went into the wrong orbit.

Now there will be more money wasted, to obtain something that is already free.

Admit it!

The global warming loonies at the BBC have reluctantly come up with another change to the certainty they have been espousing.

Scientists now believe that the global warming 'pause' will continue for another ten years. What they mean by 'pause' is that they will not permit any suggestion that temperatures are not going up (that would be DENIAL), only that they will be going up soon, not right now.

So: they tell us that rising carbon dioxide emissions cause the temperature to rise, then at a time when carbon dioxide levels have been rising, there is no rise in temperature. There has been no rise since 1998 and now it looks as if it will be 2025 before you get any warmer.

I want to stress I am not a climate change denier, I am a sceptic. I would be less sceptical if they could explain why temperatures aren't rising when they said they would. But they can't explain it. According to the BBC there are ten theories as to why temperatures aren't rising. Actually there are eleven, the final one being that they were talking cock in the first place.

Incidentally, for those of you sitting in terror that temperatures may rise 0.15degC over a decade, here in Italy it is usually 5C warmer than Britain and often 10C warmer. And we don't have raging tsunamis and arid deserts; it's quite nice, really. You can grow potatoes as well as aubergines and peppers, wine and olives and in spring there are lambs bouncing around on the grass.

I just want an apology from Prince Charles, George Monbiot and the other fools who have been promoting this story, then an admission from the scientists that they haven't a clue what is going on.

After that I might listen.

Yo Kurdistan!

Of course. Why didn't we think of it before? The solution to this Middle East business is to arm the
Kurds!

The Kurds have been suffering from this ISIS incursion as well and now all we have to do is deliver shedloads of armaments and their plucky little Peshmerga fighters will sort out the loonies.

So....who are they? I know the British Foreign Office doesn't usually ask this before we fight alongside strangers and teach them how to use high-tech weaponry but this time, let's ask it.

The Kurds are a people who haven't got a country. they'd like one, and will call it Kurdistan. Good. Our weaponry will be helping them achieve that noble aim. Er.... where exactly will Kurdistan be?

Good question. They would like a bit of Iraq, where they have around 6 million people, a bit of Iran (also about 6m) a bit of Syria (2m) and quite a large chunk of Turkey (12m). On the borders of these countries is where they want to establish their homeland.

See any problems here? Aren't we against the partitioning of Iraq? Since a large number of Kurds are Sunni Muslims might a few of them not be completely unfriendly to ISIS? When they attack our NATO partner Turkey the NATO Treaty will oblige us to defend the Turks, fighting our own weaponry.

Why hasn't this Kurdistan been established before? Because they haven't had the weaponry.

Remember two things: the British Foreign Office should be closed down in the national interest and there is nothing so awful about the Middle East that we can't make it a bit worse.

Lords

This blog's compliments to Ranbi Singh Suri who has been elevated to the peerage, described by the Government as 'a leading figure among Sikhs'.

The Secretary General of the Sikh Council UK, Gurmel Singh, however, said he'd never heard of Suri.

The Conservative Party has of course head of him because he has donated more than £300,000 to it.

I am not getting into a panic about cash for peerages because that is the system we have. What I am saying is that we must change it. We still have a few hereditary peers, incredibly but the rest are all placemen: donors, failed politicians, mates. And these are our legislators. There are now so many they can't even fit into the chamber.

In good time for the next election, probably on the Feast of All Fools, I shall be publishing my manifesto, and it will include what we can do about this.

Europe

We have all seen the latest figures from Europe. Italy registered a second quarter of negative growth, putting it officially in recession, although effectively it has been in recession since 2011. France is stagnant and no one would be surprised if its high tax-high spend model tipped it into recession quite soon. Germany has now recorded negative growth, In fact it was only some surprising figures from Portugal which stopped the entire Eurozone from going into the red.

While Britain and America surge ahead, Europe is stagnant, and doesn't appear to have a policy to emerge from stagnation.

I don't want to bore everyone by saying that I predicted exactly this. Others will write the history of the Eurozone but it seems to me that Germany awoke late to the fact that rather than bringing the constituent economies together the euro kept them apart.

Germany perceived, correctly, serious flaws in several, mainly Southern economies, flaws which its own economy didn't appear to have, and then wrongly perceived this as the root of the problem. They would have to get efficient, rein back the trade unions, cut the barriers to work, the bureaucracy and so on, OR recognise they couldn't afford the public services they were giving their people and cut them.

What they failed to realise is firstly that these flaws had resulted in a breakdown of the money transmission systems. Banks lent to their friends, and in any case were stuffed with public debt instruments and had no money to lend.

The second thing they failed to realise was that these flaws and indeed the public service levels were institutionalised. I remember a Greek Trade Unionist saying that he had spent his professional life getting public services to a European level, and he wasn't going to have them taken away by Germany. It was not long before he remembered the war.

And in these countries - Italy is a good example, with France not far behind - the government spending had produced personal fifedoms which had hooked up with politicians. Politicians had relatives and friends on the boards of public and semi-public companies, private companies had political 'friends' which smoothed their passage, trade unions were in on the act. It was never going to be easy to change and if you take a look at Italy you'll find that it scarcely has.

But the financial woes remained and credit is too tight to allow growth. Some bright spark in the IMF said Italy should embark on a programme of public investment, in railways and roads and so on. And where would it get the money to do that, while it is up against its 3% budget ceiling (France is way over it)? And you can pretty well name the families in Calabria, Campania and Sicily who are going to do well out of that.

Europe needs a commitment to reform but right now, more urgently, it needs an easing of credit conditions. It needs to be flooded with money.

The only bright spot on the horizon is that if the Germans think they are going into recession, they might start to take the project seriously.

Europe was set up to be self suifficient: a vast area which traded largely with itself and was surrounded (they thought protected) by tariff barriers. They should have realised that in a crowded room, if one person has a cold, they all get it.

If you have a child or grandchild, send them to America or the Far East. Europe is dying and will be so for another generation.

Cliff Richard

For as long as I can remember, people have wanted to tell me something they knew for certain about Cliff Richard's personal life.

So one shouldn't be surprised that in the present mood of public hysteria the police have decided to have a tilt at this highly public figure.

I am not sure, though, that we can be proud about what is happening. Someone in the police or social services tipped off the media and the cameras were already waiting when the police arrived to search his flat in Berkshire.

Do not forget that this is a man who has not even been interviewed by the police, much less cautioned or charged, much less sent for trial, much less found guilty.

The law must take its course, but I think we are only just now beginning to learn that people who have been in the public eye, who rely for their living on being in the public eye, can be ruined without being guilty, and ruined by the very media which gave them the publicity.

The Daily Mail giveth and the Daily Mail taketh away.

Commentator

I have another piece in The Commentator about Europe. Read it: it's free