Earthquake (3)

250 dead, tens of thousands homeless, 26 villages and upwards of 10,000 buildings destroyed.

The hospital is working (and others are helping), the search for survivors continues despite the aftershocks, one of which, itself the magnitude of a serious earthquake, was felt in Rome and as far north as Emilia Romagna. The water is operating, most places seem to have electricity and there are tents for 14,500 people.

Despite the Italians' reputation for inefficiency, so far my impression is that they have done really well.

Data Retention and Snooping

As from last Monday, Internet Service Providers and others will be keeping a record of all emails, websites visited, as well as 'phone calls and text messages, such information to be used against you by Government, local authorities and the like.

This was not debated in Parliament, having been imposed under the EU Data Retention Directive.

The Government will say it has something to do with the fight against terrorism but it has the added little bonus that they know what you've been doing, doesn't it?

MPs' pay

Guido reports that Irish politicians have taken a 10% reduction in pay on the government side, 5% on the opposition side, a 10% reduction in expenses and cancelled all pensions.

British MPs have just awarded themselves a 2.3% pay rise.

Earthquake (2)

For those who wish to help, donations can be made to Caritas Italia direct to their account at UNICREDIT BANCA DI ROMA S.P.A. IBAN IT38 K03002 05206 000401120727 with the heading 'Terremoto Abruzzo'

or by credit card to Tel. +39 06 66177001

L'Aquila's earthquake.

It now seems that 150 people have died and something like 50,000 are homeless after a dramatic earthquake with its epicentre just outside l'Aquila struck at 3.30am on Monday. L'Aquila is a city of about 70,000 people, about the size of Bath, with a university and several schools. The town in its present form was laid out in the 13th century and many of the buildings are just rubble covered over with stucco.

I spoke on a local BBC Radio programme and the presenter said it was hard for the British, who generally do not suffer from earthquakes, to understand the threat, the fear and the reactions. Whilst it is the fourth serious earthquake in 30 years no one can ever get used to it; there are no predictors of the event and no way of estimating what the effects will be. This time there were cracks in walls 50 miles away. The mountain village of Onna was left without a single building standing.

The death tolls in similar strength earthquakes make interesting reading:

1908 86,000 dead
1915 33,000
1968 236
1976 976
1980 2,570
1997 11
2002 28
We are better at getting the wounded out and at treating them. As to the rest we are subject to nature and its incomprehensible forces.

Berlusconi, conscious perhaps of the mistakes Bush made after Katrina, has cancelled a trip to Russia and is throwing resources at this. The area needs its water supply repaired and tens of thousands of temporary homes. Then it needs to rebuild. We shall see how effective the Government is.

The Grand National

A 100-1 outsider winning the National is great news for the bookies, the worst damage reportedly being a £100 each way bet. It is the least fancied winner since Foinavon in 1967.

I used to live near Foinavon's stables and an amusing little tale is told of the background. The horse was owned by a wealthy lady who, the day before the race, turned up and treated all the workers to a bet on her horse, £1 here, £5 for the senior lads, which was serious money in the 1960s. They of course all knew that Foinavon was a hopeless nag and put the money on the favourite.

As we know at one of the last fences, now called Foinavon, almost the entire field fell, unnerved by some riderless horses, and Foinavon, well to the back, had enough time to pick a safe part of the fence and sail over while the rest were trying to remount.

One of the stable lads said the worst thing wasn't missing out on all that money, it was having to thank the lady for her gift the following day as she arrived in triumph.

Business and politicians

'According to the government, GM's Rick Wagoner was forced to resign because of poor performance. That’s embarrassing. You run an organization that loses billions of dollars and then get fired by a guy who heads up an organization that loses trillions of dollars.'
Jay Leno

Jade Goody's Funeral

'As the cortege makes its way through Bermondsey market...' What? Bermondsey?

Yes, friends, Our Jade's funeral has done a sort of lap of honour through the streets of Sarf London, which were lined with sobbing keeners. I remember watching Churchill's funeral forty odd years ago and I swear they made less fuss.

I just want to ask this: what sort of a nation have we become?

Berlusconi shouts

Her Majesty the Queen apparently asked why Silvio Berlusconi made so much noise at the summit. The answer might be that the world's decision making body, the G8, of which he is currently Chairman, has been hijacked by Gordon Brown, but I think it's more simple.

He's Italian.

Royal Marriage

Charles Moore in the Spectator points out that although Prince William is unable to marry a Catholic girl, he could have a civil partnership with a Catholic man.

That'd brighten things up a bit.

G20

I suppose it is inherent to the ageing process that I find increasingly fewer innovations pleasing, or even satisfactory.

But I do like the idea of starting international conferences on The Feast of All Fools. If it doesn't teach the participants some modesty, it may at least remind us how they should be treated.

Jacqui Smith

I don't know if it's spin; if it is the whole of the media seems to be complicit. Every time you hear about the Home Secretary's claim for adult movies as expenses they make it clear that they were not watched by her, but by her husband, who is employed by her and trousers £40,000 a year.

The veracity of this might be a job for an investigative journalist, although she might claim that, whilst in the same house at the time the movies were being played, she herself was not watching but working on some new scheme for restricting our individual freedom, with more ID cards or CCTV or whatever.

But the point is, I don't care. She does not need a subscription to Sky Movies for her job (Mr. Speaker, has the Home Secretary seen the latest movie with Jennifer Aniston?) and I don't want to pay for any of her family viewing, regardless of taste and of who was watching at the time.

Lastly, and it should scarcely be necessary to say this, she it was who applied for this to be paid for by the taxpayer. She it is who must take responsibility for her employee (in this case her husband) who has been flagrantly abusing a position of trust.

It really, really isn't enough to say she didn't see the movie.

The Act of Settlement

I am in no doubt whatsoever that Gordon Brown has tried to engineer a debate on the rights of succession to the throne for his own narrow political interest - he wants to draw our attention away from the lamentable state his stewardship of the economy has left us in.

But this is a subject always worth giving a bit of thought to.

Firstly we must dispel the mystique to it all. Parliament has decreed that the heir to the throne should be male if possible, a descendant of George II and not a Roman Catholic. If Parliament has decreed this then Parliament can change its decree.

I have no objections to pure primogeniture - that is to say the eldest child inherits the throne regardless of sex. But allowing Roman Catholics to become monarch is a proposal of a different sort. The Monarch is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Thus such a change would involve the disestablishment of the Church.

There are plenty of good reasons for disestablishment, some of them in the interests of the Church itself. But we must not go off at half-cock on this, as Labour did over hereditary peers: destroying something that works, because you don't like the look of it, then finding it too difficult to decide what to replace it with.

This has to be thought through over a period of years and should have nothing to do with the next General Election, or Mr Brown's electoral plight, which is entirely of his own making.

The Tories and Europe

I have often said that I feel I could vote Conservative again if Mr Cameron repeated the pledge he once made to repatriate powers from Europe.

Now Stuart Wheeler, the biggest donor to the Tory party, has left them and joined the UK Independence Party (with his chequebook). He says that Cameron is merely hoping that he doesn't have to say anything on Europe, that he wants the subject to go away.

Mr Wheeler has lost patience. Come on, Mr Cameron, say it and stop the rot.

Treated like idiots

The clocks have changed again under the Government's bogus 'Daylight Saving Scheme' (not one nanosecond of daylight will be 'saved' - there will be exactly the same as there would otherwise have been).

Sometimes they express it in terms of having 'one less hour in bed'. Ignore them. Spend as long as you like. On Monday if you go into an office you will be going in an hour earlier. Why not just say that as from Monday the office starts at 8am not 9am (because that's what's happening)? You have the intellectual ability to handle that.

I have no objection to things starting earlier and finishing earlier, it's being treated like a bloody idiot that I can't stand, and by people I'm paying to do it.

Tibet

Light blogging because I have been getting my book together (in the unlikely event of it ever being published I shall not hesitate to give myself a free plug).

There is a story going round that China plans to celebrate the 50th aniversary of its illegal invasion of Tibet with a 'Freedom from Serfdom' day. If this is true it is the most disgracefully cynical act imaginable. China has taken over the government and poured money into illegal Chinese settlements, leaving the Tibetans unrepresented and alone.

It used to be that we held off criticising China because of its importance as a trading partner. Now we are no longer buying its plastic shoes, Christmas tree decorations and non-working computer parts perhaps someone in some western government will have the gumption to stand up and denounce China for the aggressive totalitarian dictatorship it is.

Jade Goody

The short life of Jade Goody – I am already getting tired of the ‘tragic’ cliché – seems to me to tell us a lot about ourselves.

Reality TV may be said to have its roots in John Osborne’s ‘Look back in Anger’ of 1956. Until then, and indeed since Aristotle, drama had been about the aristocratic or at least the slightly posh. An ancient dramatist would have been amazed that the poor might want to see something about themselves – surely they got that sort of thing every day?

In a straight line through Coronation Street we seem to have demanded more and more of this stuff and Reality TV has been, so far, the latest development. You live with, and interact with, ordinary people, then go home, turn on the TV and see...ordinary people. The concept has always seemed bizarre to me.

Jade Goody, as one of the ‘star’ protagonists of this genre, seemed to me an almost extreme example of what the creators were trying to achieve. Ignorant and foul mouthed, she dumped the worst element of modern society right into our TV dinners. But, for the creators and producers of Reality TV, the ghastly people who felt we needed or deserved this, Jade Goody had a surprise. She made, as is more common with ordinary people than the bien pensant imagine, a racist remark. There were tens of thousands of complaints: ‘we paid to see ordinary people behaving in an ordinary way. How can it be that one of them said something the politically correct disapprove of? Surely she should be stupid, uneducated and like coloured people?’

Now, amongst the chattering classes who run the BBC, a racist remark puts you down at the level of Josef Fritzl. Perhaps worse: he only abused people of his own family. The calamity was so bad that the Prime Minister, holder of an office which hitherto had been regarded as deserving some respect, felt he had to meet the insulted party, an Indian actress.

So how is it that Jade Goody is now anointed with the spikenard of public sympathy? The short answer is that she employed Max Cliffiord. The even shorter answer is that she died. Max was on a no-brainer here: a consultancy with an end date.

Jade Goody decided to end her days in the spotlight and paid a consultant to make sure she did. She did it, she admitted, for money, so that whilst she was ignorant her sons would not be. Creditable, if not quite saintly. The press, the investors in this ghastly drama (one magazine brought out its Jade Goody Tribute edition while she was still alive), are now trying to make out that she was conducting some cancer awareness campaign, and that she was ‘brave’. And of course our cynical, self-serving Prime Minister was immediately back in on the act with an oleaginous statement.

‘Brave’ means understanding the risks and freely deciding to take those risks. It applies, for example, to servicemen who risk their lives for comrades. Inoperable cancer, by contrast, is a fait accompli. Facing it, for money for your children, does not make you brave.

I am sympathetic to Jade Goody. The million or two earned will comfortably achieve, if her children have the right guardian, the aim of letting them make what they can of themselves. I condemn only the press and the readership. There is talk of breaking a taboo, and I can’t help thinking that some things should remain taboo. It has been an unsightly business.

If we’re lucky, the public mawkishness which began with the death of the Princess of Wales at the beginning of the boom over a decade ago, will end with this and the recession.

Spring

The first signs of spring are with us: almond blossom, crocuses, the occasional house fly and the warning that the weather, having got warmer, is about to get colder again. Hey-ho.

The first braod beans are here. The Italians eat them raw, with slivers of pecorino (sheep's cheese).

Fritzl

Josef Fritzl has been sentenced to life.

I often wonder what to think about these things: the Brady/Hindley case in Britain in the '60s is relevant here. Is there a crime which is so horrible that by definition the perpetrator must be mad and therefore not guilty? I, and I expect you, can magine myself committing many crimes, but this?

But is such a feeling relevant? Lord Denning said that the sentence must reflect Society's revulsion of the crime. Is that right? Even if he's mad?

It is now being said that Fritzl pleaded guilty because he heard his daughter's testimony. The BBC have got a trick-cyclist to say that he pleaded guilty because he realised he was no longer in control. I heard he had offered to plead guilty if he got agreement to be sent to the right (most comfortable) prison. Some say that in Austria life means 20 years. Surely it isn't possible he could be released in his lifetime?

The reason I express all these doubts is that what society, and in particular Austrian society, needs is certainty, now. It has all been rushed through to prevent a debate on whether there is something in Austria that permitted this to happen behind closed doors. In my view that debate would have been beneficial. Sometimes you have to let the wound bleed a bit to cleanse it.

Health Fascism

Sir Liam Donaldson is, of course, the crazed fascist who stopped smoking in public places, abandoning all science to tell us that passive smoking - all passive smoking, even if there is a ventilator and you are leaning out of the window - was dangerous, while at the same time pretending to be a scientist. This outrage has had little or no effect on the public health but has virtually closed the pubs down, thus wrecking a very British way of life which has subsisted for centuries. Donaldson, you see, didn't like the idea of you smoking.

Now he is on to alcohol. Many people warned alcohol would be next. He wants to double the price with a minimum per 'unit'. Interestingly both he and his colleague in Scotland, which is making the running on this particular piece of nanny stating, admit that in Mediterranean countries alcohol costs a lot less and yet there is a lower incidence of drunkenness and of liver disease. They may even accept that in Scandiavian countries alcohol costs more than in Britain but the incidence of alcoholism is greater. Facts won't stop these bogus scientists. They want to stop you behaving in a way they disapprove of. The only reason Donaldson isn't getting his way now is that there is an election coming up and even Gordon Brown, not normally a chap to worry himself about what might affect the ordinary man, can see it isn't exactly a vote winner. In fact, like his removal of the 10p tax band it would penalise the poor. Chateau Lafite has the same alcohol content as cheap Argentinian Malbec, Lowenbrau the same as Fosters.

Sinisterly, Donaldson says he is in this for the long term and feels that, like the smoking ban, he will get his way in the end.

It doesn't affect me because I shall live out my days with decent wine at around €1 a litre, plonk a bit less, but I really do think that these people need to be exposed - 'scientists' who don't let evidence get in the way of their opinions - and that the State should be firmly told the limits of its power.

Otherwise what's to come of Britain?

Bank Regulation

I was just talking to my partner over dinner last night about renewing the Glass-Steagall Act, you know, the way people do, when up pops Nigel Lawson in today's FT suggesting the same thing. Perhaps he was hiding under the table - he certainly doesn't look as if he eats much.

It's quite interesting actually. It's about how we regulate banks in the future - more, or better. Glass Steagall was brought in in the 1930s after the last major recession. Quite simply it said that commercial banks shouldn't be allowed to own investment banks. Bill Clinton repealed it in the 1990s.

When last year the whole pack of cards looked as if it were tumbling, the government thought it had to rescue the banks, or the economy would grind to a halt. But in fact all it needed to do was rescue the commercial banks, the ones which we hold our accounts with and which do the banking for small and medium sized businesses, make credit card payments and so on.

What I propose is that in the future the government guarantees 100% of customer deposits and tells banks accounting for, say, 80% of UK commercial banking business, that they will bail them out but in return they must be tightly regulated, as to their leverage (how much they lend and borrow in relation to their capital) their bad debts and so on. Unlike with the Glass Steagall Act they would be welcome to indulge in investment banking but this business would be kept separate and allwed to go bust.

Simpler and better than the needlessly complicated Gordon Brown scheme of 1997. In fact rather similar to what we had before the clueless rogue came on the scene.

Quantitative Easing

The new money 'printed' by the Bank of England is going towards buying back the gilts it issued. Official figures show that more than a third of gilts are owned by foreigners. So much of this new money, perhaps even all, will leave Britain. It will not serve as a stimulus to the economy because the foreign holders, aware that we are printing new money, will want to be out of sterling and into gold or the dollar. The move is likely to depress sterling even further.

So why are we doing it? It is whispered that the only effect will be to firm up the price of gilts, thus perhaps putting off the day when the government can no longer finance the massive debts it has committed us to. Gordon Brown is using our money to improve his credit rating and let him continue his policy of spending, perhaps until he is re-elected and can put up taxes.

The way to use quantitative easing is to send a cheque to each family in the country. Send them John Lewis vouchers. Get them spending.

A better alternative would have been to cut government expenditure on all but essential items and reduce taxes, but you can't see Gordon doing that.

Sudan

Pete Hoskin has a piece in the Spectator blog criticising the Muslim Association of Britain’s statement on Sudan and Darfur, which said that it opposed the ICC arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, on the grounds that similar prosecutions haven't been launched against war crimes in "Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya". Hoskin points out, rightly, that Bashir is about as nasty a piece of work as you are likely to find and that many of his victims were Muslims.

I’m afraid, however, that in one sense the MAB, normally a safe haven of unargued nonsense and racist cant, are right. Just as our war against Saddam Hussein lost legitimacy because there was nothing he had done that China hadn’t (invaded a neighbouring country, acquired WMD, ethnic cleansing, persecution of its own political dissidents) – and we weren’t going to invade China, were we? – so the lack of investigation other suspected ‘crimes’ by the ICC – and I don’t necessarily agree with the MAB’s list – makes this look as if it were a whim of the Western nations, self-righteous posing.

The UN scarcely lifted a finger to help Bashir’s victims. It is a little late now to enter judgment.

Computers

Posting has been a little light due to computer iffyness. It turned out after a lot of hard work and expense that despite being set for automatic updates - essential for Vista users since Microsoft are still fixing the faults - it did not receive 3 of the updates but didn't tell me it hadn't got them. Anyone else experienced this?

Apparently the new version is going to be better. I'm just trying to remember where I've heard that before... oh yes...

Economists

Can't resist lifting this from Danny Finkelstein


An economist friend has just told me a wonderful story about a professional colleague of his. The colleague was waiting at the airport for his flight to be called when a man ran into his section of the lounge, slightly out of breath. "Is there an economist in here?" he called out.

My friend's friend was delighted. He has always wanted to help out in an emergency. He puffed out his chest, stood up and in a clear voice called out. "Yes. I am an economist."

The man looked back at him with a mixture of contempt and bewildered surprise. "The magazine," he said slowly.

Telegraph hacked

If you subscribe online to any of the Daily Telegraph services it is possible your password is compromised and you should change it. The Telegraph has been informed of this but hasn't told subscribers. More if I learn anything

Your guide to quantitative easing

In order to bail out the banks the Bank of England borrowed money by issuing gilts. Now, under quantitative easing it is putting money into the economy by..er..buying them back.

Easy, this economics stuff.

We the people

The BBC's Mark Mardell reports that the EU is planning to put booths in city squares all over the European Union's 27 countries so citizens can "send a message to Brussels".

Oh, please...please do this.

Mardell says "I am sure those leaving London's pubs and clubs in the early hours of Saturday mornings will be forming queues to have their say. Or at least thinking of ways to put the booths to good use."

Sudan: an international shambles

So the International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, for war crimes (not for genocide, as had been requested by the prosecution). Mr al-Bashir was not present at the deliberations of this court, nor did he recognise its authority.

In retaliation Sudan has expelled aid agencies, putting at further risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

One can't help thinking that a little less idealism and a little more realpolitik would have been useful here.

But I have grave doubts about this court. Supposing you were to be told, having done what you imagined to be the right thing, and as far as you were concerned perfectly legally, that it was in fact illegal, under laws made thousands of miles away in different language and under a different historical, political and philosophical background. Supposing the International Muslim Court sentenced you to death for adultery some years ago?

That it is of zero or negative use is amply demonstrated above. Is any African leader, about to attack his enemies as they have done for thousands of years, suddenly going to say 'Oooh! I might be indicted by the ICC and my name would be mud in Europe' ? I don't think so.

But also I don't think we, who emerged from barbarism just a few hundred years ago, have the moral right to condemn people who haven't yet.

Mr Brown goes to America

Thanks to Sky's Jonathan Levy for noticing that CNN's US news round-up, as you would expect, featured high on the list a British Politician talking in Washington. Unfortunately it was Tony Blair addressing the Climate Change Conference.

I do not have it in me to feel sorry for Gordon Brown, but I nearly did.

Ted Kennedy

'Senator Kennedy, you cheated at school, you panicked at Chappaquiddick, what makes you think you're fit to be President?' was the opening line of a somewhat tough (but fair) interview of this ambitious member of the American Royal Family.

This is a man who is famous for having a famous father and two famous brothers. He is distinguished for nothing else except his political longevity (he became a senator on the back of his brother's presidency in 1962).

Now we learn that Her Majesty the Queen is pleased to grant this person a knighthood, and that Gordon Brown will announce (perhaps even confer?) it on his visit to Washington. I suppose Ceaucescu and Mugabe got them but it really is time this nonsense stopped.

Mark my words, it'll be Des O'Connor next.

The dying days of Labour

So, Mr Brown wants to sack Harriet Harman, despite the fact that she has been elected to her post.

And Harriet Harman wants to reduce Sir Fred Goodwin's pension, despite the fact that he is contractualy entitled to it and that it was agreed by a Government Minister.

What has happened to these people? Their minds have gone, like crazed emperors in the dying days of Rome. They think that everything they say will be seen as true just because they have said it, and that for something to be accomplished they only need to give the word.

Now Brown is going to lecture Congress and return clutching a part of Obama's clothing expecting to be hailed as the saviour of the world. And none of his aides has the courage to whisper those few words into his ear....

Truly, Britain hasn't got a government at the moment.

Iceland: music for geysers

We hear a lot these days of the disastrous collapse of Iceland’s banking and business sectors but little or nothing about that nation’s cultural heritage. After my first sample I am here to tell you that it is right up there with Icelandic liquidity management.

The audience at the Borromini Sacristy of Sant’Agnese in Agone, Rome, were treated last night to a recital by Nina Margrét Grìmsdòttìr featuring works by Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson and Pàll Isòlfsson. These are composers whose work has largely, and rightly, been overlooked.

The nearest I can get to describing the work of Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson (so good they named him twice!) is that it seemed like a random selection of the national anthems of West African nations, one moment grandiloquent, at times sonorous, at times jocular, as if three Olympic athletes had come joint first and the band had a go at playing the various themes concurrently.

Pàll Isòlfsson was along the same lines but for my money seemed to offer a new layer of randomness, almost Maoist in its insistence that you never get used to one theme, that you are projected into a new layer of horror before you have understood what’s going on. Grìmsdòttìr pounded the keyboard valiantly but you had the feeling she had abandoned all hope.

I recommend Icelandic music to you: an experience on a par with a visit to their frozen food shop.

Cameron and the NHS

Right at the start of Tony Blair's premiership we had a clue of the empty vessel we had elected. A nutcase, you may recall, had burst into a school in Dunblane and slaughtered a number of children. It was an horrific, shocking event, leaving the country numb. It was a time for strong leadership.

A group of bereaved mothers wanted the law changed, as a memorial to their lost children. They were called, if I remember, the Snowdrop Campaign. Blair, more interested in headlines than governance, acceded to their wants and 'handguns' (pistols to you and me) were banned. Apart from the idiotic incidence of the British Olympic Shooting Team having to train in France (for ownership of a pistol, deemed so dreadful by these bereaved mothers was part of a sport, subsidised by the taxpayer) there has been no beneficial effect of this law. It used to be that the bad guys, and a very small number of good guys, had guns, now it is only the bad guys. You can buy a pistol in a pub in many cities, for about £50.

The lesson of all this is that the bereaved are not in a position to make laws. They are too emotionally connected.

Following the tragic loss of his son Ivan, it is being said that David Cameron's politics have been shaped by the experience, and the poor boy's tragic life and death will influence the country. Here is Cameron quoted in the Times: "When your family relies on the NHS all the time – day after day, night after night – you really know just how precious it is.” The Telegraph says: "He revealed the treatment of his son at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, where he died was one of the prime reasons why the NHS had become such a campaign priority for his Conservative Party. "

I recently heard of a man who entered hospital without anything that much wrong with him and contracted, in the hospital, MRSA, C-difficile and E-Coli. There is an increasing number of reports of unnecessary deaths in hospitals. Doctors earn £100,000 a year and people can't get treated. Such is the rationing of healthcare that older people have to be deemed less deserving of treatment than the young. There is talk of not treating the overweight in order to save cash.

What the NHS needs is a good kick up the backside; I wonder now if David Cameron is equipped to administer it.

Directors' Disqualification

When a small company goes bust, if the directors are seen to have acted rashly and in particular wasted government money (not paid the VAT) they can be disqualified, under the Company Directors' Disqualification Act.

RBS and HBOS anyone?

Italian News Lenten Edition

The Villa Borghese Gallery in Rome, which has works by Bellini and Caravaggio and includes Raphael’s Deposition, now boasts an exhibition of photographs of Sarah Palin. The show runs for several weeks and you can get a taxi from the airport.

A series of rape cases has alarmed the public and engendered an anti-immigrant feeling. The Justice Ministry has confirmed that whilst the rapes in large cities had been committed largely by immigrants, overall in Italy most rapists were Italian.

Tests in the waters around Sicily are showing that an anti barnacle paint applied to the hulls of ships may be causing molluscs to change sex.

The San Remo festival, Italy’s private Eurovision Song contest (Italy, to its credit, does not belong to Eurovision) had been threatened with closure unless its audience ratings improved, and to the delight of all, pulled 50% of prime time viewing, against 18% for its nearest rival. The winner was Marco Carta with a forgettable song.

The largely charisma-free Walter Veltroni has resigned as head of the centre left Partito Deomcratico after disastrous losses to Berlusconi’s PdL, most recently in Sardegna. The new leader will be Dario Franceschini

18,500 people descended on Venice for Carnival, adding to more than 10,000 already there. The annual festival seems to be losing popularity, with nearly half of all Milanese, Florentines and Palermitans ready to cancel it. Carnival is most popular in Naples.

This past week has not only been the coldest of the winter in Rome but also the coldest in the past 100 years. However the coldest day so far this winter was said to have been on January 14, when it was fractionally below zero.

There is new excitement that work might begin this year on the Messina Bridge. Don’t hold your breath, though.

Mills no boon

News that tax lawyer David Mills had been sentenced to 4 years 6 months in prison came as a bit of a surprise - the prosecution had requested 4 years and I thought that was a bit tongue in cheek - but we shouldn't read too much into it. The sentence will only be confirmed once the appeal procedure has been gone through (2 separate appeals) and this moves so slowly it will certainly come up against the statute of limitations. This is what happens to 70% of crime here. White collar crime hardly ever ends in prison. One British newspaper archly suggested that this might bring down Berlusconi, which made me chuckle (him too, I expect).

I still think we have not heard enough about the British end. The way Mills washed the money was to take out a mortgage on his house (jointly owned with wife Tessa Jowell, the minister) and repay it with the ..er.. less clean stuff. Jowell, at the time a cabinet minister and now Paymaster General, if you will believe it, had to sign the appropriate forms on borrowing and repayment but claimed that it was just something her husband asked her to do for his business. Mills, and apparently this is not the first time it had happened, said to a Cabinet Minister with three University degrees 'Don't bother your pretty little head about this' and she didn't.

I'm afraid this beggars belief and really does need to be properly investigated. At the time the cabinet office said it was a matter for the Prime Minister (Blair) who simply absolved her. Not good enough for me.

Health Fascism and the Left

'Heavy drinkers are receiving nearly one in four of the UK's liver transplants, it was revealed last night, igniting a furious row .....' thus shrieks the Observer.

Actually, I'm a little surprised we tipplers don't make up for a higher proportion. What have the three quarters who haven't damaged their livers with drink done to need a transplant? They can't all have got Hepatitis exploring up the Amazon, surely?

According to the rant, Dr Tony Calland, chairman of the British Medical Association's medical ethics committee 'acknowledges' that this is raising new questions for surgeons, who 'are within their rights to refuse transplants to anyone with alcohol-related liver disease if they do not demonstrate a genuine desire to stop drinking.'

And I bet you were expecting this: 'Liberal Democrat shadow culture, media and sport secretary Don Foster, who obtained the new transplant figures, said only by increasing the cost of alcohol could the nation's health be saved from Britain's binge-drinking culture.' As with most Lib Dem MPs, I've never heard of him, but I bet he's a smug, sober bastard, hmm?

So, under the new fascism, when you are ill, before you are treated some godly soul is going to decide whether you have contracted your illness in a suitable way, and perhaps withhold treatment if you do not show remorse for your sins.

Now, I don't mind limiting healthcare provision for people who have brought their troubles on themselves, as long as we have a level playing field. Promiscuous homosexual who has contracted AIDS? No drugs or liver transplant for you! Respiratory complaint when you live in a town? Suffer and die, towny! Mountain climber? Cyclist? Nope, brought it on yourself.

Alternatively we could revert to the system of treating people who need help.

Lamb

An Italian, who these days runs a good restaurant in Tuscany, married an English girl and lived for a while near London. Asked if he enjoyed his time in England he replied that he just could not tolerate the English attitude to lamb and returned to Tuscany with his bride.

I disagree. Apart from the fact that there are other and better reasons for leaving England, the separate treatment of Spring lamb, shearling (which has overwintered), hoggett (another year) and mutton (caper sauce) seems to me a triumph.

For Italians, and particularly for Romans, however, it is now that lamb should be eaten. They know nothing of mutton. Such is the heat in central Italy in summer that lamb is the only creature that spends its entire life out of doors. Pigs, ewes and cattle are brought in before the middle of spring. The lambs eat the early grass and are very good.

For fresh spring lamb the Roman way, which they call abbacchio, get the butcher to hack at the bones to break them, ensuring quicker cooking. Don't plug it with rosemary and garlic, just sprinkle with salt, heat the oven until it is exploding and cook for the shortest time possible. Serve with lemon. And turnips.

The tiny lamb chops are picked up by hand. The Romans call it scottadito - 'burn your fingers'.

Germany: The Aristocracy strikes back

The name of the new German Economics Minister is Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jakob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.

Love it.

Lincoln

Oddly, I have heard nothing of it from my American friends, nor does it seem to have got much coverage in the press, but today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

What I like about Lincoln was that he was a far from perfect figure. He seems to me a man of contradictions, and a man of doubts, which is healthy for a politician.

President Obama makes much of comparisons with Lincoln (they both began their politics in Illinois) but he will do well if he comes up with something as good as this:

'.....that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'

Proportional Representation

Every time I hear one more crank go on about proportional representation (often ludicrously referred to, unchallenged by the media, as 'fair votes') I think of Israel.

Israel's insane system regularly delivers two parties with similar support and a host of tiny parties, some of whom are raging nutcases. As with most systems of PR, after the people have voted, the political class gets together and decides what sort of government they are going to get, often having little correlation with the wishes of the electorate. So the parties find that they can only govern with the support of some nutcases; which nutcases to choose?

In this instance, there are the usual deeply religious parties, some of whom believe they should nuke the Arabs, but one nutcase, Avigdor Liebermann, has a healthy vote. Either party could govern with his support. He is rabidly anti-Arab so it would more likely be Netanyahu who would form a coalition with him. So the people, having voted for Livni as the largest party, will likely get something very different.

It probably won't matter because Hamas wouldn't recognise Israel if it had Father Abraham in charge, so there won't be peace anyway.

Free Trade

Emma Marcegaglia, the Chairman of Confindustria, the Italian equivalent of the CBI, who runs a steel company in her free time, has written an article in the FT today, critcising the protesters at the Lindsey refinery and laying into Gordon Brown for being foolish enough to say 'British jobs for British workers'. She mentions that her company, Marcegalia Industries, is about to make an investment in Britain and that such cross border movements of people and capital are to the benefit of us all.

She is right, of course, but the reason I mention it is this: when the Italians start criticisng you for protectionism you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

Eluana

Just as the debate was reaching new heights of self-righteous pomposity, Eluana, the girl in the coma for 16 years whose feeding tube was removed last week, has stolen a march on them all. By dying.

I am not sure we British, or anyone else, would have managed this much better, but it has been a period from which neither the politicians nor the girl's family nor indeed the press have come out well. Even those, like me, who are against the legalisation of euthanasia will find it hard to resist a feeling of relief that it is all over.

One change which could be introduced would be to enforce the privacy of the patient, whether the relatives want it or not.

City Bonuses

A lot has been said recently about City bonuses, and I feel it may be time to put the thing into perspective. There are essentially three types of bonus. When I joined the City in the 1970s, I received just a monthly salary but my friends in what were then called stockbrokers earned a lot less as a basic salary but had a bonus. With an average bonus we all earned about the same, but when times were bad they scarcely earned enough to cover their rent or mortgage. This bonus didn’t apply to personal performance but to the company performance: dealers and secretaries were on the same deal. In the present unhappy times it seems obvious that these bonuses should be zero: the banks aren’t making any money.

In the post Big Bang City the bonus idea was applied to a lot more people, on more of a personal incentive basis. If salesmen sold a lot they earned a lot of money. I have no problems with that. Picture a vacuum cleaner salesman: he was told to sell vacuum cleaners and he sold shed loads of them. He should get his bonus because it is not his responsibility if the vacuum cleaners are no good. Several junior bankers earn a lot more than their senior counterparts: we learn that the highest paid employee in RBS earned four times what the Chairman earned. Good for him. But let’s not blame the sergeants; it’s the officers that make the decisions.

It is with the senior management that we (the people as shareholders) have to get tough. It is the managing directors and directors who have allowed a lot of this to happen. They it was who subcontracted out the credit analysis function to ratings agencies. They it was who got their banks into the stage where they didn’t know what they had invested in; couldn’t say how much was tied up in property or what the exposure to Icelandic shares was. They it was who told the traders to pile these assets on to the books.

The City – and this should come from the shareholders, not the government, needs a new form of remuneration. Bonus should mean bonus, and you get none when times are bad, even if it’s not your fault. For the senior men the shareholders should be able to claw the money back up to five years later. This would instil a sense of responsibility into investment and lending which will be sorely needed in this part of the cycle.

If a junior guy has got a huge bonus for selling something he wasn’t to know was toxic, let him keep it. He’ll need the money when he is laid off.

Obama

Hear the words of Charles Krauthammer following Obama's emergency stimulus bill, not just a continuation, but an exaggeration of pork-barrel politics:

'Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.'

Some of us, unpopularly, suspected this. As the French, in their unsurpassed idiom put it: 'Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose'

Depressing

Euthanasia in Italy

Italy is floundering in the waters of a familiarly intractable problem. Euthanasia.

This is something every country has difficulty with, but here it is being played out in a peculiarly Italian fashion. The case concerns Eluana Englaro, a strikingly attractive girl who, 16 years ago was involved in a near fatal car accident. I say near fatal because she has been in a persistent vegetative state all that time. Her father wants the feeding plug pulled.

The lower court agreed, but the minister said this could not happen in a state run hospital. Yesterday Eluana was moved to a private hospital. The government, some say under pressure from the Vatican, others say sensing the mood in the more religious South from where it draws much of its support, rushed through a measure banning the removal of the feeding tube. The President, Giorgio Napolitano, a former communist, refused to sign the decree. The government threatens to return the measure to Parliament.

This is not the time to rehearse the arguments in favour and against. The attractiveness of Eluana has tilted the balance – pictures of her laughing face make you think it incredible that such a being could have its life terminated. One doctor, in favour of pulling the plug, reflected that public reaction might be different if they saw her now. Initially I thought it would have been best if the father quietly removed the tube, she died and then they just didn’t prosecute him. Certainly if there were any evidence that the girl were suffering that is what I like to think I would have done myself.

But there is no evidence that Eluana is suffering. And there is a further complication: removal of the feeding tube means it would take her 10 days to die. It cannot be done clandestinely, so the story is played out in the media on a daily basis, and on balance they have handled it sympathetically.

Loss of dignity? Sanctity of human life? I don’t know. What I do know is that if it were me I would be very unhappy about my daughter’s life being played out in public, without her ever knowing.

Clarkson - Brown

The issue of what I don't suppose will come to be called Clarksongate could have been resolved easily by Brown's going to law. He could then have persuaded the court that
a he wasn't one-eyed or
b he wasn't Scottish or
c he wasn't an idiot.

Er.... perhaps his mother was Welsh?

Longleat in the snow

Photo by Robert Tilleard, who has recently completed a portrait of the Marquess of Bath, which hangs in the reception area at Longleat.

Tilleard also paints portraits of adults, children, animals as well as cherished objects and landscapes for the more proletarian amongst us, myself included. See http://www.tilleard.co.uk/

Another shameful disaster?

My reactions to the news that we are sending a team to bid for the 2018 Football World Cup alternated between humour and horror.

Could we please come back down to earth? It is going to be bad enough with the Olympics. Britain has a shameful record for bringing these grands projets in anything like on time or within budget. We have a transport system the quality of which would embarrass Cairo. The standard of the hotels is abysmal, it is near impossible to get a decent meal except at fantastic expense and, most important of all, listen to me, WE HAVEN'T GOT ANY MONEY.

Stop it! Lord love us!

A bit of Bob

Andrew Stuttaford quoted in Samizdata after Michael Phelps the swimmer had been caught smoking pot

'Look, I don't blame Michael Phelps for apologizing. He has a living to earn, so he did what he had to do.

In the meantime, I merely note that this broken wreck of a man's failure to win any more than a pathetic fourteen Olympic gold medals (so far) is a terrifying warning of the horrific damage that cannabis can do to someone's health - and a powerful reminder of just how sensible the drug laws really are.'

Quite

Foreigners

I am heartily fed up with the recent range of strikes in the oil industry. The unions are saying (wink to the knowing) that it is all unofficial, as if they have had nothing to do with it.

There is one fact to be considered here. The Treaty of Rome requires free movement of labour across the union, and subsequent treaties require free access to contract bidding by European members. Total (why did no one complain when a French company was investing in England, creating jobs for British workers?) has accepted a bid for some new building from an Italian firm which uses Italian and Portuguese labour. From within the EU. EU membership requires us to regard these workers not as foreign but as the same as us.

We now need the head of the TUC, and of the union, Unite, and the Chairman of the Labour Party, to confirm that it is the policy of all these bodies that we should belong to the EU (it is, isn't it?) and that we should conform with the treaties. And that they therefore regard these strikes as nothing other than racist.

For myself I do not believe it is in our interest to remain in the EU, but I still wouldn't stop Total employing whomever they want. I have a strong feeling that our chaps didn't get the contract because they were charging too much.

Racist is a word brought out rather too often for my taste but it will serve here.

Bearders

The BBC has had two cricket scorers since 1934 and to the great regret of Test Match Special listeners they are now looking for another. Bill Frindall, who has been in the job since 1966, has died from Legionnaires Disease, caught during a recent cricket tour to Dubai where he was both playing and scoring. He was 69.

I always wanted to ask him which batsman was most often out during the break for the shipping forecast (my own guess is Graham Hick).

I hope Frindall has bequeathed his detailed records to the BBC, or the nation. He is all but irreplaceable.

More on global warming

From the Corriere della Sera: the CTMA Vacancier, a ship with 300 passengers on board, is stuck in thick ice at the mouth of the St Lawrence river. Even an icebreaker from the Canadian coastguard failed to cut a passage through to the stranded people. Also the steamer Georges-Alexander-Lebel is stuck outside the port of Matane, 600km east of Montreal, which is completely iced in.

‘We’ve not seen a layer of ice this thick at the start of the year for a long time’ commented the general manager of one of the shipowners.

Burns Night

Today is the 250th Anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. We are informed that it will be a celebration of Scottish culture.

Scottish WHAT?

Although seemingly thought by much of the British press to be Jewish, ‘Rabbi’ Burns was in fact a Lowland tax inspector, ratting on his countrymen to glean more money for the English.

My late mother claimed to be Scottish (as Lou Reed said, ‘you can’t always trust your mother’), but there will be no celebration here in Umbria for this turncoat, with morose, self-indulgent Scot-mongrels like me cross dressing, eating lamentable food, drinking spirits during dinner and reciting third rate poetry in a cod Lowland accent. The whole damn thing really ought to stop and be replaced by a celebration of James Watt who at least did something useful.

‘Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as others see us’

And real men eat offal unadulterated by oatmeal.

Zsa Zsa Gabor

I read that Zsa Zsa Gabor had lost US$ 7m in the Bernie Madoff business. If I hadn't been already impoverished by another conman (Gordon Brown) I'd hold a whip round for the old trout, if only for this:

Q: What do you think of the male contraceptive?

ZZ: Depends what's in it for me, darlink.

Not watching Big Brother

Yesterday’s Alitalia flight AZ784 Rome/Tokyo was missing an air hostess and they took off without her (history does not, alas! record when they took off but we can assume it was as normal, within 2 or 3 hours of the scheduled time). The lady, Daniela Martani, had been in the Big Brother House since 12th January.

Alitalia says that missing her flight could result in her job being at risk.

Amazing.

Schoolboy in India

The prattish behaviour in India of the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, reminds me of one of his predecessors, the late Robin Cook. He was accompanying HM Queen on her visit to the country and also gave an unsolicited lecture on how he could solve the Kashmir problem. Aside from how we would have acted if an Indian Foreign Minister had arrived and lectured us on Northern Ireland, there is the added problem that in their view we are, at least in part, the cause of the problem.

What must they think of us? Apparently Mandelson has been sent out to repair the damage but the Indian PM is refusing to see him.

Cooky compounded his error by leaving the Queen in the lurch while he flew back to London to see his mistress, while Milly made things worse by calling the venerable Indian Foreign Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, by his first name. Manners are better in India.

Where, where do we get these people?

But granted that we have a schoolboy as Foreign Secretary, where was our Rolls Royce of a civil service to guide him through his trip? I have said it before and I am sure it won't be the last time, the British Foreign Office should be closed down in the public interest, the work contracted out to Switzerland and the enormous cost savings given to the poor.

Quote of the month

Apologies if you have already heard it. From Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary

"David Cameron's task is to turn the Conservative party from a party of Old Etonians and closet homosexuals into a party of homosexuals and closet Old Etonians."

Wow!

I have been at lunch parties in Wiltshire where you expected a couple of people to pass out, but to achieve this at your inaugural luncheon shows a determined start from the new President, after the long, dry Bush administration.

This is what Americans call 'hitting the sidewalk running'.

Our turn now

America embarks on a new journey today, buoyed up on hope, inclusiveness, trust. Perhaps wrongly, I am not as optimistic, but I think the world will see that optimism and inclusion are very good things economically and there will be some timely Obama bounces all over the place.

I mentioned in my New Year's forecasts that the spotlight would soon turn to Europe; it is on us now. Ambrose Evans Pritchard in the Telegraph refers us to the social problems in the former Eastern bloc countries on the Baltic and in the East, where their fixed exchange rates to the over strong euro are causing unemployment figures of over 20% and widespread social unrest. It was a condition of their joining the EU that they signed up to the euro and the pre-euro purgatory of fixed exchange rates. And that social unrest will spread. Did you know that over 1,000 cars were torched in Paris alone on just one night - New Year's Eve? The eurozone's fourth largest economy, Spain, has lost its AAA status (the third largest, Italy , was downgraded twice a while back and is down at A+) and Greece, despite being in the euro, is getting down towards junk bond status. The euro will survive in one form or another, but it may well not be the same form within 18 months.

Keep an eye on what German politicians are saying - don't forget that it was Germany's refusal to say anything calming which led to Britain's (most felicitous) departure from the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

Jan Palach

Forty years ago today, on 16th January 1969, in protest against the Soviet repression of free speech in Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring, a young student, Jan Palach, poured petrol over himself on the steps of the National Museum in Prague and lit the fire.

Palach took three days to die, during which time he begged other students not to follow his example, because of the extreme pain.

I was 13 at the time and it impressed me forcibly – it still does – that a man should give his life in such a way to publicise what was happening in his country, that the fight against the State machine could be so brutal, and yet so eloquent.

It was my political awakening and I don’t think he should be forgotten.

Great and the good

I am not a slavish follower of football but I read that Manchester City are hoping to sign Kaka from Berlusconi's team AC Milan, for an absurd sum.

I should have thought he had one problem at Milan - his name sounds like (albeit spelled with a C) the Italian for 'shit'.

It always raises an eyebrow when I read of actress Salma Hayek. Nice to have the surname of a great economist but Salma in Italian means 'corpse'.

Royal racism

It's not often in these unhappy times that I get a good laugh from the BBC News, but after the nonsense about Prince Harry calling a fellow cadet 'our Paki friend' I almost fell apart when I heard that Prince Charles has a friend he calls 'Sooty'.

I am sure this has been said before but 'Paki' is the common parlance for Pakistani. Pakistanis refer to themselves as Pakis. Since the name is an acronym for the tribes that live there (Punjabi, Afghani, Khyberi, Sindhi, Baluchistani) it is only really unfair of the person is of Sindhi or Baluchistani origin, having his bit left off.

This term is offensive only to the tiny number of people in the political and media classes, who of course have been having a field day. I look forward to more sombre sociological analysis of 'Sooty'.

Perhaps we could also have a contribution from the Duke of Edinburgh.

Ken Clarke

A silly article by Andrew Porter in the Telegraph, a once decent paper which I fear is getting worse and worse. Porter says

'Both Mandelson ..... and Milburn were Europhiles. Brown kept Britain out of the single currency. If Brown can bite the bullet and embrace people he had such fundamental differences with then surely the Tories should decide that they can live with Clarke. They must accept they need some heavier hitters alongside Cameron.'

This is about collective cabinet responsibility. Labour's position on Europe is that we carry on accepting what's thrown at us, and as regards the single currency we go in when the time is right (but Brown decides when the time is right). A committed europhile such as Mandelson or Milburn would have no problem with this. The Conservative position, by contrast, is that we would never join the single currency and would, indeed, repatriate powers from Brussels. Is Clarke going to stand up and say he has changed his mind and now agrees with this? My guess is not.

So that means that the Conservative position has changed.

It's one or the other.

Alitalia: same old story

Tuesday 13th January, and we know what that means, don't we? YES... it's the day that Alitalia finally gets going. You will remember that after a couple of false starts last year the CAI consortium finally took over Alitalia on Monday 12th, but had to spend its first day on the ground while the pointy heads checked the planes. So, today it's all GO!!!

Er... no, in fact. All the takeoffs from Linate and Malpensa (Milan and some distance away from Milan) have been suspended because the staff don't like the choice of Air France as partner.

Air France, which was a pretty dreadful airline even before this, is going to regret its dalliance with the Italian unions.

The intellectuals

To the ordinary man in the street who, alas!
Is a keen observer of life
The word ‘intellectual’ invariably means
A man who’s untrue to his wife

Thus Hilaire Belloc (from memory). The British have always been anti-intellectual, whereas in France you cannot become a serious public figure unless you have written a turgid self-indulgent book on philosophy and I remember once having to explain to a confused Swiss what ‘too clever by half’ meant.

Prospect Magazine has for a second year running held a poll for who was the ‘public’ intellectual of 2008. The three shortlisted are General David Petraeus for his Iraq plan, Thaler and Sunstein for ‘Nudge’ (the theory that it is better to point the way to correct behaviour and let the citizen make the choice, rather than to penalise bad behaviour) and Nouriel Roubini, the economics professor who forecast the crunch a year before.

There is only one thing these people have in common, pretty obvious, you might think, and that is that they were right and not stupidly wrong. You can have a maths professor who can’t buy a bus ticket but not one who confuses algorithms with logarithms. The professor who thought the boom would go on forever might well have been well read and clever but he is not going to win a prize for the public intellectual of 2008.

The reason I mention this rather basic point is that last year one of the 100 on the long list was Gordon Brown. This is a man who put it out that he was the progenitor of some new economic paradigm but who in fact did nothing more than embrace 1950s statism: ‘the man in Whitehall really does know best’, with the interesting twist that he would permit enough low regulation capitalism to pay for it. His policy, such as it is, consists of a confused mishmash of half understood theory, unconsidered morality and self-aggrandisement and it was glaringly, ear-trumpetingly obvious that it was wrong. I began to think that Prospect, whose editor David Goodhart is himself something of an intellectual, had taken leave of its senses to try replacing the New Statesman as the rag de choix among the Fabian diaspora, and I confess I still don’t really trust it.

Anyway Brown wasn’t on it this year. Petraeus won, even though Prospect opposed the Gulf War. Good stuff.

Letter from Italy (Epiphany)

The working year begins after Epiphany, 6th January, except for this who will take the ponte (bridge) of Wednesday – Monday in which case it begins on Monday 13th. Befana, a corruption of the word Epiphany, is portrayed as a witch and at the Befana fair in the Piazza Navona brightly dressed ugly-faced dolls are for sale along with cribs and Christmas tat. Many children receive their presents on Befana.

The economic feeling in Italy is confused. The country suffered badly from high commodity prices – principally oil, also grain for pasta and bread - and now these have come down there is more money about, just as the Italians are reading how bad things are. The shops were packed at Christmas, and there were queues to get into some of the upmarket establishments on the via dei Condotti. The widely mistrusted official inflation rate for 2008 as a whole was, at 3.3%, the highest in 12 years although it has since tumbled and the year on year monthly rate is 2.2%, down from 2.7% in November. This resulted in some papers announcing record high and record low inflation rates on the same page. Italians shrug their shoulders a lot.

The Corriere della Sera reminds us of the interesting, and very Italian, story of Salerno Airport (at the eastern end of the Amalfi coast, S.E. of Naples). There had been a private airport there for years but it was only in August 2008 that it was used for commercial flights, the principal routes being to Malpensa (the airport near Lake Como which describes itself as Milan), Sardinia and Spain. And it was reasonably successful, 33 flights a week on the 100 seat planes (the runway is too short for anything bigger) moving 20,000 passengers until the end of the year. Now however all flights have been suspended due to ‘disagreements with local politicians’. You can guess. Naturally the EU has thrown money at it, €49m at the last count. The airport is spacious, clean, brightly lit and completely deserted, the latest addition to the ‘Cathedrals in the desert’ which include motorways not connected to any other roads and football stadia nowhere near human habitation.

The Vatican has announced that it will no longer incorporate Italian laws automatically on to its statute book, as has been the case since 1929. This is because there are too many laws in Italy and some are contradictory. I should have thought this was a golden opportunity to make itself a tax haven.

Alitalia will become a new airline next week! Already! The new consortium takes over officially on 12th January, but will immediately close down for a day while the aviation department checks the planes. They will discover that all the clocks are at least an hour slow. There will have to be some alliance with another airline, and whilst the obvious one is with Air France/KLM, the Northern League are pushing for Lufthansa because it is more likely to keep open the slots at Malpensa Airport (the one near Lake Como 45 minutes from Milan, unlike the real Milan airport which is called Linate). This project is unlikely to be viable until it stops becoming a political football, which itself is about as likely as the planes suddenly taking off on time.

Snow has been falling in the North, closing Milan’s airports and blocking motorways. Russia has closed the gas off. People are worried about global warming.

The Equal Opportunities Ministry has been advertising for clowns to work in children’s hospitals. 2m euros has been set aside for the project. I hear the money will be paid directly to Alitalia.

Arctic Ice

A couple of people have asked where I got the news that the Arctic ice had returned to 1979 levels. It was reported by Bill Chapman, researcher at The Arctic Climate Research Centre, University of Illinois.

It's your money

The EU spent €2.4bn on publicity last year.

That's spending your money to tell you what fine fellows they are...er... in spending so much of your money.

Just what you want to hear in a recession.

An inconvenient truth

The Arctic ice has returned to the levels of 1979.

Oddly enough I have not seen this story on the BBC, which was excellent at reporting ice levels when they were diminishing.

L'esprit communautaire

Having told us how essential it is to have the Lisbon Treaty with its common foreign policy, President Sarkozy has launched his own embassy to the Middle East, bypassing the common European one led by the Czech presidency, saying only large countries were capable of this. It might be pleasing to have one of my New Year's forecasts come true within a couple of days, but this is a salutary lesson to small countries on how they are going to be treated, Ireland take note.

And just as an indication of how much power the French constitution gives this diminutive busybody, he has just made a unilateral ruling on adverts on French State Television. Imagine Gordon Brown trying that kind of interference!

Something you probably won't see on French TV is that Rachida Dati the cabinet minister has given birth to a son. She refused to name the father but Sarkozy's brother was one of the first to visit her and the child in hospital.

This year

What might be

I think it’s too early for any firm economic predictions, but here is a thought. What is it like when an economy is coming out of recession? How do you spot the signs? I think it is a bit like the end of a battle. Bad news flies around like bullets, every day something worse. Then, almost imperceptibly the bullets seem to be less frequent; the noise abates; after a period in which no one has been shot you feel able to put your head cautiously above the parapet. I believe that this warmer feeling may come at the end of this year. Not, as Alistair Darling said that the recession will be over, that will I think be for 2010, but there will be gradual signs of it bottoming out and consumers nervously going back to the shops, perhaps moving house.

The government can, in my view, do little to bring this about, but there is much they could do to prevent the recovery. Unfortunately they have to guess when the lavish expenditure stops and when Prudence should name the day. They seem uniquely ill-equipped for this decision.

This year the economic spotlight may turn its focus to Europe. Some respite will be given the exchange rate as the dollar makes up for its fall, but a long period of a high euro will expose holes in the economic apparat. The PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) and perhaps Ireland and Denmark will look very uncomfortable in the Euro but I believe, to my regret, that the line will hold. However the euro/£ rate will improve for us expats: 1.25-1.30.

Politically, I have one suggestion, I hesitate to call it a forecast, which I have seen nowhere else. There is much talk about when the election will be (it has to be before late Spring 2010). It seems that if Gordon called it now he would lose, but conventional wisdom says the Tories have everything to gain by him delaying (and things are going to be bad this year, I feel quite safe with that forecast). Why not duck the issue completely? He doesn’t want to be seen as the Gerald Ford of Britain, never elected or electable (and at least Ford didn’t engineer the departure of his predecessor). We get to the end of 2009 and Gordon retires, citing ill health (he tried to prepare us for this earlier in the year), an exhausted public servant, a martyr for his people, having steered them through the most difficult time in their history ‘We..’, I think he’ll use the Royal we..'We have laid down the direction, we have shown the path and navigated the storm, now it is for a younger generation to take the helm….sunlit uplands (if I may mix metaphors), building on our work…blah blah’. He accepts the Garter and the OM and retires to write his rather dull books. He could hardly do this with the election date staring him in the face so would probably choose Christmas 2009.

Other political forecasts: the eurosceptics’ hope, that Czech President Vaclav Klaus as the new president of Europe will provide some shake-up or at least defence against further EU integration, will be dashed. The powers that be have been preparing for this for some time and at best they will slow down for 6 months, effectively bypassing him. They seem to have persuaded the Irish to hold a second referendum, essential in case the Tories win in Britain, and the Yes vote will probably win it, unless the recession is dreadful and the No-ers can pin the blame on the euro. Unlikely, I think.

President Obama will have some frantic back-pedalling and expectations management to do, and rather than hitting the sidewalk running I think early in his term he will be advised to be the president that never was, emerging occasionally with some brilliant rhetoric to keep people’s confidence but letting Hillary dominate the headlines. By November 2012 he will need to have weathered the economic storm, gained a reputation for prudent economic management and made America look like a moral, if not a military leader. 2012 will be seen as a good one to win, and his efforts to that end will begin this month.

What won’t be

The Middle East, despite being touched by the magic hand of Obama, will be much the same as it has been since 1948.

In my view 2009 should be the year in which HM The Queen abdicated in favour of Charles, Britain left the EU, The Church of England disestablished itself and the BBC was halved in size becoming a self financing trust. But I predict that none of these will happen.

I wish you all a prosperous 2009, knowing that won’t happen either. Happiness is more important, as is a glass of Chianti.

Last year...

I think one thing we can all agree on is that 2008 was not a good year for forecasters.

At the end of 2007 / early 2008 I thought we were in for a contraction which would be mitigated by interest rate reductions and lower commodity prices: I believed the year would be one of gradual decline. What in fact happened was just that for the first three quarters followed by a massive contraction in the last.

Four month periods
Oil 100 112 (150) 110 40

FTSE 6500 6000 5500 4300

I thought the FTSE would decline gradually and then rally. It fell out of bed.

The oil price peaked in June at almost double my year end estimate of $75 or less. Many thought it would go to $200 but I stuck to my estimate. The reason was oil futures had clearly been a proxy for shorting the dollar, and as positions unwound, and the recession caused a flight to quality, the growth in the oil price would be reversed. Oil ended at around $40, and whilst most people wouldn’t celebrate a forecast that was double the actual outcome, I am reasonably pleased with that.

I predicted that a major American bank and a car firm would go bust but be rescued. Again, I seriously underestimated the problem.

Perhaps the pivotal factor was the demise of Lehmann Brothers. There was a case for allowing it to go under, on the grounds that it was not a retail bank and that it was not the State’s job to bail out companies with a bad business plan. However the underlying weakness in the banking sector meant it was simply a warning to banks that it could happen to anyone, prompting a further loss in confidence.

To all you gold bugs out there, an investment in gold on 1st Jan 2008 would now be showing a gain of 4%, about the same as a cash deposit.

It has been a bad year for forecasters everywhere. It turned out the banks didn’t know what they had invested in, and, not knowing what the others had invested in, wouldn’t lend to each other. The credit markets almost collapsed. It has not been pretty.

Politically, I predicted that Giuliani would beat Hillary in the presidential race: it may however turn out to be a good one in which to have come second.

Cookery: Oxtail

Does anyone eat oxtail any more? Perfect winter food, perfect recession food. Recommended for a winter recession. You don't have to brown the meat. Start two days early.

For two people:
As much oxtail as your butcher will let you have. The small bits help the stock.

Half a bottle of red wine.

Marinade the one in the other overnight. Add a tin of Italian plum tomatoes and top up with water to cover the oxtail. Add 6 juniper berries, 2 tsp dried oregano, crushed garlic clove and a bayleaf. Simmer all day, topping up with water as necessary.

Following morning scrape off fat and reheat without lid so liquid evaporates. The oxtail browns while this happens. Keep turning it into the liquid.

When liquid reduced by half to two thirds serve with potatoes and the remaining 11 1/2 bottles of wine.

Sleep.

UK: House prices

The figures are in from the mortgage lenders. It seems that from the peak in Apr-Oct 2007 the average house price has declined about 12%, to where it was three years ago. That is to say what they put on between early '06 and mid '07 they have now lost.

Not quite such a disaster as the press would have us think. I suppose there's not much of a story in 'house prices don't decline much'

UK: Ken Clarke

Rumours, rumours, rumours.... that Ken Clarke is due to return to the shadow cabinet.

Now I, and I am sure thousands of others, could not vote Conservative with Clarke in any major role unless he made a clear statement that he agreed with Cameron's plans to repatriate powers from Brussels. My guess, however, is that he's not such a hypocrite.

Which can only mean....

Cyprus: Papadopoulos dies

Henry Kissinger was said to have left instructions with his staff that if he were found meddling in the Cyprus problem they should put him in a straightjacket. Now I have a feeling that not enough is being said and written on the subject, and the death of Tassos Papadopoulos a couple of weeks ago is a reminder.

What the EU would have us believe (both Greece and Cyprus are members) is that Cyprus is in a mess because of the intransigence of the Turks. No major country recognises Turkish Cyprus, effectively saying the whole island belongs to the Greeks. The truth, is, as so often, more complicated.

Cyprus became independent from Britain in 1960. The constitution provided for representation in parliament by the Greek and Turkish communities according to population, resulting in 70% Greek, 30% Turkish MPs and ministers. In addition the Turkish community was given the right of veto.

In the late 60s Greece was subject to a military coup, and was ruled by The Colonels, who wanted union between Greece and Cyprus (Enosis) and were dissatisfied with the Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios. In July 1974 Greece engineered a coup d’état in Cyprus, suspending the constitution and excluding the Turkish community from the Government. Turkey appealed to Britain, as it should have done because Britain was one of the guarantors of the Cypriot settlement, but we did nothing. Accordingly Turkey invaded and sealed off the Northern part of the territory.

At the time of the coup, Papadopoulos was part of a group which was trying, by fair means or foul, to rid the island of ethnic Turks – what we would now know as ethnic cleansing. He became president in 2003, and in 2004 there was a UN plan to bring peace to the island, which the Turks accepted. Papadopoulos campaigned against it and it was rejected by the Greeks, resulting in a continuation of the partition of the island. His idea was that the larger, wealthier southern part of the island could bide its time and achieve a result on its own terms. It was never going to work. Papadopoulos was ousted from office in the elections in February this year and now he is dead. Perhaps Cyprus can look forward to peace.

Here they come

An extraordinary piece in the Telegraph, an interview with Andy Burnham. Mr Burnham, and this will shock some people, is a cabinet minister, with responsibility for culture and the media. One of the surprising parts is this: ‘Mr. Burnham also uses the interview to indicate that he will allocate money raised from the BBC’s commercial activities to fund other public-service broadcasting such as Channel Four.’

So: we pay for the BBC and if it does anything to make a profit this is allocated towards Mr. Ahmadinejad’s fee for his Christmas Message. I hope he is paid less than Jonathan Ross.

But the really gripping part was Mr. Burnham’s views on the internet. ‘If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now. It’s true across the board in terms of content, harmful content, and copyright. Libel is [also] an emerging issue.’

I think we can see where this is going, can’t we? They will use the excuse of child porn or some such to enrage the Sun and the Mail, and then restrictions will be quietly extended to anyone posting anti New Labour ‘unhelpful’ propaganda. At least we know where the battle lines are.

Just to be clear exactly where this blog stands, Mr Burnham is a diminutive junior fascist, probably bullied at school. His boss has wrecked the British economy and will be seen as the worst Prime Minister of modern times.

In order also to fall foul of the pornography excuse I may publish lists of body parts in later posts.

Harold Pinter

While all the tributes to Pinter are pouring in, I thought I'd add my 2 centesimi-worth. I didn't like his plays, his poems, his ghastly left-wing politics and his defence of ethnic cleansing by Serbia. His only redeeming benefit was that he liked cricket, which should at least get you an introduction to the man with the keys at the pearly gates.

And when the One great scorer comes
To write against your name
He marks not if you won or lost
But how you played the game.

Pinter, though, was a tosser of the first water.

Benazir and the Beeb

We get BBC World here, and I have just gone through the astonishing experience of them observing a minute's silence for the anniversary of the death of Benazir Bhutto.

I knew Benazir slightly, years ago. She was self-obsessed, almost to the point of insanity, hedonistic, look-at-me hubristic and, of course, rich. In her time as a politician she enriched herself further at the expense of some of the poorest people on earth, her husband, who is now president, creaming off a slice of any major contract in the country. What the BBC fawningly describes as 'her vision for Pakistan' was that the keys of the treasury should be in her pocket and that her opponents should be in prison.

It is difficult to get the BBC to respect the minute's silence for our war dead. This was a disgrace, which must go into the pot with so many other incidents when we finally get to decide its future. Mene Mene Tekel upharsin. I hope it's soon.

Rome

'Rome, by all means, Rome' said Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, and who am I to disagree?

Here until Epiphany. Best wishes to all

Letter from Italy (Christmas)

It is said that everything in Italy has a political connection but you don’t expect it in the annual jamboree of calendars. Every year hundreds of starlets, aspiring models and C-list celebrities publish a collection of a dozen over-posed half naked photographs of themselves. The calendars are bought openly and shown in newspapers; wives buy them for their husbands. It seems strange to the less colourful world of northern Europe. Amongst the many this year are a couple each showing a dozen female students, one lot against the educational reforms of Maria Stella Gelmini the other in favour. My vote? Those against the reforms start at a disadvantage because they are fully clothed, and the education minister herself is better looking than any of them.

The astonishing tale of Prime Minister Berlusconi continues. Having won 47% of the vote at the general elections, his coalition is now polling over 50%. He himself has a 60% approval rating. The left-wing Partito Democratico are increasingly looking like yesterday’s men. Berlusconi is making noises about the President being directly elected (he is currently elected by MPs); it may be he has a candidate in mind.

Alitalia goes from weakness to weakness. Christmas travellers were left stranded at Fiumicino due to a wildcat strike by baggage handlers. Eventually the minister for transport had to tell them it was illegal but they have threatened further action later. The new owners, the CAI consortium, will be realising that attitudes have to change: it is not enough to concentrate on the numbers.

Bad weather coming down from the north, the recession and a minor earthquake in Parma have not dampened Italian enthusiasm for Christmas. Romans will spend an average of €270 per head. The trains are full with people rejoining their families ‘Natale con I suoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi’ (Christmas with your family, Easter with whom you please). In the wake of falling demand for Champagne, sales of spumante and prosecco are up 10%, and exports to Britain more than double. Cin Cin!

Internal Minister Roberto Maroni has announced that the Ferraris, Maseratis and Porsches confiscated from Mafiosi will become part of the police car pool. This has generated a new enthusiasm and a further 99 have been arrested this week.

Giuseppe Rebaudi, who six months ago married his sweetheart after living together for 56 years has died aged 101…….in the arms of his housekeeper. Forza!

Auguri a tutti

UK: global cooling

From the BBC's environment correspondent (I'll repeat, that's the BBC)

"The world in 2008 has been cooler than at any time since the turn of the century, scientists say.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) notes that temperatures remained about 0.3C above the 1961-1990 average.

One recent analysis suggested there may be no warming for about the next decade.

What is beyond dispute is that 2008 saw temperatures a shade below preceding years"

Could we please, therefore, have less of this stuff about global warming? Could we start telling the truth, however un-trendy it may sound? Please? Isn't that what independent news services are there for?