Global warming news

From the BBC:

A number of ships, including ferries with thousands of passengers on board, have become stuck in ice in the Baltic Sea, officials say.

The vessels are grounded in the waters between Stockholm and the Aland Islands, Radio Sweden reports.

Many of the vessels are not likely to be freed for hours, Swedish maritime authorities were quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

It is reportedly the worst Baltic freeze for 15 years.

Well well. What I am saying is not that this disproves the idea of man made global warming, it is that it gives rise to doubts, and that the burden of proof is now with them.

Encomium for the troublemakers

There is an interesting aspect to the departure this week of two of UK politics’ best known names. First, Michael Foot, who has died aged 96, was one of the great orators of his day. If you read one of his speeches it seems dull, repetitive and, of course, wrong. It was his delivery, the throaty voice raised almost to screaming point, which was able to render the most mundane of lines ‘the composite motion to Conference to amend Clause 26 (a)’ seem like Henry V’s speech at Agincourt. Foot will probably be remembered for his donkey jacket but should be for his rabble rousing and his work on Jonathan Swift.

Ian Paisley, who has announced his retirement from politics, achieved the rank of First Minister of Northern Ireland but he, too, will be remembered for his rabble rousing. My favourite incident was when Pope John Paul II visited the European Parliament to much touchy feely smiling and waving and adulation. Paisley, who was also a Euro MP (he often claimed to have received more votes than any other politician in Britain) stood up when it was his turn and said ‘I denounce you as the Antichrist’, almost certainly the first and last time the old boy had been spoken to in those terms.

What links these two engaging political figures is that they may be the last. It is clichéd to write ‘we shall never see his like again’ but we may well not if we adopt the proposal for changing the voting system to the Alternative Vote. Under this system, to be elected you have to get a lot of second and third preferences and thus appeal to (or not go against) a wide spectrum of opinion. Those who are elected will be dull, middle of the roaders who don’t rock the boat. It’s a grim prospect.

Rude about Rumpy and Belgium

I suppose I must take some small responsibility for this in that I recruited Nigel Farage to what was then the Anti-Federalist League (which changed its name to UKIP in 1993).

He is actually quite good company and serious, but in a speech in the European Parliament welcoming the visit of the President of the EU, he described Belgium as 'pretty much a non-country' and the President as having 'the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk'.

I wasn't going to report on this since it wasn't one of Nigel's best speeches but I now read he is to be fined nearly €3,000 for being horrid. As he himself says 'Free speech is expensive in Brussels'.

It is a shame Rumpy didn't go to the defamation courts. We could then have heard the fair comment defence as to whether he did indeed have the charisma of a damp rag and the Public Interest Defence, as to whether we should be entitled to know that the President of 500 million people has the appearance of a low grade bank clerk.

But Belgium? Belgium? You can be fined for being rude about Belgium?

I should like to go on record as stating that Belgium is an unnecessary country and that it would be better for it and for Europe if part were reattached to France and the other part to the Netherlands. Its political system has collapsed, with no governemnt being formed after the last election, and it has an inordinately high incidence of paedophilia.

It seems that the recent fatal train crash was caused by one official not understanding the language spoken by another, in a country about as wide as the M4.

I think that Farage was wrong, though, not to mention that the chips are good.

Sarah's Law

I am getting a little concerned that in our anxiety to be seen to be doing anything to stop child molestation we are inching away from the sort of fair and just society that those children would want to grow up in.

Sarah’s Law, named after Sarah Payne, who was killed by a convicted paedophile, is a diluted copy of Megan’s Law in the US (where they publish the whereabouts of people convicted of paedophilia). It has been on trial in 4 areas of the country for 18 months. It is reported that 585 enquiries were made to the police in Cleveland, Warwickshire, Cambridgeshire and Hampshire. Of those, 315 were investigated by police and 21 turned out to relate to people who are on the sex offenders' register for offences against children. A further 11 related to people with criminal convictions for other offences, such as violence. The law is now to be extended - 'rolled out' is the term they use - to the rest of the country.

We need to have a careful look at this. Here is what the Government website says:

‘The disclosure pilot is intended to test the effectiveness of giving parents, carers and guardians a more formal way of requesting information about people who are involved in their family life – specifically if they are concerned that a person is a child sexual offender.

If police checks show that someone has a record for offences that may put a child at risk, the authorities will consider sharing this information with the child’s parent, carer or guardian.’

The first thing is ‘people who are on the sex offenders' register for offences against children’. Now, you can be on the sex offenders’ register for other things than offences against children. Many people have been persuaded to go on it: sad people who spend a little too much time looking through the fence at the school playground are taken away by police and threatened that they might be prosecuted (even though there would be no chance of a prosecution being allowed, much less successful) unless they agree to go on the register; people who have viewed photographs of children on their computers (Pete Townsend, the guitarist, is one) but would never commit an offence against a child. One person is on the sex offender’s register for smacking an unruly child in a supermarket. Are these people to be investigated and their names given to parents?

Suppose you committed a robbery with violence. You would presumably come under Sarah’s Law under ‘for offences that may put a child at risk,’ – indeed one such case cropped up in the trial period – even though you have never committed violence against a child and never would.

What do you do then, if you have served your time and will never err again, or have seen some dirty photos, or you have simply smacked your child? You could be hounded from neighborhood to neighborhood, never being allowed to settle as your record – extending far past the Statute of Limitations – follows you.

Now it may well be that the authorities will act sensibly and refuse most requests, keeping their investigations and the release of personal data to those who have genuine, regular access to children and are genuinely likely to put them at risk. But nothing in the hysteria we have already seen would give one confidence about this. Parliament should keep a close watch on how this is proceeding and if necessary issue restrictions on its operation.

BBC: crocodile tears

BBC6 Music (count them: 1,2,3,4,5,6) and its Asian Network are facing closure, the comfortably remunerated Mark Thomson, Director General, has said, to howls of complaint.

There is one question we should ask, and indeed the BBC should ask itself, when considering its involvement in a programme or channel. ‘Could this be done equally well by the private sector?’

In the case of these two, it is said that BBC6 is giving airtime to bands which aren’t heard elsewhere. The reason for this is that the massive financial clout of the BBC is starving potential small stations from the airwaves. It’s like nationalising the Post Office and saying ‘see? No one else delivers letters’.

There may be enough Asians in Britain to justify the occasional programme, but there are not enough for a ‘network’ outside the Asian section of the World Service.

Apart from the World Service and the website (which they are also cutting), the BBC needs two or three platforms: Radio 4, BBC1 TV and maybe Radio 3 to do arts. For the rest, it should be a commissioner of public service programmes.

Politicians rightly hate to be seen to be dictating to the BBC but the upshot of this is that we have given it the right to tax the people of the UK and create a vast, bureaucratic, self serving Leviathan. Again at this last Olympics we sent more BBC staff than athletes. I am told it only needs a hopeful in the Women’s Slalom to come from, say, Henley-in-Arden and BBC Radio Henley-in-Arden has to send its representative with recording staff to do the interviews.

It has got to stop. I suspect the only reason they are making these minuscule cuts now is that they don’t want to be put under scrutiny after the election. The sooner they are the better.

The horrors to come

It is 70 days to the final date for a general election in the UK, and 100 days until the Football World Cup.

All I'm saying is, have a think about your holiday plans

UK: The Tories

I have just seen David Cameron's speech to his Spring Conference. If I can find a link to it I shall add it.

I thought it very good

Petty corruption

The case being made against Guido Bertolasi, the Head of the Civil Protection Service in Italy, is that he accepted bribes, financial and sexual, for contracts within his gift. The Civil Protection Service looks after, for example, rehousing the people of l’Aquila after the earthquake there. It is alleged that several other prominent figures were involved and that Achille Toro, the Chief Prosecutor of Rome, had to resign because he tipped off several people of the impending charges.

No one I know is particularly surprised by this, even if Bertolasi is a popular figure nationally.

It is not alleged at the moment that this is organised crime. I maintain what I have stated before that Berlusconi’s government has done more against the various southern mafias than any previous one. Asset seizures have trebled since it took office, and whilst this amounts only to something like 5% of annual revenues of the Cosa Nostra (Sicily), n’Drangheta (Calabria), Camorra (Campania) and Sacra Corona Unita (Puglia) it nevertheless comes out as about €7 billion.

What is alleged against Bertolasi, and there are dozens of similar cases larger and smaller going on in Italy at the moment, is a result of the culture of petty corruption. If you are in a position where you can award government contracts, or offer jobs to the raccomandati it is assumed that you can be bribed and firms bidding for contracts think that the quality and nature of the bribe is as important as the quality and nature of the services they are offering in their bid. Most Italians will shrug their shoulders and say ‘Everyone is doing it’.

Which brings us to Greece, which is even worse than Italy in this respect. The government may hit against big corruption, as Berlusconi has done against the 4 mafias, but it is hard to get to grips with the petty stuff which, totalled up, amounts to billion upon billion. A Greek doctor reported that every year a tax inspector would come to see him promising, for €1,000, not to investigate his affairs. And this is not an isolated case. Most professional people don’t pay anything like the taxes they should, and most government contracts are inflated 10-20% to cover backhanders.

If the tax inspector were fired, the unions would be up in arms, just as they are in Italy if anyone has a go at the public servants who have two jobs and get someone to clock in for them. But what alternative is there? What investor is going to buy Greek or Italian bonds if they know a large part of the money is being frittered away?

Identifying and firing the guilty is going to be difficult and go against the culture, but a start must be made and that, I think, is it.

PS I forecast a while back that David Mills’ case would be eliminated by the Statute of Limitations, and so it has proved. Now perhaps that it is no longer sub judice, the British can hold an investigation as to whether his wife, Tessa Jowell, then a cabinet minister, knew what she was doing when she mortgaged the family home then repaid the mortgage soon after, thereby washing the money. And this was not the first time she had done it. Well?

Let battle commence

I have always said of the absence of Switzerland in any of the planet’s wars that you don’t rob your own bank.

We now learn that Colonel Gaddafi withdrew his money from the banks before declaring war on Switzerland, leaving open, of course, the possibility of an invasion. His reason is officially the Swiss vote to ban the erection of any more minarets, but some say it is because they arrested one of his sons, interestingly named Hannibal, for beating up a servant.

If Gaddafi does invade Switzerland it will provide some colour to an otherwise tedious political story and in my view be greatly to the benefit both nations. I hope his first move will be to colonise the Ticino, the Italianised canton, the principal town of which is Lugano. Happier and less judgmental, the Ticinese are philosophically far removed from the dour Swiss Germans of Basel and Zurich. Pitching his tent among the lakeside dwellings near Locarno, here he would find acceptance of his almost industrial requirement for female company, his interminable speeches and his absurd uniforms.

And he could just pop across the border to Piemonte to see his mate Silvio, and stock up on a few more women.

Yes; a consummation, as the poet said, devoutly to be wished.

Turkey

Here in the rich, modern western world, we tend to forget our history pretty quickly. With the exception of Churchill our collective political memory scarcely stretches as far back as Heath, much less Atlee or Balfour. In Turkey, however, the ghost of one of the early 20th century’s truly great figures still walks the corridors of power and informs the actions of the rulers. Every office, not just the Government ones, contains a picture of him; no criticism is heard of him, and indeed it is doubtful if anything untoward is known about him. It is as if a god had walked the earth.

In the early years of the 20th century the Ottoman Empire was imploding under its social contradictions and its casual, caste-entitlement philosophy. In the First World War, adhering to a treaty to fight with Germany, it performed weakly: its outdated military, both in terms of equipment and lack of esprit de corps, crumbled in front of the modern Western armies.

Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk, had graduated from the military academy in 1905 and became the Ottoman Army’s most successful general, the only one undefeated in the First World War. He commanded at Gallipoli, defeating the Allied troops. He became the first leader of the Turkish Republican Party and it is not too much to say that he founded Turkey, which was the rump of the Ottoman Empire after everyone had chipped off a bit.

Ataturk’s primary consideration, having seen the outdatedness of the forces and indeed the whole Ottoman civilisation, was to modernise. His vision for Turkey was as a modern, educated, secular state, and that effectively became Turkey’s constitution. The army, which worshipped Ataturk, was sworn to uphold it and this went well (the pace of modernisation was slower than Ataturk might have wished, but the direction was the same) until the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which has Muslim leanings.

And that is what this whole crisis in Turkey is about. It is not an attempted coup for profit, it is not for democracy (Erdogan was properly elected) it is about defending the legacy of Ataturk. It is, unfortunately, not going to help Turkey’s application to join the European Union. Countries such as France, who fear Turkish access to their markets because of the low wage rates and high quality agriculture, now have an excuse: the ructions of the last week have highlighted the Islamist leanings of the government and the strength of the army.

My own view of Turkey and Europe is the opposite: that the Turks would be mad to join the EU, but Europe should be trying desperately to get them in. It would be Europe’s own little piece of Islam, which would be politically valuable, the well trained Turkish military would bolster the WEA (the proposal for a European Army) and Turkey would be our own China, making cheap goods for European markets.

I wonder now whether it will ever happen.

Pope for the day

The Pope, we learn, has been invited to deliver Radio 4's Thought for the Day on his forthcoming visit to Britain.

I haven't heard the programme for some years but I remember Rabbi Lionel Blue, who was a regular, always used to finish off with a little joke.

I am not sure this would be the correct course for His Holiness, however. You know what they say about a German joke: it's no laughing matter.

Pompey the poor

My grandfather, who worked in the dockyards, was a regular at Fratton Park, Portsmouth’s football ground. I wish I could say, like the moist eyed Tony Blair, that he had taken me to see some of the football greats at Pompey, but in fact none of them were playing there and he didn’t want a child accompanying him to a man’s event. As a result football is rather a closed book to me; except for the financing, which is a piece of continuing fascination.

Portsmouth has gone into administration today and I think history will say that its demise is a piece of singular incompetence. Yet the news showed bewildered fans wandering around saying that football seemed to be more a matter of money than social cohesion. Indeedy doody. The money men are in, and the social cohesion chaps are talking on local radio.

One morning in Borneo, watching the sun rise over the Kuching river (one of the world’s ‘must sees’ by the way) I had myself rowed out to an island in the middle of the stream. Alighting from the boat the first thing I saw was a Manchester United merchandising trolley for selling T-shirts and caps and so on. The Manchester United brand is strong internationally. No one on that island, or in the whole of Kuching, would have heard of Portsmouth.

When Manchester United was being bought there were demonstrations saying ‘Man Utd is not for sale’, which of course it was, being quoted on the stockmarket. But all the supporters clubbing together could have bought it, outbidding the Glazer family, and we would have had a sort of co-operative. I am certain that this is the solution for Pompey.

The BBC tried to explain football’s financing problem in terms of debt (and football clubs have a lot) in relation to assets. This is meaningless. The important ratio is debt to cashflow. The Americans who bought Manchester United and filled it with debt did it on the basis that all these Indonesians, Chinese and Japanese are buying Manchester United shirts. The cashflow is strong and they borrowed against it. A similar cachet exists with Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur. Not with Manchester City (is that the second team?), Aston Villa, or, of course Portsmouth.

Football suddenly became a billion pound industry without getting billion pound managers to run it. It is the same set of self satisfied uneducated working class slobs who manage the Football Association as did 50 years ago. The twenty top teams get far too much money and the remainder get far too little. Football cannot expect its outdated business plan to be rescued by billionaires. It happens from time to time but there really aren’t enough.

The only answer is for the fans to own the teams. That is what should have happened with Manchester Utd, but it seemed too much money. It could certainly happen with Portsmouth, which can’t now be worth very much, and would transform the whole industry. Why not pay the players’ bonuses with shares, as happens in the City? Start training youngsters instead of buying expensive players from abroad? Pay the manager and his staff on a purely performance basis?

Football is in crisis. It needs some new thinking. More than anything else it needs some leaders who are open to new thinking. Don't hold your breath, though.

Election fever?

The blogophere is alive with rumours that an election is about to be called. There are stories that the BBC political team have had their leave cancelled....

Toyota

Something you may not know about Toyota is that the founding family is called Toyoda. The car company was given the different spelling because the number of strokes in Japanese script for a 't' was a luckier number than that for a 'd' .

Time to change it again, think.

St Sheila

Streuth!

Had me worried for a bit when I heard they were canonising an Australian nun.

But it's OK. It turns out she was excommunicated in 1871 for insubordination.

Probably a bit of drunk and disorderly as well.

Veneziette?

I am a great fan of the headline writer's art and one of the best I have seen this year is in today's Telegraph: 'Smart salad dressing could save Venice'.

It involves mixing oil and water to turn carbon dioxide into limestone and if true it could...well, it could show how little I understand about chemistry.

You can read it here.

Snow

The continuing bad weather in Britain might have an interesting effect. Bad weather tends to lower production - people don't make it into work, logistics get fouled up - and it seems not unlikely that this might tip the economy back into negative growth for the first quarter. The announcement of the figures should be in the third week in April. Gordon might want to go to the country before the news comes out.

April 1st, which is what I would favour, is both Maundy Thursday and the Feast of All Fools, and it seems that even our accident prone Prime Minister might wish to avoid that. But April 8th?

You can still get decent odds at Ladbrokes

Colin Firth

Congratulations to Colin Firth on his BAFTA award.

Firth is a middle aged Englishman living in Umbria. That's all I can think of at the moment that we have in common.

Greeks bearing debts

Mr Papandreou, the Greek Prime Minister, has demanded that the European Union (not just the Eurozone, you'll notice, but Britain as well) publish details of how it will bail out Greece 'should the need arise' while insisting they don't actually need it - something just for the markets. But Papandreou is on the mild mannered side of the argument.

"How does Germany have the cheek to denounce us over our finances when it has still not paid compensation for Greece's war victims?" Thus Margaritis Tzimas, of the conservative New Democracy party, in a recent speech. "There are still Greeks weeping for their lost brothers."

Now if you were a hard working German, who in recent years had foregone payrises in the interests of keeping the German economy sound, would you think (a) He's right, you know. It is our duty to bail out our Greek brothers; or (b) Isn't it about time these idle shysters were left to fend for themselves ?

The Winter Olympics

Until a couple of days ago I thought a luger was a type of pistol and Women's Skeleton was what you might see in one of these new scanners at the airport.

What doesn't seem right about it all is that the sports played in the Summer Olympics - running, jumping and that silly one where girls in the swimming pool all stick their legs out of the water at the same time (a clear case of gender discrimination) - these sports can be played equally well in the cold, snowy countries, whereas you can't luge, if that is the verb, in North Africa.

What we need is some sports which can only be done in hot countries, to even up the balance. Formation sunbathing would be my choice.

Burning bright

Actually I don't want Tiger Woods to apologise to me. No need, really. The whole thing was a bit of mildly interesting chaff, some tittilation in the cheap press, nothing more. I didn't suffer; in fact I was mildly amused. This is the stuff of Roman folklore, that the Gods have the same weaknesses as us.

Traducing the image (of a clean cut young boy) he had sold to the media and the sponsorship companies is something he could have apologised for quietly. But I don't feel let down by that, either. I know a little it about the publicity machine and it has its ups and downs. Look at Britney Spears.

The only apology necessary should be to his wife, and that in private.

When all is said and done, Tioger Woods is wonderful golfer and he will return to golf. As soon as he wins his first tournament the press will forget about his indiscretions. Life is like that.

A billion thanks

Thanks to the Adam Smith Institute for this:

A billion is a hard number so let's get some perspective. A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. A billion hours ago was the Stone Age. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet. A billion Pounds ago was only 13 hours and 12 minutes... - at the rate our government is spending it. Thanks Gordon!

The Law and the busybodies

Today marks the anniversary of the end, in 1933, of Prohibition in the United States.

Prohibition seems daft now, but the anniversary is significant for a number of reasons. The first is that this was not just a law, it was a part of the Constitution. People who want a constitution in the UK (of course we already have one, I mean people who want a codified model you can buy in newsagents), forget that you can put lots of silly stuff into a constitution (and I bet we would) and then change it, as the Americans did an astonishing fourteen years later. Constitutional amendments are only different from ordinary laws in that you need a bigger majority in the legislature to enact or amend them.

The second reason all this is worth thinking about is that, following the ridicule with which this sort of thing is now viewed, the busybodies (and what must they have been like in 1919 to enact this!) are using a different method to get their way. Look at smoking: first they tax it, so heavily that it is a burden on the poor, not the rich; then they come up with a lot of bogus statistics about passive smoking (and this is an episode for which Science should hang its head in shame) to ban it from stations, public buildings and so on. They are passing the Prohibition Amendment (it was called at the time ‘The Noble Experiment’!) by stealth.

Who can doubt that what has happened to cigarettes will happen to alcohol unless the busybodies are stopped?

Laws should be made by the people, working upwards through their representatives, not by the great and good looking down on the people, knowing what is best for them.

The Euro

I forecast that this year the attention of the currency markets would focus on the eurozone and how it has. The single currency has lost 5% of its value against the dollar this year, which is not yet seven weeks old.

There are two aspects to this which merit attention. The first is, shall we say, the technical argument. The European model, with its regulated labour markets and strong welfare, tends to bounce along without changing much, which is what you want in good times but not when emerging from a serious recession. The lesser regulated American model, by contrast, if not roaring out of recession, is at least pulling strongly. The peripheral European economies are waiting for the German consumer to do something, but he is cautious and not spending. The euro will tend to fall against the dollar just for being the slower runner in the race.

The second aspect is a discussion of the very existence of the euro, and it is this which has made Greece, a minnow at 3% of Eurozone output, so important. A single currency among sovereign states means that monetary policy - the interest rate - is controlled in Frankfurt, but fiscal policy - government spending - is a matter for the individual nations. Greece, together with several others, have overspent. The 3% deficit limit is a joke when not even France and Germany can keep to it, so to a Mediterranean country this was simply carte blanche. Someone would bail them out eventually.

Romano Prodi once said that the first crisis the eurozone faced should be seen as an opportunity. What he meant was that they could seize the moment to complete the European unity project, and that means complete economic union. The guys at the centre now have this dilemma: if they try to complete monetary and fiscal union now - Frankfurt telling Athens how much it can spend on welfare next year, and Italy whether it can afford its bridge to Sicily - the members of the eurozone might see that as an attack on their independence (it would indeed be exactly that). But even then, with the olive belt agreeing to cede fiscal independence, there would loom the problem of the lack of competitiveness in these areas. They would continue to get steadily poorer relative to Germany and in five years they would have to be bailed out with massive regional spending. And no hard working German wants to be on the hook for that.

The other horn of the dilemma is that if they don't limit Mediterranean profligacy, the euro quite simply cannot survive. The poorer countries will collapse under the weight of their ever rising debt.

So the chaps in Frankfurt and Brussels are left hoping that Greece and the rest will cut their deficits willingly. But no one has any experience of cutting: since the war governments have got their fingers into more and more pies, not fewer; elections have always been about who would spend more, not less. Already Greece is on strike and they haven't even heard, much less felt, the half of what they are going to have to go through. Can the Greek government pull it off? Can they reduce people's living standards and benefits in order to stay in the currency union? Or would that make them unelectable?

It seems to me that Democracy has faced the project down. Papandreou now knows that the German electors won't allow Merkel to open her chequbook, but the Greek voters won't allow him to close his.

It is on this that the future of the euro depends. If it were me, I'd get ready to sling five of them out. But there again I would have addressed this problem ten years ago.

The tortured mind

The subject of torture has raised its ugly head again. The British Secret Service (a name I always find so old fashioned) is accused of being complicit in the torture by the Americans of Binyam Mohammed.

This morning Lord Harries (the former Bishop of Oxford) tried to explain on radio why torture should be banned. It was, he said, because it took us down to their level, it made us do things which were simply not the sort of things which would be done by the type of society we wanted to be (by which he means the sort of society he wants us to be).

I must say, I don’t think the British public are with the bien pensants on this one. I think most of us – if we get the signatures can we have a referendum, Mr.Cameron? – think that if police have in custody a suspect who, they seriously believe, knows details of a terrorist attack which could cost hundreds of lives, they want him tortured until he spills the beans. I know this is difficult. Perhaps a variety of exceptional methods of interrogation (the euphemism sounds lots better than 'torture' which is reminiscent of the Inquisition) could be authorised by a High Court Judge, the Security Services being scrutinised afterwards to make sure it was targeted rather than random. I'm in two minds about it, to be honest, but I want to discuss it rather than being lectured by the great and good.

The other thing the public don’t much like is ‘the sort of society we are’ being determined by these self-appointed arbiters of morality, such as the liberal leftie Harries. We ordinary people might decide that depriving a subject of sleep is a vastly different moral transgression to blowing up a busload of innocent people. We might in fact decide that rather than being the sort of cosy, smug society Harries would like, we are in fact a collection of vindictive torturers. Whatever we decide, I don’t believe lefty Harries is representative of us.

I, for example, think Harries should be tortured until he explains why he nearly destroyed the Church of England by appointing an openly gay priest (who later had to resign after the damage was done) as Bishop of Reading. He knew it could cause a schism so why did he do it? Why? Where’s my rubber truncheon?

Spring springing?

At this time of year I am often looking out for the first signs of Spring, so far, of course, without luck. But I wondered when it officially begins. Most Italians would say that February is winter, March is Spring. So do we celebrate it on 1st March?

Some people go by the solstices and equinoxes. This would mean that Spring ran from 21st March to 21st June but that seems a little late. Indeed these are supposed to be the mid point of the season. But that would mean Spring began on about 4th February, which seems a little early.

St Valentine’s Day, which was chosen for when birds mate? When you see some particular flora – for example almond blossom?

Anyhow, it’s not yet.

Stormont Shocker

With all the delicate negotiations in Northern Ireland at the moment I was a little taken aback to read the headline ‘Trimble elated at Ireland call-up’.

The Six nations rugby, in which Andrew Trimble (and not David, the former Ulster Unionist) will turn out for Ireland against Italy this afternoon, is a welcome break from politics, and probably more important.

MPs' expenses

I have written little on the parliamentary expenses scandal, in part because it just seems a tawdry product of the age we live in. Partly, also, there is some reason behind what is going on. Successive governments have refused pay rises to the legislators so that they might all appear to be suffering with us in the economic mire they have caused. Mrs Thatcher, I seem to remember, linked an MP’s pay to the salary of a senior civil servant and they should have stuck with that no matter how unjustified it sometimes seems (how many times have you remarked that things are gong so well in our country that the MPs deserve a pay rise? Nor have I.)

The upshot of this was a tacit agreement that they could recoup some of their losses with some lavish expenses. That they over played their hand is clear, but there is at least some reason behind it.

The four parliamentarians (three Labour MPs and a Conservative peer) who have had their details referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions are not in this category. There is evidence (they have not been found guilty yet, except by the newspapers) of clear fraud. One of them, for example, seems to have claimed the rental for a property he himself owned; two others are accused of faking invoices.

It is quite unacceptable that these men might be allowed to claim parliamentary privilege from prosecution. The rule of parliamentary privilege was put in place to protect free speech: you could not sue an MP for defamation if he spoke the words in the House, and so he could be fearless in his allegations. It has nothing to do with criminal activity.

The public wants a scalp or two. Let’s get this over with – properly, without compromise or evasion of responsibility – and move on.

Cuts

I really don't know what is happening to the Tory Party. Cameron and Osborne seem to have lost their nerve and there doesn't seem to be anyone else they can allow out except on a lead.

Having been savaged by Lord Mandelson recently, Osborne yesterday made a speech on the economy almost completely without content. It turns out they have identified £1 billion of savings. They need to find £80 billion, and quickly.

The worst of it is they have accepted, or allowed to go unchallenged, Labour's dictum that you mustn't cut expenditure too quickly or you will ruin the recovery. This is nonsense. Firstly it will take a while to get the cuts through - the entire civil service will be resisting, not to mention all the quangos and lobby groups. Secondly it is not expenditure cuts which might dampen the recovery but a monetary contraction. So if you made £40 billion of cuts and felt the economy was still stuttering, you would just have to release the money back in some positive way, like cutting business taxes or national insurance, either of which would have a positive effect on employment.

But you have to make the cuts. Reducing the size of the State is a good thing, Mr Osborne. You're supposed to be a Conservative, remember?

F.A. to do with them

It was eleven years ago today that Glen Hoddle was sacked as England’s football manager. You may recall that Hoddle had some highly publicised religious views which included a belief in reincarnation. He said in an interview with the Times that he believed disabled people were being punished for their sins in a previous life.

Notwithstanding the fact that more people in the world believe this than watch English football, Hoddle was criticised by many, and in particular Tony Blair, the People’s Prime Minister, said he did not believe Hoddle could stay in his job after what he had said. Rather than being outraged that a public servant should poke his nose into what was clearly a private matter, the tabloid press called for Hoddle's head and he lost his job, a piece of religious persecution redolent of the counter reformation.

Now we have the Sports Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe (no, I’d never heard of him either) suggesting that John Terry, the England captain, cannot stay in his job because he has had an affair with a team mate’s girlfriend and paid for her to have an abortion (whatever you think about abortion I suppose there may be a certain old world courtesy in offering to pay).

What I want to know is why the State is getting involved in this. If I were interested in football I should want as captain the best man for the job, even if he had fathered dozens of illegitimate children with everyone from the Spice Girls to the Little Sisters of Mercy.

Why have we got a sports minister, anyway? There isn’t a reading minister or a listening to music minister.

Gordon Brown should tell Mr Sutcliffe to stick to his brief, which is squandering the taxpayer’s money on the absurd Olympics jamboree.

He doesn't deserve this

David Cameron, leader of the UK’s Conservative Party, seems to have lost the plot. He said we should have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, then said that if it were passed without a referendum he would ‘not let matters rest’ (‘I will do such things – what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth’). Then he admitted he would do nothing.

Recently he has made a bit of a name for himself saying that there must be immediate cuts to reduce the deficit. Then, at Davos the other day, he said that there didn’t have to be massive tax cuts.....

Cameron seems to be inviting the electorate to replace one indecisive ditherer with another. He looks such a prat – wait until you hear Gordon Brown grind him into the dust for the third week running on Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday – that I fear there is no hope.

But he doesn’t deserve this. Peter Mandelson has been comparing him to Des O’Connor.

This is an unacceptable level of slander, and Mandelson must apologise or Cameron must consult his lawyers.

I said the election was hotting up but I hadn’t realised it had got this bad.

UK Elections

The campaign is hotting up.

Hat-tip to Shane Greer

Greece and the euro

The British papers have conflicting stories on what is going on in the eurozone. The pro-euro FT says ‘EU signals last resort backing for Greece’ whereas the anti-euro Telegraph quotes a statement made to the German parliament by Rainer Bruederle, economy minister, that there would be "no bail-outs" for struggling debtors and no move to a "European economic government". There is a divergence of opinion in Europe as to what to do. The Germans, as was bound to happen, have decided they don’t want to pay.

The markets went for the Telegraph’s version and hammered Greek debt. It hadn’t helped that an auction of Greek bonds had sold well to hedge funds who believed a story that China was going to invest in Greek bonds. The story seems to have been put out by Athens and its advisors. When they found out they had been conned they sold heavily. Greece now pays 4% more than Germany on its debt and must renew some 50 billion euros by June. It can’t afford these rates, which means it can’t afford the uncertainty being allowed by European leaders to diffuse over the markets.

So what will happen? Simply enough, a country in Greece’s position must either have an external devaluation (of its exchange rate) which Greece can’t do while it is in the euro, or an internal devaluation, which means wages and asset values must go down and taxes must go up. Many people think Greece doesn’t have the political will to do this.

No one knows what would happen if Greece left the eurozone. One idea is that it would create a new internal currency called the drachma, in which all internal transactions would be made. External transactions and the payment of taxes would be in euros. So Greece would be both in and out of the euro. It would be a temporary measure and the Government would undertake to buy back all the drachmas with euros in five years time. If you own a property in Greece it would now be valued in drachma (probably 30% lower) but so would any mortgage you might have.

But what of euro notes issued by Athens? Are they, like the Bank of England’s ‘I promise to pay the bearer..’ an obligation of Greece?. Have you got any?

The number on Greek issued notes begins with a Y. That on German issued notes begins with X.

Silvio and the mafia

On 3rd January the courthouse in Reggio, Calabria, was firebombed. No one is in any doubt that this was the work of the n'drangheta, the Calabrian mafia, telling the government to back off. A week ago, a car containing explosives was found a few hundred metres from the route taken by the President, Giorgio Napolitano, to the airport after a visit to the city. On Monday a prosecuting magistrate investigating the n'drangheta received a bullet through the post.

On Thursday Silvio Berlusconi, himself recently attacked in public, held a cabinet meeting in Reggio and unveiled a new plan against the n'drangheta, the Camorra in Naples and the Sicilian mafia. The plan includes stringent procedures for asset confiscation.

It would be nice if just some of the press could recognise (a) that Berlusconi has balls, which can scarcely be said of 99% of European politicians and (b) that more has been done by this government against organised crime than any before it. Papers in England and Germany in particular are still putting out sly little insinuations that Berlusconi has connections to organised crime. Funny way of saying thank you.

Stephane & Django

After the post about Django Reinhardt I missed that a couple of days later it was the anniversary of the birth of Stephan Grapelli. Here they are playing together

Ban the Burqa?

Following the noises being made about banning the burqa in France, I suspect that there are sympathetic rumblings in many parts of Europe. The party I helped to found, UKIP, is making noises in this direction. I suspect and hope it is purely a political machination and they aren’t serious.

Now, I am of the view that if you are coming to live in a country you should adopt as many of its customs as possible, and in the absence of proof that it is required by Islam, I regard the wearing of the burqa as refusal to integrate and damned bad manners. I have problems banning it, though.

I don’t want to get to the stage where the State decides what you can and can’t wear. You can imagine in the past we would have banned such things as jeans (except for manual workers), miniskirts and long hair (except for women).

You can make the ban conditional. For example in France they are considering banning entry into government buildings for those wearing the burqa (except presumably the courts), withholding benefits and denying citizenship. But with the conditionality you have to say what it is about those circumstances which makes the ban necessary or desirable. Presumably it would be banned in the offices of France Telecom but not if it were denationalised. Why shouldn’t you receive benefits for dressing in a particular way? If they are conditional on suitable behaviour why do we allow benefits for drug addicts? And the refusal of naturalisation: what if the woman doesn’t wear the burqa for the qualification period and puts it on once she has got her passport?

No, the only one that’s remotely viable is banning the covering of the face, motorcycle helmets included, in any organisation where there is the risk of robbery, such as Post Offices and banks. For the rest we must confine ourselves to reminding these women to their faces that they are not playing the game.

But I don't suppose many of us will be doing that. It just might be a cross dressing karate black belt under that sheet.

Eating out in Rome

I live down the road from Il Passetto restaurant in Rome. It is known to be expensive, but you may remember last June that two Japanese tourists complained to the police after forking out 700 euros for their lunch.

The newspapers love a story like this, partly because of the opportunities offered to sub-editors ‘Restaurant lands itself in the soup’, ‘Bill left a nasty taste in the mouth’ (and here I must apologise for that ‘forking out 700 euros’). In part however it is because the Roman restaurants have a bit of a reputation for this. The Romans themselves don’t suffer, because they all know a little place round the corner which makes an Amatriciana better than your mother does and costs less than a hamburger.

Anyway, the restaurant was closed by the authorities, rather elegantly, I thought, for hygiene reasons. It is part of life in Italy that you can get away with blue murder but cross the line one millimetre and you will get the book thrown at you. They probably checked the owner’s car had been properly serviced. His crime seems to be giving the sport a bad name.

Now the owner is fighting back. On the window of the restaurant he has posted a list ‘For the curious: this is what those two Japanese ate in June’.

And I must say it is a pretty sporting little lunch. A couple of beers, and three antipasti: 2 portions of porcini mushrooms, 2 of scampi and two of oysters (6 of which were au gratin). That would be enough for most people and with the bread and a half bottle of sauvignon notched up 176 euros. A full meal for two would be fifty or sixty in that little place round the corner but this is Passetto and they are eating seafood.

Then the Japs went for the primo, or pasta course. Tonnarelli pasta with two kilos of lobster, if you please, at 104 euros a portion.

They seem to have been getting into their stride now because they ordered 1.5kg of roast sea bass with potatoes at 55 euros a kilo, together with an interesting chardonnay at 79 euros.

Dessert? Naturalmente. 2 portions of fruit compote and only one of ice cream (perhaps one of them was running out of steam or it was a desire to economise).

And the whole lot, with a bottle of water, came to euro 579.50. They then had their photos taken with the waiters and, according to the proprietor, offered a tip rounding it up to 700 euros.

I rather think I am coming down on the side of the proprietor. It is difficult in a foreign country but the prices are on the menu and I am sure 2kg of lobster would cost a fair bit in central Tokyo.

The name of the restaurant, by the way, is taken from the secret passageway from the Vatican to Castel S.Angelo, used by the Pope when besieged by angry restaurant proprietors for not paying his bill.

Police Roads Terror

Details have emerged of the terror campaign conducted by British Police on Britain’s roads during the Christmas period.

223,423 people were stopped in December while going about their lawful business and made to take a breathalyser test. Only 7,638 were over the limit. That’s about one in thirty.

That this is an enormous waste of police time is self-evident: in no other field would such an enormous effort with such low results be tolerated. What is less often mentioned is the erosion of civil liberties. The laughably low success rate means that there can have been no suspicion of criminality – police were just randomly stopping anyone they felt like stopping.

Even the incidence of being over the limit when there had been a collision was only 7%, which means that for every fourteen road accidents, thirteen were caused by something other than alcohol. What?

Where I used to live, near Shaftesbury, the major problem was not drunks but old people. They had poor eyesight and were often unable to control their vehicle. But the police weren’t stopping them and subjecting them to carbon dating tests. No, this is purely and simply a caving in to the ghastly busybodies who want us all to behave in an approved manner.

An example of what we have to contend with is Sarah Fatica, from the road safety charity Brake (funded by your taxes), who bemoans the fact that Britain only stops 1% of its drivers annually. ‘As a country we’re still lagging behind other world leaders’ and you can almost hear the swivel-eyed loony licking her lips as she mentions that in New Zealand they test 50% of drivers ‘they block off whole sections of road and test everyone who comes through’.

Ms Fatica needs help so that she can look objectively at herself and at what she is doing, so she can see how her brand of do-good fascism is ruining the country. What she doesn’t need is to be taken seriously or given taxpayers’ money.

Guantanamo

I can scarcely believe I am writing this. The American Justice Department has said that out of 192 inmates of Guantanamo Bay, which President Obama has promised to close, 110 could be released, 35 could stand trial but the remaining 47 of the prisoners should be detained indefinitely without trial. The Justice Department admitted that there was not enough evidence against them to stand up in court, but said they were too dangerous to release.

Well, if they weren't dangerous before (and it seems that the majority of the detainees were not), they have every right to be now.

As I say, I can scarcely believe I am writing this. Obama must stand up immediately and declare this is not an option. America must retain the moral high ground when fighting other peoples and detaining people without trial on the say-so of a civil servant is the moral gutter.

Django

No list of famous Belgians would be complete without the name of Django Reinhardt, the jazz guitarist, the centenary of whose birth is today.

So original was his technique that a critic hearing Django for the first time said it was as if he had become adept on the guitar without ever having heard another person play it. Part of the cause was partial paralysis of the third and fourth fingers of his left hand. He played his famous solos using only two fingers.

Django came 65th in a 2005 list of the greatest Belgians compiled by Belgian television, showing what a cultured lot they are. The list contains 16th century mapmaker Mercator (famous for his projection), Rubens, Erasmus and Adolphe Sax, plus a lot of people you have never heard of.

Django means 'I awake' in Romany.

More crimes, more criminals

Chris Huehne, who on a couple of occasions has been in danger of giving the Liberal Party a good name, reminds us that since Labour came to power in May 1997 they have introduced roughly one new offence per day. These include causing a nuclear explosion (pity I missed the chance when it was still legal) and disturbing a pack of eggs when ordered not to by an authorised officer.

This is an aspect, and an important one, of the sort of society Britain has become. Egg inspectors, dustbin searchers, CCTV watchers, wheel clampers, busybodies and petty fascists. This is where to start, Mr Cameron.

Australia

Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia, has an article in the Times, broadly to the effect that however charming Prince William may be, they still want a republic. And good for them: I am quite unable to understand why such a vibrant country would want as its head of state an octogenarian aristocrat living thousands of miles away.

Turnbull says the best time for another referendum on becoming a republic would be at the end of the Queen's reign. What with this and other stories about the Royal Family recently I might almost suspect we are being groomed for the Queen's retirement on her 60th anniversary, in 2012.

But Turnbull makes a point worth thinking about: with Britain being incorporated into the EU, in fact Australia is a more independent nation than the 'mother country'.

Obama and the banks

Mr Obama, perceived in America as having been too close to Wall St, has suddenly moved in the opposite direction. Middle America was confused and angry about the billion dollar bail outs and fabulous headline salaries (rather than the average wage bill in financial services but that is another matter). Obama, in trouble over healthcare, is making a leap towards the middle classes. This is political, but there again most things are.

I posted in March last year about what used to be known as the Glass Steagall Act (GSA), separating commercial banks from investment banks, so that a financial institution either deals for the customer or for itself but not both.

The points against GSA, and these will come out strongly as the financial sector lobbyists swing into action over the next few weeks, are valid: inhibiting the free flow of money will reduce the efficiency of the markets and will ultimately be against the interests of the consumer. We have benefited greatly from the loosely regulated markets, right up to the time they went belly up.

But I am broadly in favour of GSA. The legislation, in place since the thirties, was cancelled by Bill Clinton at a time when we didn’t think the markets could possibly crash in the way they in fact did. Now we know differently, we have to consider this implied contract: we know deep down that we can’t let major banks go bust because the whole edifice would come down round our ears. The Central Bank is clearly an insurance for them and they must therefore suffer detailed regulation and mitigate all possible losses, as you have to in any insurance contract.

GSA was clumsy and we don’t yet know the details of Obama’s plans. But it should be possible to allow the banks to operate in the casino but ring fence the capital for the bits we can't afford to go under. A holding company would own an investment bank and a commercial bank, capitalising both. The investment bank could make its losses and go under but could not use the capital of the commercial bank, dragging it down too. There would be no guarantees between the two. The commercial bank, in return for operating in a safe environment, would be subject to closer regulation and not allowed to play in the casino. An advantage of this is that as we understand more about the financial instruments that are being created we could allow them, simply adding them to the list of what is permitted to the commercial banks.

The advantage of this method is that it accepts that, with the ceaseless development of new products in the investment banking scenario, the regulators can’t keep up. Some investment banks will go bust, but they won’t take us down with them.

Cadbury's

There seems to be a feeling in the UK that the purchase of Cadbury by Kraft is robbing the country of something. Whilst it may be understandable that people harbour suspicions of the makers of Kraft cheese slices, which terrorised so many of us in our youth, it has to be said that for the chocolate aficionado Cadbury’s Dairy Milk is no great shakes either. It contains so little cocoa that they had to get a dispensation from the European Union to allow it to be called chocolate. They now use environmentally unfriendly palm oil instead of cocoa butter.

Useful facts to bear in mind are

The Headquarters is not in Bourneville but in Uxbridge

Many Cadbury products such as chocolate fingers, ice cream etc are made by other companies, using the name under licence

Only one in seven of Cadbury’s employees works in the UK

The Chief Executive is not Mr Cadbury but Todd Stitzer (of the Bourneville Stitzers, presumably) who earns £4 million a year, more than the vast majority of evil bankers.

The Cadbury board can’t agree to a sale; only the shareholders, who own the company, can. It seems they would rather have the money than their Cadbury shares.

The money the shareholders receive will not necessarily leave the UK (assuming it was from the UK in the first place). It might be used to create more British jobs. What decides whether this is a net loss to Britain is whether international investors want to keep their money in Britain, given the Government's lack of economic policy. Nothing to do with Kraft at all.

Haiti and Realpolitik

There is the whiff – just a whiff at the moment – of politics in the Haiti aid mission.

Alain Joyandet, the French minister for humanitarian relief is said to have been involved in a fight with an American serviceman in the control tower of the airport at Port au Prince, whilst Médecins sans Frontières say that one of their flights carrying a mobile hospital was refused permission to land, by Americans hogging the show.

The French, of course, are scarcely in a position to whinge about Haiti, having kept the islanders in slavery for years, then blockading it after the slaves revolted, only lifting the blockade after saddling the islanders with a massive debt for reparations to the slave owners which it took them more than a century to pay off.

Normal for the times, perhaps, (we are speaking of the early 19th century). A less appropriate presence is that of Bill Clinton who failed to give President Aristide the support he needed to turn Haiti into a functioning democracy, terrified he would turn into another Castro. Haiti, you see, is America’s backyard. It is right that if they are supplying the largest amount of aid (easily) they should run the show, but....

Obama is in trouble at home and, having been highly critical of the performance George W Bush over Hurricane Katrina has to look effective. Something going on abroad, and the use of the military for humanitarian purposes, constitute a welcome distraction. But there seems to be a longer term foreign policy at work here – he has sent in thousands of troops, such that some people are talking about an occupation.

I may be wrong. Let’s hope the Haitians don’t get caught up as pawns in a game they have no business in, and that nothing gets in the way of delivering food, water and medicines to the needy.

Binge headlining

'Scots drink 46 bottles of vodka' shrieks the BBC.

What does this mean to you? All of the Scots? 46 bottles over a period of years? Every day?Vodka to the exclusion of everything else?

Well, what they wanted to force down your throat is that the average Scot, 'over the age of 18', drinks this amount, on average, every year. A bit less than a bottle a week, although how they know it was drunk by people over 18 is beyond me. My experience of Scotland (I worked in Edinburgh for a bit) is that it is a heady mixture of alcoholics (from the age of 6 upwards) and proselytising teetotallers.

Anyway, in modern nanny state parlance this is 26.5 units, on average, assuming no one under 18 drinks a drop.

So let's look at it, taking as our norm an adult professional person. He or she comes home in the evening after work and unwinds with a large whisky (like Margaret Thatcher) or gin and tonic. Just one. A pub double (which isn't very much when you pour it yourself) would make 10 units a week (weekdays). On Saturday and Sunday our person doesn't have the whisky but has 2 pints of beer or equivalent with friends in a pub; 9.4 units. Two pints isn't much; you wouldn't be in the pub for long. In the evenings man and wife share a bottle of wine; 33.6 units each.

So our person, who drinks, but not to what anyone other than a crazed temperancer could describe as excessively, has had 45 units, 70% more than the average level thought of as appalling.

You see, what they do here is take an average and in Scotland, perhaps England too, it's an average between some people drinking too much, some nothing and some normally . The people clogging up Scotland's A & E units are drinking far more than our model citizen above, perhaps three times as much, which would be five times the 'shocking' amount drunk at the moment (and that hasn't taken account of the drunken teenagers).

Their solution, of course is to penalise the average. Until we 'averagers' stand up and put a stop to it, this insane treatment of ordinary law abiding folk is going to continue, using the twisted statistics which we never seem to complain about.

Hip-Hop Balls

An unpleasant if confusing little fracas on BBC Radio 1 teaches us something of British Politics. The dramatis personae, a cast guaranteed to send shivers up your spine, are Ed 'Blinky' Balls, described as Schools Secretary (he is in fact the Prime Minster’s Economics Adviser but uses this nom de guerre) an unmarried mother and N-Dubz.

Oh all right. N-Dubz are a hip-hop band consisting of Mr Hudson (I like this formality, which seems to have gone out with the Beatles), Fazer, Dappy and Tulisa, the last two, interestingly, children of the engagingly named Byron Contostavlos, who sang ‘In the Summertime’ with Mungo Jerry when the world was a happier place.

What? Oh, Ok then. Hip-hop comes from 1970s (nothing to do with Mungo Jerry, though) New York and purports to be a popular culture. The music involves repeats of a percussive pattern, overlaid by rap. Groovy, baby.

Anyway, our story concerns a Radio 1 show where a young lady called Chloe ‘phoned in to describe the band as ‘losers’ and Dappy, in particular, as ‘a little boy with a silly hat’. The aggrieved Dappy (Dino Contostavlos, son of the late Byron) obtained her ‘phone number and texted “Your (sic) gonna die, U sent a very bad msg towards N Dubz on The Chris Moyels show yesterday Morning and for that reason u will never be left alone!! If u say sorry I will leave u alone u ****." I’m afraid I really don’t know what the asterisks stand for.

Now the political context. Ed Balls, the Children’s Economic Adviser, said ‘This text message was completely unacceptable and it is right that he has not only apologised, but accepted there was no excuse for his behaviour. Every form of bullying must be stamped out.’

Wonder why this incident should receive the attention of the Puerility Minister and would be premier? Well, Mr Balls had recently used N-Dubz, Dappy y inclus, to launch a campaign against bullying.

The answer, or moral, is simple. People have a wrongly sentimental attitude towards children. In fact they’re shits, and bullying is, and always has been, rife. There is nothing a government can do to change this. It is the job of parents and teachers and older children to stop it. It is a foolish government which thinks it can make an ‘initiative’ out of bullying (of course it’s just for vote winning, not for helping the country) and typical of New Labour that they should try to look all trendy by getting Dappy and his ilk on stage with them, rather than work quietly behind the scenes to achieve their aims.

The other moral is: let’s sell off Radio 1 which has no place in the public broadcast sector.

By the way, Dappy’s father was far more contentious:

‘...do a ton or a ton and twenty-five
Have a drink, have a drive
Go out and see what you can find’

Now that's naughty.

The Tories: Nanny tells you what to eat

The Conservative Party has produced its plans for the Department of Health, covering the treatment of obesity and alcohol consumption.

One of the deeply depressing things about the modern day Tory Party is that despite accepting the need for government to get out of people’s lives, both for political and economic reasons, they seem unable to shed their own ‘government is best’ obsession. Here their spokesman, Andrew Lansley pledges ‘to work with fast-food restaurants and bars... to reduce the size of portions’.

Lansley appears to believe that it is the business of the State to influence or control the amount people eat. The Tories really do need to get rid of these people otherwise nobody is going to believe a word they say about cutting the deficit, but will think them as patronising as the last lot.

Lansley’s other wheeze is that he says most people don’t know what a unit of alcohol is. In this he is correct. Lansley wants to replace it with ‘centilitres of pure alcohol’.

Two problems with this: first, most people don’t know what a centilitre is, either. Second, a 'unit' is a centilitre of alcohol.

Oh Dear. Oh Dear.

Climate (all) change

The Daily Mail is saying that we are in for 20-30 years of global cooling, a new mini ice age and the cause is water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. I mentioned something about this a while back (if it is the same thing) called Pacific Decadal Oscillation or some such claptrap.

I am a sceptic and I don’t believe this new stuff any more, or less, than I believe the old stuff about the climate getting warmer because of something I’ve done. I have a feeling it might be better if all the climate scientists got together and admitted they didn’t have a clue even about what it will be like tomorrow, much less in 50 years, perhaps blaming the strange weather on some metaphysical influence like God, or Margaret Thatcher. For all I know it’s caused by Des O’Connor and he should have been put down.

No, what I was thinking about as I read this was what a bunch of pillocks so many people are going to look if it turns out the anthropogenic global warming shtik is a complete nonsense. David Cameron, Ed Milliband, the entire Liberal Party, Prince Charles, Al Gore, the whole German nation. What are we going to do with them?

Public vilification is the answer. We know what they have said and written because it is all stored on the world’s computers and we need to subject them to a digital version of the stocks, where they can be jeered and abused 24 hours a day for everyone’s amusement.

I’m looking forward to it. Bring on the snow!

A sense of belonging

When I was a kid – 6 or 7 years old – there was a craze for badges, in which I participated willingly. I remember some business friend of my father’s obtaining a BP badge, and the car companies used to sell them or give them away, I can’t remember. I must have had 30 of them, all pinned to my anorak.

Badges are a public statement of belonging to something. If you see someone with a ‘ban the bomb’ badge or a ‘rock against racism’ one they are trying to identify themselves, to people they don’t even know; where they stand, what sort of people they are.

Of course when I was six BP, in some vague way, was an association to be aspired to, for a child with no formed views of its own, but in later life I ask myself ‘why?’. I have quite firm views on fascism, racism, all manner of things, but I don’t profess them in the street. The reason these people do is a complex that they actually have nothing to offer in the way of opinion or conversation so they may as well hang their hat on some aspirant goal. It is a sign of weakness, of inarticulacy.

So what I want to know is why the American president has to wear a badge. George Bush wore one – I’m not sure if it was the same one – and I think Clinton, too. We can’t quite see it. Is it the vague aspiration ‘I’m pro democracy’ (let’s hope he is) or is it the sort of mawkish, folksy thing The Sun would issue to its readers ‘supporting our boys in Afghanistan’ (again, let’s hope he does, he’s the Commander in chief).

What can it be that, before shaking hands with him, before recognising him as the most powerful man in the world, we are supposed to think ‘Oh, you’re one of those guys who is a supporter of….’?

I think we should be told.

The Royal Family - skip a generation?

‘ ’Bin a lotta talk about..’ was how the Letters from Idi Amin in Private Eye Magazine used to begin and it seems a fitting way to approach the subject of the Royal Family.

An interesting start might be a series of extraordinary articles in a number of papers towards the end of last year to the effect that Prince William was going to become a ‘Shadow King’, taking over lots of duties from his grandmother, HMQ. The elephant in the room was that William has a still extant father, who hasn’t had his turn yet (big ears, ruddy complexion, married en secondes noces to that horsey woman… it seemed we had all forgotten his name).

Then, interestingly (this is interesting, even though sections of the media and the various palaces seem to be trying to feed us opinions) the Shadow King in waiting said he didn’t want the job but wanted to concentrate on his military career (judging by his uniform he seems currently to be in the RAF).

Then came a rather peculiar article in the Daily Telegraph from George Pitcher. It said that St James’ Palace had gone to some efforts to squash the ‘Shadow King’ story because ‘Loyal subjects were hoping it might be true’. And Pitcher goes on to give his view about why that might be the case. ‘..(Prince Charles) has the ill fortune to have been a victim of a changing monarchy in changing times, a challenge that regrettably he has not met well. His demand for old-fashioned deference and his resistance to globalisation and technology make him not just a stranger to the 21st century but ill-equipped for most of what happened in the second half of the 20th.’

Pitcher, astonishingly, goes on to claim it was Charles’ stint in Cambridge in the 1960s with its liberal atmosphere that ruined him. ‘Prince William is unencumbered by any of this post-modern clap-trap.’ So, old fashioned deference and 1960s liberalism, a curious mixture.

What proponents of the idea of skipping a generation (that is what this is all about) seem to omit from their freely given opinions is that if Prince Charles is old fashioned, how much more so must be his mother, who was born in 1926 when George V had ten years yet to reign. HMQ has not spoken out on the issues which annoy George Pitcher about Prince Charles (architecture, globalisation) for the simple reason she isn’t allowed to, and nor will Charles be when he becomes king.

I am a fan of Prince Charles, whilst thinking he is wrong on global warming and globalisation, and I am not a fan of the present queen, who is not and never could be in tune with the zeitgeist and should have abdicated in 1993. Others may differ, but we have had some good monarchs and some bad over the years and Charles may prove to be one or the other. What we cannot do is allow public opinion (that is to say the press and the insider rumour mongers) to decide who the Head of State should be. If we go down that road it should be by election, and don’t forget that republics have good presidents and bad ones, just the same. And they cost just as much, or more.

Either we have the monarchy, with its sometimes strange looking people and its rigid system of successor selection, or we don’t.

Epiphany

Today is Epiphany, when Christians celebrate Christ's manifestation to the Gentiles.

Some Italian children get their presents on Jan 6th, and some are even getting a second lot. In a curious mixture of paganism and Christianity the festival is known in Italy as Befana, represented as a wicked witch, who instead of presents gives lumps of coal to naughty children. Befana is thought to be a pre-Christian deity and black faced witch dolls can be bought everywhere, but not, I suppose, in the souvenor shops in Vatican City.

This is a country where people teach their children about Sabine/Roman witches, go to early morning mass, then home to read their horoscopes.

Iceland: the final solution

It seems a little strange that people who banked with Icelandic banks - presumably to get a better return on their money - should be bailed out by the taxpayer, but I suppose if it weren't for the generosity of the island republic they would have stuck it with Natwest and we should have paid anyway.

Anyway Alastair Darling, UK chancellor, paid it all off when the Icelandic banks went belly up and now wants his (that is to say our) money back. Was there a proper loan agreement? Could we have a look at the terms?

But the Icelanders have decided not to pay it back (I really would like to have a look at that loan agreement). President Grimsson has refused to sign into law the bill providing for the repayment of the Darling billions.

Oh, and could they join the European Union so the Germans pay it off next time? Well. You don't have to have spent a lifetime studying the German mentality to suspect that this might not play too well in Frankfurt. Just a hunch.

But fortunately I have the solution. Those of us who can remember back to 1972 will recall the cod wars. The result of this conflict was that Iceland enforced a 200 mile limit round its fisheries and Britain gave away its fisheries to the European Union. So here we go: something the Icelanders will find easy and at the same time will greatly improve the British diet.

We'll take it in cod.

Food

It seems that after the political parties have had a go at each other on health, social services etc it will soon be the turn of food. Labour wants to make us self-sufficient (why? are we expecting the U-Boats back?) and the Tory Party want to regulate supermarkets to the benefit of farmers.

Here's the best thing they could do: leave it alone. There's plenty of food in the shops, and it's cheap enough that no one is starving. The examples in recent times of people going short of food (outside agriculturally depressed third world areas) are where socialism regulated the supply chain. The queues in Russia were because the food couldn't travel from farm to shop without the state getting involved at several stages.

Instead of a quango (have the Tories taken leave of their senses?) we need a Can-Do, a completely autonomous non directed organisation. The farmers would pay for it and it would set out quality standards for a 'Produce of Britain' label. The reason? Other countries in the EU produce things a lot cheaper than us, not just because of low wages but because of lower standards. Polish pork springs to mind. To get people to pay more for British pork (and we can't keep the Polish stuff out because they're in the EU) they have to be sure of the quality. Prince Charles is the chap to sort this out.

There would be a second label saying 'This food is guaranteed free from political interference'

Spaghetti con carciofi

The wonderful Italian artichokes are in full season which lasts, with different types of artichoke, until Easter.

OK: 1 decent sized artichoke & 1 tbs chopped pancetta/bacon per person and some tomato. Wild mint (mentuccia) or a mix of mint and parsley. Or just parsley. Put a pan of water on to boil.

Pull off the woody outer leaves - a good 2 layers - until the artichoke feels soft. Chop off the pointed ends so it is the shape of a flattish bowl. Chop off the stalks and scrape them with a potato peeler until you get to the soft bit. If you are doing a lot rub them with lemon to stop them oxidising. Halve, quarter and eighth the artichokes and cook them and the stalks in boiling salted water for 10-15 mins. Rinse the pan and put it on for the spaghetti.

Heat 2tbs olive oil and turn the artichokes in this with the pancetta. You don't want the pancetta to brown, you want it to give its flavour to the artichokes. Put the spaghetti in when the water is boiling. Add the tomato and a bit of water to the artichokes to keep the whole thing moist. When the spaghetti is cooked drain it and put it into the artichoke sauce with the mentuccia, stirring and mixing over a low heat. Serve with or without grated parmesan.

Eccezionale!

Italy: constitutional crisis

The first chapter of Italy's constitution says 'Italy is a republic founded on work'.

Now Renato Brunetta, the elegantly titled Minister of Public Functions, has declared that this should change.

Marshalling my own views, I have rejected 'Italy is a republic founded on the black market', in favour of 'Italy is a republic founded on food'.

Camus and the burial of the Absurd

Good news from France. Interior minister Brice Hortefeux confirms that the number of torched cars has ‘stabilised’ at about 4 a day, over 1,000 a year. In the riots of a couple of years ago it reached that number in a week.

In the meantime the French are tucking into the intriguing dilemmas surrounding the body of Albert Camus. The Nobel Prize winning author of La Peste, l’Etranger and La Chute debated the philosophy of the Absurd for much of his early life and would have been intrigued by the goings on.

Camus died in a car crash in 1960 and is buried in the Vaucluse region of southern France.

Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered that his body should be transferred to the Panthéon to rest alongside other literary greats such as Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Emil Zola, 50 years after his death. The outrage has been widespread. Reading from left to right, the left describe Camus as one of their very own, and declare the centre right Sarko is stealing their man. Amongst these is one of Camus’ children, who would have the right to prevent his disinterment. Centrist opponents of Sarkozy point out that M. le Président is famously unlettered (it is important in French politics to look cultured, but in one interview Sarko seemed not to know who Mme de La Fayette was, and dozens of people mailed him copies of her novel La Princesse de Clèves) and that the diminutive leader is just trying to get some good publicity out of this.

Jean Marie le Pen, founder of the hard right Front National, declared that Sarkozy was just trying to take away his supporters: Camus was a Pied Noir (Frenchman born in Algeria) and they vote for Jean-Marie. Finally another group have declared that Camus, born to a French father and a Spanish mother in what is not now part of France, was not French. This has caused a parliamentary debate on national identity.

Splendid stuff. In fact Camus was definitely French: his father died fighting for France and he himself was a part of the Resistance, editing their magazine Combat. Camus was not really of the left, as Sartre was, and warned against the totalitarianism which was the inevitable result of Sartre’s Marxism. He was one of the first to criticise the gulags, and spoke against the repression in Hungary in 1956. At the same time Camus was in no way of the right, and far from the traditional model of the Pied Noir. His philosophy, in modern terms, would be described as libertarian. His writing was of a quality to justify a position in the Pantheon (better than Zola), but he so despised government that I don’t think he would have received the honour from them.
One of the problems Camus debated was whether life had any meaning, given that we are going to die anyway. He will be looking down, a sadder but wiser man.

The year that’s gone & The year to come

2009 inherited from its predecessor one of the worst recessions in memory. And we haven’t seen the end of it: whilst most major economies (not Brown’s Britain) were technically out of recession by September there is bad news still to come as each little national weakness is probed.

2009 was expected to be Obama’s year and most people would say he disappointed, despite some clever diplomatic footwork getting him the Nobel Prize, the most surprising selection since Al Gore. Obama has grounds for optimism in 2010, however. His Health Bill will be passed, Afghanistan will look better, as will the economy, the jobless figure beginning to fall. His one black cloud is Iran. Here he will be expected to be tough. If he can get credible sanctions imposed and prevent Israel from bombing, he will have done well. If Israel does bomb Iran it will be with tacit American support. The world will then want to see a new order, which Obama must lead.

In the UK MPs’ expenses were one of the main topics of conversation through 2009, replacing house prices, but the new election will wipe that from memories, even if the new lot are just as corrupt as the old lot (but they won’t be).

In my opinion Gordon Brown would be wrong to leave the election too late – he should go in March before he has to present another budget. It is not beyond possibility that he will dither again however. Either way, the Tories will win , in my view more comfortably than people are saying. A majority of more than 35 seats.

I thought last year that the economic spotlight would fall on Europe and it hasn’t. But I believe it will in 2010. The deteriorating weaker economies Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain and Ireland will put pressure on the euro, just as it was becoming to be seen as a possible reserve currency. Austria will join this unhappy group in 2010. Overall for Europe, low consumer demand in the major economies and the weakness of export markets in the Eastern Bloc and the Balkans will hold back recovery. Rigid labour markets are preventing innovation and efficiency. In 2009 the £ traded at 1.02 – 1.19 (it ends the year at 1.13). By the Spring, with a new leadership and lack of good news for Europe I believe we will see 1.25. Over the last year the euro has been $1.25-1.51 (currently 1.43). If there is trouble in the Middle East we will see 1.25 again.

Oil will bounce along at $75-85 and gold will put on a bit, but not above $1,250, particularly if some economies start raising interest rates

2010 will be the year remembered for a shift in power away from America – Europe – Japan to China and India and the peripheral countries of the Far East. The decade to come will see Brazil join the new axis and the first signs that India might overtake China.

But we still have to get over the Iran business.

New Year's Eve

Traditional Roman New Year's Eve dinner of puntarelle and cotechino.

Puntarelle are a member of the chicory family, the thin sprouts shredded raw and dressed with anchovy and garlic.

Cotechino is a sausage made of pig's leg, wrapped in its skin. It is gelatinous and full of flavour. Cotechino is served on a bed of spicy lentils (believed to be lucky, a sign of fertility).

There may have been some wine involved.

I can't keep up any more with the revels. The last drunks were ambling down our street, singing hoarsely, at 6am, as I was getting up.

The Romans love fireworks, for the noise as much as the spectacle, and I usually keep a bucket of water by the window to chuck over anyone lighting bangers in our narrow vicolo. The rain kept most of them away but one time I did hear the telltale fizzing and threw the window open ready with the bucket but it was a neighbour, trying to reject the advances of a romeo, down in the street, by chucking a banger at him. Tough cookies, these Roman girls.