Voters do not of course have infinite knowledge and occasionally you have to trust your instinct. Rarely has this been more the case than in the last election with the timing of the cuts. Alastair Darling made a persuasive sounding case – and is still making it – that we shouldn’t endanger the economic recovery by cutting spending too soon.
For me part of the judgment was a speech made by that non-economist Prime Minister James Callaghan, some 35 years ago. It went something like this: ‘We used to think that we could simply spend our way out of recession.... I have to tell you in candour that that is not an option..’
So if it was Labour Party policy in the 1970s, why isn’t it now? Why does Alistair Darling insist that in the teeth of a recession public sector spending had to be maintained?
But one of the most telling arguments for immediate cuts came just yesterday, with scarcely any coverage in the newspapers. It was that one member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, which sets interest rates, had voted to increase the rate. OK, their are eight members of the MPC (usually 9, one seat is vacant – why not apply?) but this is the start, the first rumblings which George Osborne with his budget will seek to assuage.
The difference between the markets quietly swallowing our debt, as they have done since Waterloo, and just holding back a bit, humming and haa-ing, is psychologically tiny. It might well be influenced by other factors, such as a similar country falling into difficulty, but the effect is dramatic. Whilst the deficit at £155 billion is massive our total debt, including unfunded public pensions, is £1.3 trillion; that is £1,300 billion. Every one percent extra on the cost of this is going to be £13 billion, which is more than Osborne reduced welfare by over four years. More than the VAT increase. And Spain pays 2.5% more than Germany on its debt.
And now there are the first suggestions that the cost of servicing this debt might go up. In my view it would certainly have done were it not for Osborne’s cuts.
In Continental Europe the story is a little different. There is a furious comment by George Soros in the press today to the effect that Germany should pursue economic policies for the rest of the eurozone, rather than just to suit itself. But why? Poor Mrs Merkel, unpopular abroad and at home (it seems the German President resigned because he simply couldn’t stand her) is trying to do what is best for Germany. The only reason her coalition hasn’t collapsed is because nobody is ready with an alternative.
The fact remains that Germany has in the past been prepared to take difficult action economically and will in the future. The rest, with a couple of exceptions, have swept the matter under the carpet, hoping, without mentioning that hope, that the Germans will pay. One analyst, quoted in the Telegraph, said that either Germany does more to boost liquidity, in which case it will set off inflation in Germany and cause Germany to leave the euro: or they don’t ease liquidity, in which case it will lead to deflation in Southern Europe and force them out of the euro.
That is an increasingly voiced opinion. At least the UK is in control of its own destiny.
24 June, 2010
23 June, 2010
General misdemeanour
If I had said a few days ago that a clean cut, senior American general would have to resign because of an article in Rolling Stone magazine, you would have waited for the punchline. It is quite likely, however, to be true.
The article comes out on Friday but you can read it here, now. General McChrystal thinks quite highly of himself and his immediate team, but quite poorly of the White House machine. Unfortunately for him he is prepared to say it.
It was for just such as this (albeit worse) that Truman fired Macarthur during the Korean War.
Let's see what Mr Obama does.
The article comes out on Friday but you can read it here, now. General McChrystal thinks quite highly of himself and his immediate team, but quite poorly of the White House machine. Unfortunately for him he is prepared to say it.
It was for just such as this (albeit worse) that Truman fired Macarthur during the Korean War.
Let's see what Mr Obama does.
UK Budget
Mr. Osborne is to be congratulated for being the first Chancellor in my memory at least who, when short of money, didn't take it out on drinkers.
The reversal of the planned increase in duty on cider is good news. Cider always bore lower duty because it was classed as an agricultural product (beer wasn't). And yet in the South West of England you can get cider as strong as wine. I knew of a cider house where the glasses had two handles because the drinkers were shaking so much on their first of the day.
Of course the main point of the budget was to keep the financial markets quiet and buying our debt. In this I think Osborne has done enough - as I write 24 hours later the pound has risen over one cent against the euro.
The reversal of the planned increase in duty on cider is good news. Cider always bore lower duty because it was classed as an agricultural product (beer wasn't). And yet in the South West of England you can get cider as strong as wine. I knew of a cider house where the glasses had two handles because the drinkers were shaking so much on their first of the day.
Of course the main point of the budget was to keep the financial markets quiet and buying our debt. In this I think Osborne has done enough - as I write 24 hours later the pound has risen over one cent against the euro.
22 June, 2010
Savage Cuts
Earlier this year I posted here that there had been no cuts during Mrs Thatcher's time as PM.
Now, with George Osborne's first budget sending people howling for their security blankets, I feel it only right to mention that public spending will go up every year for this 5 year parliament.
We haven't even seen the start of it. Yet.
Now, with George Osborne's first budget sending people howling for their security blankets, I feel it only right to mention that public spending will go up every year for this 5 year parliament.
We haven't even seen the start of it. Yet.
World Cup: technology to blame
I am indebted to Mr.Eugenides, who reads the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, for this:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il "gives regular tactical advice during matches using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye," the team's manager Kim Jong-hun told ESPN Thursday. The coach dutifully told the sports channel that Kim Jong-il developed the James-Bond technology himself.
Due to a faulty mobile signal in capitalist South Africa the brave N.Korean team lost 7-0 to Portugal
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il "gives regular tactical advice during matches using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye," the team's manager Kim Jong-hun told ESPN Thursday. The coach dutifully told the sports channel that Kim Jong-il developed the James-Bond technology himself.
Due to a faulty mobile signal in capitalist South Africa the brave N.Korean team lost 7-0 to Portugal
Astronomy update shocker
I'm not frightfully well up on astronomy - it's always semed to me that it would be going on whether I watched it or not, that there was nothing I could do - but I was surprised to read this in the Telegraph, written by Dr David Jess, a solar physicist at Queen's University Belfast
"Last night marked the summer solstice – the longest day of the year, and the period when the Sun reaches its northernmost latitude and highest point in the sky at noon."
This is what happens when you take your eye off the ball. It seems we have abandoned Copernican Theory and gone back to the idea that the Sun rotates round the Earth.
The Vatican will have to start reconsidering that pardon for Galileo.
"Last night marked the summer solstice – the longest day of the year, and the period when the Sun reaches its northernmost latitude and highest point in the sky at noon."
This is what happens when you take your eye off the ball. It seems we have abandoned Copernican Theory and gone back to the idea that the Sun rotates round the Earth.
The Vatican will have to start reconsidering that pardon for Galileo.
20 June, 2010
Blue cheese
A scandal is erupting in Turin, where shoppers have been astounded to find their mozzarella turning blue within seconds of opening the packet. A German manufacturer is blamed and about 70,000 mozzarella balls have been impounded.
What is more surprising is the information that mozzarella is made in Germany and sold to Italy.
What is more surprising is the information that mozzarella is made in Germany and sold to Italy.
A sign of our times
The Sunday Times reports that two brothers, Jake and Dinos Chapman, have purchased Brueghel's Calvary, painted in 1607, defaced it, among other things giving Christ the head of an insect, and put it back on the market for three times the price.
'The sublime is expensive', said Jake Chapman
'The sublime is expensive', said Jake Chapman
19 June, 2010
Sports
Not the long suit of this blog, but a summary is always useful.
England's cricketers did very badly against Bangladesh, the test cricketing equivalent of Partick Thistle.
For the first time in more than a hundred years no Englishman will be contesting the men's singles at Wimbledon.
We are about to be thrown out of the Football World Cup.
England is good at sailing, rowing and cycling, sports which are conducted sitting down.
On the subject of football, I hope people were shocked by Wayne Rooney, who earns, if I am not mistaken, something like £80,000 a week (why are footballers' wages quoted weekly as if they were unskilled workers? Mind you a glance at the England team will answer that). The poor little rich boy bleated that the fans were booing him: people on £500 a week who had saved for months to travel thousands of miles to see England, and were disgusted at the heartless, gutless display which Rooney and his colleagues provided.
Rooney earns so much and is so famous that putting on an England shirt is just a sideline to his wealth creation. He and the rest of the overpaid idle rich should be replaced by people who want to play for their country.
Poor Mr Capello really must wonder what he has let himself in for.
England's cricketers did very badly against Bangladesh, the test cricketing equivalent of Partick Thistle.
For the first time in more than a hundred years no Englishman will be contesting the men's singles at Wimbledon.
We are about to be thrown out of the Football World Cup.
England is good at sailing, rowing and cycling, sports which are conducted sitting down.
On the subject of football, I hope people were shocked by Wayne Rooney, who earns, if I am not mistaken, something like £80,000 a week (why are footballers' wages quoted weekly as if they were unskilled workers? Mind you a glance at the England team will answer that). The poor little rich boy bleated that the fans were booing him: people on £500 a week who had saved for months to travel thousands of miles to see England, and were disgusted at the heartless, gutless display which Rooney and his colleagues provided.
Rooney earns so much and is so famous that putting on an England shirt is just a sideline to his wealth creation. He and the rest of the overpaid idle rich should be replaced by people who want to play for their country.
Poor Mr Capello really must wonder what he has let himself in for.
Myanmar: no hope
She was married to the late Dr Michael Aris, the Tibetan specialist, and was not even able to go to her husband's funeral. As such she is, I suppose, jointly or optionally British, and yet she has been imprisoned for years without our doing anything.
Readers of this blog who fail to understand why we felt able to invade Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone but not Burma will not find much of an answer here. The regime in Rangoon is maintained by India and China. Whilst the Indians have stopped actually selling arms to Rangoon the Chinese haven't, and both have strong commercial ties which keep the money flowing.
President Obama has said Aung San Suu Kyi ought to be released, and I expect he felt better afterwards. It won't help the people of Burma. That would require standing up to China. And Obama won't do that.
Change hasn't come to Burma.
18 June, 2010
Cutting kitsch
The awful English Heritage and its hangers on were preparing to build a 'visitor centre' at Stonehenge with carparks, souvenirs and the 'Stonehenge Experience'.
Now it has been cancelled and the stones can be left in peace.
17 June, 2010
PR - how not to do it
No, not Proportional Representation this time (although thre are plenty of ways not to do it) but Public Relations.
BP has had a bad accident, but managed to make it worse, getting almost the entire US nation united against it, through its Chief Executive's ability to open his mouth and get a large foot inside it. There are whispers within BP that they just can't shut him up, which is, to put it at its mildest, unfortunate.
But where is the Head Honcho, the Chairman? Carl Hendrik Svanberg is his name and when the accident happened he went below periscope depth, claiming to be on holiday (obviously doesn't own a mobile 'phone or see the CNN news).
But Obama summoned him to the White House, presumably confused that he wasn't British (he is Finnish). 'I mean, I've seen the movies and all baddies are British, right? I mean, change has come to Britsih Petroleum'
And here is what Svanberg said, in an accent which reminded you of Arnie Schwarzenegger playing the role of a German Concentration Camp Governor: 'He (Obama) cares about ze small people. Und ve care about ze small people'.
Well, that should have raised morale in the Louisiana fishing villages.
BP has had a bad accident, but managed to make it worse, getting almost the entire US nation united against it, through its Chief Executive's ability to open his mouth and get a large foot inside it. There are whispers within BP that they just can't shut him up, which is, to put it at its mildest, unfortunate.
But where is the Head Honcho, the Chairman? Carl Hendrik Svanberg is his name and when the accident happened he went below periscope depth, claiming to be on holiday (obviously doesn't own a mobile 'phone or see the CNN news).
But Obama summoned him to the White House, presumably confused that he wasn't British (he is Finnish). 'I mean, I've seen the movies and all baddies are British, right? I mean, change has come to Britsih Petroleum'
And here is what Svanberg said, in an accent which reminded you of Arnie Schwarzenegger playing the role of a German Concentration Camp Governor: 'He (Obama) cares about ze small people. Und ve care about ze small people'.
Well, that should have raised morale in the Louisiana fishing villages.
16 June, 2010
BP and the beautiful game
I am indebted to Lord Soley, former Clive Soley MP, for this remarkable insight:
"I’m no football expert and I’m not paranoid but does anyone else think that Cameron told Robert Green to let the ball in deliberately so that the US didn’t feel totally trashed and oiled up by the Brits!?"
When you look at it, it seems obvious
"I’m no football expert and I’m not paranoid but does anyone else think that Cameron told Robert Green to let the ball in deliberately so that the US didn’t feel totally trashed and oiled up by the Brits!?"
When you look at it, it seems obvious
Bloody Sunday
There is an old joke that as a plane lands in Belfast the captain says ‘and for those of you who want to adjust your watches, put them back 200 years.’ For now we are looking at 38 years ago, although the origins of the matter lie further back, and the resentment will last into the future.
The Bloody Sunday enquiry, investigating the deaths of 14 civilians in a riot in 1972, must leave non-British observers in confusion. There was an investigation by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, immediately afterwards which said the soldiers’ behaviour ‘bordered on the reckless’.
Then in 1998 the new Prime Minister Tony Blair instigated a new enquiry, headed by Lord Savile. That enquiry has now been completed. It took 12 years and cost a bit short of £200 million.
The principal finding of the Savile enquiry seems to be that none of the rioters were armed.
But someone was.
In an article in the Daily Mail, General Sir Michael Rose, who as a junior officer was on the scene that day, says
‘It was the IRA who started firing with the Thompson sub-machine gun..
..There was no doubt that the IRA gunmen were firing from their positions on the galleries of the flats opposite..’
Six of one and half a dozen of the other? Not really. The paras were wrong to shoot at unarmed civilians (but right to shoot at armed gunmen) and we simply cannot have our armed forces killing unarmed people without the most rigorous scrutiny of their actions. I find the oft quoted cost of the Enquiry irrelevant; if truth is expensive we still have to have it.
But here I think the matter should end. These were young soldiers, following unwise orders to tear down the barricade and attack the rioters (who were throwing nail bombs by the way). Martin McGuiness, now Deputy Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, has admitted he was No.2 in the IRA in Derry at the time. The Savile Report says he might well have been there, holding that sub-machine gun. In what other area of politics could a man admit to having been a terrorist, responsible for the deaths of innocent people, and not resign? Nowhere but Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is different.
Tony Blair ordered this enquiry because he had been told by the Irish Prime Minister that it was necessary for the Peace Process. Perhaps it was. I hope it has satisfied some grievances, lit up some dark areas. But it should stop there.
The Bloody Sunday enquiry, investigating the deaths of 14 civilians in a riot in 1972, must leave non-British observers in confusion. There was an investigation by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, immediately afterwards which said the soldiers’ behaviour ‘bordered on the reckless’.
Then in 1998 the new Prime Minister Tony Blair instigated a new enquiry, headed by Lord Savile. That enquiry has now been completed. It took 12 years and cost a bit short of £200 million.
The principal finding of the Savile enquiry seems to be that none of the rioters were armed.
But someone was.
In an article in the Daily Mail, General Sir Michael Rose, who as a junior officer was on the scene that day, says
‘It was the IRA who started firing with the Thompson sub-machine gun..
..There was no doubt that the IRA gunmen were firing from their positions on the galleries of the flats opposite..’
Six of one and half a dozen of the other? Not really. The paras were wrong to shoot at unarmed civilians (but right to shoot at armed gunmen) and we simply cannot have our armed forces killing unarmed people without the most rigorous scrutiny of their actions. I find the oft quoted cost of the Enquiry irrelevant; if truth is expensive we still have to have it.
But here I think the matter should end. These were young soldiers, following unwise orders to tear down the barricade and attack the rioters (who were throwing nail bombs by the way). Martin McGuiness, now Deputy Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, has admitted he was No.2 in the IRA in Derry at the time. The Savile Report says he might well have been there, holding that sub-machine gun. In what other area of politics could a man admit to having been a terrorist, responsible for the deaths of innocent people, and not resign? Nowhere but Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is different.
Tony Blair ordered this enquiry because he had been told by the Irish Prime Minister that it was necessary for the Peace Process. Perhaps it was. I hope it has satisfied some grievances, lit up some dark areas. But it should stop there.
15 June, 2010
Execution in Utah
Ronnie Lee Gardner was sentenced to death in 1985, for shooting a lawyer in a courthouse. He will be executed by firing squad.
For many years I believed capital punishment to be a deterrent but my mind changed after the case of the British West Midlands Police fitting up suspects. It further changed with the growth in the number of weirdos who do not see execution as a deterrent but as an attraction.
But the USA has capital punishment and that is their business.
And it isn't really the method of execution I object to. If I were to be executed I wouldn't care how they did it as long as it was quick. All executions affect the people designated to carry them out and this is not healthy, but I suppose unavoidable. I don't know if a firing squad involves more people than a lethal injection.
No, what I wanted to highlight was the fact that he was convicted 25 years ago. That's a quarter of a century on death row. In England when we had capital punishment if you were not hanged within 101 dys of sentence you were reprieved. 25 years awaiting death must surely be what the American Constitution calls 'a cruel and unusual punishment'.
For many years I believed capital punishment to be a deterrent but my mind changed after the case of the British West Midlands Police fitting up suspects. It further changed with the growth in the number of weirdos who do not see execution as a deterrent but as an attraction.
But the USA has capital punishment and that is their business.
And it isn't really the method of execution I object to. If I were to be executed I wouldn't care how they did it as long as it was quick. All executions affect the people designated to carry them out and this is not healthy, but I suppose unavoidable. I don't know if a firing squad involves more people than a lethal injection.
No, what I wanted to highlight was the fact that he was convicted 25 years ago. That's a quarter of a century on death row. In England when we had capital punishment if you were not hanged within 101 dys of sentence you were reprieved. 25 years awaiting death must surely be what the American Constitution calls 'a cruel and unusual punishment'.
Italy: cost of parliament
Basic salary €9,980 per month
Secretary €4,030 per month (usually a family member)
Rental €2,900 per month
Office up to €6,455 per month
The recent vote to reduce salaries by 10% hides the fact that they secretly (without it being mentioned in the official records) increased them by €1,135 per month (more than 10%)
No tax is payable on the above.
But look at what else they get
FREE car with driver
FREE cellphone
FREE Cinema
FREE Theatre
FREE Buses, trains, motorway charges and internal flights
FREE Swimming pools and gymns
FREE Accident and life insurance
FREE Private clinics
FREE Restaurants - they eat and drink around €1.5 million a year
Overall they cost around €1.25 billion a year.
Now some people want value
14 June, 2010
The vuvuzela
Maybe they blow it when they are not supporting a team – I don’t really care.
The French captain Patrice (I hope I’ve got the name right) Evra, from Dakar, says it puts him off when playing and that he can’t sleep for hearing it outside his hotel room. The main complaint is from the media, who haven’t got sufficiently targeted microphones, and say it interrupts their broadcasts.
BBC News wasted taxpayers’ money on an ‘expert’ who said it could be bad for your ears!
There are calls to ban it, as you might expect, as with any bit of fun; the new regulator class is like that, and the expert is what Marx called a ‘useful idiot’.
In cricket the West Indies have steel bands, blow horns and play reggae. It livens things up and it is the excitement of this atmosphere which gets young people to support the game.
During the last football world cup I was on a drive down through Italy and every time Italy scored all the lorry drivers leant on their horns – they had the radio on in the cab. It was deafening, probably a danger to traffic, but what the hell! I like a bit of local colour and a bit of noise. Did they think Soweto was going to be the same as Zurich?
Lighten up. I wish I had a vuvuzela here. For when England play Italy in the final (OK, OK)
Glasto!
The Glastonbury Festival starts in a few days.
Here are some perhaps little known facts: Saga, the insurance outlet for the zimmer framed, is offering... oh, I’ve just realised I qualify for Saga ... the insurance outfit for the middle aged, is offering over 50s who take out its motor home insurance a refund on the rental for a motor home pitch at the Festival.
The big draw act this year at Glastonbury is Stevie Wonder, who had his first hit some 47 years ago.
And the BBC are sending 400 people to cover the event. Four hundred.
I don’t at all mind a private event for middle class hippy-manqués but that our state broadcaster is taking it seriously is quite, quite preposterous.
Here are some perhaps little known facts: Saga, the insurance outlet for the zimmer framed, is offering... oh, I’ve just realised I qualify for Saga ... the insurance outfit for the middle aged, is offering over 50s who take out its motor home insurance a refund on the rental for a motor home pitch at the Festival.
The big draw act this year at Glastonbury is Stevie Wonder, who had his first hit some 47 years ago.
And the BBC are sending 400 people to cover the event. Four hundred.
I don’t at all mind a private event for middle class hippy-manqués but that our state broadcaster is taking it seriously is quite, quite preposterous.
12 June, 2010
Belgium doesn't speak (but no one listens)
The economic plans of the two semi-countries match this stereotype: Bart de Wever in the North wants an independent Flanders and doesn't want to pay any more to the South. Elio di Rupio in the South has published an expansionist draft budget (ie more money coming from the North).
The problem is that under their system the two sides are supposed to form a coalition.
Such is the insane union we British joined in 1973: a cover-up of democracy, no trial by jury, bureaucratic rule. We should at least take a good look at what is going on in Europe and debate it.
Flotilla Wars
The National Union of Israeli Students are organising a flotilla to run from Israel to Turkey, with the aim of highlighting the plight of the Turkish minorities, Kurds and Armenians.
Rather amusing, in my view. Let's see how much coverage the BBC gives it.
Rather amusing, in my view. Let's see how much coverage the BBC gives it.
The Dutch speak (no one listens)
The party with the most seats is the VVD, an economic liberal party which emphasised the need for public expenditure cuts. But it cannot get a majority in parliament even with another party. It will need four, and it seems likely that one of these will be Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom which is an extreme far right organisation which wants to ‘de-Islamise’ Holland. Wilders has more than doubled his seats since the last election.
So the likelihood is that having voted for economic restraint the Dutch will not get it, because the VVD will not be able to get it over its partners, but will get the policies of a half crazed fascist.
If this is democracy I’m a Dutchman.
Interestingly the mood in Europe is to let them get on with it, as Der Spiegel says let Wilders show how little he has to offer. This is a stark contrast to when in Austria Joerg Haider rose to the status of party leader and possible Prime Minister. Then there were mumblings that Austrian MEPs shouldn’t be allowed to take their seats in the European Parliament.
Holidaying in Italy (3): taxis in Rome
The proper environment for a Roman taxi driver is standing around talking to his friends. Don’t forget when you step into his cab that you are distracting him from this important activity.
Your driver likes to relax with his seat well back. If you can’t get in, lie down on the back seat
It is his cab and he chooses the radio programme. It is not his fault if he is slightly hard of hearing and has to have it on loud. In any case, football is more important than passengers.
The suspension on the taxi is not your concern. If your driver feels it appropriate to drive at high speed over kerbstones, potholes and cobbles in order to get to
What keeps the traffic moving in Rome is an informal race between taxis, buses and the police. Your driver is a determined winner.
The shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line. Sit back and enjoy the view.
Red lights are for wimps.
When approaching the gridlocked roundabout in the Piazza Venezia close your eyes. Your driver will also close his.
The precise minutiae of the Roman street system is not the business of your driver. He is not Google Earth. It is useful to have some reference point for your destination, such as ‘100m from the Pantheon, which is a large ancient building near the Senate’ or ‘It doesn’t matter if you can’t find it, I’m happy to walk’ . But don’t worry, your driver can read a map while driving, talking to his wife on the mobile ‘phone and snatching a crafty cigarette.
At the conclusion of your journey read the amount on the meter and courteously offer your driver that sum. This is the opening point of the negotiations. Why were you unaware that there is a supplement after 3pm on alternate weekdays? Your baggage took up space in the car, didn’t it? Your driver does not carry change; he is not the Banca di Roma.
Treat your driver with respect and he will serve you right.
11 June, 2010
Obama and us
1. He has family in Kenya.
2. His father was around at the time of the Mau Mau rebellion, brutally put down by the British
3. One of the first things he did on arriving at the White House was to return to Britain a bust of Winston Churchill
4. When the previous British Prime Minister visited he offered as a gift some DVDs (playable only on American systems)
5. He is now hysterical about BP
Viewed in isolation these things may seem normal. The business of the statue seemed at the time simply extraordinarily insensitive. Churchill is revered in Britain and also by many in America. He could have transferred it to an attic, as one does with Granny’s painting. A gaffe, perhaps.
The DVD matter was seen in Britain against the backdrop of Brown being one of the most unpopular politicians we have ever had. But he went there as the British Prime Minister and deserved to be treated, as Britain deserves to be treated, with respect.
Now BP. Obama is tremendously unpopular at home and seemed to want to make this oil spill a personal cause, particularly given the unpopularity George Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina. But it has gone out of control. Scarcely a day goes by without Obama making some impertinent remark (it is none of the President’s business who the BP shareholders choose to have as their Chief Executive). He seems to have spent more time on the oil damaged beaches than in the White House. Even though it has not styled itself ‘British Petroleum’ for some years, Obama uses that formula to lay it on that it is the evil Brits at fault, even though the drilling company and the regulator were American.
Now Obama has mouthed off about whether he can stop BP paying a dividend.
All in all I think we can only take this one way. America has had Presidents with whom we have enjoyed a ‘special relationship’ and Presidents who haven’t really cared. Now, for the first time since Suez, we have one with an open and visceral hatred of Britain.
There will be results from this. The new British Prime Minister will, I think, be forced, in a ‘phone call over the weekend, to tell the President to get off BP’s back. Otherwise Cameron will look weak, which he can’t afford to do. But our relationship, special or otherwise, goes further than BP. Afghanistan. Trident, where we virtually allow America to keep the keys. International Finance and the G8. The huge new embassy the Americans are hoping to build in London.
And if this unpopular, spiteful, Britain hating man is re-elected, this is going to carry on for years. Time for openness and a bit of hardball, Mr Cameron.
Holidaying in Italy (2): Travel Tips
Buses. Some people have the courage to travel on Italian buses, and some may even be exhilarated by the kidney shaking, centrifugally lurching ride they offer. You are not one of them. If you must travel on a bus, you are expected to enter through the door marked ‘no entry’. Do not set yourself up for ridicule from your fellow passengers by buying and stamping a ticket. If you are fortunate enough to get a seat never give it up to someone less fortunate because this causes fights.
At the station: on some trains you have to book a seat, on others you don’t. Don’t expect the station staff to interrupt their busy day explaining. Don’t expect them to know which platform the train is leaving from, that’s your job. There is a timetable but you cannot have a copy because they have recently run out. Anyway why publish a timetable if the trains are going to be late?
Air Travel: flying Alitalia is regarded by some as a sport and by others as contributory negligence. You’re on holiday, so you’ve plenty of time to spare if the plane is late either taking off or landing. And what business is it of theirs where your baggage is?
Hire cars: the law requires you to carry the original document for the car at all times. The hire company will only give you a photocopy, so you are a criminal as soon as you set off. Don’t worry. Take a walk on the wild side. There are bigger horrors than this ahead of you.
Driving: Drive as the Italians do: repeat continuously ‘I am the only person on the road’. If you have an accident show equal outrage to the other party. The driver with the nicer car or more attractive girlfriend is innocent.
Michael Schumacher cuts corners, drives at high speed inches from the car in front, pulls sharply in front of other drivers, starts when the lights are red and doesn’t use indicators. Same with all good drivers.
All Italian cars are equipped with a handy mirror to get your hairstyle right while you are driving.
At the station: on some trains you have to book a seat, on others you don’t. Don’t expect the station staff to interrupt their busy day explaining. Don’t expect them to know which platform the train is leaving from, that’s your job. There is a timetable but you cannot have a copy because they have recently run out. Anyway why publish a timetable if the trains are going to be late?
Air Travel: flying Alitalia is regarded by some as a sport and by others as contributory negligence. You’re on holiday, so you’ve plenty of time to spare if the plane is late either taking off or landing. And what business is it of theirs where your baggage is?
Hire cars: the law requires you to carry the original document for the car at all times. The hire company will only give you a photocopy, so you are a criminal as soon as you set off. Don’t worry. Take a walk on the wild side. There are bigger horrors than this ahead of you.
Driving: Drive as the Italians do: repeat continuously ‘I am the only person on the road’. If you have an accident show equal outrage to the other party. The driver with the nicer car or more attractive girlfriend is innocent.
Michael Schumacher cuts corners, drives at high speed inches from the car in front, pulls sharply in front of other drivers, starts when the lights are red and doesn’t use indicators. Same with all good drivers.
All Italian cars are equipped with a handy mirror to get your hairstyle right while you are driving.
Holidaying in Italy
The tourist season is upon us and I am pleased to offer my guide to holidaying in one of the world's great tourist destinations..
Internet Access. Don’t be daft. Did the Emperor Tiberius have the internet? Did Bernini have WiFi access? This is Italy, not South Korea.
Everyone knows when the public holidays are, so there’s no need to publicise them. Everyone, that is, except you.
Italians do not work during August, which starts on July 15th and ends on September 15th.
Why would a restaurant open during the holiday period if the favoured customers are away?
Churches, shops and supermarkets close for lunch, usually between 1pm and 5pm. During this period have lunch yourself; if you can’t eat for four hours, do your best.
Your restaurant may have dispensed with the menu and the waiter will deliver a list of what is available in a broad Pugliese dialect. This is a test of courage designed for foreigners. Simply at some stage raise your finger and you will get whatever was where his monologue stopped. It is the best way to enjoy sheep’s intestines, which you would not otherwise have ordered.
Don’t expect to receive the same food as the regular customers.
Just because the hotel says it is air conditioned doesn’t mean they are prepared to turn it on. It's only 35C, for Heaven's sake, still cool.
You enjoy swimming. Italians enjoy posing by the pool in skimpy trunks and sunglasses and occasionally jumping in to splash you. Try to fit in.
Do not have your photograph taken with a gladiator outside the Colosseum or have your portrait done in the Piazza Navona. Both will leave you severely out of pocket and your friends will laugh.
Always eat some distance from the main tourist points, unless you are doing a survey on imaginative food pricing.
Never ask a policeman for directions. They are all from South of Naples.
It is a criminal offence both to buy and to sell fake watches, handbags etc. You are easier to arrest than a wiry Senegalese sprinter.
If you wear shorts, eat in the open and have no sunglasses they will know you are a tourist and treat you accordingly.
Black girls standing by the roadside are not there as tourist advisers.
Internet Access. Don’t be daft. Did the Emperor Tiberius have the internet? Did Bernini have WiFi access? This is Italy, not South Korea.
Everyone knows when the public holidays are, so there’s no need to publicise them. Everyone, that is, except you.
Italians do not work during August, which starts on July 15th and ends on September 15th.
Why would a restaurant open during the holiday period if the favoured customers are away?
Churches, shops and supermarkets close for lunch, usually between 1pm and 5pm. During this period have lunch yourself; if you can’t eat for four hours, do your best.
Your restaurant may have dispensed with the menu and the waiter will deliver a list of what is available in a broad Pugliese dialect. This is a test of courage designed for foreigners. Simply at some stage raise your finger and you will get whatever was where his monologue stopped. It is the best way to enjoy sheep’s intestines, which you would not otherwise have ordered.
Don’t expect to receive the same food as the regular customers.
Just because the hotel says it is air conditioned doesn’t mean they are prepared to turn it on. It's only 35C, for Heaven's sake, still cool.
You enjoy swimming. Italians enjoy posing by the pool in skimpy trunks and sunglasses and occasionally jumping in to splash you. Try to fit in.
Do not have your photograph taken with a gladiator outside the Colosseum or have your portrait done in the Piazza Navona. Both will leave you severely out of pocket and your friends will laugh.
Always eat some distance from the main tourist points, unless you are doing a survey on imaginative food pricing.
Never ask a policeman for directions. They are all from South of Naples.
It is a criminal offence both to buy and to sell fake watches, handbags etc. You are easier to arrest than a wiry Senegalese sprinter.
If you wear shorts, eat in the open and have no sunglasses they will know you are a tourist and treat you accordingly.
Black girls standing by the roadside are not there as tourist advisers.
Life without the internet
48 hours without the internet and life grinds to a halt, making you dependent in internet cafés and friends.
To all my British friends who think BT is dreadful I advise you to live a while with Telecom Italia. When for no apparent reason service simply disappears they order you not to call back again for four days. If you do they say 'But you just called last Wednesday!' as if internet access were a gift you should be thankful for, rather than something for which you have paid. It is the policy not to let you know what is wrong so you just have to sit there fuming.
Dreadful.
To all my British friends who think BT is dreadful I advise you to live a while with Telecom Italia. When for no apparent reason service simply disappears they order you not to call back again for four days. If you do they say 'But you just called last Wednesday!' as if internet access were a gift you should be thankful for, rather than something for which you have paid. It is the policy not to let you know what is wrong so you just have to sit there fuming.
Dreadful.
09 June, 2010
Where to cut
The Canadians, we are constantly reminded, reduced Government expenditure by 20%, without serious social unrest. Since then there has been a trail of Tory strategists and philosophers to find out how they did it; and the answer has been ‘take the people with you’.
This has been the thrust of recent speeches by Cameron and Osborne, who yesterday called for the nation’s ‘brightest and best’ brains to offer suggestions.
I rather think that more than the nation’s brightest and best brains are required here so even I shall be offering suggestions. But in the meantime we have Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph to consider.
Heffer, from humble Essex origins, portrays himself as the highest of high Tories, although the result is more a permanently indignant Lady Bracknell. Think ‘outraged bluster’ and you are in tune for one of his articles. Heffer believes in nothing so base as consulting the brightest and best – the Government should just get on with it. And I think here the example of Prime Minister Edward Heath is significant. 1974 was the last serious occasion a Government put itself before the electorate with a detailed question; ‘Who governs Britain?’ Heath asked. It was the first time I voted and I remember clearly feeling ‘if you don’t know the answer to that you shouldn’t be in power’.
But I rather think Cameron is right here. A great deal of cutting has to be done, and it has to be done before the Government will be able to talk people out of their entitlement philosophy; that will take a generation. People are going to suffer a fair bit, and feel they are suffering a whole lot more.
Politically if Cameron can get a debate going it will be very advantageous. It will enforce his position as leader with the others following. It will silence the LibDems from saying something was a cut too far, and if they do would enable him to call an election, his position reinforced by the popular mood that cuts will come.
He may fail, as Labour’s ‘Big Conversation’ failed, but he should try.
For me the cuts should be gentle and continuous, such as not indexing tax thresholds for inflation, freezing public sector pay, welfare entitlements and pensions.
Trident will obviously figure large in the debate. It costs a fantastic sum, but against that is an international political badge of honour. Several countries in the next few years will be insisting on a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations – Brazil, India, perhaps the Pacific nations led by Japan and Australia. Without a nuclear weapon we would be grouped as one seat with France or Europe. France will not give up its force de frappe so we would be the junior partner.
What I think we have to do about Trident is to show that there is no alternative. I, not being an expert, find it hard to believe that our needs wouldn’t be covered by a smaller, battlefield type nuclear weapon, and imagine this would be cheaper. Would it? I don’t know: perhaps Trident with its nuclear submarine force is the cheapest option. In that case it has to be explained.
Lastly I think all this is not enough. The government overspend, the excess of expenditure over its revenues, is £160 billion a year, every year. The Government has to get out completely of some of the things it is doing. In Health, Education, Transport, Military expenditure, pensions, a whole host of areas, the door must be opened and a little private sector light shone in.
This has been the thrust of recent speeches by Cameron and Osborne, who yesterday called for the nation’s ‘brightest and best’ brains to offer suggestions.
I rather think that more than the nation’s brightest and best brains are required here so even I shall be offering suggestions. But in the meantime we have Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph to consider.
Heffer, from humble Essex origins, portrays himself as the highest of high Tories, although the result is more a permanently indignant Lady Bracknell. Think ‘outraged bluster’ and you are in tune for one of his articles. Heffer believes in nothing so base as consulting the brightest and best – the Government should just get on with it. And I think here the example of Prime Minister Edward Heath is significant. 1974 was the last serious occasion a Government put itself before the electorate with a detailed question; ‘Who governs Britain?’ Heath asked. It was the first time I voted and I remember clearly feeling ‘if you don’t know the answer to that you shouldn’t be in power’.
But I rather think Cameron is right here. A great deal of cutting has to be done, and it has to be done before the Government will be able to talk people out of their entitlement philosophy; that will take a generation. People are going to suffer a fair bit, and feel they are suffering a whole lot more.
Politically if Cameron can get a debate going it will be very advantageous. It will enforce his position as leader with the others following. It will silence the LibDems from saying something was a cut too far, and if they do would enable him to call an election, his position reinforced by the popular mood that cuts will come.
He may fail, as Labour’s ‘Big Conversation’ failed, but he should try.
For me the cuts should be gentle and continuous, such as not indexing tax thresholds for inflation, freezing public sector pay, welfare entitlements and pensions.
Trident will obviously figure large in the debate. It costs a fantastic sum, but against that is an international political badge of honour. Several countries in the next few years will be insisting on a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations – Brazil, India, perhaps the Pacific nations led by Japan and Australia. Without a nuclear weapon we would be grouped as one seat with France or Europe. France will not give up its force de frappe so we would be the junior partner.
What I think we have to do about Trident is to show that there is no alternative. I, not being an expert, find it hard to believe that our needs wouldn’t be covered by a smaller, battlefield type nuclear weapon, and imagine this would be cheaper. Would it? I don’t know: perhaps Trident with its nuclear submarine force is the cheapest option. In that case it has to be explained.
Lastly I think all this is not enough. The government overspend, the excess of expenditure over its revenues, is £160 billion a year, every year. The Government has to get out completely of some of the things it is doing. In Health, Education, Transport, Military expenditure, pensions, a whole host of areas, the door must be opened and a little private sector light shone in.
08 June, 2010
07 June, 2010
Thatcher: the tiresome truth
John McDonnell, who is standing for the leadership of the Labour Party, and has already garnered the support of 10 MPs, has said that if he returned to the 1980s he would assassinate Margaret Thatcher.
Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, has said that there will be no Margaret Thatcher style cuts under this coalition.
I rather think both of these characters have returned to the 1980s. As I pointed out here, there were, regrettably for these two, no cuts. None. Spending went up year after year after year. It always has done.
It won't now, Mr Clegg, and it wouldn't have done either, Mr McDonell, if Labour had got in. The money, to quote another leftie idiot, has all gone.
Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, has said that there will be no Margaret Thatcher style cuts under this coalition.
I rather think both of these characters have returned to the 1980s. As I pointed out here, there were, regrettably for these two, no cuts. None. Spending went up year after year after year. It always has done.
It won't now, Mr Clegg, and it wouldn't have done either, Mr McDonell, if Labour had got in. The money, to quote another leftie idiot, has all gone.
A new tradition?
It is reported that one of Gordon Brown's last acts as Prime Minister was to reduce the Prime Ministerial salary (ie his successor's salary) from £194,000 to £150,000, but that he did so in secret. When David Cameron arrived one of his first acts was to order a 5% paycut for ministers, not realising he had already been hit with a 22% reduction.
I rather think this should develop into a tradition, one of those unwritten elements in our constitution, that the outgoing PM leaves a few nasty surprises for his successor - the mouldy prawns sewn into the curtains, the putrifying piece of meat behind the sofa.
And of course a pay cut. Spices things up.
I rather think this should develop into a tradition, one of those unwritten elements in our constitution, that the outgoing PM leaves a few nasty surprises for his successor - the mouldy prawns sewn into the curtains, the putrifying piece of meat behind the sofa.
And of course a pay cut. Spices things up.
03 June, 2010
Cumbria and Dunblane
The recent events in Cumbria have inevitably led to comparisons with the Dunblane massacre of 1996, when Thomas Hamilton murdered sixteen children and one of their teachers.
After Dunblane the Commons select committee concluded that a ban on handguns would serve no useful purpose, but following pressure from a group of the bereaved mawkishly called 'The Snowdrop Alliance' our new touchy feely Prime Minister, Tony Blair, as one of his first acts on being elected in 1997, called for and got a ban on people owning pistols (the word 'handguns' entered the language at this time).
Derek Bird in Cumbria, Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane and Michael Ryan in Hungerford in 1987 all held their weapons legally. I can accept that there is a case for closer analysis of the people who own guns, although friends tell me that the current regulations are already draconian. In one case Police arrived unannounced at a man's home while he was out, and demanded that his wife tell them where the key to the shotgun cabinet was held. When she told them they withdrew her husband's licence because he had told someone where the key was.
Inevitably there are renewed calls for further restrictions on gun ownership. Even now the British Pistol Shooting Team have to practise abroad and further restrictions would presumably mean arresting foreign teams at the Olympic Games in London. The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has wisely resisted calls for changes to the law.
She should continue to do so. We have to accept that we cannot protect ourselves agaisnt any eventuality. Next time it will be carving knives or garden shears. These tragedies, quite simply, happen.
After Dunblane the Commons select committee concluded that a ban on handguns would serve no useful purpose, but following pressure from a group of the bereaved mawkishly called 'The Snowdrop Alliance' our new touchy feely Prime Minister, Tony Blair, as one of his first acts on being elected in 1997, called for and got a ban on people owning pistols (the word 'handguns' entered the language at this time).
Derek Bird in Cumbria, Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane and Michael Ryan in Hungerford in 1987 all held their weapons legally. I can accept that there is a case for closer analysis of the people who own guns, although friends tell me that the current regulations are already draconian. In one case Police arrived unannounced at a man's home while he was out, and demanded that his wife tell them where the key to the shotgun cabinet was held. When she told them they withdrew her husband's licence because he had told someone where the key was.
Inevitably there are renewed calls for further restrictions on gun ownership. Even now the British Pistol Shooting Team have to practise abroad and further restrictions would presumably mean arresting foreign teams at the Olympic Games in London. The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has wisely resisted calls for changes to the law.
She should continue to do so. We have to accept that we cannot protect ourselves agaisnt any eventuality. Next time it will be carving knives or garden shears. These tragedies, quite simply, happen.
The World Cup
First in an occasional series of 5,486 posts.
The World Cup starts on 11th June, so only 8 breath holding days left to go.
This blog would like a final between England and Italy, or failing that between North and South Korea, a lively match, but expects it will be between Spain and Brazil.
The British are sending 23 players, which puts us in with a chance if the others are decent enough only to field the usual 11. The team is reported to have arrived in South Africa, to be greeted by a traditional African welcome.
Presumably a request for bilateral aid.
The World Cup starts on 11th June, so only 8 breath holding days left to go.
This blog would like a final between England and Italy, or failing that between North and South Korea, a lively match, but expects it will be between Spain and Brazil.
The British are sending 23 players, which puts us in with a chance if the others are decent enough only to field the usual 11. The team is reported to have arrived in South Africa, to be greeted by a traditional African welcome.
Presumably a request for bilateral aid.
02 June, 2010
Israel and Gaza 2
We seem to have learned a little more since Monday morning but not everything.
1. It seems clear that the principal aim of the 'peace flotilla' was publicity, not delivering aid.
2. The Israelis were clearly wrong to make the interception in international waters.
3. There is no dispute that Israel has the right to ensure that goods coming in to Gaza are not weapons.
4. The Israeli restrictions seem to include building materials, which seems harsh.
After that, the debate descends to discussion of 'proportionality': that they shouldn't have used so much force. I don't know about you, but if someone, Iceland, say, decides to invade Britain, I want the **** kicked out of them. I don't want us to send the Women's Army Band, armed only with blanks in case someone is hurt. The full caboodle, if you please.
No, what does it for me with this convoy business is the fact that it took place in international waters. I don't know if it was a cock-up by the Israelis, but these people, ghastly though they may be, have every right to protest outside Israel.
1. It seems clear that the principal aim of the 'peace flotilla' was publicity, not delivering aid.
2. The Israelis were clearly wrong to make the interception in international waters.
3. There is no dispute that Israel has the right to ensure that goods coming in to Gaza are not weapons.
4. The Israeli restrictions seem to include building materials, which seems harsh.
After that, the debate descends to discussion of 'proportionality': that they shouldn't have used so much force. I don't know about you, but if someone, Iceland, say, decides to invade Britain, I want the **** kicked out of them. I don't want us to send the Women's Army Band, armed only with blanks in case someone is hurt. The full caboodle, if you please.
No, what does it for me with this convoy business is the fact that it took place in international waters. I don't know if it was a cock-up by the Israelis, but these people, ghastly though they may be, have every right to protest outside Israel.
Resignations
Fancy yourself as an international investor? Which would you have bet on, the resignation of the President of Germany, of the Prime Minister of Japan or the Prime Minister of Thailand, which has all but descended into civil war?
I'm sure you guessed it: it's goodbye to Horst Koehler, goodbye to Yukio Hatoyama and well done Abhisit Vejjajiva for surviving a vote of no confidence.
I'm sure you guessed it: it's goodbye to Horst Koehler, goodbye to Yukio Hatoyama and well done Abhisit Vejjajiva for surviving a vote of no confidence.
Public Sector Pay
David Cameron has insisted on the publication of the salaries of public sector workers who earn more than, ahem, the Prime Minister.
So now we know that the head of the Office for Fair Trading gets £280,000 a year.
The question is, how much wiser are we?
Plenty of people earn more than the Prime Minister’s £150,000 or so – footballers, musicians, junior securities traders - but is it a relevant comparison? The National Health Service, for example, is one of the largest employers in the world. If someone has to be tempted out of a lucrative private sector job to run it, that’s OK with me. If however someone gets the job on Buggins’ turn, that we don’t need a top guy running it, I don’t think he should get the same as the Chairman of BP.
What seems to me to be important is that the government regularly reassesses how much individual people get from the taxpayer, and that we look at how much pay has risen (quite a lot in recent years).
I need to feel confident in that process, that money isn’t being frittered away in a sort of back scratching club, but I don’t feel I need to know the numbers.
So now we know that the head of the Office for Fair Trading gets £280,000 a year.
The question is, how much wiser are we?
Plenty of people earn more than the Prime Minister’s £150,000 or so – footballers, musicians, junior securities traders - but is it a relevant comparison? The National Health Service, for example, is one of the largest employers in the world. If someone has to be tempted out of a lucrative private sector job to run it, that’s OK with me. If however someone gets the job on Buggins’ turn, that we don’t need a top guy running it, I don’t think he should get the same as the Chairman of BP.
What seems to me to be important is that the government regularly reassesses how much individual people get from the taxpayer, and that we look at how much pay has risen (quite a lot in recent years).
I need to feel confident in that process, that money isn’t being frittered away in a sort of back scratching club, but I don’t feel I need to know the numbers.
Italy takes the day off
The Republic was formed on 2nd June, 1946 following a referendum.
In these 64 years there have been 61 governments. Still, it works, after a fashion.
Forza Italia!
31 May, 2010
Israel and Gaza
Strange. I never agreed with my late father about Israel. By my early teens I had a large number of Jewish friends and I suppose had absorbed their views. I still harbour a strong sympathy for Israel now.
My father by contrast had been in Palestine after the war and was vehemently anti-Israeli. He even regarded the Balfour Declaration, that there should be a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, as a stitch up.
I asked him once how they had permitted the young state to establish itself. He said that after the war there was no taste for killing innocent people, women and children, particularly those who had been persecuted. They arrived in small boats and were let in.
When I heard of the flotilla of small boats arriving from Turkey I wondered whether the wheel was turning a full circle. I don't know. It appears they were warned not to enter the exclusion zone, that Israel had identified known gunrunners amongst them. Israel says it promised to deliver the aid via the usual channels from Ashdod.
Anyway the Israeli army boarded the ships and several people are dead. The BBC carried a report that some Israeli soldiers had been killed or wounded, but said this was from weapons taken from them. I should like to know more about this: what you have to do to take a weapon from an Israeli commando I'm not sure.
I think we need some independent report on this. I don't buy the business about this being just a humanitarian mission - there are better ways to go about that, which would have assured the aid got through. Aid doesn't seem to have been their principal goal. And we must remember that Hamas is a terrorist group, not a political party.
At the same time this hasn't done Israel any favours. We should let some light into the matter.
My father by contrast had been in Palestine after the war and was vehemently anti-Israeli. He even regarded the Balfour Declaration, that there should be a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, as a stitch up.
I asked him once how they had permitted the young state to establish itself. He said that after the war there was no taste for killing innocent people, women and children, particularly those who had been persecuted. They arrived in small boats and were let in.
When I heard of the flotilla of small boats arriving from Turkey I wondered whether the wheel was turning a full circle. I don't know. It appears they were warned not to enter the exclusion zone, that Israel had identified known gunrunners amongst them. Israel says it promised to deliver the aid via the usual channels from Ashdod.
Anyway the Israeli army boarded the ships and several people are dead. The BBC carried a report that some Israeli soldiers had been killed or wounded, but said this was from weapons taken from them. I should like to know more about this: what you have to do to take a weapon from an Israeli commando I'm not sure.
I think we need some independent report on this. I don't buy the business about this being just a humanitarian mission - there are better ways to go about that, which would have assured the aid got through. Aid doesn't seem to have been their principal goal. And we must remember that Hamas is a terrorist group, not a political party.
At the same time this hasn't done Israel any favours. We should let some light into the matter.
Danny Alexander
It seems that this time the Telegraph may be wrong and that in fact no tax was payable.
However what Mr Alexander cannot avoid is his extraordinary likeness to Beaker from the Muppets. Apparently they have never been seen in the same room together. Here, appropriately since Mr Alexander was Director of Communications for the Britain in Europe Campaign, is his attempt at the European Anthem.
29 May, 2010
David Laws
This morning’s Telegraph ‘outed’ Mr Laws as having paid rent to a live-in lover (male), one James Lundle, that rent coming from the public purse. I suppose the two stories are connected.
Mr Laws has offered to pay back the money and said that he kept the arrangement secret because he didn’t want his sexuality to come out, nor his relationship to Mr Lundle.
Now it seems to me that this is somewhat odd. Laws was born in 1965 and so for all but 2 years of his life homosexuality has been legal. Several MPs from all parties have declared themselves gay and he wouldn’t be the only gay man in the cabinet.
And if he really wanted to keep all this secret, why pay rent to his lover, inviting scrutiny? I’m afraid it looks as if he was simply on the fiddle.
This is a serious problem for Mr Cameron because Laws holds a pivotal position. He is in charge of the spending cuts and is probably the only senior LibDem who is sensible on this issue. If Laws goes, there will be a movement to have Vince Cable as Chief Secretary, which Osborne and the Treasury don’t want.
Cameron will try to keep him on. But he can’t, not in the present climate. You can’t say ‘An end to the old politics, we’re whiter than white’ and then have as Third Lord of the Treasury someone who has had his hands in the till.
Phillip Hammond, Transport Minister, had been an able Shadow Chief Secretary and should be put quickly into the job. The LibDems could supply a replacement at Transport, preferably someone not barking green.
The late Berlusca
This might be seen as a defining moment for Silvio Berlusconi. He has, since the banking crisis, affected to regard Italy as sailing above the wreckage (to the extent it has it was because the Italian banks were too old fashioned to buy any of the new fangled financial instruments) and Silvio has not been slow to take some credit for the fact that everything seemed OK.
But with a budget deficit and ballooning debt it wasn’t OK. Now the crisis, a sovereign debt one rather than a bank liquidity one, is in his front garden and knocking on his door. When talking of excessive sovereign debt, the markets never really thought ‘Greece’; they might have thought a little bit ‘Spain’ (which has been downgraded recently) but what they really think is ‘Italy’. And Silvio obliged by posting even worse debt figures than had been expected.
What sort of opportunity is it for Silvio? Perhaps this most Italian of politicians, who uses charm and style to circumvent even the most dangerous moments can reinvent himself as the man who made austerity work, the man who saved Italy, even (and he has already mooted this) the man who saved the euro.
But to what end? He has three years left of his mandate. At the end of it he will be 76. True, that won’t make him the oldest ever (that was Fanfani, who held on until he was nearly 80) but times are changing, and the corrupt, immovable system which kept Fanfani, Andreotti and the rest in power is no more.
Really for Silvio it is too late. He should, as advised by this blog, have done this a lot earlier. His only hope is that he wants to be President, a post elected by MPs, and that he can threaten to carry on after 2013 unless they vote him in.
It is a tragedy of lost opportunity. A man with the country at his feet who did nothing until the markets forced him to.
28 May, 2010
Will Hutton
The pieces of legislation which define the economic governance of the UK came shortly after the war; the Companies Act, and the component parts of the Welfare State. Will Hutton has understood neither of them.
Instead, he believes that society operates on a system of 'stakeholders'. that is to say that if you buy shares, say, one hundredth of a percent of a company, you are not entitled to one hundredth of a percent of it, because there are other people who have an interest, too: trades unions, local governments, whatever. Hutton saw no separation between ownership and involvement. In fact he failed completely to understand the capitalist system.
Hutton naturally asssociated himself with the loopier element of the Labour Party after 1997, the group of sycophantic pseudo intellectuals surrounding Tony Blair who were there to give credence to his absurd, and failed, 'third way' concept. Blair liked these guys because they meant he didn't have much explaining to do. Hutton wrote for the Guardian and headed up the Work Foundation.
Here is Hutton on Gordon Brown, writing in 2004
'His economic forecasts prove more accurate than those of his self-righteous and near permanently wrong critics. It is boring that brick by tedious brick he is laying the foundations of an economy and society that copies Scandinavia's successes as much as those of the US. And it is infuriating that the predictions that his sums will end in a terrifying black hole never come true.'
How pleased he must be with that statement now.
Now, incredibly, David Cameron has offered Hutton a job, working out how much public sector workers should be paid. It's like asking Cheryl Cole for her opinions on Rousseau.
If Cameron is ever going to make a change to this country, if he is ever going to get the Conservatives into power on their own, if he is ever going to defend us against these charlatans coming back to power, he must get out and denounce the intellectually bankrupt basis of their governance. Not give them jobs.
Greece: the knot tightens
From Associated Press (hat-tip Ian Martin of the WSJ)
“Greece’s biggest phone company says it accidentally cut off the prime minister’s home line in a mix-up over an unpaid bill the day the country faced a crucial debt repayment deadline. OTE telecoms says George Papandreou was left without a home landline for three days on May 19-21 after an employee mistyped a digit when cutting another subscriber’s line over debts. An OTE statement said Wednesday the mistake was not immediately noticed. It said the company chairman wrote to Mr. Papandreou over the incident.
On May 19, Greece repaid an expiring 10-year bond worth €8.5 billion ($10.48 billion) - using the first installment of a €110 billion rescue package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. There was a general strike the next day.”
On May 19, Greece repaid an expiring 10-year bond worth €8.5 billion ($10.48 billion) - using the first installment of a €110 billion rescue package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. There was a general strike the next day.”
25 May, 2010
Greece: the island nation
One of the reasons the EU are going to such lengths to keep Greece afloat is the extent of its foreign bondholders: that is to say non-Greeks to whom it owes money. If it only owed money to its own citizens - and this is to a large extent the situation with Italy - a restructuring of the debt would simply mean impoverishing them a bit.
But Greece owes some €340 billion abroad, enough to trigger a major financial disaster.
So if a restructuring of its debts is too much of a shock, and it can't pay them back itself, what is the answer?
It's the islands. Greece owns something like 1,400 islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas, of which only a few hundred are inhabited. They should sell them off now.
But Greece owes some €340 billion abroad, enough to trigger a major financial disaster.
So if a restructuring of its debts is too much of a shock, and it can't pay them back itself, what is the answer?
It's the islands. Greece owns something like 1,400 islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas, of which only a few hundred are inhabited. They should sell them off now.
24 May, 2010
Sarah Ferguson
I have always been a bit of a fan of Sarah Ferguson. She was treated badly by the Royal Family and never did any of the kiss and tell stuff – although I am sure there was plenty to tell. And she has tried to earn money in whatever way she could, which is commendable.
The latest scandal in what seems to have been an over-eventful few years has shown her in a poor light. It seems she saw an opportunity at a time awhen she needed money and jumped at it. Ferguson is not bright, although brighter than her friend the late Princess of Wales who said she had wanted to be an air hostess but wasn’t brainy enough.
There is much tabloid murmuring about damage done to the Royal Family and Prince Andrew’s business role. As regards the Royal Family, they have ploughed on through far worse than this and it will soon be forgotten.
The latest scandal in what seems to have been an over-eventful few years has shown her in a poor light. It seems she saw an opportunity at a time awhen she needed money and jumped at it. Ferguson is not bright, although brighter than her friend the late Princess of Wales who said she had wanted to be an air hostess but wasn’t brainy enough.
There is much tabloid murmuring about damage done to the Royal Family and Prince Andrew’s business role. As regards the Royal Family, they have ploughed on through far worse than this and it will soon be forgotten.
As regards Prince Andrew, most people think he is pretty lucky to have any kind of business role at all. The irony is that Andrew is the easiest royal to meet – you just say you want to import some goods from Britain. If you wave a golfclub in the air you get him for the whole day.
23 May, 2010
The cops vs. The people
Bedfordshire Police’s new speed camera van. They bought a normal speed camera van (whatever that is) and converted it at a cost of £28,000 so that it has cameras at the front, the rear and at the sides. It can detect a speeding motorist at a range of half a mile.
For me this is exactly why we want elected chief constables. Politicians boast about how much of our money they are spending on the police, or about how many policemen there are, but never about what those police are doing.
What most people want is to feel safe in their homes, to be able to walk to the shops or the bus stop without fear of attack, for their children not to be offered drugs at the school gate.
The Police don’t seem to be in tune with this at all, or if they are, don’t seem to care what we want. They like film cameras, fast cars and helicopters. And I am quite certain they enjoy their relentless battle against the British Motorist.
Unless this is something else that Cameron has given up because Nick Clegg didn’t like it, the game may soon be up. Sooner the better.
For me this is exactly why we want elected chief constables. Politicians boast about how much of our money they are spending on the police, or about how many policemen there are, but never about what those police are doing.
What most people want is to feel safe in their homes, to be able to walk to the shops or the bus stop without fear of attack, for their children not to be offered drugs at the school gate.
The Police don’t seem to be in tune with this at all, or if they are, don’t seem to care what we want. They like film cameras, fast cars and helicopters. And I am quite certain they enjoy their relentless battle against the British Motorist.
Unless this is something else that Cameron has given up because Nick Clegg didn’t like it, the game may soon be up. Sooner the better.
21 May, 2010
The last refuges of scoundrels
1. Repeating tirelessly the lie that the British drink too much because alcohol is cheap, and putting up taxes. Alcohol is not cheap in Britain, it is expensive, and people drink too much because they think it is naughty.
2. Pretending the European Convention on Human Rights was Churchill’s invention, so it must be OK. Forgetting for a minute that Churchill made mistakes (Dardanelles?) it is preposterous to make out that he would have approved of Pakistani terrorists being allowed to stay in Britain because the Pakistanis might have been horrid to them.
3. Fiddling the rules to stay in power. Shamelessly telling the people that a 54% majority having no confidence in the government should allow it to stay in power. The people can count.
4. Shafting your own supporters to stay in power. Cameron’s actions on the 1922 Committee involved people who are not members of a club voting on whether they should become members. Think I’ll try this at the Athenaeum.
5. Suddenly realising a hung parliament is a good idea, when you described it as ‘disastrous’ just days before, and describing your clinging on to power as ‘the National Interest’.
New Politics, eh?
Oh brave new world, that hath such people in it!
2. Pretending the European Convention on Human Rights was Churchill’s invention, so it must be OK. Forgetting for a minute that Churchill made mistakes (Dardanelles?) it is preposterous to make out that he would have approved of Pakistani terrorists being allowed to stay in Britain because the Pakistanis might have been horrid to them.
3. Fiddling the rules to stay in power. Shamelessly telling the people that a 54% majority having no confidence in the government should allow it to stay in power. The people can count.
4. Shafting your own supporters to stay in power. Cameron’s actions on the 1922 Committee involved people who are not members of a club voting on whether they should become members. Think I’ll try this at the Athenaeum.
5. Suddenly realising a hung parliament is a good idea, when you described it as ‘disastrous’ just days before, and describing your clinging on to power as ‘the National Interest’.
New Politics, eh?
Oh brave new world, that hath such people in it!
20 May, 2010
At last! The policies!
So, here we are. The General Election was on 6th May. Mr Cameron became Prime Minister on 11th May. And on the 20th May, a fortnight after you voted, they are telling you what the policies are.
I am still waiting for someone to explain in what way this is democratic.
If you voted Conservative because Mr Cameron was going to repatriate powers from Europe, your vote was a nonsense because he isn't going to do that any more. And he is going to fiddle the votes of his backbench 1922 committee, and the dissolution rules in parliament, to make sure he stays in power for five years and you never get what you voted for.
In my view this is just, just awful. We should have had another election but 'they' (the political class) said that 'we' (the electorate) didn't want one.
I am still waiting for someone to explain in what way this is democratic.
If you voted Conservative because Mr Cameron was going to repatriate powers from Europe, your vote was a nonsense because he isn't going to do that any more. And he is going to fiddle the votes of his backbench 1922 committee, and the dissolution rules in parliament, to make sure he stays in power for five years and you never get what you voted for.
In my view this is just, just awful. We should have had another election but 'they' (the political class) said that 'we' (the electorate) didn't want one.
19 May, 2010
A simple economics lesson
No one should be surprised when European stockmarkets fall after Germany bans short selling.
If you buy something and someone restricts what you can do with it, it is worth less.
Europe seems stuck in the rut of blaming others. Instead it should be asking 'why isn't it a rush to buy our stocks which is causing market turmoil'?
The answer is the incomplete nature of the eurozone. It should either be a total political and economic union or not exist at all.
I would favour the latter. So would most Germans.
If you buy something and someone restricts what you can do with it, it is worth less.
Europe seems stuck in the rut of blaming others. Instead it should be asking 'why isn't it a rush to buy our stocks which is causing market turmoil'?
The answer is the incomplete nature of the eurozone. It should either be a total political and economic union or not exist at all.
I would favour the latter. So would most Germans.
A shameful piece of nonsense
I think the first thing which needs to be said about the strange case of Abid Naseer and Ahmad Faraz Khan is that they arrived in the UK on legitimate visas and have not been convicted of any crime. In fact they have not even been charged.
However the Home Office wanted them deported, convinced they were al-Qaeda operatives and a danger to national security. A judge has now said that they cannot be deported because they might face torture.
A number of lessons need to be drawn from this. The first is, that having been told for years that our Foreign Office is a Rolls Royce machine, we are slowly coming to the certainty that it is comprised of a bunch of lazy, ineffective pen-pushers. Pakistan is supposed to be an ally of the UK in the war on terrorism, and we couldn’t even get some assurance that they wouldn’t torture their own people for something done here? We’re on the same side for God’s sake!
Incidentally, I don’t think the British Public are in tune with the politically right-on about torture. I think an opinion poll would reveal that the vast majority wouldn’t care if these people were tortured by their own government. It goes on in China all the time and we never complain about that.
The second lesson is that whatever we do in this coalition period it is clear that a priority must be getting rid of the absurd human rights legislation. Foreign lawmaking judges can hand down interpretations to British Courts to the effect that legislation, even the control over our borders, is now out of our hands.
So what will happen to this strange pair who are seeking asylum in a country where they apparently intended to commit mass murder? The Home Secretary, Teresa May, who has not had a good start, has suggested that they will be subject to control orders. I am against these. I think the guilty should be sent to prison and the not-guilty left alone. Control orders are a way of imprisoning the innocent.
But we’ll have to keep an eye on Messrs. Naseer and Khan. To mount 24hr surveillance requires 50 operatives.
Could someone in authority please take a step backwards and tell us whether this state of affairs is (a) roughly what they envisaged, (b) sustainable and (c) a suitable example of governance for the future. The new Lord Chancellor, who has also had a poor start, has said that reviewing the human rights legislation is not a priority. I think it is. This is clearly a piece of idiotic nonsense.
As someone said during the election campaign, we can’t go on like this.
However the Home Office wanted them deported, convinced they were al-Qaeda operatives and a danger to national security. A judge has now said that they cannot be deported because they might face torture.
A number of lessons need to be drawn from this. The first is, that having been told for years that our Foreign Office is a Rolls Royce machine, we are slowly coming to the certainty that it is comprised of a bunch of lazy, ineffective pen-pushers. Pakistan is supposed to be an ally of the UK in the war on terrorism, and we couldn’t even get some assurance that they wouldn’t torture their own people for something done here? We’re on the same side for God’s sake!
Incidentally, I don’t think the British Public are in tune with the politically right-on about torture. I think an opinion poll would reveal that the vast majority wouldn’t care if these people were tortured by their own government. It goes on in China all the time and we never complain about that.
The second lesson is that whatever we do in this coalition period it is clear that a priority must be getting rid of the absurd human rights legislation. Foreign lawmaking judges can hand down interpretations to British Courts to the effect that legislation, even the control over our borders, is now out of our hands.
So what will happen to this strange pair who are seeking asylum in a country where they apparently intended to commit mass murder? The Home Secretary, Teresa May, who has not had a good start, has suggested that they will be subject to control orders. I am against these. I think the guilty should be sent to prison and the not-guilty left alone. Control orders are a way of imprisoning the innocent.
But we’ll have to keep an eye on Messrs. Naseer and Khan. To mount 24hr surveillance requires 50 operatives.
Could someone in authority please take a step backwards and tell us whether this state of affairs is (a) roughly what they envisaged, (b) sustainable and (c) a suitable example of governance for the future. The new Lord Chancellor, who has also had a poor start, has said that reviewing the human rights legislation is not a priority. I think it is. This is clearly a piece of idiotic nonsense.
As someone said during the election campaign, we can’t go on like this.
17 May, 2010
The axeman cometh
In what I think will be regarded as a brilliant stroke by Chancellor George Osborne, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury - the man who actually has to implement the public expenditure cuts - is a LibDem, David Laws.
Here is what Matthew d'Ancona had to say about him:
'Mr Laws has the slightly stooped but twinkle-eyed countenance* of a mortician who likes to have fun at the weekend.'
He it is who will have to decide what is a 'front line service' (a phrase which seems to have been accepted without challenge during this election but which to my mind is indefinable and therefore meaningless) and is ring-fenced and what is not and therefore cuttable.
What about.... no, thought not.
This is the toughest job in the government and I wish him well.
*this use of 'countenance' to mean demeanour rather than facial expression is archaic, but we can forgive d'Ancona because he is a fellow of All Souls.
Triesman says
I rather agree with Matthew Sayed, that any comments Lord Triesman made to his mistress in confidence are a matter for him. In fact he said that there was some evidence that the Spanish were trying to find the names of the referees in order to bribe them; he didn't say it was a lot of evidence or that it was compelling, just that there was some.
Triesman has in fact done us a favour if his statement means that we lose the World Cup bidding. After the nonsense of the Olympics the last thing we need is another expensive international competition. This is a good race in which to come second.
Can I just remind everyone, read my lips..
We haven't got any money.
Lords a-plenty
A disturbing article in today’s Times. In order to reflect the state of the parties after the election, it is calculated that the Con-Lib coalition would need to create more than a hundred new life peers. In fact 172 new ones are what is being suggested over the five year term.
The problem is that you can’t get rid of any of the existing 211 Labour ones, elevated by Tony Blair because most of the last lot were Conservative.
So if we have a series of elections (not impossible: between 1964 and 1974 we had five) the House of Lords would increase inexorably as adjustments were made and nobody died until you were more likely to meet a peer over the dinner table or at a football match than a commoner.
This is unless it is reformed, which they have promised to do but over which those self same lords will have a vote.
Here is a different idea. Let’s abolish the whole damn thing. The House of Lords is always described as a revising chamber, but why do we need such a thing? Civil servants could check that the laws promulgated weren’t idiotic. Why do we need another body to say ‘The elected representatives of the people were a little wrong here, let’s change it to this or water it down’. A bit patronising, no? Why should the people I’ve elected to run the country have their deliberations watered down or ‘revised’?
It’d save a few bob, too.
And having sacked the lot of them, if we at some stage in the future felt we needed a second chamber after all, we could just create it, along sensible lines.
But I rather feel we wouldn’t miss it.
PS We didn't get a 'resignation honours' list from Gordon Brown, but he reserves the right to elevate some of his chums. Just imagine what horrors that might contain.
The problem is that you can’t get rid of any of the existing 211 Labour ones, elevated by Tony Blair because most of the last lot were Conservative.
So if we have a series of elections (not impossible: between 1964 and 1974 we had five) the House of Lords would increase inexorably as adjustments were made and nobody died until you were more likely to meet a peer over the dinner table or at a football match than a commoner.
This is unless it is reformed, which they have promised to do but over which those self same lords will have a vote.
Here is a different idea. Let’s abolish the whole damn thing. The House of Lords is always described as a revising chamber, but why do we need such a thing? Civil servants could check that the laws promulgated weren’t idiotic. Why do we need another body to say ‘The elected representatives of the people were a little wrong here, let’s change it to this or water it down’. A bit patronising, no? Why should the people I’ve elected to run the country have their deliberations watered down or ‘revised’?
It’d save a few bob, too.
And having sacked the lot of them, if we at some stage in the future felt we needed a second chamber after all, we could just create it, along sensible lines.
But I rather feel we wouldn’t miss it.
PS We didn't get a 'resignation honours' list from Gordon Brown, but he reserves the right to elevate some of his chums. Just imagine what horrors that might contain.
16 May, 2010
Abusive Gnome alert
An ugly struggle is developing in the tiny village of Furore, between Amalfi and Positano. The council has sent out letters demanding the removal of garden gnomes and similar statuettes of Snow White and her dwarves from village gardens. Hitherto no planning permission had been required to erect a gnome, but they have now been declared ‘abusive’. ‘They alter the natural environment’, said the mayor.
The villagers have not been slow to condemn this Gnomist tendency on the part of their elected politicians, with several declaring they will pay the fine and keep their little garden friends.
Furore lists its population as 810, but it is not certain how many of these are gnomes.
The villagers have not been slow to condemn this Gnomist tendency on the part of their elected politicians, with several declaring they will pay the fine and keep their little garden friends.
Furore lists its population as 810, but it is not certain how many of these are gnomes.
14 May, 2010
The Grand Panjandrum
Ken Clarke, who has been sworn in as Lord Chancellor. I was never really happy with Jack Straw in the post: the Lord Chancellor should look as if he drinks vintage port, not mint tea.
Clarke has said that abolishing the human rights act is not a priority, which is a shame, because at present if you don't like the decision of our Supreme Court you can appeal to some foreigners.
He will, however have to put up with the flak over the 55% limit for dissolution, a case of a government legislating to prolong its term in office and a pretty ugly spectacle.
Good luck to him.
13 May, 2010
The new boys
Here’s what the new coalition has achieved so far:
1 A 5% reduction in ministerial salaries. This looks like a silly gimmick. It is not necessarily a good idea to pay ministers less. If you’ve got monkeys you have to consider the possibility that you may be paying peanuts.
2. Fixed term parliaments. I don’t know what people think this will achieve. Now we all know the date of the next election, the government just has to inflate the economy in good time. What have we gained?
3. A new 55% vote required for a dissolution of parliament after a motion of no confidence as opposed to the usual 50% + 1 MP. This is a piece of sheer gerrymandering. It is a disgraceful, undemocratic fiddle.
Good grief.
1 A 5% reduction in ministerial salaries. This looks like a silly gimmick. It is not necessarily a good idea to pay ministers less. If you’ve got monkeys you have to consider the possibility that you may be paying peanuts.
2. Fixed term parliaments. I don’t know what people think this will achieve. Now we all know the date of the next election, the government just has to inflate the economy in good time. What have we gained?
3. A new 55% vote required for a dissolution of parliament after a motion of no confidence as opposed to the usual 50% + 1 MP. This is a piece of sheer gerrymandering. It is a disgraceful, undemocratic fiddle.
Good grief.
John Smith
I missed it, but yesterday was the anniversary of the death of John Smith, leader of the Labour Party, in 1994.
When I heard of his death I was closeted with the returning oficer for Wiltshire (it was the time of the Euro elections and I was a candidate). It is hard to think of another party leader having died during an election campaign. Such was the commotion that there was even talk of suspending the election, but the matter was, of course, out of British hands.
Smith was highly intelligent, a good debater, but mostly wrong on a range of subjects. As shadow chancellor he helped lose the election for Neil Kinnock by publishing a draft budget, which we all had plenty of time to ridicule. It is following this humiliation that candidates on both sides are reluctant to reveal the details of their plans, and the ridiculous spectacle of people arguing about £6 billion when they needed to cut £160 billion.
When I heard of his death I was closeted with the returning oficer for Wiltshire (it was the time of the Euro elections and I was a candidate). It is hard to think of another party leader having died during an election campaign. Such was the commotion that there was even talk of suspending the election, but the matter was, of course, out of British hands.
Smith was highly intelligent, a good debater, but mostly wrong on a range of subjects. As shadow chancellor he helped lose the election for Neil Kinnock by publishing a draft budget, which we all had plenty of time to ridicule. It is following this humiliation that candidates on both sides are reluctant to reveal the details of their plans, and the ridiculous spectacle of people arguing about £6 billion when they needed to cut £160 billion.
Italy: The Caste and their cars
Seeing the shiny new Jaguars arriving in Downing St I thought what a boost to the car industry this must be. While central government has about 300 cars, I was rather surprised to learn that the total number of government owned or financed cars in the UK is 55,000.
However this is nothing like Italy, where the comparable figure is 629,000. They are known as Auto Blu, although they can be any colour; the police wave them across red lights and often, behind, say, a Maserati there will be an expensive BMW carrying an aide or a bodyguard.
Despite a law passed in 1991 that only Ministers, undersecretaries and a few Directors General are entitled to such a privilege, the number has grown dramatically, up from 200,000 just a few years ago. It is qute normal to see a government car, with police escort, pull up outside some luxury store so the mamma of someone important can do her shopping. Near us, a Lancia regularly collects an attractive ragazza and brings her back the following morning.
Now the minister for Public Administration (which sounds straight out of Yes Minister), Renato Brunetta, has promised to do something about it, under pressure from Contribuenti.it, a taxpayer's group.
He'll have a fight on his hands. The political class, known as La Casta in Italy, The Caste, looks after its own.
12 May, 2010
R.I.P.
Gordon Brown made a decent resignation speech and people are nice to the departing loser, but before long conversation will turn again to whether he was the worst Prime Minister we have ever had.
I am inclined to think he wasn’t, firstly because competition for that accolade is pretty stiff, and second because his premiership was defined by trying to patch up, undo and explain the mistakes of the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer which was, of course, him.
I think, however, he is well on course to be regarded as the worst Chancellor we have ever had.
In part it was the preachy hypocrisy. While pompously lecturing his European counterparts (there is one group of people who won’t miss him) on management of the economy, he unleashed a debt fuelled boom that has left us on our knees. While preaching about the ‘twenty-two Tory tax rises’ he introduced literally hundreds, introducing us to the term ‘stealth tax’ which meant something he had inserted into the small print which you only discovered several days after the end of the debate. While rambling on about Prudence being his watchword he allowed the economy to overheat, such that the only way he could stop the Monetary Policy Committee from raising interest rates was to change the definition of inflation, which he didn’t hesitate to do.
Brown wrecked the nation’s pensions, taking out, some say, £100 billion, leaving the stockmarket (into which the pensions were invested) roughly at the same level it was in 1997. He did this by cancelling the Advanced Corporation Tax dividend relief, confident that the voters wouldn’t understand it and therefore wouldn’t complain. With this and his tax rises and his debt he showered the public sector with money, most of which went on pay rises for people who might vote for him.
As a politician Brown was perhaps the most tribalist we have ever seen. Anyone who can profess to being a socialist while taking away the 10p tax rate, making our poorest people worse off, just to score a point off the Tories, is a psychological study.
With Brown goes the last vestige of New Labour. With its Spin Doctors and Special Advisers, its media refutation unit (what the minister was actually saying....) its corruption, its dirty tricks, it has brought British Politics to a new low from which I don’t expect we shall ever recover. On average, in their thirteen years of office, a new crime was created every day.
Good riddance to the whole twisted, sanctimonious lot of them.
I am inclined to think he wasn’t, firstly because competition for that accolade is pretty stiff, and second because his premiership was defined by trying to patch up, undo and explain the mistakes of the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer which was, of course, him.
I think, however, he is well on course to be regarded as the worst Chancellor we have ever had.
In part it was the preachy hypocrisy. While pompously lecturing his European counterparts (there is one group of people who won’t miss him) on management of the economy, he unleashed a debt fuelled boom that has left us on our knees. While preaching about the ‘twenty-two Tory tax rises’ he introduced literally hundreds, introducing us to the term ‘stealth tax’ which meant something he had inserted into the small print which you only discovered several days after the end of the debate. While rambling on about Prudence being his watchword he allowed the economy to overheat, such that the only way he could stop the Monetary Policy Committee from raising interest rates was to change the definition of inflation, which he didn’t hesitate to do.
Brown wrecked the nation’s pensions, taking out, some say, £100 billion, leaving the stockmarket (into which the pensions were invested) roughly at the same level it was in 1997. He did this by cancelling the Advanced Corporation Tax dividend relief, confident that the voters wouldn’t understand it and therefore wouldn’t complain. With this and his tax rises and his debt he showered the public sector with money, most of which went on pay rises for people who might vote for him.
As a politician Brown was perhaps the most tribalist we have ever seen. Anyone who can profess to being a socialist while taking away the 10p tax rate, making our poorest people worse off, just to score a point off the Tories, is a psychological study.
With Brown goes the last vestige of New Labour. With its Spin Doctors and Special Advisers, its media refutation unit (what the minister was actually saying....) its corruption, its dirty tricks, it has brought British Politics to a new low from which I don’t expect we shall ever recover. On average, in their thirteen years of office, a new crime was created every day.
Good riddance to the whole twisted, sanctimonious lot of them.
Brown out, Dave in
Presumably as a result of reading this blog, HM Queen has handed Gordon Brown his P45 and sent for David Cameron.
It is too early to tell the price the Tories are having to pay for this. There is talk that Clegg will become Deputy PM, that the new government will abandon Tory plans on inheritance tax and supporting the family, but will commit to a referendum on the Alternative Vote and the Liberal plan to raise the income tax threshhold to £10,000. And there will be six LibDem cabinet ministers.
It already looks like a very high price to pay, and I suppose there is more in the offing.
It is too early to tell the price the Tories are having to pay for this. There is talk that Clegg will become Deputy PM, that the new government will abandon Tory plans on inheritance tax and supporting the family, but will commit to a referendum on the Alternative Vote and the Liberal plan to raise the income tax threshhold to £10,000. And there will be six LibDem cabinet ministers.
It already looks like a very high price to pay, and I suppose there is more in the offing.
11 May, 2010
The Euro: Dirty Harry Trichet
I'm not a great fan of the near $1 trillion 'shock and awe' rescue package of the euro, given that it was more of a rescue for the banks than for the member countries, and that all it does is buy time, rather than address the fundamental problems.
But I did enjoy this, from Daniel W Drezner in Foreign Policy
"I know what you're thinking. Is this my last rescue package, or do I have another source of credit in reserve? Well, to tell the truth, in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a €720bn rescue package, the most powerful one in the world, and would wipe away any short position you've taken in the past week, you've got to ask yourself one question. 'Do I feel lucky?' Well do you, punk?"
We'll see. In my experience the markets get satisfied and warm for a bit, then a bit itchy, then a bit have-a-go.
But maybe they'll turn on Britain first.
But I did enjoy this, from Daniel W Drezner in Foreign Policy
"I know what you're thinking. Is this my last rescue package, or do I have another source of credit in reserve? Well, to tell the truth, in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a €720bn rescue package, the most powerful one in the world, and would wipe away any short position you've taken in the past week, you've got to ask yourself one question. 'Do I feel lucky?' Well do you, punk?"
We'll see. In my experience the markets get satisfied and warm for a bit, then a bit itchy, then a bit have-a-go.
But maybe they'll turn on Britain first.
UK Elections 21: the end of democracy?
I go away for a few hours (unfortunately they’d found my stolen car, leaving me with more forms to fill in than if I had wanted to change my citizenship) and all hell breaks loose on the UK Politics front.
Clegg announces that he will start negotiations with Labour, and Brown announces he will resign.
Actually, what Brown in fact seems to have said is that he will oversee the negotiations and hope to have his successor in place by the Party Conference in September / October.
So, let’s see what is being proposed. Far from being a weakened or Lame Duck Prime Minster Brown’s position is greatly strengthened: his offer to resign confirms him in power for a few months while he steers the negotiations towards the policies of his favourite, Ed Balls, who will also make him Viscount Brown of Concorde, if they don’t give in to the LibDems on an elected second chamber. All this will have been explained to him by Peter Mandelson (‘Trusssst in me..’) as the knife went in between his shoulder blades.
As stated before, the parties in Britain are themselves coalitions, so there is a great difference between a set of policies drawn up by Brown / Balls and one drawn up by Harriet Harman or David Milliband. We vote for individual representatives in Britain but the Prime Minister will have a huge amount of patronage and influence. Think you’ll be asked who you want? Don’t make me laugh! It’s out of the hands of the little people now.
A deal will be done involving other parties, since the LibDems votes added to Labour’s are not enough. Their votes are for sale, and the new rulers will spend hundreds of millions of our taxes buying them. For the second time in a row Britain will have a Prime Minister who did not stand as Party Leader in the election, chosen by senior Labour Party people (‘Jussssst in me...’) and a few big smells in the unions.
Can you honestly say you are happy about this? Coupled with the stitch up will be the LibDems’ price, an alien voting system which nobody knows is what we want – less than a quarter of people voted for it. If we move to proportional representation we will have this sort of stitch-up every time.
Our democracy is being wrested from us by a few insiders. And where is the guardian of our constitution HM The Queen? Palace officials say she doesn’t want to get too close to the details of her people being shafted in case it embarrasses her.
We need another election, and we need it now.
Clegg announces that he will start negotiations with Labour, and Brown announces he will resign.
Actually, what Brown in fact seems to have said is that he will oversee the negotiations and hope to have his successor in place by the Party Conference in September / October.
So, let’s see what is being proposed. Far from being a weakened or Lame Duck Prime Minster Brown’s position is greatly strengthened: his offer to resign confirms him in power for a few months while he steers the negotiations towards the policies of his favourite, Ed Balls, who will also make him Viscount Brown of Concorde, if they don’t give in to the LibDems on an elected second chamber. All this will have been explained to him by Peter Mandelson (‘Trusssst in me..’) as the knife went in between his shoulder blades.
As stated before, the parties in Britain are themselves coalitions, so there is a great difference between a set of policies drawn up by Brown / Balls and one drawn up by Harriet Harman or David Milliband. We vote for individual representatives in Britain but the Prime Minister will have a huge amount of patronage and influence. Think you’ll be asked who you want? Don’t make me laugh! It’s out of the hands of the little people now.
A deal will be done involving other parties, since the LibDems votes added to Labour’s are not enough. Their votes are for sale, and the new rulers will spend hundreds of millions of our taxes buying them. For the second time in a row Britain will have a Prime Minister who did not stand as Party Leader in the election, chosen by senior Labour Party people (‘Jussssst in me...’) and a few big smells in the unions.
Can you honestly say you are happy about this? Coupled with the stitch up will be the LibDems’ price, an alien voting system which nobody knows is what we want – less than a quarter of people voted for it. If we move to proportional representation we will have this sort of stitch-up every time.
Our democracy is being wrested from us by a few insiders. And where is the guardian of our constitution HM The Queen? Palace officials say she doesn’t want to get too close to the details of her people being shafted in case it embarrasses her.
We need another election, and we need it now.
10 May, 2010
Coalition
Interesting, while all the talk of negotiations for a coalition (or cohabitation) are going on, that today is the 70th anniversary of Winston Churchill's wartime coalition.
They say that even though history may not repeat, it does rhyme
A billion here, a billion there
.... and pretty soon you're starting to talk about real money' said the American senator.
Yesterday Alastair Darling, acting UK chancellor, having spent the election campaign lambasting the Tories for wanting to take £6 billion out of the economy, 'agreed' to underwrite £13 billion of other European countries' debts.
Apparently he was forced into this because the Lisbon Treaty made such bailouts the subject of majority voting and we were simply outvoted.
The next time Mr Nick Clegg is in front of a microphone perhaps he could explain why the Lisbon Treaty was such a good idea.
Yesterday Alastair Darling, acting UK chancellor, having spent the election campaign lambasting the Tories for wanting to take £6 billion out of the economy, 'agreed' to underwrite £13 billion of other European countries' debts.
Apparently he was forced into this because the Lisbon Treaty made such bailouts the subject of majority voting and we were simply outvoted.
The next time Mr Nick Clegg is in front of a microphone perhaps he could explain why the Lisbon Treaty was such a good idea.
The LibDems and the system
The LibDems, understandably, are resentful about the number of seats they won, which I admit was very low compared to their share of the vote. As Robert Tilleard comments, for achieving nearly a quarter of the vote they got less then a tenth of the seats. I wonder if I can offer some advice?
Firstly, the British system is not about voting for a party, it is about voting for a person to represent you. So in this respect complaints from a party are irrelevant. But no one claims that the First Past the Post (FPTP) system is perfect, only that it is the least bad.
The Tories suffered too:
In Scotland: Labour polled 1,035,528, which translated into 41 seats
The Tories polled 412,855, yet got only 1 seat
In Wales:Labour polled 531,601 for 26 seats
The Tories 382,730 for 8 seats
Those are even worse percentages of seats to votes than the LibDems complain of.
I have chosen this example because as everyone knows the Tories are not very popular in Scotland and Wales. They would have done far better to concentrate their resources on areas where they were likely to do well, rather than come second or third. The reason they don’t is that they feel they have to fight every seat in order to look like a national party.
And this is the Liberal problem – always has been. The reason they fight every seat is historical: they were once, when Lloyd George was with us, the governing party, and they still aspire to this: they think they have to offer a candidate in every constituency. They remind me of an athlete who comes second in every race demanding a share of the World Champion’s crown.
Of course, one of the reasons they so often come second or a good third is that they are the disaffected voter’s party. If we had a system in which they were likely to do very well, people might start to look at their policies, which are a ragbag of the clever and the insane. Europe, for example, is unpopular with the British electorate. If the two main parties had realised in time that the LibDems would be such a threat, they would have continually broadcast to a terrified electorate Nick Clegg’s speeches on further integration and Vince Cable saying how joining the euro would solve our problems. Their vote would have ben considerably lower if they had been scrutinised.
But they could do better under the present system. The solution for the LibDems is to abandon their blanket coverage and concentrate on places they do well. The South West is an example: if they had not bothered with candidates in a good 150 seats but love bombed the South West, turning themselves into a sort of Wessex Regional Party those second places might have been translated into firsts. As it is they put up candidates in safe Labour or Tory seats, the candidate gets 5,000 votes, nowhere near winning, and that five thousand votes are added to the total that they whinge about not getting them enough seats. It’s a bit disingenuous, really.
Back to the voting system. The human mind isn’t channelled along two or three fixed lines, it is nuanced. There are many strands of belief and opinion and government is achieved by coalitions of belief. Under the British system the large parties are the coalitions, each one has a left, a right and a middle and they just about manage to rub along together, Ken Clarke with Michael Howard, Tony Benn with Tony Blair. Under the continental system there are many more parties and they come together to form a coalition. The difference is that under our system you know the policies before you vote. Under the Continental system you get to find out about them after you have voted.
Firstly, the British system is not about voting for a party, it is about voting for a person to represent you. So in this respect complaints from a party are irrelevant. But no one claims that the First Past the Post (FPTP) system is perfect, only that it is the least bad.
The Tories suffered too:
In Scotland: Labour polled 1,035,528, which translated into 41 seats
The Tories polled 412,855, yet got only 1 seat
In Wales:Labour polled 531,601 for 26 seats
The Tories 382,730 for 8 seats
Those are even worse percentages of seats to votes than the LibDems complain of.
I have chosen this example because as everyone knows the Tories are not very popular in Scotland and Wales. They would have done far better to concentrate their resources on areas where they were likely to do well, rather than come second or third. The reason they don’t is that they feel they have to fight every seat in order to look like a national party.
And this is the Liberal problem – always has been. The reason they fight every seat is historical: they were once, when Lloyd George was with us, the governing party, and they still aspire to this: they think they have to offer a candidate in every constituency. They remind me of an athlete who comes second in every race demanding a share of the World Champion’s crown.
Of course, one of the reasons they so often come second or a good third is that they are the disaffected voter’s party. If we had a system in which they were likely to do very well, people might start to look at their policies, which are a ragbag of the clever and the insane. Europe, for example, is unpopular with the British electorate. If the two main parties had realised in time that the LibDems would be such a threat, they would have continually broadcast to a terrified electorate Nick Clegg’s speeches on further integration and Vince Cable saying how joining the euro would solve our problems. Their vote would have ben considerably lower if they had been scrutinised.
But they could do better under the present system. The solution for the LibDems is to abandon their blanket coverage and concentrate on places they do well. The South West is an example: if they had not bothered with candidates in a good 150 seats but love bombed the South West, turning themselves into a sort of Wessex Regional Party those second places might have been translated into firsts. As it is they put up candidates in safe Labour or Tory seats, the candidate gets 5,000 votes, nowhere near winning, and that five thousand votes are added to the total that they whinge about not getting them enough seats. It’s a bit disingenuous, really.
Back to the voting system. The human mind isn’t channelled along two or three fixed lines, it is nuanced. There are many strands of belief and opinion and government is achieved by coalitions of belief. Under the British system the large parties are the coalitions, each one has a left, a right and a middle and they just about manage to rub along together, Ken Clarke with Michael Howard, Tony Benn with Tony Blair. Under the continental system there are many more parties and they come together to form a coalition. The difference is that under our system you know the policies before you vote. Under the Continental system you get to find out about them after you have voted.
09 May, 2010
Another Election
This time in Germany, in North Rhine Westphalia, the region bordering Holland and Belgium, which comprises some of Germany's large industrial cities such as Duesseldorf, Dortmund, Essen and the old capital Bonn.
Mrs Merkel could lose her majority in the Bundesrat, the upper house, today, which would dramatically weaken her position. She is rather a victim of circumstance. Having delayed implementation of the Greek rescue plan because the majority of Germans are opposed to it, she is now being criticised for dithering, and making the final plan more expensive than it need be.
Several North Rhine-Westphalia cities are on the verge of bankruptcy, and in no mood to bail out the Greeks.
08 May, 2010
UK Elections 20: a marriage made on TV
So, here we are then. Nick Clegg has said that the Conservatives deserve the first inscription on his carte de danse and despite the fact that the incumbent would be constitutionally allowed first shout, Gordon Brown has graciously permitted this (ie not believing it can happen). So let us play the shadchan, or matchmaker, and work out what are the chances for this union.
Easier of the two positions to explain is the Tory Party, mainly because it is the least detailed. The core belief of the Tory Party (many people have said they should ditch the term ‘Tory’ but I think they should ditch the term ‘Conservative’) is that they ought to be in power. Nick Clegg landed a blow when he said they were already measuring up for the curtains in Downing St (silly, though; they already had them on file). Otherwise the Tories are the party of fiscal rectitude (I exclude the period of Anthony Barber’s ‘dash for growth’ in the ‘70s and John Major’s absurd adherence to fixing the currency against the Deutsche Mark) and of doing what the middle classes want. The new intake of MP is younger and less likely to lean towards the unattractive Daily Mail authoritarianism of its predecessors . It’s about ‘doing the right thing’ with a bit of modernity. Oh, and Cameron professes to be a tree-hugger, except when it might cost votes.
The Liberal Democrats are easier to understand and at the same time more eclectic. Over the years, partly because they have had no chance of power, some rather interesting policies have emerged, and these have been in part libertarian. They are against ID cards, believe there should be fewer cameras on the streets; they like the idea of localism and want an elected second chamber.
Against that the LibDems have two authoritarian Big State policies: they favour the European Union and the Euro, and they want to empower the political class at the expense of the electorate by embracing proportional representation.
In the negotiations the Tories can threaten a new election which the LibDems can't afford, but Clegg can threaten to cosy up to Brown. Cameron isn't in such a powerful position that he can take the nice bits of LibDem policy and reject the rest. These votes have to be bought.
Cameron can't really compromise on the euro because he has promised never to join it (unlike Gordon Brown’s ‘Let’s join the euro when the time is right’) and the LibDems don’t want to talk too much about that at the moment, but promises on the House of Lords, evening out the size of the constituencies and a referendum on PR some time in the future (‘the British people don’t want to be bothered about constitutional change until the deficit is reduced’) with the Tories deciding on the question to be put.
Add in a couple of cabinet jobs (not Vince Cable, please) and it could work. A part of me hopes it does.
Easier of the two positions to explain is the Tory Party, mainly because it is the least detailed. The core belief of the Tory Party (many people have said they should ditch the term ‘Tory’ but I think they should ditch the term ‘Conservative’) is that they ought to be in power. Nick Clegg landed a blow when he said they were already measuring up for the curtains in Downing St (silly, though; they already had them on file). Otherwise the Tories are the party of fiscal rectitude (I exclude the period of Anthony Barber’s ‘dash for growth’ in the ‘70s and John Major’s absurd adherence to fixing the currency against the Deutsche Mark) and of doing what the middle classes want. The new intake of MP is younger and less likely to lean towards the unattractive Daily Mail authoritarianism of its predecessors . It’s about ‘doing the right thing’ with a bit of modernity. Oh, and Cameron professes to be a tree-hugger, except when it might cost votes.
The Liberal Democrats are easier to understand and at the same time more eclectic. Over the years, partly because they have had no chance of power, some rather interesting policies have emerged, and these have been in part libertarian. They are against ID cards, believe there should be fewer cameras on the streets; they like the idea of localism and want an elected second chamber.
Against that the LibDems have two authoritarian Big State policies: they favour the European Union and the Euro, and they want to empower the political class at the expense of the electorate by embracing proportional representation.
In the negotiations the Tories can threaten a new election which the LibDems can't afford, but Clegg can threaten to cosy up to Brown. Cameron isn't in such a powerful position that he can take the nice bits of LibDem policy and reject the rest. These votes have to be bought.
Cameron can't really compromise on the euro because he has promised never to join it (unlike Gordon Brown’s ‘Let’s join the euro when the time is right’) and the LibDems don’t want to talk too much about that at the moment, but promises on the House of Lords, evening out the size of the constituencies and a referendum on PR some time in the future (‘the British people don’t want to be bothered about constitutional change until the deficit is reduced’) with the Tories deciding on the question to be put.
Add in a couple of cabinet jobs (not Vince Cable, please) and it could work. A part of me hopes it does.
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