Super Tuesday

Yesterday was the day when, in a rush of states to declare their support, an American political party wants to be anointing a new leader. This race, for the Republicans, has been at the same time the most expensive, the most aggressive and the least inspiring. The man who began the race as the front runner, Mitt Romney, has spent millions bad-mouthing his opponents, and he could never really unite his party. An interesting cultural note here: in almost all pictures of Americans, the woman has her mouth open, as if to declare astonishment at how happy she is. Here Romney's mouth is wide open, saying 'My! You are having a good time, aren't you?' but his wife is sufficiently unemoted that she can breathe normally. It sums up his campaign.

Newt Gingrich's wife looks as if she is going to deny ever having known the man, as if nothing in the conduct of the campaign or in the man's behaviour is anything to do with her and that she is only hired help for the day. She is his third wife and this pretty well sums her life as well as his campaign.

Rick Santorum, the evangelical nutter, who has got far further in all this than he really should have, makes an Archbishoply embrace of the world ('Dearly beloved..') but inclusion is not really his thing. I think he would have liked to have been a lot nastier in the race but his sanctimonious public persona wouldn't permit it.

Having done better than anyone thought, he may be a force to be reckoned with but I somehow doubt it.

Ron Paul looks tired but he is in his 70s and after this will hand over the libertarian mantle to his son Rand (named in part, I think, after Ayn Rand). He was this blog's preferred candidate and did well, on the back, astonishingly, of young people and students. Now America may have a libertarian future.

Romney will win, but to quote Mark Mardell of the BBC, he hasn't sealed the deal with the American people. It is good news for Obama and therefore bad news for Britain.

The ties that bind

There is an emerging row of the political / religious establishment over gay marriage. You'd have thought they all had something better to do.

'I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative, I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative' said David Cameron in one of the most fatuous comments by a party leader in a generation.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, accuses Cameron of trying to redefine reality, and changing long-standing laws and traditions at the behest of a small minority of activists.

So there's going to be quite a row, and it's hard to know what it is all about. Homosexuality has been legal in Britain for 45 years, so gays can live together, a state which is also chosen by a large number of heterosexual couples. Then a few years ago there was introduced the new concept of registered partnership, which means that gays can openly and legally make the assurances of love and commitment which are normal for heterosexual couples. So it can't be that.

What it seems to be is just an attempt to redefine the word 'marriage' (away, incidentally from the definition in the UN Declaration on Human Rights). It means making both sides definitionally the same as well as practically.

I have many gay friends and oddly enough a lot of them regard themselves as different, and rather relish that difference.

So it seems to be a lot of fuss about nothing. This blog is neither in favour of it nor against it, but it is opposed to the Government wasting so much time. 

Humpty or was it Dumpty?

One - just one - of the reasons I have never thought that Britain should be an integral part of the European Union is that we really don't understand them. Sometimes they mean what they say, and sometimes they don't.

Take for example our accession to the then European Economic Community in 1973, nearly 40 years ago. A couple of sceptical politicians reminded the then government that the Treaty said it was for 'ever closer union'. The Prime Minister, Edward Heath, said in a broadcast that there was nothing to worry about, this was the sort of language these European Johnnies used, and there was no question of any political element to it. Of course we now know that this was something they said and meant, but didn't want us to know.

On the other hand, consider this. Spain, on the very day  that it enthusiastically signed the new budget agreement (Britain, if you recall, refused to sign it and is a pariah) on the very day, announced a proposed budgetary deficit in excess of that permitted. But they signed! The thing will have lasted intact for minutes rather than hours, rather than as Angela Merkel said 'it will last for ever'.

Nicolas Sarkozy announced that their strategy was bearing fruit, on the day that Greece was downgraded again.

I mean, what on earth is it all about?

'When I use a word', Humpty Dumpty said, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less'

Picking a loser

Born Arnold George Dorsey and nicknamed Gerry, the reason for his change of name to that of a German opera composer is lost, thankfully, to history. Engelbert Humperdinck (he changed his name by deed poll) is Anglo-Indian, born in Madras. In the 1960s he was a hairy, open shirted crooner of unparalleled awfulness.

He is now 75 years old and has been selected to represent Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Needless to suggest we are unlikely to win; I think we must study the strategy a little deeper. After we have limped through the litany of 'Royaume Uni - nul points' there will be a feeling of the inevitable. People will ask how we were supposed to win when represented by a hirsute old age pensioner who seemed outdated 50 years ago. It will take away some of the sting.

Incidentally it is for this reason that I don't believe Harry Redknapp is the right choice for England football manager. We need a foreigner, on whom we can blame our traditional and ineluctable first round loss to a team of the level of Azerbaijan or Burkina Faso. People will be reluctant to blame defeat on the charming, blokey, Redknapp. If there's a Frenchman out there with managerial qualities, he's our boy. Step forward Arsène Wenger.

The Ice Man

In better days

It is a fraction over 20 years since the discovery in the Alps between Italy and Austria of the body of an ancient man. He has been nicknamed Oetzi after the valley where he was found.

Since then the body has been prodded and poked, cut and examined. We know that Oetzi is some 5,300 years old and 1.65m tall. Researchers have taken samples of and examined his mitochondrial DNA and his nuclear DNA. They know that his family came from Corsica or Sardinia, that he was blood type O, that he was lactose intolerant, predisposed to heart condition, suffered from Lyme's disease, even that he had brown eyes.

If this had been a war grave - and Oetzi died from loss of blood after being hit by an arrow - you wouldn't be allowed to touch the bodies.

I know it's science, and I suppose it's important, but I am just wondering whether we shouldn't allow the poor chap some dignity.

Davy Jones

Davy Jones, lead singer of The Monkees, has died aged 66.



The Monkees might be said to be the first modern band. Founded in the mid-1960s for a TV programme, being photogenic was the first requirement. Stephen Stills, later of Crosby Stills and Nash was turned down for a role due to his looks. The TV programme, featuring absurd antics and superb music ran for 58 episodes and there were spin-off films and of course records. At one stage they were more popular than the Beatles. The diminutive Jones became an international heart-throb.

RIP

Leap Day

Legend has it that St. Brigit of Kildare asked St. Patrick whether there couldn't be a day on which a woman might propose to a man (not, I think, self-interest: she was fiercely celibate). Anyhow, it has stuck and for a while in some places it was an offence for the man to say no (there weren't the tax implications then).

And speaking of the economy, if the UK's Chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne could claim last year that growth was slower due to the day off for the Royal Wedding, presumably he will have to acknowledge that growth ought to be higher this year due to the extra day. What goes around, as the Gregorian Calendar makes clear, comes around.

A child born today will legally be allowed to vote on 1st March 2030, assuming we still have voting then.

Investment advice

This blog doesn't give investment advice, but is quite happy to recommend things not to invest in.

Top of the list is Costa Cruises (motto: Vada  a bordo, cazzo!) which suffered the debacle of the Costa Concordia. We read of the strange discovery of cocaine in the Captain's hair, and an Eastern European dancer making claims for the night she was about to spend if only the boat hadn't crashed.

Now these master mariners have lost another ship.

The Costa Allegra seems to have run out of power off the Seychelles and the passengers are being treated to an extensive view of the Indian Ocean starscape.

Perhaps they should rename it the Costa Andante.

Greeks bearing beer

There are reports of thousands of Greek émigrés, impoverished by the crisis, becoming waiters in richer countries



Incidentally, that sounds a rather 1940s soundtrack, doesn't it?

The Oscars

I didn't watch the Oscars, indeed not many people did. Audience figures have been steadily declining for the American film industry's love fest, and this may be the year that Hollywood fell out with itself.

Last year the highest winning film was about the last British king, this time best actress went to someone playing a British Prime Minister; the best foreign language film went to the Iranians (whom nobody likes) and most awards were won by the French (whom nobody likes either).

There were no speeches this time criticising American wars, indeed little or nothing of interest seems to have been said all evening.

Perhaps next time they should cut it back to a sensible size and hold it in Idaho.

Greece: a new..er..thing

From the Economist

Too fast

CERN, which has been doing such interesting work bumping hadrons into each other (I can't quite remember why), found in the course of its researches that some neutrinos travelled faster than light.

This would have turned physics on its head, but I'm afraid it isn't quite so exciting (in fact nothing about particle physics ever is). It turns out this was a case of faulty wiring.

This is certainly the reason I shall be giving the next time I am stopped by the Polizia Stradale for a more modest breach of the speed limits. If the pointy heads at CERN can't measure speed correctly then we can't expect the cops to either.

Marie Colvin

What would you risk your life for? It is a question which, thank God, most of us in the West, for two or three generations, haven't had to ask ourselves.

Marie Colvin risked her life to get news of war, of repression and suffering, in front of ordinary people like you and me, knowing that if these horrors were not published nothing would ever be done. She would often report from lesser known conflicts, recording and reporting frankly the terrible events to which she was witness.

Marie Colvin was killed in Homs, the main battleground of Syria's civil war. It seems her attackers knew who and where she was, which brings a new level of awfulness to an already sad tale.

Tonight's the night

Shrove Tuesday.

If you're doing Lent, it starts tomorrow, so go at it with a will. If you're not doing Lent, it's polite to keep company this evening with those who are.

I shall decide tomorrow.

Very clean hands

Germany has opted for Joachim Gauck as President.

Good decision.

Gauck, once described as 'Germany's Mandela', was born in Eastern Germany during the war. His father was imprisoned by Stalin. and Gauck waged a long battle for human rights under the Soviet yoke, becoming, with Vaclav Havel, one of the signatories to Charter 88.

He is a Lutheran preacher with no party affiliation.

After the corruption scandal this seems like just the guy.

Mani pulite

As proof of the rule that big things often have small beginnings, it was twenty years ago that a small time Socialist politician named Mario Chiesa was arrested for allegedly accepting a bribe from a cleaning company.

The Socialist Party itself denounced him - unacceptable behaviour, one bad apple in every barrel etc - and Chiesa, outraged that his colleagues failed to stand up for him, sang like a canary, evidencing a widespread web of corruption involving all major parties, one fiddle leading to another. The entirety of Italian politics was itself funded, it seemed, by bribery and extortion, money for favours.

The affair, which became known as Tangentopoli ('bribesville') and the persistent investigation by lead magistrate, Antonio Di Pietro which was known as Mani Pulite ('clean hands') grew and all major political parties dissolved themselves and refounded. Scores of politicians confessed and a couple committed suicide. It led to the flight of former Prime Minister and socialist leader Bettino Craxi to Tunisia, where he died in 2000, and to the rise of Silvio Berlusconi.

The magistrate Antonio Di Pietro is now head of a political party IDV (Italy of values).

Incidentally, some people say that the name Mani Pulite was coined by an artist, who sculpted an exhibit supposedly made from Silvio Berlusconi's liposuction.

Boxing

Many years ago, when I had to do boxing at school (the education system was different then), I simply could not understand why I had to follow rules. I mean, there we were, my opponent and myself, engaged in a fight - no other word for it - and yet I was not allowed to trip him up and poke his eyes out, or even let him off with a Chinese burn.

So I was a little sympathetic to a man I had not previously heard of, Dereck Chisora, who, while fighting for the world title, managed, before the fight, to slap his opponent's face and afterwards (he lost) to engage in a battle with another boxer who had not been involved.

That's more like it. 

Hypocrisy (No.3,422)

The German Head of State, President Christian Wulff, who is a close ally of Chancellor Merkel, has had to resign following a scandal involving an industrialist, some money and some property (the usual grubby stuff).

Presumably we won't now be hearing any more from Frau Merkel or her finance minister Schaeuble about corruption in Greece and Italy.

Nuclear peanuts

I was pleased when President Sarkozy and David Cameron announced a Franco-British deal on nuclear power plants. Then they said it was worth £500 million.

The latest add-on to the nuclear power station in Cherbourg cost €6 billion (note: not a new power station, just a bit more kit). £500 million is like saying you are going into car production and buying a couple of dinky toys.

Scotland the brave

It is almost beyond conjecture that a country's strategy for independence would include joining the European Union. Beyond conjecture firstly because it is like holding on to the coat tails of a man falling back on top of you, but secondly both in pronouncement and practice the direction of travel of the EU is towards integration. Scotland proposes to declare independence only to lose it in an undemocratic bureaucracy; to exchange having votes and an elected assembly to being governed by diktat.

Nevertheless, it seems that that is what a lot of them want. My belief is that they should be allowed to have it.

In the meantime we are witness to the worst of the dark arts of politics. Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party and leader of the Scottish Parliament, is as canny a political operator as the world has seen since Talleyrand. Yesterday David Cameron said that if the Scots voted 'no' in the proposed referendum they might be allowed a further measure of self-governance, known as 'devo-max'. Strangely enough, devo-max, a sort of independence-lite, would, being a changing of the rules of the UK, be voted on by everyone in the UK, whereas independence would just be voted on by the Scots.

Mr Salmond likened this to an offer by Sir Alex Douglas Home in the 1979 referendum, that they would somehow get more independence if they didn't vote for it. He demands details of what they would get. Salmond is calling Cameron's bluff: he seems to win at every turn.

Or does he? Is Mr Cameron playing an even darker game? If Scotland became independent, the Labour Party, easily the biggest rival to Cameron's Conservatives, would be finished in the UK, since it depends on Scotland for its support. Cameron's party would be what Harold Wilson said of Labour in the 1970s: 'the natural party of government'.

Is Cameron looking as if he is doing his best in an heroic battle to keep the UK together, only to lose it in the final struggle and be in power for the rest of his life? Is that what's going on?

Unfortunately only a couple of hundred people in the UK really care about the answer to this question, and I am not one of them.

Dropped like a hot coal

The 'troika', an unholy trinity of the European Central Bank, the European Union and the IMF, has postponed the meeting to approve Greece's bailout, citing lack of commitment as the reason.

In a separate and certainly unrelated piece of news, Luc Frieden the Luxembourg Foreign Minister, said 'The impact on other countries [of Greece leaving the Eurozone] will be less important than a year ago.'

They are shaping up to drop Greece, now that it won't look too bad.

Greece has had to accept a new Prime Minister imposed on it by Europe, and now they are asked to give up all semblance of being a democracy by promising their policies after the next election will comply with what this unelected shower want. It's irrelevant, because the people can (and probably will) vote for parties which have not made these ridiculous promises.

My advice to Greece is to default on all its debts, now. Don't pay a penny. Life will be tough for a bit, but it will be anyway. At least the country will have maintained its self-respect.

Good sense

Mario Monti has said no to a proposed bid for Rome to host the 2020 Olympics saying, refreshingly, that Italy couldn't afford it.

If only Tony Blair had shown the same good sense for Britain.

San Valentino

Left alone on Valentine's night (the other half has a gig in Britain) I noticed that the Duchess of Cambridge is in the same position and I thought we might do something together (I shan't say what). Her PR says she will be spending the day visiting alcoholics.

So watch this space.

Incidentally, it is said they fixed the date of Valentine's Day on the date when birds started pairing up and nesting. Presumably it wasn't during a period of global cooling such cold weather.

A new Jeanne d'Arc

The Parisian suburb of Nogent-sur-Marne is a fairly pleasing place, once popular with artists. It had several feather factories in the 19th century and the feather pluckers (I am using spell-check) or plumassières were largely the wives of Italian railway workers from Piacenza.

It was proposed that a statue representing the plumassières be erected in the town, but it was only after the local council gave its approval that councillors learned that it will be in fact be of President Sarkozy's Italian wife, Carla Bruni. The taxpayer is putting up half the money. President Sarkozy's re-election campaign is suffering enough, I should have thought, without this.

For myself I have left instructions that no statues of me are to be erected until after my death. I think it's the best way.

Greek tragedy

100,000 people were on the streets of Athens protesting against the new austerity measures (which were passed by parliament). I think we need to ask the European Union the following questions:

Is this what you were expecting?

In the future, is Greece likely to need more austerity or less?

Do you think the popular unrest is just going to go away?

How do you think the Greeks will vote in the April elections?

Whitney RIP

Daughter of a famous gospel singer, cousin of Dionne Warwick, goddaughter to the only comparable talent, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston had seen enough of the fame business to know how to cope. But she couldn't. Perhaps it's a lesson for us.

The first good news

The picture shows a cricket match, played in Sharjah, between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of course Afghanistan didn't win - Pakistan have just beaten the world's top ranked team (England, although you wouldn't think it to look at them).

Cricinfo magazine, from whom I nicked this photo, says that cricket is booming in Afghanistan, with the national team now full time, league teams in 28 of the 34 provinces and a youth training programme.

I am a great believer in the ability of sport to pacify warring parties (look at the hard fought matches between India and Pakistan, played in a good spirit), and in particular cricket, the more so because it is the most popular sport on the sub-continent.

Afghanistan needs help to develop this, and it is to be hoped they will get it.

Abu Qatada

One of the reasons I started to write this blog having moved away from the UK, is that I believe that being away, living under a different set of cultural and legal circumstances, gives me a different perspective on what is going on. Expats see things through two or three different prisms.

And there is a strange matter going on now, where we need to take a pace back. It concerns a man called Abu Qatada (at least that is the name he goes under at present: he was born Omar Othman in, of all places, Bethlehem). Mr. Qatada is a citizen of Jordan. He entered Britain in 1993 using a forged passport, and fraudulently obtained asylum. He is believed by the British authorities, and by the United Nations, to be a spokesman and trainer for Al-Qaeda, and to be guilty of incitement to religious hatred, violence and murder. In short a nasty piece of work.

Mr Qatada has been in prison in Britain for most of the last ten years, and I must say I am not particularly happy about this. He hasn't been prosecuted with any crime, it is said because to do so would reveal the names of British agents who have infiltrated his associates, and put their lives at risk. Now a judge, rightly in my view, has said we have to let him go.

Back to basics. What should we do with illegal immigrants who are nasty pieces of work? Deport them of course. But the European court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has said we can't deport him, first because he might be tortured (he is accused of a number of serous crimes in Jordan); we gained assurances from Jordan that they would not torture him. Then we couldn't deport him in case information gained in the use of torture were used at his trial.

This is a piece of nonsense. Next they will be saying that the traffic in Amman puts his life at risk every time he crosses a road. There are plenty of aspects one doesn't like about foreign jurisdictions, even those of European countries using the Napoleonic code, but we put up with them and recognise them and so we do with Jordan. Mr. Qatada, who is regarded as a danger to the UK, should be put on the next plane. All the ECHR can do is write us a letter saying we shouldn't have done that, as they have with France and Italy. It isn't so bad.

Britain can be proud that it has offered a shelter to people from all over the world who are in distress, from Jews to Africans to Huguenots. Mr Qatada has abused this shelter. he must forfeit it.

There is a more important matter here, though. I want the final court in Britain to be the British Supreme Court, not some foreign assembly containing people some of whom are not even proper lawyers. How can they complain about Jordan when they allow Romanians as judges? We should stick with the Human Rights Act, even though most if it is sanctimonious drivel, but withdraw our allegiance from the Court.

The trouble with democracy

Further to my last post about the EU attitude to democracy, it doesn't just apply in failing states. Here is Pierre Moscovici, campaign manager to François Hollande,the leading contender in the Presidential race, discussing their opposition to the Finance Treaty:

'We don't like the idea of a popular vote because we are pro-Europeans and we don't want a 'No' '

The Greek endgame

Mixed, confusing signals about the Eurozone powers and Greece. Last I heard was that the bureaucrats came up with a set of proposals on Tuesday night, the Greeks sent in their reports saying 'we accept' but that it mysteriously turned out to be missing €325 million.

This will resolve itself, I think, although not without a certain amount of tears among the hard pressed Greeks. They have gone on a 48 hour strike. Of course losing 2 days of production means lower revenues, bigger deficit, higher shortfall that needs to be financed....Once established the measures will hold until they need to be revised. No one is doing anything about the poor productivity in Greece (and the other countries).

One thing which could derail it is that the longer this goes on the closer we get to the Greek elections. As they get into campaigning mode the politicians are beginning to wonder how it will sound to the voters if they are seen to be opting for more austerity (Clue: not that good).

What concerns me more is the other requirement of the EU: that as well as being approved in the Greek parliament, the three main parties undertake to impose the austerity measures if elected. This is a case of the unelected telling the elected not just what to do but what to put in their manifestos. This is going down very badly in Greece, who could well vote in an extreme left wing government which would ignore the austerity programme completely. Europe must begin to understand that its cavalier attitude to democracy doesn't go down well with democrats.

Anniversaries good and bad

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.

Dickens is an almost wholly good thing: a child brought up in poverty - his father was in the debtors' prison - who made an extraordinary amount of money from his writings and devoted himself to philanthropy. At one stage he ran a home for fallen women, who had to agree, at the end of their stay, to emigrate.

Like many Brits, I had Dickens forced on me as a child. His long winded prose style and plotting together, perhaps, with the books' being written for serialisation (he was thus paid by the column inch) make him somewhat indigestible and unfit for children. In later life, and with an understanding of the social reform he campaigned for, Dickens can be most enjoyable.

Today is also the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which created the European Union and paved the way for the disastrous monetary union. An indication of how the thing is run is that a short time earlier the bank I was working for received a call asking to borrow money. We had to point out that the EU did not yet exist and so of course we couldn't lend them money. They were outraged: obviously having no intention of letting democracy get in their way.

Now they all have second thoughts. 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure', the saying goes, and the same is true for treaties.

Sign of the times

A gay man....follow me closely here....a gay man has entered a custody battle wanting access to his son. He was married to the child's mother but she was a lesbian....try to keep up....who went off with another woman. Now the child was born after he came out as gay and she went off with her better half (equal half?) because he donated sperm for her to be artificially inseminated. The women say that if they had known he would want to see much of his son they would have gone for another, anonymous, sperm donor.

This raises a number of questions, not least the one which in our political correctness we don't ask, whether this is an acceptable way to bring a child into the world.

Sixty Years

Today, Her Majesty the Queen celebrates an astonishing 60 years since her accession to the throne. On 6th February 1952 Britain was a very different place.

Churchill was Prime Minister, Truman President of the USA and Stalin ran Russia. In Germany Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was laying the base of the German economic miracle. King Farouk was tottering on the throne of Egypt, and the Tunisians were rebelling, then against the French.

Although the Second World War, in Europe at least, had ended nearly 7 years before, it was still at the front of people's minds: after the mass celebrations life was not much different for many people. Indeed Britain still was at war, in Korea, in Kenya where we were fighting the Mau Mau rebellion, and, officially, with Japan where the peace treaty had yet to be signed. In 1952 Japan was refused entry into the United Nations.

Rationing continued in Britain, and was still in place for tea, sweets and sugar; meat rationing would not be ended for a further two years.

The first commercial jet flight had not yet taken place, no one had climbed Everest, homosexuality was illegal, as was abortion, and murderers were executed. There was only one TV channel.

The average house price was £2,200.

After 60 years of dramatic change, and a number of family upsets, the Queen remains highly popular with her people, as this year's celebrations will show. She has pledged to continue in the job for as long as she lives.

What's going on at the UN?

We wake this morning to the news that Russia and China have vetoed a UN resolution, sponsored by the Arab League, for President Assad of Syria to leave office. At the same time Assad’s troops were committing another massacre in Homs.

On the face of it this would seem to render the UN Security Council an irrelevance. Russia is the major supplier of arms to Syria, which allows it to maintain a naval base – its only warm water port. It might be seen as cold calculation on Russia’s part. But again, you might argue that Assad is almost certainly a goner, and the new rulers, whenever they accede to power, will not be kind to those who prolonged the conflict. Russia may lose out by this.

And what of China? Little has been said about its interest here. There isn’t enough in the way of minerals in Syria to interest China, and they have no military presence there.

Perhaps the key lies in what the Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked Hillary Clinton: ‘what’s the endgame?’ and I think in the light of the West’s recent willingness to undertake military adventures we are entitled to ask it too. What if the Security Council were to endorse a motion for Assad to hand over to his deputy and to stop the violence, and then he refused. What would we do? Eh? You can just hear the self satisfied tones of politicians ‘We are right to do this... clear mandate....helping the Syrian people....’

For myself I find it quite easy to condemn Assad and his henchmen without feeling the West should involve itself militarily. But there is some doubt as to whether the governments of the USA, France and Britain think that way. For some, and British foreign Secretary William Hague looks as if he may be one of them, seeing something wrong and feeling we have the right and the duty to try to put it right, go together.

And this, I think, is what Russia and China are concerned about. They did not veto the action in Libya, only to watch Britain and France openly flout the terms of the mandate. They have recently said that they will oppose any vote which interferes with the sovereignty of a nation. And with good reason: there is nothing the leaders of Iraq or Libya or Syria have done to their people that the Chinese and Russians haven’t done to theirs. Where will it all end? Of course I may be maligning them: they may just be on a moral crusade not to allow military crusades. If this is the case this blog supports them.

Of course the Arab League could go it alone. Tunisia has already said that it no longer recognises the Assad administration. And interfering in Syria would establish the League as the major power broker in the area. But I think that, even with the newly discovered muscular influence of Qatar, it lacks the co-ordination and the guts to do so. It’s a shame for the Syrians, but it looks as if they will have to overthrow Assad on their own.

But if this is the price of the UN Security Council not becoming a global army, it might just be worth it.

Huhne

I don't quite know what to make of the news, but I have just learned that Chris Huhne's mother was once the voice of the speaking clock.

Crime and punishment

Chris Huhne, the absurd Secretary of State for global Warming, or somesuch, the man behind the windmills and expensive electricity bills, has been charged with perverting the course of justice.

What happened is alleged is that in 2003 he persuaded his wife, the economist Vicky Price, to take a speeding ticket on his behalf. In 2010 he left his wife for a bisexual research assistant, and Ms Price let it emerge in a Sunday newspaper that this was what had happened.

It is hard to see the crime as particularly serious, and I am sure it happens quite a lot, but it is perverting the course of justice, however grandiose a name, and he cannot remain a cabinet minister while he is trying to clear himself of such a crime. Not that I am defending Huhne (which means chicken in German; his actual name is Christopher Paul-Huhne but it probably lacked the common touch and like so many public figures he goes under an alias); the country will be better off without him.

Of course if he is found guilty he should not remain as an MP: you cannot be a lawmaker and be guilty of perverting the course of justice. It would be a nonsense.

It's cold

Damn cold

(Sir) Fred

The media is full of the news that Fred Goodwin, former head of RBS, or Royal Bank of Scotland as we used to know it, has been stripped of his knighthood.

I'm not particularly fussed one way or another, but it seems an act of petty spite rather than a considered decision.

What Goodwin did wrong was to bid too much in a takeover battle for a Dutch Bank ABN. I think criticism of his actions is quite interesting when it comes from people qualified to pronounce on the appropriate price/earnings ratio for a major continental bank. I'm probably one of them, and all I can tell you is that it's not easy.

With Goodwin in his decision were the banks who were joining his bid, and competing banks, including Barclays, who were also keen to snap up ABN at an inflated price.

Also in agreement were the board of RBS and of the other banks, and of course the regulator.

Goodwin didn't cause the recession, and in my opinion his bank dd not need to be nationalised.

So let's keep this sensible.

US Election shock

There's not much to smile at with the Republican primaries but Americans are doing their best:

Smoke and mirrors

News in Italy this morning is that MPs' salaries are being cut by €1.300 a month (they are currently €14,000 a month).

However a brief examination, before we open the prosecco, shows that this reduction is simply a removal of the extra they would have got from a change in the calculations of their entitlement.

No. These chaps don't vote for reductions in their remuneration.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Summit strike

Happily, today's European summit - yes, another one! - will take place amid a general strike in Belgium. There won't be a bus (not that these guys travel by bus) or a taxi or even a plate of turbot and a glass of Gewurztraminer.

That should, at least, keep it short.

The guys in the Justus Lipsius building won't care or understand much about ordinary people, though. They have secured for themselves decent salaries, wonderful pensions and a couple of weeks fully paid in a spa if the stress gets too much.

All these other people are required to do is pay for it.

Look for the letter

Faisal Islam, of Channel 4 News, is reporting that a leading European bank is discriminating between euro notes issued in different countries. I have reported on this possibility before: German notes are marked with an X, French ones with a U, Greek with a Y, Italian with an S.

What this means if it is true is that there is now an internal exchange rate within the EU.

Actually I don’t really think it is true. Only a tiny proportion of a bank’s balance sheet is actual notes so it probably wouldn’t be worth the effort, particularly since it could go to the ECB and exchange them at any time. But it is intriguing: it means that if there is a sudden removal from the euro, and the central bank of the departing country doesn’t have time even to put a sticker on the notes, the ECB will simply eliminate from the system all notes beginning with, say, Y.

And if it is going to these lengths, it means the bank thinks it is worth it.

What Croatia can expect

Having described Croatia's decision to join the EU as a mass loss of sanity, I thought I ought to expand on the subject.

We began the year with two Eurozone governments, in Italy and Greece, having been replaced by pressure from the unelected European Commission. The post of prime minister is in each case held by a Euro-placeman.

Now it's Hungary's turn. You may recall that Hungary used to have a Euro-apparatchik in charge; his name was Ferenc Gyurcsany, Prime Minister in the early days of joining the EU, from 2004. His government was deeply corrupt, but the Eurocracy doesn't mind that. In addition, Gyurcsany had lied in Greek fashion about the country's financial affairs in order to get into the euro, but they don't mind that either. The euro is a political project, not an economic one, so it's enough that you are west of the Urals and that you want to join (and that you're not Turkey).

But Gyurcsany's government was very unpopular and, as happens in democracies, he was thrown out by the people. The man they elected in his place is Viktor Orban, who is very much not a Euro placeman. For a start Orban wanted to replace the constitution which had been imposed by Stalin (the European Commission hadn't minded it) and he wants to 'Hungarianise' a lot of the country's institutions. This is to an extent shorthand for Nationalism, and it may be you don't like the cut of his jib (nor do I) but he is what the Hungarians have voted for and democracy implies the right of the electorate to make a mistake.

Eurocracy implies the limited right of the electorate to vote as their masters in Brussels require.

So the European Commission, using your taxes, is trying to oust a democratically elected government. It is taking legal action against Hungary, saying it does not have the right (!) to take the measures it has and threatening to cut off the subsidies it receives if it doesn't toe the line.

You may recall that the EC got all supranational fascist with Austria when it dared to elect Joerg Haider against the wishes of Brussels. Austria and Hungary: seem to go together somehow.

But it isn't just them. The FT reports today that Germany wants to take away Greece's power to enact an economic policy - even one that has been decided for it - and that the economic government should be undertaken by a budget commissioner.

So Greece is no longer a nation state, Italy is scarcely one, Hungary will soon cease to be one. Croatia should realise this: that joining the European Union will give it the freedom to do....as it is told.

The BBC

Whoever it is who makes appointments to the BBC is said to be looking for a replacement for Mark Thompson, the current director general.

OK. Since you beg. I'll do it.

And in accordance with Dave's interference policy in people's salaries, I won't need Thompson's £670,000 salary. In fact I'll do it pro bono publico. For zilch.

And here is my manifesto.

1. Public service broadcasting means doing things which need to be done but which the private sector won't do. So it doesn't involve long running soap operas and it doesn't involve reality TV, because the others do those things, too.

2. Unlike the Prime Minister, I have no objection to the talent-free Jonathan Ross earning £6m a year. Somewhere else. And I don't know if Des O'Connor is still looking for work but the answer's no.

3.There would be one BBC News service with a vast number of outlets. It would feed reporting to National and local TV and Radio, the website, the World Service. Large events such as the Olympics would not have representatives of each of these jostling with each other.

4. Apart from the news, the BBC would just be commissioning programmes, not making them.

5. There would only be a need for 2 TV channels (one news and politics, one culture) and two radio (essentially Radio 3 and Radio 4) and the World Service, which would be expanded but just called the BBC.

6. The BBC would not be judged on how many viewers and listeners it got relative to the private sector, but on the quality of the service.

7. The fantastic cost savings entailed would enable the licence fee to be cancelled. The BBC would be set up as an independent trust, serviced by the return on a government endowment, sale of London property and income from programme resales abroad. People in other countries would have full access to the BBC for a subscription.

8. Anyone with an obvious political bias - Andrew Marr is an immediate example but believe me there are plenty of others, including the euro-loony chairman of the BBC Trust, Chris Patten and his deputy Diane Coyle - would be fired.

When do I start?

The Costa Concordia 3

I confess I should like to know a little more about the company Costa Cruises. It seems to have behaved in a very strange way throughout this saga. It has clammed up when it should have spoken, and offered misleading information when it did speak. There are claims, admittedly from Captain Schettino and his defence team, that it was company policy to sail close to the island of Giglio.

Costa is owned by Carnival Cruises, an American company. Imagine President Obama's panicked response if this had happened in American waters, with a ship owned by Europeans or, worse, the hated British.

Costa has now offered survivors compensation of €11,000. My advice to them is not to take it. This one has a long way to go.

In support of Stephen Hester

I don't suppose you'll find that headline in many newspapers this morning.

Stephen Hester is, of course, the Chief Executive of troubled bank RBS, which is 83% owned by the Government (not as many people seem to think, by the taxpayer). Mr. Hester receives a salary of £1.2 million a year and was due to receive a bonus this year of about £1.5 million, payable in RBS shares. After a lot of hoo-ha, the Government said this was too much and finally his bonus has been negotiated down to just less than a million. The unions and the ignorant are up in arms.

Many critics begin their argument with 'Mr. Hester is a civil servant'. He's not. The last government, a socialist one, by the way, had plenty of opportunity to put a civil servant into the job (maximum salary usually about £250,000) but it didn't. It chose to put in a banker and negotiated a remuneration package for him. This, as stated above, was a basic salary of £1.2m and a bonus to be decided by the bank's remuneration committee, according to certain pre-arranged criteria. I have no idea whether Mr. Hester would have done, or would now do, the job for less, but that is the deal which was agreed. The Government cannot go back on that deal, and when they tried to lean on the remuneration committee (in order to make it look good politically for David Cameron) they threatened (some say the whole board threatened) to resign. Indeed how could RBS take on new employees if they thought the Government might interfere after a year or so and cut their wages for political reasons?

Mr. Hester should insist on the money he is entitled to. I hope he's worth it, but that's another matter.

Burns night

The Angus lads had nae gude will,
That day their neebours' blude to spill,
For fear, by foes, that they should lose,
Their cogs o'brose; all crying woes,
And so it goes you see, man."

If you enjoy reciting maudlin doggerel, such as the above, taken from The Ball a'Sherriemuir, eating sheeps innards and drinking whisky, tonight is your night. Go to it with a will. It is a night to shed a tear over the '15 and the '45, to dream of independence and the glories of (that's enough of this drivel, Ed.)

In my experience the celebration of Burns Night is a mistake, and I think, as you accept that extra wee dram, that you know it, too. Don't you?

Croatia

In what at first appears a mass loss of sanity, Croatia has voted to join the EU, with a substantial majority of 2:1. So just 20 years after becoming a democracy it is giving it all up.

The voting figures show a turnout of only 44%, which means just 30% of the electorate said yes.

How easy it is to lose your rights, and how hard to get them back. 

The loser's race

'Mitt' (his real name is Willard) Romney has been forced to show that he only pays 13% tax on his substantial earnings, which is scarcely going to go down well with middle America, which is feeling the pinch.

Meanwhile, the Republicans come up with the brilliant idea of Newt (Newton, which is far nicer) Gingrich, who carries so much political and personal baggage he can barely walk.

The Democrats are having difficulty deciding which candidate would suit Obama, who ought to be unreturnable, better.

Has there ever been such a cock-up in American political history?

Cosy capitalism

The British political year has begun with all sides saying they wanted 'responsible capitalism' or some nonsense of the sort. They all hate bank employees for earning so much money and huff and puff hoping people believe they will do something about it. The amount an employee is paid is of course purely a matter for the shareholders. In another context, Mr. Cameron cannot, for example, insist that Wayne Rooney is paid too much because he hasn't scored any goals recently (apologies to Mr. Rooney if he has), or that Cliff Richard is rewarding himself for failure.

In the case of the banks where the Government is the dominant shareholder, it can ban bonuses or halve salaries, but will be told that if the taxpayers are ever to get their money back they need to employ some top people. Who charge a lot.

Ensuring bonuses are paid in shares rather than cash is about as far as they can go.

A famous investment banker used to tell staff that they should start the day 'ready to bite the ass off a bear'. And that is what I like to see when investing in a company: raw aggression, so it can kick the competition into second place.

I need a return on my investment to keep me warm and mildly drunk in my old age. I don't want them musing on being nice to children.

Enter the Dragon

Today begins the year of the dragon. The characteristics of the dragon are dominance, leadership and ambition.

Let's hope the Chinese zodiac applies to us all, not just the Chinese.

A thistly question

Scotland is due to have a referendum on independence from the UK, to be held in 2014. Already people are discussing who should vote. How do you define a Scots person, when all their lives their nationality has been British? Is it people living in Scotland (some of whom are English, French, Pakistani, whatever)? Or would you have to trace your ancestry back to before the Act of Union 1801? Or will it be like qualifying to play for the rugby team, where you just come up with a grandfather? Under these circumstances I might be eligible myself (only a chronic inability at the game has prevented me from applying for the blue shirt).

Some are saying that the English should have a vote. But if all the English voted against and all the Scots voted for, the vote would be lost by 8:1.

Equally likely is that the English would vote to cut them adrift and the Scots would vote to remain in the Union. What would we then do? Kick them out? If we'd thought of this before we could have got rid of Northern Ireland and Wales years ago.

Name of the Rose

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet"

 Maybe so, but I feel I must record that neither Newt nor Mitt sound like the name of a President.

On your screen now

News reaches us that for-profit abortion clinics are to be allowed to advertise on UK television. A sign of the times?

Abortion is of course legal in the UK – this year will be the 45^th anniversary of the bill receiving Royal Assent, and the performing of abortions for profit is also legal, but one can’t help feeling a little disquiet at the news.

Advertising is used to distinguish one brand from another for the purposes of profit. On what basis are these abortion clinics (they call themselves post-conception advisory services; why do they need a euphemism?) competing with each other? Quality? Will someone be allowed to offer cut-price, only slightly risky abortions? I don’t suppose so.

What about the nature of advice? Catholic charities have been prevented from advising women not to have an abortion (family-friendly PM David Cameron voted for this). So, no, it won’t be the nature of the advice.

Will they try celebrity endorsement? If one of the in-crowd like Katie Price or Lady Gaga have entrusted themselves to a particular clinic will other women think it a good idea to emulate them?

Or is all this just to they can advertise abortion itself, to promote the concept? Britain has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, and I have often wondered if we shouldn’t be trying to find out why.

Etta James

This blog regrets the passing of Etta James, aged 73

Entente cordiale

I am greatly indebted to Guido for this, being one of the comments to a post on his blog:

Coming back from another recent EC summit in Rome, various European leaders were forced to take the train due to a strike by Swiss ATC controllers; sitting together in the same compartment, travelling through the Swiss Alps, were Sarkozy, Cameron, Merkel and the young and very attractive female Irish foreign minister.

The train goes into a dark tunnel and a few seconds later there is the sound of a kiss followed by a loud slap.

When the train emerges from the tunnel, Sarkozy has a bright red hand print on his cheek. No one speaks, everyone is extremely shocked and embarrassed.

Angela Merkel thinks: Sarkozy, not able to help himself, must have kissed the Irish girl in the dark, and she slapped his cheek.

The Irish girl thinks: Sarkozy, not able to help himself, must have tried to kiss me in the dark, but missed and kissed Merkel and she slapped his cheek.

Sarkozy thinks: Why me ? That perfidious Cameron must have groped the Irish girl in the dark knowing that I’d get the blame for it and she slapped me…the English bastard.

Cameron thinks: I can’t wait for another tunnel, just so I can kiss the back of my hand again and smack that little French sod another time.

The Costa Concordia 2

The whole world has now been treated to a recording of a conversation between the coastguard at Livorno and the captain of the Costa Concordia, the coastguard urging the captain to return to his ship. It is not hard to tell what people’s attitude will have been.

What I should like to know is who released this recording, and why. And in return for what? Why didn’t the police and the coastguard, aware that there would be an investigation and the possibility of criminal proceedings, not scoop up the evidence and keep it safe for use in the case?

In any sensible legal system the people now in jail would be those who released the tape, charged with interfering with the course of justice.

How, with the whole world thus set against him, can Captain Schettino possibly get a fair trial?

There is another aspect to this which I find disturbing. This ugly tale will reinforce the stereotype of the ‘typical Italian’, which started after the Second World War, as a coward. The BBC even reports with a sneer that Schettino called his mother from dry land. This stereotype detracts from the heroism and effectiveness of the Italian rescue teams, whose divers searched the blacked-out wreck for survivors, even though it was perched precariously on the rock and any movement would have put their own lives in danger.

This is a bad business.  

Now for the cover-up

The thing to remember about philosophers is that when they appear to have got it wrong, it is your fault for not understanding. I should have known that when the former football star Eric Cantona announced his bid for the French Presidency, and wrote to 50,000 mayors as is required, he was in fact just complaining about social housing.

It's a shame, he would have brightened the race up.

My new preferred candidate is Kendra Drider, a Muslim woman who is campaigning against the banning of the burqa. This blog is opposed to the State telling citizens how to dress.

Unfortunately I don't have a photograph of Ms Drider, since she is always covered up. We shall have to trust that it is indeed her on the campaign trail and not, say, Wayne Rooney.

The Costa Concordia

It is nearly 100 years since the sinking of the Titanic and there is an inclination to make rather too much of the sinking of a cruise liner off Giglio in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Still, six people, perhaps more, have been killed (more than 1,500 on the Titanic) and the matter needs some thought.

There needs to be an independent investigation of this, not a national one of the sort that gets sucked into the Machiavellian politics of the country. The idea, currently receiving an airing in the media, that the captain had gone too close to the island in order to honk the horn at a friend of his, and that he had subsequently departed the ship before the passengers, is too horrible to contemplate.

Some commentators have said that this is evidence that cruise ships are too big, but I don't think so. There were more than 2,000 on board the Titanic, and I think that 100 years later, with a better attitude towards safety (in part brought on by the Titanic disaster itself) as well as modern technology, double that number should not be excessive. In fact it is a miracle, little remarked on, that so few people have been lost.

So what do we expect? The Titanic was within regulations only having lifeboat space for 1,100, but of course regulations these days are far better. Lloyds of London approves the safety and design of modern ships, and they have a lot to lose so they generally get it right.

I think it is within modern capability that if the captain erred too far from an approved deep water channel an alarm would sound and that he would have to confirm independently that he knew what he was doing. I also think there should be a black box, as there is on an aeroplane, so that all actions are traceable. There has been talk of a power failure and of course there should be backup systems. I am sure there are.

My guess is that, once there has been an inquiry, this will not have been enough to deter people from taking a cruise. I certainly would, if it weren't for the frightfully dull people you have to share an enclosed space with.

Time for commonsense

Who is time for? What is time for? I don't mean these questions in a metaphysical sense, more 'for whom or what purpose do we measure time in minutes, days, etc?' The answer's easy: it's for us, you and me, so that we know that when it is four o'clock, in sixty minutes it will be five o'clock.

The reason I ask is that there is a lot of nonsense going on amongst the pointy heads in their universities and laboratories, the people who often seem quietly to rule our lives. They invented their own time, like a clock that never needs winding, and they measure it against the decay of a radioactive substance called caesium.

Now, what the little cleverheads hadn't taken into account is that the rotation of the earth is slowing: only very gradually but it is grinding to a halt. But caesium, in its own sweet way, decays at exactly the same rate all the time. So pointy head time tended to get ahead of yours and my time.

They got around this by adjusting it, every so often adding in an extra second. In fact their adjustment is usually made every 500 days or so.

But now they don't want to bother adjusting it any more: they will tell us what the time is, and it's caesium time, and that's that.

The problem is that after a little over 80 years, when today's children are coming to the end of their lives, we'll be a minute out. And after years and years it will be daylight in the middle of the night. But what I'm trying to say is that this time business is ours, not theirs. If they want to measure time accurately they should find some material, let's call it Timium, which decays at the right rate.

And leave us alone.

Some good

The Duchess of York as was (she is now called Sarah, Duchess of York for reasons too unimportant to mention) has been charged by the state of Turkey with breach of the country's press laws when in 2008 she participated in a documentary about cruelty in orphanages there.

There is some good in Sarah Ferguson, it's just that it is sometimes difficult to put your finger on it.

The system's rubbish

Nicola Cosentino is a deputy with Berlusconi's PdL party. He is regional organiser for the Campania region, which includes Naples.

Cosentino is accused of having an association with the organised crime syndicate the Camorra to which, it is said, some of his relatives belong, and to having received bribes concerning the Naples rubbish scandal. This, you will recall, involved the city's entire refuse system being appropriated by organised crime, and space sold on the allocated rubbish tips so that there was no room for the rubbish of the people of Naples and they threw it out on to the streets. Some say the water supply has been poisoned by tipping of illegal materials.

The authorities wanted Cosentino remanded in custody - held in prison - and approached the Parliament for permission to do so. Parliament has now refused so Mr Cosentino is still at large and still a deputy. Mr. Monti, the unelected Prime Minister, says he doesn't want to get involved.

There is something deeply wrong with all this. If he hadn't been one of the political class - la casta - he'd have been locked up awaiting trial.

Anwar

I happened to be in Malaysia when the story broke, in 1998. Anwar Ibrahim, the political darling, protégé of long-serving Prime Minister Mohammed Mahatir, the man Malaysians regarded as their future, was arrested for sodomy.

The way the business people thought of Anwar was that whenever Mahatir came up with some particularly hare-brained scheme he would tone it down, make it acceptable for the markets, keep Malaysia progressing. Mahatir needed this: we are talking about a man who, having won the right to stage the Asian games, insisted on designing the seats in the stadium himself.

Mahatir and Anwar fell out, fairly publicly, and then there was this. I spoke to someone close to the political class, who told me that actually sodomy was rife in Malaysia, particularly among the upper echelons, so he couldn’t say that Anwar wasn’t guilty, but that it was certain that even if he was it was a stitch-up.

In fact the first charge was for corruption, which he denied. After the sodomy charge was overturned he was arrested again, also for sodomy.

During all this time, in prison and out of it but banned from politics, Anwar’s wife Dr. Wan Aziza Wan Ismail not only stood by him but substituted for him, becoming leader of the opposition party. She resigned her parliamentary seat in order to let her husband back in.

The recent news that all charges against Anwar have been dropped may just herald a new beginning for Malaysia. I hope so.

Melancholy marked him for her own

Here's an interesting story. An Italian minister called Carlo Malinconico had a holiday at Porto Ercole paid for by a suspect property developer.

Not so interesting, you may say: this sort of stuff has been going on for years, hasn't it? But there are interesting aspects to it.

What Mr. Melancholy (which is what the word means and is, now, somewhat apt) says is that he went off to Porto Ercole in good faith, running up a bill of nearly €20,000 (it was a 5 star hotel) and imagine his surprise when he found that the bill had been already paid.

Well, it could happen to any of us.

But this was a while ago. Malinconico was working in the last pre-Berlusconi Government, under Romano Prodi. He was appointed rather than elected, and a Knighthood was procured for him (Cavaliere di gran croce dell'Ordine al merito dell Repubblica Italiana). He held two jobs with Prodi, with whom he is pals.

Mario Monti, unelected Prime Minister, is pally with Prodi, too: they were European Commissioners together and Prodi became President of the Commission.

So we still have the grubby old friends network running Italy, a funny handshake here, a title there, dodgy dealings and a ministerial car in every case.

This time it was supposed to be different.

Cometh the hour...

The happy news reaches us that footballer turned actor Eric Cantona is to try for the French Presidency.

Voters now have to decide which is the least absurd candidate from tiny, unpleasant Nicolas Sarkozy; dull serial failure François Hollande; chauvinist firebrand Marine Le Pen; smooth, ineffectual François Villepin; and about eight others you have never heard of and never will again. And 'King Eric'.

Qualifications? In 1995, after aiming a kung-fu style kick at a football fan, Cantona said to a press conference 'When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much.' He then got up and left.

Yes. For my money, oo-aa-Cantona might just edge it.

To catch a drunk

The latest tiresome exhortation from the State to drink less - this time that we should take two days off the booze a week - comes, incredibly, from the over-excitable drunks in the British House of Commons.

But the idea may have some merit. Let's close the taxpayer-subsidised bars in Parliament for two days a week.

In fact, since they obviously think alcohol is a bad thing, let's close them for good. We want our lawmakers in tip-top condition, and sober.

More money saving ideas, please.

Change

I have often written of the difficulty of sorting the euro into a viable currency zone. The debt troubles we see at the moment are unfortunately, serious as they are, only a symptom of the problem.

The southern countries - I am excluding Ireland for the moment which has problems of a different nature - are, quite simply, less efficient. This is caused by lack of investment, by bizarre inefficient labour practices and by regulation. They are not liberalised economies.

A while ago my computer crashed on a Monday morning. After lunch I 'phoned the computer shop who said he couldn't help me until the following day. Why not? He must have been open or he wouldn't have answered the 'phone. Oh, he was working, he said, and had time to solve a fairly basic problem for me, but by law he could not open on Monday afternoons. So I met him in the local car park, surreptitiously handed over my computer, both of us feeling like drug dealers, and collected it in the same way later.

Now Mario Monti has liberalised opening times for businesses so that, subject to, say, public order regulations for bars, they can open whenever they like and do not have to observe the half day closing in mid-week. A chemist or a clothes shop can open 24 hours a day.

Now, you would think that all this would pass easily and happily, making Italy a better place to live and work in. The effects would not be immediate. Attitudes take time to change: when the Prodi government made the momentous decision to allow people to get their hair cut on a Monday not much altered since the barbers had to have two days off; Saturday was their big day so Monday was a good day to close. Now a barber can open 7 days a week if his customers can get used to the idea.

And they're up in arms (not just the barbers). There is a deep seated suspicion that this will favour large suppliers who, with many staff, can always find someone to work on a bank holiday or a Sunday. The Region of Tuscany has referred the matter to the Constitutional court. The Lazio business federation, which covers Rome, says 100,000 enterprises could close. What? Why should they? Because the supermarkets will be open on the Feast of the Assumption and put the religious shopkeeper out of business?

Tempora muntantur nos et mutamur in illis: times change and we change with them. We have to change, we have to adapt to new circumstances. But we shall see, I think, that like the building of Rome, this isn't going to happen in a day. A Greek cabinet minister threatened to resign if they de-regulated the issuance of taxi licences. It will take ten years of concentrated effort to eliminate the vested interests in these countries and thus to make supply-side change possible and drag their economies up towards German levels. And this change has to happen first: otherwise any amount of subsidy to Italy will disappear into the black hole of its inefficiency.

Either Europe is ten years late in beginning the changes or Mrs Merkel has turned the austerity screw ten years too early. And as so often happens with the Europe Project, it comes up against the wishes of the people. They don't want change, either to efficiency or austerity.

It's going to be messy.

Rupe tweets

Startling news of the year is that Rupert Murdoch has joined Twitter, and this blog is the first to be able to bring you his initial tweet:

G’day, or rather howdy because I’m now American. All my kids have left, leaving me in charge, and the guy who brings my cocoa Not much 140 ch

The year begins

Greece has announced its first strike of 2012: of doctors and chemists.

The only reason they left it so long is that yesterday was in any case a holiday.

So, what will it be like?

I ought to be be wary of making forecasts, because they so easily go wrong. Last year I was correct about the price of oil, but forecast the FTSE index to finish on 6500 (it ended at 5572). I and, to be fair, most people, completely underestimated the lack of leadership in Europe. They had to make a decision on substantial support for ailing southern Europe economies, or suspending them from the euro. They managed neither. Also unguessed was Angela Merkel’s blind insistence on austerity, when the root of the problem is on the supply-side: a lack of growth.

I believe Merkel will have dragged the Eurozone into recession in the first half of 2012.

This is the first time I can remember that the ordinary guy in the street has understood and openly discussed the idea that all economies are connected: the whiff of 1950s socialism which still pervades much of Europe made people think as if each country were N. Korea, self-contained. The recession in Europe will spread, not only across the continent but across Africa, Asia and America.

Against that, the American economy appears to be in fragile recovery, and this will generate a certain optimism. Obama may well be re-elected on the back of this, but if he is it will be principally because the Republicans couldn’t come up with someone who could kick a ball into an open goal (or whatever you do in American football).

2012 will see elections in Russia, China, USA, France and Greece (and quite possibly Italy). Normally the first two of these wouldn’t be worth worrying about, but there are signs of opposition to Putin which are quite interesting. China will ‘elect’ another faceless automaton. Sarkozy could be returned for a second term in France, for the same reasons as Obama, that the socialist candidate, François Hollande, is character-free. The French are tempted by Marine Le Pen but not that tempted. Elections in Greece could pose a threat to European financial stability.

The Arab Spring is at tipping point. The goal line is holding free elections on a liberalised constitution. The West should offer financial and commercial incentives to liberalise and grant rights for women, but we haven’t the money. Tunisia has just about made it, and I am still optimistic about Egypt, but with less reason. Assad will presumably fall in Syria but we don’t know what he would be replaced with: the country is close to Iran, and not just topographically.

2012 may see the demise of Castro in Cuba, Chavez in Venezuela and the retirement of Christina Fernandez-Kirchner in Argentina, who is ill. All of these might be good news but probably won’t be. The Pope will go to Cuba and could even grant Castro the last rights, if he has long enough for the confessional part, a brutal dictator and mass murderer being absolved by a former member of the Hitlerjugend.

The oil price rose about 13% in 2011 and is likely to be weakish this year in the face of a slowing Europe. What could change that is the possibility of heightened tension or war between Israel (and the West) and Iran. If the Iranians carry out their threat to block the Straits of Hormuz the sky’s the limit.

China is slowing, the repercussions of which are more political than economic. Some are forecasting a ‘hard landing’ for China but I don’t think so.

Currencies: the dollar will look stronger, particularly in the first half. Further indecisiveness in Europe could induce massive dollar-printing to save the financial system, which would send it weaker in the second half. If Britain retains its AAA rating the pound should be fairly strong, but we don’t know how far the economy will slow in the first half. I am fairly optimistic, and fairly often wrong, although the Olympics and Queen’s Jubilee will create some counter-cyclical spending, which is good. As I write the euro is looking weak and the thing to remember is the Germans won’t mind that: they don’t want their engineering exports priced out of their markets by a strong currency at this stage. Many people are saying the euro will hold together, Greece and all, for another year, but I can’t really believe it. France is likely to lose its AAA rating, devaluing any rescue package, and Italy has to renew €440 billion of debt this year.

Most of the world is looking forwards to austerity, rising unemployment and civil unrest. It won't be pretty; I think we’ll all feel the squeeze in 2012. Good luck, keep low and keep moving.

Made it!

If you are reading this, it means you have made it, bruised and bleeding perhaps, into another year. I was thinking about Harold Campion, who twice forecast the end of the world last year, and remembered this: