The Falklands

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands. Much will be written about those days but I wanted to put the matter into its historical context, and in my view this is so important that it dwarfs the underlying issue of whether the islands are the Falklands or the Malvinas and who rules over 12,000 sq km of unplantable land and 3,000 people, together with a lot of sheep and penguins. Incidentally I was intrigued to learn that 0.6% of the population are Japanese amounting, I suppose, to 2 people if we don't take into account their size.

What I remember from those days is that once it was believed that we might be able to mount a taskforce there was such a public outcry to do so that Mrs Thatcher would have had difficulty saying no. But - and I think this is the key - most people still didn't expect her to do it. The origins of that pessimism lie in the years of post war decline. Having handed back what remained of the Empire we began our economic decline. Underperformance, socialism, overmighty trade unions and debt gave the country a smell of decay. One government after another had been weak. No one was proud of Britain.

I was born just before the Suez debacle, when America told us we were living in the 1950s not the 1850s. Apart from winning the World Cup in 1966 and the brief Cool Britannia years of the Beatles and Carnaby St, in my lifetime Britain had never won anything or seemed good or talented or brave. I was in my mid twenties and when one went abroad one was embarrassed to admit to being British. I, like most of my friends, often considered leaving.

Then this happened. The taskforce seemed to take an awful long time to get there - people wanted a battle, they wanted results, even if they had hitherto never had a clue where the Falklands were. It seemed to take ages but I read we landed on the Falklands on 21st May. As the ships, which included the liner Queen Elizabeth II, sped south, there was no talk of anything else. In pubs and in homes people followed our boys as they would follow the football team progressing through a tournament. We had forgotten that perhaps the one remaining area of British excellence lay in our armed forces.

The nationalism was riveting. People sported T-shirts marked 'QE II in the Falklands - the Empire strikes back'. Private Eye's spoof tabloid headline 'Kill an Argie, win a Metro' was not too far from the truth.

We regained the Falklands in mid June and people felt great. Mrs. Thatcher seemed like Churchill and was easily re-elected in 1983 and 1987. For those few days, and arguably until the economy was brought to its knees in 2008, Britain felt comfortable in its own skin.

Earth Hour

While we are on the subject of foolishness (see previous post), yesterday the world 'celebrated' Earth Hour. This is where lights are turned off for an hour to highlight global warming. As you can imagine this has been invented by those preachy types who know what is best for you. In this case it is the World Wildlife Fund, or WWF.

It is estimated that this event results in the equivalent of 6 cars being taken off the road, out of the billions in existence. Indeed some estimates show that a reduction in energy usage, followed by a surge when the lights go back on again, will in fact use more fuel. And of course if you use candles, which are made of paraffin, you will be increasing the amount of fossil fuel usage. In addition there is the risk to life and limb, as experienced by the Environment Minister of British Columbia last year, when he set his cat on fire.

It is so obvious that it sometimes just isn't mentioned: most of us don't want to be told what we should be celebrating or regretting on a particular day. We can think for ourselves.

Urbi et Orbi

On the 1^st April this blog, unlike more traditional media, does not play tricks on its readers – April fools, or Pesci d’Aprile as they are known in Italy.

The reason is that this blog finds everyday life crazy as it is. The mainstream media, conservatively accepting that what goes on is ‘normal’ invents its own silliness, missing the point that the real craziness lies in the fact that we let these ‘normal’ things happen.

Instead, this blog, in its annual Urbi et Orbi message to mark the Feast of All Fools, invites you to take a pace back and consider the silliness around you.

In Italy, the politicians, not being completely stupid, were aware that the country had spent and borrowed its way to perdition and that something had to be done. It was pretty obvious what had to be done, as well. But the snag was that they didn’t want to become unpopular by doing it. So instead of explaining it to the people and carrying the electorate with them, they agree, democratic politicians agree to suspend democracy and allow unelected university professors to run the country and make all the hard choices. Then next spring these saintly democrats will again present themselves to the electorate saying ‘Dear me, this is a bit of a mess, let me make it better’, assuming that the people, whose trust they betrayed, will welcome them with open arms.

Elsewhere in Europe, Greece has had a Prime Minister imposed on it by the French and the Germans. Everybody knows that it cannot become solvent by austerity and nor can Spain, but they choose not to discuss the matter. Belgium ran for more than a year without any government at all, Britain is run by a coalition nobody voted for, and spends its time debating whether Cornish pasties are better hot or cold.

Greece will hold elections this year, despite there being no confidence in the political parties. France looks likely to elect the maddest government in its history, and Britain will spend the year hosting games it cannot afford, and remembering an octogenarian monarch, a war which ended 30 years ago and a ship which sank 100 years ago.

The whole fabric of our society has broken down. We drift in and out of democracy, while criticising regimes such as Burma which are reluctant to adopt it. We close our eyes to things we don’t want to see. Perhaps we have all taken the lead from Belgium and let the politicians gabble meaninglessly on in their self-importance, while ignoring them and getting on with our lives, knowing that if something horrible happens, someone will sort it out, don’t you worry.

Perhaps we are all Fools. And today is our day.

A Credible Strategy

This press release, regrettably bogus, came from the office of His Magnificence Hermann van Rompuy

Brussels, 29 March 2012

8255/12

PRESSE 140

Eurozone summit next weekend

Press Statement

It has been confirmed that a Eurozone summit will be held on April 1.

Due to inadvertant wording of the Treaty on Stability, Coordination & Governance, which refers to countries "whose currency is the euro", it has been confirmed that this summit will also include the heads of state or government of Montenegro, Kosovo, San Marino, Monaco, Andorra and the Vatican City, all of which use the euro.

The presence of His Holiness the Pope affords an opportunity to pray for divine intervention to save the euro. This is now seen as the most credible strategy.

Nice to think that someone there, at least, has a sense of humour.

The good and the bad

Each year the European Court of Justice publishes the details of which countries have received judgments against them for failing to implement EU directives: who the good Europeans are and who are the bad. Before looking at the list, try to guess who the best and worst Europeans are. You may be in for a surprise.

Here it is

Belgium 9
Italy 8
Portugal 8
Spain 7
France 6
Germany 5
Greece 4

The best Europeans included the UK, Denmark, Slovakia and Latvia: no cases against any of them.

From 2007-11 the worst Europeans were the Italians, with 66 cases lost, followed by Spain, France and Germany.

It seems the countries which talk most about the need for further integration and the importance of being communautaire are the ones worst at it.

'The more they talked of their honour, the faster we counted the spoons'.

The pasty season

It is usually August, when there is no news to write about, that idiotic stories appear in the press and attract undue attention, and it is known as the 'silly season'. So it is a bit of a surprise to experience this phenomenon at the end of March.

Gideon 'George' Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, having composed a budget designed to keep his party out of power for a generation, slipped into it that a new tax would be payable on a hot Cornish pasty but not on a cold one (the assumption being that you buy the cold one an take it home and cook it, so it isn't a takeaway meal). How a supposedly intelligent man got caught up in this twaddle escapes me, but people started accusing the government of not being in sympathy with the pasty eating classes.

The Prime Minister, abandoning all reason, started to ascribe working class credentials to himself (cor, guvnor, nuffink like a pasty and no mistake!') and talked of his passion for the food, thrilling his audience with the story of him eating one in a railway station last year. Unfortunately on the occasion he described the shop had already been closed for four years and so people doubted his tale.

In the meantime the Cabinet Office Minister, poor Angus Maude's son, advised people threatened with petrol shortages to fill a Jerry can. He probably didn't know this, but it is illegal to store more than 10 litres of petrol in two 5L canisters, so an idiot debate started as to the size of  Jerry can, and whether it meant that Mr Maude was posh if he didn't know.

I've said it before, the presentational wheels have come off this government and something needs fixing.

Back to the caviar, Cameron!

For readers of this blog, however, the solution is at hand. Make your own pasty!

500g flour, 250g lard (yuk), an onion, a swede, a potato and 200g finely chopped or minced beef.

Put a pinch of salt in the flour, rub in the lard, add water and roll out the pastry into a circle. One one side put the finely chopped onion, parboiled potato and swede chopped finely and the meat, salt and pepper and fold over the edge to make a D shape. Crimp the edges together, poke a hole with a knife to stop it exploding and bake in a hot oven until the pastry is golden. Eat warm, making rude gestures towards Downing St.

Leaving bad alone

With another cash-for-something scandal in our newspapers there has returned the age-old call for party donations to be illegal and for the taxpayer to finance our election campaigns. Normally the response to this is that these are straightened times: the last thing we want is to pay more through our taxes for the politicos.

But in fact it is a very bad idea for a quite different reason. The biggest risk to our country, to its prosperity, its democracy, to its very future, lies in the uncontrolled growth of the political class. These are civil servants, workers in quangos and those bogus charities which take taxpayers’ money to lobby the government with suggestions the government want to hear. The political class also includes those career politicians, not the ones who take risks and make a bit of a splash but the ones quiet at the back, shuffling papers without making waves.

The political class likes proportional representation, because it never produces shocks or violent changes. In Italy, where they have PR and the party list system, the same people seem to be in power all the time, even standing for different parties from those they represented before. They have greased their way to the top and they stay there: self-serving rather than public servants.

And of course what these people love is party funding. It lets them establish themselves and stay in place, the immovable apparat paid for by a people conned into thinking they have a democracy. And with taxpayer funded parties there will be no shocks. Political parties which in the last few years have got their message in front of the people and started to challenge the status quo – the Scottish Nationalist Party, UKIP, the Greens – would soon be no more. How much would these parties be handed out? Not much, you may be sure. Who will decide how much? An independent commission, you say? Who will appoint that commission? Ah. What about when your local doctor decides to stand for parliament in protest at the closure of your hospital? How much will he get given to campaign? Probably nothing at all. You see he is rocking the boat and the political class don’t want it rocked.

I know it sometimes seems as if the Tories were in the pocket of business and Labour were in the pocket of the unions, but the alternative is worse.

The objection to taxpayer funded parties is not about money.

It is about democracy.

Deeper and down

Waking up to headlines such as 'Cameron sinks to the depths' I confess I wasn't surprised. Somehow the government made a fairly harmless budget seem as if pensioners were to be starved in order to give millionaires that little bit more, and then the chief Tory Party fundraiser, a man who seemed like a second hand car salesman, was filmed by Sunday Times journalists offering quiet dinners with David Cameron en famille in return for £250,000.

The wheels seem to have fallen off the Tory presentational machine.

The budget was timid. Our upper income tax rate of 50% was the highest in Europe and an independent report said it was damaging rather than helping the economy. Osborne should have reduced it to 40%, which is still high. The tax regime, which makes 5% of earners pay 25% of income tax, is still far too progressive. But all sections of society are taxed too much because of Osborne's (and Brown's before him) passion for public spending: Osborne borrowed an extra £140 billion in his first year and will borrow an extra £120bn in his second.

I had no idea that pensioners have a higher tax threshold than ordinary people and it seems sensible to close this gap. Independent reports are that pensioners, on average, will lose a quarter of one percent of their income. This desn't seem much and, as Mr Osborne says, we are all in this together.

These are criticisms the Government should have swept aside, but didn't. Mr. Milliband's suggestion that cabinet ministers would benefit from the budget was contemptible, and someone should have said that.

As to the 'cash for access' stuff, it's useless trying to lobby the Tories because they can't even get their own ideas past the LibDems in the coalition.

Something is badly wrong here with the workings of government and party and Cameron needs to clear it up.

Oh - the headlines were about a film director of the same name going in a submarine.

Happy Day

I don’t know what it is about 25^th March that makes people do significant things – perhaps it is the visible onset of spring which makes them say ‘Yes! Up and at ‘em!’

Today is the anniversary of the formal founding of Venice in 421, so La Serenissima is 1,591 today.

25^th March is Independence Day in Greece, which marks its founding in 1821, making it just 1,400 years younger than Venice. Greeks will listen to their anthem, ‘Hymn to Liberty’ and wonder what the devil they are doing approaching starvation levels under the guidance of a Prime Minister imposed from Belgium (founded 1831).

We can all celebrate today the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 making the bogus idea of ‘Europe’ 55 today. Doubtless the Greeks will ponder that, too.

It is Waffle Day in Sweden, when families sit by the fireside reciting European Agricultural Directives.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow the State will try to tell you what the time is.

It will be wrong.

Ignore it.

The fictional and the overpaid

Daft Idiot

Inspector (Commissario) Montalbano, the fictional Sicilian police chief, will be known to many Britons and expats. The books, by Andrea Camilleri, are excellent, and available in English, and the television programmes, also very good, are shown on the BBC, with subtitles.

Now the good Inspector is in trouble. In the books and programmes, much is made of his passion for food, in particular (being Sicilian) fish, but the European fisheries commissioner, incredibly a Greek called Maria Damanaki, has complained that his liking for baby squid, totani, is wrong, in that the sale of them is illegal under her regulations. She is writing to Andrea Camilleri – good luck there, he is a chap who speaks his mind – to ensure Inspector Montalbano in future eats only food approved by her, perhaps fish McNuggets.

This is awful on so many counts it is hard to know where to start. Firstly we are paying her a six figure sum annually to come up with this dross. She has scores of assistants, also well paid and with good pensions, none of whom saw fit to advise her not to be such an idiot.

Second, Montalbano is a fictional character: that is to say not a real person, Maria, but one who exists only on the pages of a book and the frames of a film. It will be difficult appearing before a court to prosecute someone who doesn’t exist. The Courts don’t like it.

Third, the eating of baby fish – not just squid but all types - is common in Mediterranean countries. One place it is just as common as Italy is Maria’s native Greece.

Next, the European Union’s contribution towards saving fish stocks is to make fishermen throw fish away, dead. So if you are fishing for sole, with a licence from Ms Damanaki, and you accidentally catch a red mullet, over the side it goes. It doesn’t help fish stocks because now, like Inspector Montalbano, it is not alive.

I don’t expect to solve the EU problems overnight (at least my solution for any self-respecting sovereign nation is to leave it) but could we please, some time, take some small tentative steps towards reality? Please?

Food Trucks

The city of Sydney, in Australia, has passed a bill permitting healthy, interesting fast food outlets opening at night. 'Food trucks' will appear at 13 destinations in the city, offering delights including Cantina Mobil, Let's do Yum Cha and Veggie Patch to replace the usual greasy burger or kebab.

This is an excellent idea which the mayoral candidates in London would do well to follow. The Food Trucks, checked for financial viability as well as cleanliness, are a mobile equivalent of Singapore's excellent Food Halls.

Good luck to them.

Team What?

There has been a lot of complaints about the new kit for the UK's athletes at the Olympic Games. I don't really share this view: there is some red, some white and some blue on the shirts, which is about as much as you can expect if you waste money asking Stella McCartney to design it (as if enough money hadn't been wasted on this vanity project already).

What I do object to is that we have got the name of the team wrong. The country is called The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland so the team should be called 'Team UK', not 'Team GB'. We screwed this up last time - how come nobody has noticed?

Kidnap

Six months ago Judith Tebbutt, aged 56, was holidaying with her husband David in a resort in Kenya. Attackers staged a kidnap attempt, during which Mrs Tebbutt was captured and her husband was killed. She has been a hostage for six months, and has now been released following the payment of a ransom.

Naturally I am pleased for Mrs. Tebbutt, but I cannot condone the payment of a ransom. It simply means that kidnappers know they can make money from this crime, and will encourage further kidnappings, further murders.

The countries of the West should get together and agree that under no circumstances will ransoms be paid, whatever the circumstances. It will be difficult, and lives will be lost as the bandits begin to learn, but eventually many lives will be saved as the criminals realise it won't work. If the whole of the G20 made this pact, countries which had not signed it would realise they were putting their citizens at risk.

We need to bite the bullet, now.

Worth a flutter

Britons have the reputation among their neighbours of betting on anything and everything, but surely one of the most ridiculous is the book made on the colour of George Osborne's tie as he delivers today's budget.

For your information you can get 2/1 on purple, 3/1 on blue and 25/1 on orange. Almost the entire contents of the budget have been leaked in advance, but the colour of his tie remains a closely guarded secret.

PS it seems to have been a spotty light / dark blue. I don't know if this means a stewards' enquiry.

All quiet in Europe?

Europe seems to have gone out of the headlines for a while, with the Greek default / bailout, Mario Monti making some progress in Italy and the other Mario, Draghi of the European Central Bank, flooding the market with a trillion euros of cheap 3 year loans to the banking system. They have bought themselves some time.

But how do we stand, in real terms? It doesn’t look too pretty.

Greece. Lucas Papademos, the man chosen by Merkel and Sarkozy to be the Greek leader, has made optimistic noises to the effect that Greece will start paying its way in two years. Unfortunately no one seems to share this view. The latest IMF report on the bailout makes it fairly clear that Greece simply can’t hack it. Further cuts of some €12 bn – more than 5% of output – need to be made in the next three months, and there are elections coming up in which the people are unlikely to forgive the existing leaders. If Greece doesn’t make these savings – and I can’t see how it can – the IMF will withhold its aid payments and the whole pack of cards will come tumbling down.

Portugal. It seems inevitable now that Portugal will seek a second rescue package this year. GDP will shrink by at least 2% this year, unemployment is 14% and rising and all this despite 20% cuts in public spending. The idea was that Portugal would be saved by the rescue package and then export itself out of trouble. Its main export market is Spain.

Spain. Budget deficit will exceed the limit imposed by the new pact, as Prime Minister Rajoy simply ignored it. In the middle of a recession Europe wants Spain to reduce public expenditure by 5.5% over two years and it does not seem likely this can be done. The banks are nearly bust due to the collapse of the property market, and it is likely to fall further.

Italy. Mario Monti has made progress but is gaining a reputation for giving in too easily. It seems likely that the new labour market reforms will be watered down. Italy’s debt is still rising at an alarming rate and entered recession at the turn of the year.

The Pact. The Merkozy agreement to limit deficits and for indebted countries to put this in their constitutions seems to be breaking up. Spain announced a breach on the very day they signed the pact, François Hollande has announced that he will renegotiate it, and the Dutch have declared they will follow suit. Slovakia didn’t sign it and the Irish are holding a referendum.

Europe has been undone by the indecisiveness of its leaders and it has come up against democcracy, as it was always going to: the people don't always choose what is best for them.

There is a pause in the shooting, but the European Army is surrounded and out of ammunition.

Demjanjuk

I wrote about John Demjanjuk a couple of years ago. He had been convicted in Israel in 1988 of being Ivan The Terrible, a sadistic guard at Treblinka camp during the war, and sentenced to death. Before they managed to do away with him the Israelis found they had the wrong bloke and sent him back home to America.

Then he was arrested, to stand trial in Germany as having been a guard at Sobibor camp. The Americans cancelled his citizenship and sent him off to Germany (even though there was no suggestion he had killed any German citizens). He was found guilty in May last year.

Now he is dead, aged 91.

I don't know if Demjanjuk was guilty - I suppose he was - but I do know that charging a man on the evidence of survivors more than 60 years after the event is dubious. And I do not believe it to be in the public interest to keep raking over the coals of the last war.

Let us hope Demjanjuk's departure to a higher court draws a line under this nonsense. I was born ten years after the war and am in my fifties. Enough.

St. Patrick's Day

Back where he belongs

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has resigned. He is going off to be an academic, at Cambridge, which in my view is what he was fit for all along.

When he became Archbishop in 2003 everyone knew what his tasks were. He had to diffuse the remainder of the row on women priests, and he had to sort out a burgeoning split on homosexuality. As to the first, the issue of women priests per se had been sorted in 1994; there remained the issues of whether a safe place could be found within the church for people who disagreed with the idea, and whether women could become bishops (and thus ordain other priests). The homosexuality issue was driven by a separation between the Western Church, in Britain and America, where liberal attitudes prevail, and the African church, equally numerous, where there is great intolerance of homosexuality. David Cameron's recent push towards making marriage equal for everyone is merely an exacerbation of the rift.

There are two ways in which you can resolve crises such as this. One is to take a principled stand, the other is to negotiate. Williams chose the latter and it was the wrong choice: these debates were not being conducted by a malleable general public, who, by and large, couldn't give a damn. They were conducted amongst educated, principled people with fundamental differences on what they saw as vitally important matters. They weren't going to be fobbed off. If there were a measure of confidence and satisfaction among churchgoers it would be lower now than in 2003.

What Williams lacked in organisational ability he more than made up for in original thought. He once said that Britain should be ready to accept pockets where Sharia Law was practiced; and on the issue of whether Christians had a right to wear a cross or crucifix, he said that many people were taken in by the business of selling souvenirs. Both of these were intellectually defensible but idiotic as utterances of the Archbishop.

For most of my lifetime the Archbishops have been soaking wet liberal ditherers. Church attendance under their guidance has collapsed and no one believes anything at all. The last Archbishop who was any use was Michael Ramsay, and he retired in the 1970s. In my view the Anglican communion will now split up into Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical and Liberal arms. Its future, if it has one, lies in the third world.

Sachin

Just heard that Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar has completed his 100th international century, a feat so remarkable it is hard to comprehend.

Tendulkar has scored more than 15,000 test runs, 2,000 more than the second on the list, Rahul Dravid, who has just retired. Tendulkar has scored 6,500 runs more than the highest ranked England player, Graham Gooch, who retired 17 years ago.

He also easily tops the One Day Internationals batting list with over 18,000 runs and once scored 200 not out in a one day match.

I can't imagine Tendulkar's feat ever being repeated, although I would have said it was impossible in the first place.

Racing

At the recent Crufts Dog show, five pedigree dogs, while being put through their paces, were injured; their owners decided that rather than keep them alive it was easier and cheaper to have them put down.

Well, actually, no. But this is what happened to five horses at the current Cheltenham Festival. I invite you to imagine what, say, the Daily Mail would have made of it, if it had been dogs.

Racing is watched or attended by millions of people but managed by a group of self-appointed and, on the surface at least, rather smug individuals called the Jockey Club. I have wondered before whether it isn't time to review who is responsible for the sport: the rules, the betting, safety at the track, animal welfare.

Measuring success

The International Criminal Court in The Hague has found someone guilty.

I mention this because the ICC has been in existence for nearly ten years and has cost something around a billion dollars, and this is the first person it has found guilty. Just one.

His name is Thomas Lubanga and he is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, better known as Zaire, or the Belgian Congo. The country is huge, the people poor and uneducated. It has been at war for most of its unhappy existence.

Lubanga has been found guilty of recruiting and using child soldiers ten years ago. Obviously it is a disgraceful act and something I myself, living as I do in Europe, would never do. But I didn't know it was illegal. Wrong, yes; illegal? Did you know this?

Supposing one lived in an area of the world - Central Africa, for example - where using child soldiers was the norm. Life expectancy is around 45 so presumably to commit an atrocity you have to catch your employees young.

I don't wish to be flippant but what we have done here is impose a set of western values and call people who don't live up to them criminals. In my view the concept of a universal morality set is nonsense, and is there merely to appease the bien pensant in the civilised world.

A billion dollars spent educating Congolese might have been worthwhile.

Equality vs. Equalities

Sometimes one looks at what is going on and wonders whether the whole world is mad.

The British Government is opposing, in the European Court of Human Rights, the right of Christians to wear crosses or crucifixes at work. This daft crusade is being led by Lynne Featherstone, the confused and completely useless Equality Minister. The Government's opponent in the case is its own Equality Commission.

Britain is one of few countries in the world with an established church: Bishops sit in the House of Lords and the move permitting women priests had to be approved by Parliament. The Church of England, headed by the Queen, is part of the fabric of life in Britain, and you would have thought the Government had enough sense to stay out of this one.

Of course Mr. Cameron has already upset the Church with his proposals for gay marriage, which I have commented on recently. He has also upset people who live in the countryside with his changes to planning law and ruinously expensive high speed trains. He has upset a lot of people with his poorly explained changes to the Health Service, and he is about to start a row with changes to the taxation of pensions. On top of that people are seeing their standard of living fall for the second year in a row, youth unemployment is far too high and fuel far too expensive in part due to his insane environmental levies.

All of this would not really matter if it weren't for the fact that within a couple of years he will be asking these people to re-elect him.

Hostage fiasco

Meanwhile a row has broken out between Britain and Italy over the failed rescue mission for the hostages in Nigeria.

President Napolitano, whose constitutional position forbids him from commenting on anything but the most important issues facing the country, has said that Britain's behaviour has been inexplicable.

It would appear that faced with two hostages, one British and one Italian, the British trained up a team and landed them in Nigeria and found no time in all this to discuss the matter with the Italians until the mission was underway.

It is accepted that few countries have the ability to mount such an expedition and Italy is not one of them, but it will be seen as high handedness in the extreme. Given it was a joint operation with Nigeria, it seems Mr Hague had plenty of time to discuss it with Lagos and none with Rome. The Italians couldn't have contributed much militarily but they might at least have warned that telling the Nigerians would mean telling the kidnappers.

Salary madness

Mario Monti's policy of transparency in public sector remuneration has thrown up some interesting disparities. A public letter signed by the heads of the most important art galleries in Italy, including those of the Gallerie Borghese in Rome and the Uffizi in Florence, declare that they earn less than €2,000 a month, less than a quarter of the salary of a clerk at the President's Offices and less than a sixteenth of the pension of the former Secretary General of the Senate.

Of course it will take years to eliminate the jobs-for-the-boys culture of the Italian political class, but in this case Monti has made a good, if timid, start.

However, writing in the Financial Times, Beppe Severgnini, who refers to the unelected Prime Minister as like a nanny and calls him Mario Poppins Monti, says that he has been too cautious in front of several vested interests and the cap of €295,000 for public officials will only apply to new contracts.

There's a lot of anomalies to dissolve, including Article 18 which prevents companies from laying off workers and means foreign direct investment in Italy is effectively zero.

Poppins only has a year left.

International Women's Day

In my local Umbrian village this morning I must have seen half a dozen women within 10 minutes who were carrying a sprig of mimosa to commemorate International Women's Day. There will be dinners, there will be speeches, there will be eager politicians on the bandwagon.

For the remaining 364 days a year these women will be sidelined, paid less, expected to keep their place, prevented from entering the top tier of business. Scantily clad females will support even the most banal TV programmes and newspapers will discuss the youthfulness of their bottoms as if it were the only thing God put them on this earth for.

This is why I am against UN or other days of support: people feel they only need think about it for 1 day a year.

Non investment

Continuing this blog's advice on what not to invest in, Italy has established a four year bond which you can buy over the internet. Very convenient!

However, there will be elections in Italy next year, and the new government may or may not do exactly what the unelected Monti government has suggested. It might be an administration of a completely different mindset. Opinion polls say that the Monti administration, if it were to stand for power today, would receive 22% of the vote (100% in Berlin, of course, but they won't be part of the poll).

Sit this one out.

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.