A breath of fresh air

Congratulations to my old pal Justin Welby who has been nominated Archbishop of Canterbury. We knew each other well in the 1980s, when he was Treasurer of an oil company and I was his bank manager (or one of them).

The information you will glean from the press is that he is an old Etonian, inexperienced, in favour of women bishops and against homosexual marriage.

I suppose we must expect that public figures are pigeonholed like this, but I think it a shame. Strangely enough, although I could reel off quite a few facts about the new primate, I never knew he was an old Etonian. People imagine businessmen talk about their schooldays all the time whereas they are of course completely irrelevant. As to inexperience, he is 56, born within a few months of me, which makes him ten years older than the Prime Minister.

I wasn't surprised when Justin threw it all up to study for the priesthood; he is capable of profound thought and able to be decisive. He was an enthusiastic member of an evangelical congregation.

What the public and the establishment will learn about this man is first, of course, that he understands business. We shall no longer suffer the 'all business is wrong, all capitalists are horrid' drivel which came out of Lambeth Palace under Rowan Williams. However, as those grilled by the House of Lords Select Committee on the LIBOR scam found, he is capable of directing a torrent of informed criticism. I don't think he would support the 'Occupy' movement which camped on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral, because it was unfocused. He is however just what they need: someone articulate and influential who understands the case against banks and the governments who regulate them, and isn't scared to put his views across.

Welby is a good debater and negotiator for the simple but rare reason that he takes a lot of trouble to understand where the other side is coming from. He will need this skill as schism raises its head in the Anglican communion.

I think it is an imaginative and perspicacious appointment and I wish him all the best.

It's Obama

In the end, Obama won easily. So easily, in fact, that you wonder whether the voices saying it was neck and neck were just trying to make it exciting.

Obama ran a good campaign, Romney ran a bad one. Presumably the world will now hear no more from Willard 'Mitt' Romney except on the celebrity golf circuit. This blog will shed no tears for him.

Obama now has three years to make history look kindly on him (not four, because positioning for the new election will start well in advance of the end of his term).

And it's not going to be easy: the Republicans control the House whilst the Democrats control the Senate and so there will be a fair bit of bickering to get anything through. In particular the 'fiscal cliff' looms. This is a series of measures which come into force on 1st January, 7 weeks away, which will take some $680 billion out of the economy in tax increases and spending cuts. It needs to be done but would be easier to swallow if spread over a longer period, and Obama will need to impose himself on the negotiations, over a Republican party still smarting from defeat.

But Obama mustn't take his eye off the austerity ball: America is mired in debt and if nothing is done it will default some time in the early part of this century, something which would have appalling consequences for the entire world.

It's the biggest job in the world, but not the best.

Nadine Dorries

The Conservative MP Nadine Dorries has decided to be a performer, if that is the right word, in a reality TV programme called 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here'. I have not seen the programme but it is, apparently, a humiliating experience.

Ms Dorries has been suspended from the Conservative Party. I should mention, perhaps, that she is something of a thorn in Mr Cameron's side: she believes that because of him she will lose her seat at the next election. She doesn't agree with the coalition and thinks Mr Cameron should be more of a man, two sentiments with which this blog concurs.

I am slightly curious as to why she has had the party whip withdrawn. Presumably Mr Cameron is not going to suspend every MP who takes time off and earns a bit of money outside parliament - he'd hardly have anyone left. I think her idea was a lapse in judgment but should she be punished for that by a man who has been sending intimate text messages to Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch's henchperson? Andrew Mitchell had to resign as Chief Whip for telling a policeman that he was a pleb who didn't know his place, but he wasn't suspended from his party.

It seems to me that Cameron hasn't really got a grip on things and acts against people who criticise him in a manner one can only describe as bitchy. It is the sign of a weak man.

Alexander and the living wage

Addle-pated

Every so often you hear a politician talking absolute nonsense and you dismiss it: twerps will be twerps, and these people make their living from associating themselves with new concepts before a national media with an increasingly short attention span. At times, however, the daft concept picks up news coverage and you are astonished to find it attaining some credence. At such times people of sense have to step in and fight, before it becomes accepted nationally.

That is how it is now for The Living Wage. Did you know there is a Living Wage Foundation (I shall try to find out who is funding this) and that this week, 4th - 11th November has been designated (by them) The Living Wage Week?

Years ago, in the early days of the Blair administration, they produced a National Minimum Wage, which is currently £6.19 per hour, or  £247.60 for a 40 hour week, around £12,500 a year depending on how much holiday you get. You may not think it very much and, when times are booming, it isn't. Now, however, there is plenty of unemployment and people feel able to temper their demands to get some income. That is how capitalism works: you have to price yourself into the market.

But right now, if person A can pay £5 an hour for a job and person B is prepared to do it for £5, they can't. It's illegal. A doesn't get his business working and B remains unemployed. Yes, I know it isn't much, but 2 million people in Germany (not Albania, Germany) are working for less than €5 an hour (£4). In China and the Far East they work for a lot, lot less. We have to compete.

The Living Wage takes this to a new level of idiocy. It is calculated not by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not by the Treasury, not even by the Social Services, but by the Department of Social Policy at Loughborough University (Loughborough is a small town in Leicestershire, central England, and is said to be the most difficult town name for a foreigner to pronounce). It is supposed to be the level at which people can lead a decent life, although we are not entitled to know what that implies.

Now Ed Milliband, leader of the Labour Party, we can forgive for espousing this nonsense. He is, after all, one of the people mentioned in the first paragraph who has to associate himself with concepts, it being too far from a general election to deal with actual policies. But on to the scene strides the burly figure of Alexander (Boris) Johnson, who doesn't need to espouse outrageous causes, because he is already elected, but does so because he, like Milliband, is trying to distinguish himself from the governing party (whilst belonging to it).

Just to make things clear, Alex and Ed are not proposing an increase of 20% in the minimum wage (the Living Wage has been set at £7.45, more in London, by Loof-Baroof Uni) because this new thing would not be compulsory. Companies can, and will, simply refuse to pay it. They are saying that companies should pay it, and of course they are willing to do a bit of strong arming. If you want government contracts, they say, you and your subcontractors should undertake to pay this new, arbitrary, Loofy minimum.

So, incredibly, the addle-pated, dewy eyed Mayor of London, claiming to be a Conservative, never having run a business in his life, is proposing, in these times of excess borrowing, that the taxpayers of Britain should pay 20% more for labour, making each piece of government business, such as the Health Service, more expensive. Not just more expensive than is necessary, because the minimum wage is almost certainly more than is necessary in a recession, but more than we do now: more expense, more debt, more recession, more unemployment.

It beggars belief. Johnson must be denounced as an ignorant, self promoting dunderhead who will say anything, whatever the cost to ordinary people, and however contrary to common sense, to get himself in the news.

We would be mad to let him anywhere near high office.

The last day

Friends of mine, during Superstorm Sandy as it is known, were stuck on the 25th floor of their apartment block in New York. There was no power so the lift didn't work, and whilst they could have slid down the balconies, getting back up would have been a bit of a schlep. So they were stuck, probably the worst nightmare for a claustrophobe. But wait: was that the worst nightmare? Supposing the lifts hadn't worked but the Television had, and they were stuck at home constrained to watch the election campaign, unable to run away?

Today is the vote and whilst apparently Mitt Romney is carrying on with the campaign it is, essentially, over. It was slow to get going and when it had started it appeared to be largely negative. One paper suggested that $3bn had been spent in the last couple of days, just on disparaging each other.

In another respect it was a success, though. Americans were left with a clear choice of two different ways forward, something we in Britain or the rest of Europe hardly ever get, the main parties being largely fungible. If, as the polls suggest, Americans have chosen the Obama way, I think they will have made a mistake. We shall see. At least, as I say, they will have had a choice.

People were unhappy with Obama, largely, I think, because he was unable to live up to over-inflated expectations. The election was for the Republicans to lose, and if they have lost it was down to their choice of candidate, and the reluctant way in which they selected him (even with a bad candidate, if he has the whole partly solidly behind him he will start off with some momentum).

Perhaps Paul Ryan, Romney's running mate, who seemed sensible, will stand for the Republicans next time. I don't know what the Democrats will do. Shooting stars don't come along that often.

New Leader

It is often forgotten that more than 10% of the population of Egypt - some 9 million people - is Christian. The large majority of these are Copts, descended from ancient Egyptians, with their own language, written in Greek script.

The Copts have chosen a new leader - the Coptic Pope - following the death of Pope Shenouda III, who was the first Coptic Pope to visit Rome. Bishop Tawadros has been chosen to replace him.

The method of selection is interesting. Three names are placed in a bowl and one is picked by a blindfolded child. This bypasses the horse trading and politicking in the selection of the Roman Catholic Pope and would be an excellent idea if you could persuade a child to go blindfolded into a room full of cardinals.

This blog endorses.....

Four days to go until the US Presidential Election and this blog endorses its candidate.

Talk, certainly in Europe and probably in America too, is of the Republican and Democrat candidates, and I can only say I am not happy about either of them. I suppose Americans know what they are doing when they select their candidates, but, as so often, they seem unsatisfactory, peculiar even.

Obama puts me off because of his preachy attitude. He is unfortunate in having been talked up as some sort of Messiah, a position from which he could only let the people down. But he and his aides are responsible for that talk and let them down he has. Obama is fiercely anti-British and has an attitude to debt which can only be called cavalier. It is my belief that if America can show the world that it is putting some restraint on its fiscal incontinence it will probably remain the leader of the free world. If it doesn't, it probably will not. If you think this, Obama is not your man.

Some sign of sense occurred with Mitt Romney's choice of running mate, Paul Ryan, who is a well known fiscal conservative. However the Vice President never has any power or influence and I don't suppose Ryan will be any different. Romney himself looks highly dodgy. The son of privilege, he can hardly speak for lower and middle America. His foreign policy statements betray the sort of attitude which brought us Iraq and Afghanistan and before that Vietnam. And I don't like the idea of his being a Mormon. There is something unsavoury about Mormons, rather like Freemasons or Scientologists. Perhaps because of their strange beliefs they stick together and you would get the feeling the country was being run by a shady cabal who believed Christ was born on the planet Zorg.

Not liking either main candidate I looked at the others. There is one woman candidate, but she is a Green, and likely to be friendly with Al Gore. There is a Constitution candidate and a Justice candidate, both of whom are likely to be mad, so I think the only one out of the six I could vote for is Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate.

Johnson won't win, of course, but I like the Corinthian spirit of standing against the big parties, having done it myself.

Everyone tells me Obama will win, but I think it's bad news either way for America.

Loss of an old friend

Those of us who have grown up on Penguin books will feel some disquiet at the news that the publisher is to lose its independence, and that the German publishing giant Bertelsmann will merge it with Random House.

Penguin House is a nice name.

But I prefer Random Penguin.

Job vacancy: new leader

Beppe Grillo

The election results in Sicily will, I think, mark some sort of turning point. The Left coalition have won the presidency but the largest party is Beppe Grillo's 5 Star Movement.

Grillo means cricket - the insect - in Italian, but can also mean caprice: avere grilli per la testa means to have a head full of crazy ideas. It is bizarrely appropriate. Grillo says correctly that the party leadership is useless and that it is corrupt (also correct.) But he is not suggesting new policies, he is against everything.

A good example is the story going round that the elections have been put back a week so that new MPs if voted out can get their pensions (they need to serve exactly 5 years). Whether true or not, everyone believes this of the political caste.

Grillo is doing well in the polls because that is how the Italians are feeling: they are fed up with the venality of public life, which they could tolerate when times were good but now they see they are paying for it.

It does not seem likely to me that this discontent is going to change under the present lot, left or right. Italy has six months to find a credible, strong leader who can explain to the people what is going on and help them through it. It isn't Grillo: he is the catalyst.

The markets are watching.

Aiding and abetting

The interesting case of the Greek memory stick is raising its head again.

Several years ago, probably three, an employee of HSBC, the banking giant formerly known as Honkers and Shankers, put the names and account details of a large number of Greek residents on a memory stick and sent it to the IMF. The assumption is that the account holders were salting away money illegally.

Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, came across the stick and gave it to the Greek finance minister Papakonstantinou, who put it in the drawer of his desk. His successor, Venizelos, reportedly found the stick and was told what it was. He did nothing about it, and nor did his successor, nor his successor, nor the present one Stourmaras (as you can imagine job security in this post is pretty minimal).

So a journalist got hold of the memory stick and published the details in a magazine called Hot Doc, and the Greek authorities immediately arrested....the journalist.

His name is Kostas Vaxevanis and he is still being held. None of the names on the list have been investigated, despite, or perhaps because, of the fact that among them are senior politicians and businessmen.

Things are getting worse and worse for the ordinary people of Greece (and by the way the same goes for Portugal) but the government never tries to pursue the evaded taxes of the rich and influential, such is the endemic level of corruption.

It must be obvious, even to the most Euro-mad German, that there is no point putting the money of their own, honest, taxpayers to shore up this corrupt system. After a while it becomes aiding and abetting the crime.

Not gone yet

In my last post I said that the post Berlusconi era begins in 2013. It does not, as some newspapers seemed to think, begin immediately.

To remind us, the great man announced that he felt obbligato to remain in politics (for the sake of his country, natch) and that in the coming weeks he and his colleagues would be discussing whether to let the Monti government remain in power or whether to call early elections.

I don't think they will call early elections but Berlusconi, as ever, is following the public mood which does not regard Monti in a good light: they are saying 'we've had the pain, where's the gain?' The latest public protest specifically refers to itself as an anti-Monti march.

Berlusconi's still there, and he's still leader of the largest party and he wants people to remember that.

The clown goes down

JAILED! screamed the Daily Mail, a headline it has since amended. For Silvio Berlusconi is not in prison, and is not likely to be.

The former Prime Minister was sentenced in a tax evasion case, involving over-declaration of the price of film rights purchased for his Italian TV stations. The sentence was four years but it was immediately reduced to one. The Italian system is that you have two appeals and you have to lose the final one within six years before the sentence is enforceable. That six years expires next year. Perhaps he should, but he won't go to jail.

The verdict is significant, though. It is said that Silvio expected it to go against him and this is one of the reasons he declined to put himself forward as leader of his PdL party at the next election (that, and the fact he is growing less popular as people notice that Monti is achieving reforms which Silvio didn't even try to get through). It leaves Alfano as the front runner to lead the party, but he hasn't achieved much in the way of popularity.

Nor, though, has the left achieved popularity. Bersani is seen as part of the old crowd but rather than bowing out gracefully he is fighting tooth and nail against his challenger for the leadership, Matteo Renzi, the 37 year old Mayor of Florence.

The lack of charisma (something Berlusconi had in spades) and petty squabbling have left the field wide open for the two jokers in the pack. One of these is Monti himself. If the parties cannot form a government he may be appointed, with their approval, for a further short term in office. Otherwise, the Constitution says, for him to be  Prime Minister after next spring he would have to present himself for election. Like all eurocrats he is uncomfortable with democracy and everything it implies (losing your job if you are no good) and says he won't.

The other joker is Beppe Grillo, of the 5-star movement (it started life under the name Vaffanculo, which means fuck off). He is attracting increasing support all over the country, the archetypal 'none of the above' candidate.

The post-Berlusconi era begins in April next year. At present the likely scenario is an uneasy coalition of some of the three parties plus or minus Monti. And the markets won't like that. There is a risk - not a certainty but a palpable risk - that Silvio might have brought the whole house down with him. 

The madness of the unelected

It is not often that this blog comes out in defence of David Cameron and his government but he is quite right in opposing vigorously the proposed long term budget settlement wanted by the eurocrats (these, remember, are people who don't have to go to an electorate to explain themselves).

The EU's demands are that the budget should increase by €7bn in each of the next two years, increasing Britain's bill by €1.7bn. By the end of the decade Britain's bill would, under the proposals of the unelected, be €11.5bn.

These people are divorced from reality. It is not just Britain, but Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain: all will have to pay more. The difference is that they can reasonably expect the Germans to lend it to them.

As countries are having to make cutbacks - Greece is currently cutting disabled allowances - only someone living in a bubble of secure job, high pay and high pension could propose more spent on the bureaucracy. It is quite, quite mad and Cameron is right to oppose it.

Lock'em up

The Deputy Head of Italy's Civil Protection Agency and six other scientists have been found guilty of manslaughter. It seems they were sent to l'Aquila to investigate residents' worries after a series of tremors in the area. Their report, while leaving open the possibility that these tremors were the prelude to an earthquake, apparently said it was unlikely.

300 people died when the quake finally struck around a week later.

Scientists all over the world have expressed their horror at the convictions.

However, I am rather in favour of locking these people up. Other suggestions are the cabal of busybodies who invented passive smoking without the least scientific analysis, driving a further nail into the coffin of the British Pub; and the global warming loonies, who have made us cover our countryside with unsightly windmills and photovoltaic cells and caused families to pay large extra sums on their energy bills to subsidise the freeloaders who make them. All this despite the fact that there has been no global warming since 1998.

'This is the death of service provided by professors and professionals to the State', said the current head of Italy's Committee on Major Risks, and I sometimes think that would be a good idea, too.

PS Luciano Maiani, whom I quoted above, has resigned in protest at the convictions. Italy needs more men of principle, rather than the venal time-servers who characterise public life here, and this blog salutes him.

The Glorious 21st

Whenever there has been discussion of another Bank Holiday in the UK (scarcely appropriate right now, I fear, on economic grounds) I have always favoured 21st October.

I believe Britain should celebrate its national heroes and the interesting thing is, apart from being Geoffrey Boycott's birthday, it is also the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

The name of Erasmus

Daniel Cohn Bendit has proposed an Erasmus system for politicians.

Erasmus, named after the 16th century renaissance teacher, is a system by which European students can do a part of their studies in another European country. It is quite a good thing.

What Cohn-Bendit wants is that elected politicians in Europe should go to an equivalent level in another country, so our parliament would have a few Hungarian fascists, our local councils some Italian communists with big expense accounts.

But who will take Danny? An ageing soixante-huitard, known as Danny the Red, after the unrest in France in 1968 he set up a revolutionary communist group in Frankfurt and then made his way, inevitably, to the European Parliament, scum rising, as it does, to the top. He is a Green, of course.

In 2003 prosecutors in Frankfurt asked the European Parliament to lift Cohn Bendit's immunity so he could be investigated for terrorism offences, but they refused, such a treasure is he.

He has confessed to paedophile acts, from his days as a teacher. But they didn't lift his immunity for that, either.

I'm not completely sure the great catholic humanist would have wanted his name associated with the idea.

No, I think it would be better if Danny the Red stayed in Brussels, as a testament to the madness of Europe.

Just get away

The concert pianist Fazil Say has been indicted by a court in Istanbul for insulting the values of Muslims.

Mr. Say had reportedly put on his twitter account: 'I am not sure if you have also realised it, but if there's a louse, a non-entity, a lowlife, a thief or a fool, it's always an Islamist.'

It was foolish. Turkey is struggling with its identity, as it was in 1923 when Ataturk took over, as between an Islamic state and a modern western power. Prime Minister Erdogan appears to be struggling to establish a position and must occasionally turn a blind eye to the sort of religious intolerance we in Britain saw in the 17th century.

There has been a small demonstration in Istanbul with one banner saying 'leave the artists alone'. I don't agree: artists, and Roman Polanski, the paedophile rapist, springs to mind, must undergo the same strictures of the law as anyone else.

The answer for Mr. Say is to come to Western Europe, where his talents will be recognised and where he can say more or less what he likes. Actually, not Britain, where several people have been arrested for putting on Facebook things which others found insulting. Britain is no longer a country of free speech.

Italy, perhaps, or Denmark. A pianist of his quality would be welcome.

Saviour of our lungs

Mr. Dalli, the Maltese European Commissioner who has resigned, seems to have lost his job due to snus (I think I've spelt that right).

Snus is a tobacco product very popular in Scandinavia. It is sometimes referred to as wet snuff, and the idea is that you put a wodge of it under your upper lip and leave it there for a long time (I don't suppose there's much else to do in the Scndinavian winter). It is the reason so few people smoke cigarettes in these northern regions, although I must say I can't see much benefit in giving up one tobacco product to get hooked on another. An increasing number of people in America are buying snus, because it doesn't require a lot of spitting in the way chewing tobacco does, which is inconvenient if you have a public role like, say, Mitt Romney.

Anyhow, snus is banned in the European Union, because they know what's best for you, even though cigarettes aren't, and Sweden made it a condition of its entry into the EU that snus would remain legal there. In fact snus doesn't give you lung cancer because none of it goes into your lungs. Sweden has one of the lowest incidences of lung cancer in the world.

Naturally snus manufacturers want to expand their market and there is some suggestion that Mr Dalli might have encouraged a businessman to approach manufacturers with the offer of supporting a liberalisation.

Given the fact that such a move might lower lung cancer rates one wonders what is wrong, but unfortunately it looks as if Dalli, who might otherwise have been the saviour of Europe's lungs, may have had other motives.

It's all OK!

YES! It's summit time for Europe! Hungry Responsible leaders will gather together on Thursday 18th  for another decisive....er....lunch. This time it's in Luxembourg.

To summarise what's going on:

François Hollande of France is impatient: he wants a quick implementation of the decisions of the last summit (he's new to this game) which broadly means telling the Germans to hurry up and guarantee everybody's debt. You never know when a country, say, to the West of Germany, might need it.

The Germans, meanwhile, want some controls over how their money would be spent, but François reckons that can wait for a couple of years.

Oh and François is fed up with Britain. In fact it's probably all our fault.

President Rumpy produced a plan which involved structural financial development and, c'mon guess, the Germans guaranteeing everyone's debts. I think it took 20 minutes for the German Government to dismiss it as nonsense, but it might have been less.

Mariano Rajoy of Spain has come up with an ingenious idea: that the ECB should give it a massive overdraft which, of course, it wouldn't use, no, in return for no conditions. No brainer.

Greece has not stopped being Greece: it has made almost no effort to collect the taxes of the rich and well connected, deciding to raise taxes and cut entitlements for poor people. The economy is in free fall, they need 2 years to implement the last conditions (not the present set) and will run out of money to pay staff and keep the lights on in about a month.

The European Commissioner for consumer policy, a Maltese called Dalli, has resigned, having been found out by the anti-fraud agency. He will have to be replaced by another Maltese, until we run out of them.

So, it's all going to be OK.

Free fall

The case of Felix Baumgartner, who has successfully jumped from a balloon 128,000 feet up (38km) has made me think. I say successfully but there was no other way down, he couldn't decide after the ascent not to go through with it, no one was going to go up and help him; and of course once he had jumped he was going to reach the earth in one condition or another.

I used to have arguments with a friend, the late broadcaster and journalist Michael Vestey, about whether motor racing drivers were brave. My point was that they were risking their lives, perhaps, doing something they wanted to do: I didn't think Michael was brave for smoking cigarettes.

But Baumgartner's feat seems different. No one knew what might happen - in the event he started spinning out of control but got a grip on it; his visor demister didn't work so he couldn't see his instruments. If his suit had torn, his blood would have boiled. This was serious risk taking, to get that much higher, further, faster, to see what man was capable of.

Good stuff.

Brave, yes.

Shoddy

On the subject of the Scottish Independence referendum (see below) a rather strange thing has happened.

Apart from the fact that the 51 million English, Welsh and Northern Irish are not being invited to vote on the break up of the United Kingdom, Cameron seems now to have conceded to the head of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, that 16 year olds will be able to vote in the referendum. The minimum voting age in the UK is 18, and if there were, for example, a referendum on our membership of the European Union (which Mr Cameron promised and reneged on) only those over 18 would be able to vote. It seems that a 16 year old Scottish child could vote on independence but when the general election came the following year would be unable to vote.

Why is this going on?

Mr Salmond wants 16 year olds to be able to vote because they are more likely to vote against the status quo. Mr Cameron has accepted this in return for there being only one question on the ballot paper (ie not a sort of independence light being offered as an alternative).

Shoddy, Mr Cameron. Shoddy disdain for our traditions, for our constitution and for parliament.

We saw it with House of Lords Reform, where Cameron was prepared for his own political purposes to condone a monstrously undemocratic voting system and constitutional organisation; we have seen it with his promise of a referendum on Europe which he has chosen to forget, we have seen it with his permitting a vote on the AV system which is foreign for us, and we have seen it with the new celebrations of the start of WW1: Cameron is prepared to ride roughshod over our traditions and even over our constitution to get his political way.

In my view he is not the standard of person who can be Prime Minister.

Politics in the mourning

After a modestly successful speech to his party conference, what do you think was the first thing Mr Cameron did? Planned the celebration in July 2014 of the beginning of the First World War, announcing the happy jamboree in a speech at the Imperial War Museum.

Now every November 11th, British, Americans, French, Belgians, Italians and lots of others celebrate, at 11am, the end of the First World War: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I shall be giving my few euros and observing the minute's silence as I have done all my life. In 2014 am I supposed to stop this because I have celebrated the start of the war a couple of months before?

What is this business of celebrating the start of a war? Do we celebrate the start of the Second World War, the Boer war or the Vietnam War? No. So what is going on here?

Mr. Cameron is hijacking it for his own purposes, that is what is going on. He knows it is unlikely that he will be in power in 2018, the centenary of the end of WW1, which might be worth celebrating, so he is starting some tawdry political démarche of his own. He wants all schoolchildren to visit the battlefields in France and Belgium. Why? Has he ever been there? Mile after mile of flat countryside, interspersed in the grey weather with grey monuments of 'Enfants morts pour la Patrie': in what way is it beneficial for them to experience that? And it won't take place without a certain amount of jingoism, you can be sure, whereas in my own mind there is grave doubt as to whether we should have entered WW1 at all (WW2 is an entirely different matter).

So what has possessed Cameron to do this? He has been advised by his focus groups that these national gatherings are beneficial for the incumbent government (although if that is true you'd have thought that the Royal Wedding, the Jubilee and the Olympics would have been enough even for the most unpopular administration).

And it's not just that: 2014 will be the year of the Scottish Referendum on independence, and Mr Cameron wants the Scots to remain in the UK (he never seems to have explained why he takes this view). This, he hopes, will bind us together and keep the Scots in the fold accepting the annual bribe from England.

Cameron is trying to manipulate the national consciousness for his own purposes. He must be denounced for it.

Playing the Joker

In recent years the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Barack Obama (just prior to sending more troops to Afghanistan), the disgraced Al Gore, the ineffectual United Nations and the absurd, mendacious International Panel on Climate Change.

We are all left wondering how can the Nobel Committee keep up this level of nonsense, what more can it do to make itself a laughing stock?

No, the 2012 Prize is not going to the late Jimmy Savile.

It's going to the European Union.

Just as the Greeks are starving from its insane policies, as poverty and depression spread like cholera across a continent, as the gap widens inexorably between haves and have nots. The Peace Prize. On the day British and French fishermen are indulging in violent encounters in international waters.

The Prize will be awarded in Norway, which has steadfastly refused to join the EU despite several referendum campaigns, the good Norwegian folk being convinced it would herald the end of their democracy (correct).

Perhaps Jimmy Savile will be next year.

Misalliance

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth following the collapse of the proposed merger between British Defence contractor BAE (British Aerospace as it used to be known) and EADS, the people who make Airbus. Particularly among the banks who would have made millions. The rationale was straightforward: BAE was finding things hard going - not enough wars - and EADS very much wanted to get into the defence market as its rival Boeing has done.

I am not surprised the alliance didn't come off, and I think it would have been a great mistake if it had done. EADS is largely owned, and certainly controlled, by the French and German governments. In their European statist speak EADS is not just a nationalised industry, in the way that, say, Nat West Bank is in England, but a European champion. If there had been a new major contract, where do you think the new factory would be? Not the UK, I think.

And the Americans, whom BAE have cultivated for years to get a bit of the Pentagon's huge business, were never going to like the proposed new partners. Uncle Sam is suspicious of almost all foreign governments except Britain, and has a quite different philosophy to the European one. It started to ask for a reduction in state ownership of the European arm and the deal was off. Merkel took the blame, but Hollande would have vetoed it just the same.

The two companies may look the same, but they're fundamentally different.

'A greater power than we can contradict
Hath thwarted our intents'

         Romeo & Juliet

Sorry....mistake

In possibly the most extraordinary volte-face ever seen in the world of economics, the IMF has admitted that it massively understated the negative effect of fresh austerity measures on struggling economies. This means that they now know that the budget reducing measures they and the EU have pushed on Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland have been detrimental, not steps on the road to salvation. People, in Greece in particular, have suffered and starved for nothing, companies have gone bust, large areas of economic activity squeezed perhaps beyond hope of recovery.

All we can do now is guess how many people will resign in the IMF and in Brussels from this criminal balls-up. My guess....?



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Cameron: E or S?

Often at university the notices for a particular lecture would be marked in pencil by students who had gone through it the previous year as 'S' for soporific or, far worse, 'E' for emetic. I try to listen to the party leaders' speeches at their annual conferences (Warning: this cannot be done without alcohol) and I am afraid that David Cameron's speech to the faithful scored, for the first twenty minutes at least, a giant E.

There was the usual tripe about our boys in Afghanistan, an appalling bit on his feelings when he pinned a medal on a disabled athlete, and tales of his own disabled father and his late disabled son. Ghastly.

After a while, though, some scintilla of coherence managed to make its way through. He recognised the threat to our economic future posed by newly developed countries, the threat to the European continent of a massive self-congratulatory welfare state. Britain is to be a country where children receive a good educational start in life and where enterprise and work are rewarded. He did not explain why the Job Seekers' Allowance (unemployment benefit to you and me) has risen faster than average earnings while he has been Prime Minister.

But there were fleeting impressions that Cameron had some idea of where he wanted to go.

Let's hope so.

A sorry result

When details of Hugo Chavez' election victory flicked across my computer screen, there were two Italian electricians working here. 'Chavez has won!', one of them said, and I forebore from making a comment when I saw they were both clearly delighted. There is a strong tradition of communism in this part of Italy.

The significance of Chavez is not just his socialism, though. He is, above all other things, a nationalist, with all the good and the bad that that term implies. He has made the people feel individual, proud, involved. At the same time it is thought that half the Jewish population of the country has moved to Colombia.

As a leader of his people, Chavez bears comparison with Margaret Thatcher (although I am sure he would not relish the thought). In some respects national pride is a very good thing.

But I am convinced, pace my electrician friends, that he is the wrong choice for Venezuela. His crude economic interventions seem likely to increase the country's reliance on oil, which will not last forever and which forces more economic power on to the State, which is where the revenues arrive, and heralds a decline in the industrial sector. This is called the Dutch Disease (see here).

Another six years of Chavez will, in my view, bring Venezuela to its knees.

The great game

Every four years in America a competition is held to see which of the candidates has the best British ancestry (this includes Irish since almost by definition the lucky forefathers predate the Republic).

One of the most surprising was Barack Obama, whom many people didn't even think was American, but who duly produced a family in Cambridgeshire which, confusingly, went on to found the then colony of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

I think the last not to have participated in this humiliating ritual was Eisenhower, who was of German ancestry, although there might have been a tiny enclave of militaristic Eisenhowers in North Wales.

Of course Willard 'Mitt' Romney has unearthed several families in the North of England who are fourth cousins. Inexplicably he did not visit them when he came to England. Several are unemployed and its always nice to unearth a relative with a couple of hundred million dollars.

Despite holding a lead in the polls, Romney is fast disappearing from the blog radar, due to having said he would arm the Syrian rebels, proof that, as I suspected, he is quite, quite mad.

America, America, where are your Swedes, your Red Indians, your Hispanics, your Poles, your Italians? Why despite the country being stuffed with people of Italian ancestry, does none of them ever become President? I am beginning to think it might do the Land of the Free a little buono.

PS Less than four weeks to go and the campaign is still like watching paint dry. Are we going to get to 6th November and they'll say 'Damn! We thought it was next year!'?

The wrong topic

Maria Millar, the women's minister, and Theresa May, the Home Secretary, say that the latest date for an abortion should be reduced to 20 weeks. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, says it should be 12 weeks.

Now, it may be that the Tory Party is in such a mess that they need some topic of national conversation, anything as long as it's not to do with economics, to get people agitated and looking the other way.

Under any other circumstances opening this can of worms can only be a mistake.

Abortion has never been a political issue in Britain in the way it has in America, and we should be grateful for that. Firstly it is not something which divides opinion neatly along party lines and secondly it works people up into violence.

Still, now they've started, quite a difference between the time limits, no? May and Millar say that at 20 weeks a foetus can survive outside the womb, due to advances in medical care. Whilst not agreeing with their premise (the only sense I can make of all this is that life starts at conception), it does have some coherence. Some hospitals have adjacent wards where pregnancies are terminated and where there is advanced post natal care, both dealing with the same age group.

Hunt got into a bit of a mess saying 12 weeks was when the foetus resembled a human which would seem to invite him into all kinds of strange arguments. In fact 12 weeks is the law in France, Germany and Italy but even he, as disaster prone a person as to have ever sat in a ministerial car, cannot say to fellow Tory MPs that he wants to be in line with Europe.

Unless you are going to campaign vigorously in the subject, and none of these people have the guts to do so, this is a topic best left well alone.

A breach of trust

The strange case of Jimmy Savile continues to rumble on in Britain. I say strange, because for many people the former disc jockey was a minor saint, having raised millions of pounds for charity and, in particular, sick children. The strange thing about it is this: if you heard that Mother Theresa was a mass murderer or that Princess Diana had quietly participated in some ghastly slaughter in Bosnia, you would be shocked. There would be public outrage, a brutal, mass mea culpa and reanalysis of the nation's previous feelings. But the tales emerging of Savile being a paedophile don't seem to have surprised anyone.

Quite a lot of women now claim to have been brutalised by Savile, and there are stories of a fifteen year old fatally overdosing. We cannot blame them for being scared to come forward against such a public figure, or not wanting to relive their experiences. Yet colleagues of Savile suggest it was common knowledge that this National Treasure was up to this sort of thing.

Everyone has both a legal and a moral duty to report a crime. Child molestation, rape, paedophilia, call it what you will, represents a particularly evil crime on the moral scale because it is a breach of trust. A child is entitled to trust an adult to know what is best for it and what is right and wrong, and the avuncular Savile, star of Jim'll fix it, which made children's dreams come true, was in a particular position of trust, making it all the worse.

Yet Paul Gambaccini, another ageing sixties DJ, even explains how Savile dissuaded the press from covering the rumours. It seems he knew all about it; in the circles in which he moved it was dinner party gossip. Liz Kershaw, another DJ, says Savile's activities were 'an open secret'.

Some are saying that this is parallel to the cases of paedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church: strong positions of trust and the matter swept under the carpet because of its importance. I would also cite the case of Roman Polanski, who admitted anally raping an underage girl but was protected by the French government and now is back travelling the world and receiving adulation as a film director. He was too important, you see, to be convicted of something so grubby.

I very much hope the police investigation into this will cover not just Savile's vile activities, but the protection afforded to him by his colleagues at the BBC and elsewhere.

More irrelevance

Further to my occasional series on how we take seriously the views of celebrities even though they are not qualified to pronounce on them:

Roger Moore, the star of many James Bond movies, has asked people to boycott Fortnum & Mason, the famous grocer in Piccadilly, London, because it sells foie gras.

Stick to the day job, Bond (which was, until he got too old, retailing sex and violence to the underaged).

Syria

The civil war rumbles on, the rebels seemingly making slow ground but ground nonetheless. There seems no end date to the Assad regime.

Now there is a new and highly unwelcome development. It would appear that Assad's forces have fired mortars into Turkey, killing five people. I know this is difficult, but it would have been best if the Turks had accepted a public apology and buried their dead.

Instead they retaliated. Turkey is the dominant power in the region and vying for some leadership role in the Muslim world. It has vast manpower resources and considerable technical military strength. On top of that it is a member of NATO, and according to its charter an attack on one member of NATO is deemed to be an attack on them all.

Let us just try to leave it there, regretting the perhaps mistaken attack. I am not sure whether this is Turkey's fight, but it is certainly not ours.

Italy: where now

'Monti bis' - the idea of a second term for the unelected Mario Monti - has been the main discussion point for some months in the Italian press.

Monti's satisfaction rates are high. Some think he has gone too far, some think he has not gone far enough, but few Italians dispute that he has, on balance, been a good thing, relative to what they had before. And I don't just mean Silvio: Prodi, d'Alema, Amato, none of them have gone remotely towards addressing Italy's problems. Indeed none of them went remotely towards allowing the populace to discuss what those problems were.

Now there have been some cuts, not too much, and the markets are quiet. And with the arrival of the raucous Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement, people and the press are talking about corruption. The regional governments in Emilia Romagna (Milan) and Lazio (Rome) have been found out, and everyone believes there will be more to come. The papers are littered with petty corruption stories, the courts stuffed with the alleged perpetrators. This never happened before.

So feelings, if not high, are towards glimpsing some modest flicker at the end of a long tunnel. The people would prefer another dose of Monti to some of the old guys leading the major parties: the 61 year old former communist Bersani, who was President of Emilia Romagna 20 years ago in the bad old days; 76 year old Silvio, whose baggage I don't need to list here; Fini, Casini, Di Pietro, none of them inspire.

But the problem with Monti, at least as far as the electorate is concerned, is, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, the fact that he is unelected. However comfortable things may be, in the final analysis the Italian voter knows that Italy is, and must be, a democracy. To have Monti bis, he will have to submit himself to the electorate. Monti himself has publicly shown a distaste for party politics, and whilst temptingly letting it be known that he might be prepared to serve again, has said it would only be under particular (unfortunate) circumstances. By this he means if no party can form a government next spring. But this is unlikely and far from desirable.

Will Monti give in, create his own party list and submit to the voters? Some believe so, many hope so. My own guess is that he will encourage some moderate realists who will then adopt him as leader, President or mascot. There is a candidate I mentioned as long ago as April last year, here: Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. The cartoon above, from the brilliant Gianelli in the Corriere della Sera, cribs Michelangelo to show Monti giving the Ferrari chairman life.

PS Thanks to my art adviser I have properly attributed the Creation of Adam to Michelangelo rather than Leonardo. I know, I know.

No bread but circuses

It is hard to know what to say about Greece's decision to spend €100m on a motor racing circuit which would be suitable for Formula 1, particularly in the light of Singapore complaining that it was costing too much to run their own Grand Prix.

I suppose the disconnect between the politicians and reality has just reached massive proportions. When they are finally told they cannot be part of the F1 circus because they are too poor, there will remain this huge white elephant, a memorial to vanity and, no doubt, to corruption.

Irrelevant

Further to my reflections on famous people being consulted on subjects they are not qualified to talk about, we have the strange case of former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown (pictured with his wife, each, inexplicably, wearing someone else's clothes).

It seems that Brown has graduated to being some sort of UN children's ambassador (the equivalent of celebrity golf) and he summoned the eager hacks to a press conference at UN Headquarters. Only one turned up: strangely, from the Daily Telegraph, and Brown cancelled the gig.

Brown has never done anything for children (he claimed to have lifted many out of poverty but he had fiddled the figures) and no one is interested in his views. On this occasion, rightly, the press reflected that lack of interest.

Let's start giving the same treatment to Bono.

Beer and booze

Useful work from The Economist and from the bank UBS which, having nearly blown my modest pension away investing in dodgy securities and paying fines in America, has produced a table showing how long you have to work to earn half a litre of beer.

Of the European countries Britain is the worst, requiring nearly 15 minutes. Britain also has the highest average price for beer, nearly double the price in Germany.

Beer is expensive, wine is expensive, spirits are expensive and the media are overflowing with busybodies telling you about the dangers of our overly cheap alcohol.

Corruption

I was speaking to a German friend last night who has come to Italy every year for the last 30, but remains astonished at the level of corruption. There are currently major corruption scandals in Campania (which incluides Naples) and Lazio (which includes Rome).

We asked an Italian friend who said the general view was simply that they hadn't got round to investigating the other regions yet.

It is so blatant that regional assistance money from the taxpayers sometimes goes straight into the bank accounts of the ruling caste.

Of course, my German friend suggested, this must stop. I suggested it was highly uinlikely to, and they should have thought about this before getting into an irreversible union with countries which had a very different moral structure.

And that is the fundamental difference here: supporters of the project say that a united Europe is so important that anything can be overcome; opponents (me) say that people are different and it just can't be done.

Incidentally, for the foreign press who leaped on the fact that Lazio is run by Berlusconi's party, the PdL, and this is 'extreme right', they should know that Berluscon''s highest official in the region, the President of Lazio, Renata Polverini, was a trade union leader in her previous job, and the foremost campaigner for women's rights.

USA: the difference

Willard 'Mitt' Romney, in an attempt to rescue what can only be described as a disastrous presidential campaign, has released his tax return.

This shows that on an income of around $14 million he and his wife paid around $2 million in tax, an effective rate of 14%.

What is astonishing for us in Europe is that this has been deemed OK - he has done the right thing.

Here higher income tax levels of 40-55% click in at incomes as low as $50,000 equivalent.

I know the comparison is not exact because there is health and welfare insurance, but it is easy to see how in America there is at least the incentive to work - you get to keep a fair bit of what you have worked for.

Not an apology

An unusual occurrence in British politics which deserves a bit of consideration: one of them has just apologised. Of course Mr. Cameron apologises regularly, but only for things which were clearly someone else's fault: the 'Bloody Sunday' massacre in N.Ireland which happened when he was still in short trousers, and after the recent report on the Hillsborough Stadium disaster which took place before he was elected.

But Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrat party in the governing coalition, has apologised in relation to the charging of university fees. You may remember that before the election, when there was no hint of a coalition, the Liberal Democrats were united against tuition fees, which are now £9,000 a year. If you voted LibDem because of this you were shafted when they went into office.

However, Clegg has apologised for adopting the policy against tuition fees in the first place. He has not apologised for joining a coalition which went against one of the fundamental planks of his campaign. He has not apologised for being so drunk at the prospect of power that he went against his word and let down his supporters.

Not really an apology at all.

Money and mythology

Jens Weidmann, president if the Bundesbank, is against the bond purchase scheme of Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank.

Weidmann, in a recent speech in Frankfurt, reminds his German audience of Part 2 of Goethe's Faust, where Mephistopheles persuades the Holy Roman Emperor to make things happier for the people by printing paper money against gold which has not yet been mined (see any parallels here?). Of course it ends in misery, as it was to do in the real Germany within 100 years of Goethe's work.

Frankfurt is the birthplace of Goethe, as well as the home of the European Central Bank.

Here is food for thought: whereas in the English version of the Faust myth, written by Christopher Marlowe some 200 years earlier, Faust, at the end of his pact with the devil, is carried off screaming to Hell, in Goethe's version he is forgiven at the last minute by God, who declares that continual hard work, as Faust had demonstrated in his thirst for knowledge, is enough to get you to Heaven.

It brings the dystopian vision of the few Brits arriving in Paradise to find the seats covered with German towels.

And Mario Draghi? He has a slightly Mephistophelean smile, and there has still been no explanation of how all this money will be mopped up when it has done its job.

The hero of the piece could well turn out to be Weidmann (and of course the great soldier, statesman, scientist and poet  J.W.von Goethe).

Irrelevant

Surely one of the great bugbears of the modern age is the flood of opinion sought and offered from sources which make that opinion automatically irrelevant. One of my favourites was Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards being asked about the death of Princess Diana. About as far as is possible from being an effete playboy sucking up to royalty Keef replied 'I never even knew the chick'. Others include any opinion of George Clooney except on acting, or of Bono except on singing.

My new favourite is 'Brian May (former guitarist of Queen): why I oppose the badger cull'.

Challenge for the White House

Willard 'Mitt' Romney has just set the presidential race alight; for..er..Obama.

This great tribune of the people has been filmed saying that 47% of Americans are dependent on the state. 'My job', he said, 'is not to worry about these people.'

With two months to go, we may just have to consider the possibility that Romney is working for the other side.

More retsina, per favor

Ah yes, the euro. You will remember that the Germans have said they won't bail out the southern periphery unless they start making the required fiscal changes, install a bit of discipline. However when it began to look as if they would have to bail out Spain's banks as well as its government, this was applied to banks, too. There would have to be eurozone-wide regulation of the banks, a banking union.

That is why eurozone leaders are having lunch a meeting in Nicosia, capital of Southern Cyprus, which holds the rotating presidency.

Just in case they can't see through the fog of retsina, here is the problem. The centralised regulator in Frankfurt says that a particular bank in, say, Spain is insolvent and either needs an injection of capital or to be closed down. The Spanish don't like the idea of it being closed down, particularly by Germans, because it is a regional bank in an important political area. So: rescue. But neither the regulator, nor his bosses at the ECB, has access to a rescue fund: there isn't one, countries are expected to rescue their own banks. But Spain hasn't got any money; could it have some from the rescue fund for governments, the ESM, to give to its banks? Wass? Nein nein nein, the condition of the rescue is that you let the banks go bust, dumkopf.

It isn't going to work unless there is a rescue fund for banks, of perhaps half a trillion euros, centred in Frankfurt; but that would mean giving them money without discipline, which the Constitutional Court won't agree....

Hypocrisy

The case of the topless photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge seem to have brought out the worst in the press. The tabloid top-seller The Sun, prevented from running this due to an agreement it had made, declared that the magazine Closer, which first published the photos, was mercenary, just doing it for profit; a bit like receiving a lesson on chastity from a middle aged hooker.

The editor of the Italian stablemate of Closer, Chi, felt he was doing us a favour: 'No other situation has revived the English (sic) monarchy, with its obligations and rigid protocols, more than this.'

Actually the British monarchy is quite good at reviving and renewing itself, and it isn't too much of a guess that it will be in business long ofter Chi has ceased to exist.

Black Wednesday

Well, well, well. It was 16th September, 1992, twenty years ago today. The UK had joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism, whereby the exchange rate against a basket of European currencies was fixed. The markets decided to test the rate, sold sterling until the Bank of England couldn't buy any more, and we crashed out.

Typically of Euro-loonies, John Major and his government had decided the principle was more important than the facts as they affected little people. The rate was too high - DM2.95 - due to high German interest rates following reunification. Britain with its inflation and its deficits and its trade with the US (the $ was also under pressure) couldn't keep up. It was the most humiliating defeat imaginable for what was the central plank of government policy.

I had stood in the elections in April 1992 on an anti-EU ticket. I had been roundly defeated, of course. I remember walking into a pub on the Thursday after the crash to hear someone say 'What's happened is exactly what Tim Hedges said would happen'.

Strangely enough some call it White Wednesday now. Sterling fell by about 20%, pricing our exports into the market, and with the Labour reforms carried out by Mrs Thatcher British industry surged. By 1996 the economy was healthy, but it was too late for the Conservative Party which lost the election in May 1997, tainted with the disgrace of Black Wednesday. The Chancellor, Norman (now Lord!) Lamont resigned but John Major, who had stated that membership of the ERM was the main plank of his government's policy, did not. I had little respect for him before, even less afterwards. Incidentally he has started to make speeches again and write articles for newspapers: he must be treated with contempt, for being not just a fool but a dishonourable fool.

The lessons?

Exchange rates should be determined by the market, not by governments; in any case they will be decided by the markets eventually.

Don't let dogma cloud your assessment of what is going on.

Devaluation is a successful tool as long as you have flexible labour markets.

The euro (the ERM was its predecessor) is a political construct, not an economic one.

Always listen to Tim Hedges.

Silvio, of course

It now turns out that both the French magazine which has published topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge while on a private holiday, and the Italian magazine which also intends to publish them, are the property of Silvio Berlusconi.

Silvio has been sucking up to the Establishment for years. This is the time to refuse publication and earn some credibility.

Letter to a Loser

Dear Mr Cameron,

'We need a 'Kill Cameron' strategy' - Nadine Dorries, MP (Con)

'Boris Johnson Britain's most popular politician'

'Tories more popular after Black Wednesday than now'

'The start of a new Tory war?'

These are the headlines that the British have been waking up to for some time now. It is not, let's face it, either good or even normal. A very weak Labour opposition leader is sustaining, not reaching but sustaining, substantial opinion poll leads; the Chancellor is the subject of jokes:

'Why was George Osborne jeered by 80,000 people at the Olympics?'

'That's as many as the stadium could hold.'

So how did it come to this? It's not George Osborne's fault; it's yours.

You were voted a young leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, elected as a moderate, modern, refreshing change. You spent five years telling your party how it had to change, modernise, embrace the Green Revolution. Then you lost the easiest ever election in 2010, missing a wide open goal, against an unpopular, unpleasant and demonstrably incompetent Labour leader. Almost anyone could have won that.

The mistakes of your early years are easy to see. A political party consists of thousands of activists, unpaid and dedicated, giving up their days and evenings canvassing, filling meeting halls and flying the flag. You seem to have felt they were beneath you and insulted them, presenting yourself as modern at their expense. They felt hurt, mocked, and many did not bother to help at the election.

Instead of trying to run a minority government until the autumn of 2010, and, as was the tradition, holding fresh elections to confirm your mandate, you panicked and went into partnership with a party your supporters had been opposing at the election, thereby making them feel foolish and humiliated. You placed your career above your party and your country.

The Lib Dems had achieved some temporary popularity, almost entirely because of your idiot decision to allow them into the pre-election debates. It was ephemeral popularity but, negotiating at your weakest, you let them have dozens of ministerial positions on the back of it. Their popularity waned and they are having the last laugh. As you have made yourself increasingly unpopular, these equally unpopular intruders become increasingly indispensable.

And the LibDems acted as a brake on your government and on Tory beliefs. Your party thought it knew how to solve the economic crisis but couldn't put its policies into practice. And the newly elected MPs, natural Cameron supporters, found there were no government jobs for them because so many had to be given to the LibDems.

So now it looks as if you are going to lose the next election, even if you make it that far as Leader, condemning the country to another five years if the people who got us into this mess (Ed Milliband was a Treasury minister, Ed Balls was Gordon Brown's economic adviser).

Is there anything that can be done?

Yes.

Throughout your leadership of the Conservative Party you have stifled debate on Europe. It is one of the main topics of discontent in your party and you risk losing votes to the UK Independence Party. Now you have been thrown a lifeline by the unlikely figure of José Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission.

The only time as PM that you have been popular, Mr Cameron, has been when you vetoed a European treaty. You lost that popularity as soon as it was clear you didn't mean it and whilst initially vetoing the Eurozone's use of EU resources (such as civil servants) let them go ahead.

Barroso, in what he grandly calls a 'State of the Union address' has demanded new treaties, more Europe to counteract the problem of a failing Europe. It is stuff the UK cannot possibly agree to, and your supporters are waiting for some strong language from you. Incredibly, they are nervous that your response will not be robust. You must show, even at this late stage, that you have some sort of backbone.

Now is the time to renegotiate our entire relationship with Europe, from the absurdly expensive Common Agricultural Policy to the Working Time Directive which prevents the British working longer hours than the Greeks. There are rafts of directives, sub-treaties, accords and Brussels bluster that we want out of, and you need to renegotiate firmly and lead us into the next election with a vision; you need to show the country it has a future.

If you're not up to the job, someone else will do it.

Privacy

Years ago the absurd European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a sort of soup-kitchen for worthless infrastructure projects all over the continent, opened its doors in London. And very nice doors they were too. The head of this was a Frenchman called Jacques Attali, and when the British Press got on to the fact he had spent £750,000 on marble decoration and the rest of it wasn't..er..too tight a ship, he rushed into the Home Office and demanded that they stop publication of these articles. Attali was astounded when he heard that the British Government had no power to do so. The French, you see, have privacy laws, especially when it comes to the political class.

So it was a bit surprising to hear that a French magazine was going to publish pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing topless on a private holiday. She should have been a bank director.

There is going to be more of this, and I rather think the Duchess' topless sunbathing days, like Prince Harry's strip billiards days, should be declared over.

Félicitations

If you were to be contacted by someone called Harlem Désir, which profession would you assume he or she followed?

Nope, not that. It is M. Désir and he is the new leader of the ruling French Socialist Party, the first coloured party leader in Europe.

Hong Kong

This week elections took place in Hong Kong. Only 40 of the 70 seats were on offer (the others are voted by special interest groups chosen by a neighbouring power) and the democrats managed to take 27 of them. This is enough for a blocking minority.

The election is following attempts by the Chinese to hold indoctrination classes in the schools (now abandoned) and you would have thought democrats would have done better.

In the run-up to the handover in 1997 soundings were taken about democracy and about going it alone (it is only the New Territories which were on lease from China: Hong Kong itself was British until we handed it over). But hardly anyone was interested. The majority didn't much like democracy, thinking it a distraction from making money. It seems they're still not enthusiastic.

A good week

It's been a good week for the euro. Yesterday the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the German Constitutional Court, ruled that it was not unconstitutional to go ahead with the ESM rescue fund. And today we learn that the party of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, an ally of Angela Merkel, is the largest after the election, gaining 41 seats out of 150, against 39 for the centre-left.

The rumours in Holland were that the Far Right party of Geert Wilders, which had turned its fire from immigration to Europe, and the Far Left anti-bailout party, would form a serious bloc. In the end the voters went for centre-right and centre-left. Polls showed that there was popular discontent with the bailouts but rocking the boat was too much for the Dutch.

Of the Constitutional Court decision, one of the German papers said it was a bad day for Eurosceptics. This is to misunderstand. Eurosceptics do not want financial disaster in Europe - it will benefit no-one. It comes as neither a surprise nor a setback that the ESM is regarded as legal rather than otherwise. I only point out that it is not necessarily a good thing.

The Court's full judgment contains a few caveats: Germany's liablity is capped at 27% of €700 billion which means the fund cannot be increased without the approval of parliament (and if they have blown all that, MPs are going to ask where it has gone before stocking the fund up with more).

The ESM cannot get a banking licence and borrow more from the ECB. This may be important, and is something Italy's Mario Monti described as crucial. It does not have 'unlimited firepower'.

And of course the idea of joint liability for Europe's debts, by way of eurobonds or anything else, is dead in the water.

So if Spain applies for help. and this tips Italy into proffering the begging bowl, €700 billion, of which €200 billion has already been blown, may not be enough: Germany can't lend Italy more money to pay its share of the bailout of Spain and vice versa.

The markets will look closely at this, and look at the terms which will be applied to any bailouts. They will wonder if these limits are worth testing.

Strange days

Belgium was invented in 1830 in a post-Napoleonic reorganisation of the continent, to act as a buffer between the UK, France and Germany. It is almost inseparably divided into two peoples and two languages and is the butt of several jokes (although the list of famous Belgians is longer than you might think). The most likely outcome for it is to become two separate regions of the EU.

The idea that anyone, as a free decision, should decide to take Belgian nationality, is an extraordinary one, but that is what Bernard Arnault, Europe's richest man, has decided to do. He is worth around €40bn, and France, the country of his nationality, where he was born and bred, has just imposed a 75% tax on incomes over €1 million. To put this into perspective, if he expects a modest return of 2% p.a. on his fortune, a tax increase from 50% to 75%  would involve paying an extra €200 million in tax.

Will all this now go to the happy Belgian tax collector? My guess is Arnault will relocate to Monaco, where there is no tax but French citizens are not allowed to take advantage of it.

It is a lesson for M. Hollande. The rich are flexible and do not like to be seen as something to be milked at will. It is a lesson other countries should learn as well.

The Draghi Put

It has a mysterious, rather sinister sound: perhaps a remote Indian shanty town, where 19th century British Soldiers were earmarked for murder in the Mutiny by a chapati being left on their doorsteps.

It is in fact an option - no perhaps just a boast - to shore up the weaker Eurozone economies with money created by the European Central Bank.

Mario Draghi is the President of the ECB and today is his 65th birthday.

I am not sure he has much to celebrate, though. First Angela Merkel put her oar in, insisting that countries in receipt of this largesse first apply to one or both of the bailout schemes (the EFSF and the ESM) and conditions will be attached to their rescue. Then last week Jens Weidmann, head of the Bundesbank, threatened to resign if there were limitless credit on offer (it is, of course, the Germans who have to pay).

The ESM has not been fully ratified yet (the German Constitutional Court has not yet spoken) and Spain and Italy, fearful of conditions being applied to them, have not applied for help.

So right now Draghi's promise to do everything in his power to save the euro just looks like whistling in the dark

'I will do such things - what they are, yet I know not: but they shall be the terrors of the earth!'
(King Lear)

Princess by another name

A doubly comforting tale reaches us from Wales, where the Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton as was, and I still don't understand why she isn't a princess, being married to a prince) tried to buy a wetsuit. She asked if she could reserve it and the man in the shop asked for her name, which she gave as Mrs. Cambridge. Strange name, he said (everyone in those parts is called Jones, Jenkins or Price).

This blog salutes a man who, confronted with one of the most photographed women in the world, has no idea who she is; and we salute the Duchess, who is now so integrated into the Royal Family that she went out not realising she had neither money nor credit card.

Class

Alex Salmond, of the Scottish National Party, declares a couple of years ago that he intends to pursue full independence and that he will hold a referendum. The politicians huff and puff but the Royal Family, saying nothing, holds a Royal Wedding, Diamond Jubilee celebrations and plays host at the Olympic Games.

Quietly, Scottish independence has gone off the boil.

As they say in cricket, form is temporary, class is permanent.