The EM and you

The strange figure of Mario Monti, Prime Minister of Italy, has entered the debate on Britain's place in Europe. I say strange because much of Europe (not all) has been democratised for quite some time now and it is indeed odd, while the EU professes democracy to would-be members and to the rest of the world, to see an unelected figure in charge of a major country. He has been in power for more than a year now, without any popular mandate.

Indeed, Monti has held posts of considerable power (in the European Commission) for some time now without ever having been elected to anything. While Leonardo and Goethe have been referred to as 'renaissance man', Monti is that more modern creation 'Europe Man' (EM).

And he walks, he speaks.

Monti is confident in his EM status. He doesn't tiptoe round the continent saying 'Look, I know I've never been elected, but....'. He regards himself in the same light as Cameron or Merkel or poor Hollande. And his intervention tells us a lot, not just about the man himself, but about the debate.

Here's what he said, in an interview with Italian TV (translated):

  I am convinced that a compromise with the British has to be sought and, above all, it is necessary that, one day – and I spoke about this with David Cameron last week – the British ask their electorate not, ‘Do you agree with this further change that other [EU] countries want to make’, but ask the fundamental question, ‘Do you want [your country] to remain in the EU?’ I’m sure that, at that point, faced with such an important set of choices - banking interests, financial interests, industrial interests - they [British voters] would immediately say, ‘Yes, please’."

Where it's interesting is, in part, the tone. Monti, the unelected EM, does not hold open the prospect of membership coexistent with disagreement on the European ideal. He doesn't think the move towards ever loser union can or should change (despite what is going on around him). It can, of course, if the people (remember them, Mario?) want it to but he, like the rest of the crazed Europhiles, can't see that.

David Cameron, by contrast, is aiming for something quite different. He wants what we might call an 'à la carte' Europe, where Britain, for example, chooses to opt in to the single market but out of the Working Time Directive or the European Arrest Warrant. But the European Caste, the EMs, will see that if Britain can do this, others would demand to do it as well. Belgium might leave the proposed European Army; Sweden might decide it no longer wants to belong to the Agricultural Policy. The whole edifice, which is based on the elite EMs deciding what is good for you and everyone going along with it, would crumble.

Cameron hopes that a set of core countries, perhaps the original six, might opt for everything whilst an outer core might opt for half of it and a fringe (Turkey?) might just adopt one or two things.

A brief chat with a EM (Monti was in London last week) should have told Cameron that it isn't going to be possible. It's going to be 'In' or 'Out'.

This blog favours 'Out'.

Mark Carney

The new Governor of the Bank of England is a surprise, if only because he had firmly ruled himself out of the running.

There are a few things against him: he is ex-Goldman Sachs, he is only 47, his wife is a barking mad eco-warrior (the papers seem to hold this against him but I don't think it's fair: anyone could find themselves married to a loopy British woman who is likely to occupy St Paul's Cathedral). Oh, and he is Canadian. I can't think of one other major economy with a non-indigenous central bank governor.

Everything else about Carney is good, however. He understands banks (he will be in charge of regulating them) and he understands sovereign risk. This is a major coup for Chancellor George Osborne who must be very persuasive.

We must hope Carney doesn't share Mervyn King's penchant for printing money.

Jimi

Jimi Hendrix was born on this day in 1942. He would have been 70 today but instead died aged 27.

Keep a'hold of nurse

Last week, Alexander 'Boris' Johnson, the Mayor of London, was arguing for a referendum on Britain's remaining in the EU. Today, he is all over the papers saying he didn't think leaving was necessarily such a good idea. The amazing thing is why anyone is interested in his opinion at all.

This blog's view, which has been consistent, is that Britain would be better off democratically and economically if it left the EU. I do not think, however that a referendum is the right method of achieving this. The most important person in  referendum is the one who frames the question and that would be the present government, led by Europhile David Cameron and Euro-loonie Nick Clegg.

And the Europhiles and Euro-loonies would campaign that we needed just a few changes, which they could achieve, and the safest thing to do would be to remain in their newly crafted EU. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

'Always keep a'hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.'

One of the things they will say, and this is Johnson's point, is that we need the trade with Europe and that could be damaged if we left the 'single market'. On the contrary: Britain desperately needs to rebalamce its economy away from dependence on Europe. Europe is the old world, plunging into recession and unlikely to return to growth for years, if ever. The new world, in South America, Africa and the Far East, will be the engine of growth in the future.

The 'Single Market' - it's not called a free market because it isn't one - is dragging us down with its excessive regulation and protectionist policies. Several studies have shown that the regulation costs us more than the rather limited benefits.

And the likes of Johnson and Cameron like to imply - with no evidence - that we wouldn't be able to sell our goods to Europe if we left. But everyone else does: Switzerland, North Africa, everyone.

No, we don't need Europe, it is an incubus, and we don't need a referendum to get out. We need a government which with sober consideration works out that we would be better off trading with the whole world, being able to make our own free trade agreements without protectionist France and Italy stopping us, and for that government to support our exit and campaign, if referendum there must be, for a vote to leave.

There is no need to take Johnson seriously, but Cameron must be made to realise his euorphilia is condemning us to years of stagnation and unemployment.

Today in Rome

From La Nazione

The schools are on strike

9am the Flc-Cgil union will demonstrate in the Piazza Farnese

10am Cobas, the rank and file Trotskyite union movement marches from Piazza della Repubblica to piazza SS.Apostoli, complaining about politically influenced education cuts.

10am as well, the students, university and high school, march from Pyramide in the south, meeting with Cobas at the Colosseum to march on parliament. This is an unauthorised march along a route not agreed, and there is likely to be violence as the riot police try to defend parliament.

10-2pm a sit in by professors an temporary teaching staff outside the Ministry of Education

4pm-8pm Casapound Italia marches from piazza Mazzini to the Ponte Milvio protesting 'against the government of bankers and in defence of  the social state, to say no to privatisation, speculation, ending of care for workers, loss of national sovereignty'.

Many thousands of people will join the demonstrations, with many buses arriving from all over the country, even though there are other demonstrations in Florence and elsewhere.

There is a continuing investigation of claims that last week civil servants fired tear gas canisters at protesters from the upper floors of the Ministry of Justice.

So, Monti's doing OK, isn't he?

Greece is the word

Any idea what this badge is? I'll tell you: it's the badge of the Military of the European Union. Just to explain, each of the 27 countries has its own military, then the EU sets up this extra body which can't command or control or order into battle any of the individual forces which are, naturally, under the control of their respective governments.

 

I mention this in the spirit of helping to identify budget savings: the world and the EU would be exactly the same if it were disposed of.

 

And the military is what I want to discuss. Here is a list of countries with the largest military expenditure per capita in the EU

 

UK €698

France €605

Greece €421

Germany €410

Italy €358

Spain €242

 

Notice an odd man out there? Can someone please explain why bankrupt Greece has the third highest military expenditure per head in the EU? It has more combat aircraft, 303, than any other country (the UK has 284); it has 375,000 military personnel; it has twice as many submarines as Germany, and more frigates than France or Britain.

 

How can they afford it?

 

Oh.

Women Bishops (2)

Well, I was wrong, and the measure didn't pass, by a very narrow margin. Arrogance, I fear, is the cause: arrogance of those who scented victory and offered nothing to their opponents.

I mentioned in my post yesterday that 'there has to be some get out for the genuine doubters' and it seems this was inadequate. They just didn't try hard enough to accommodate within the Church those who disagreed with the majority.

Zoe Ham of the Church Society (a woman, nota bene: there are many women oppose to women bishops) said that inadequate provision had been made for the minority who could not accept a woman bishop. These number about 900 parishes out of 13,000 and they wanted a guarantee of episcopal oversight they could accept.

Unless there can be some changes at short notice, the matter cannot be discussed again for five years. This means five years of wrangling, disappointment and failure to discuss anything else.

Poor old Church of England.

The EU

The European Union is plodding, slowly but inexorably, towards a budget impasse: it now seems almost certain that nothing can be resolved in respect of expenditure for 2014-2020.

This has been portrayed in the media, including the British media, as recalcitrant, unclubbable Britain up to its old tricks and threatening a veto.

In fact the following countries have threatened to veto the result or hinted that they might use their veto:


Austria (wants a rebate and no cuts to agriculture)

Denmark (wants a rebate)

France (wants to maintain agricultural subsidies)

Italy (wants its net contribution cut)

Netherlands (no increases above inflation)

Poland (wants more subsidies)

Romania (no cuts to farm subsidies)

Spain (no loss of subsidies or cohesion funds)

Sweden (wants agricultural subsidies reduced)

.... and, of course, the UK.


Many of these are mutually exclusive (say, the positions of France and Sweden).

Not quite the happy band of brothers we are led to believe.

Women Bishops

The Church of England Synod debates today whether there should be women bishops. The new Archbishop has put his support behind the idea, despite the fact that he is an evangelical, a grouping which tends not to favour women bishops. It is the first test of his mettle, before he has even taken office.

Logic says that if a woman can be a priest (approved nearly 20 years ago) she can be a bishop. The problem is that there is a sizeable minority which believes a woman can't be a priest. This is less than it was, because some have gone over to Rome, but it is large and vocal. This minority says that since a bishop can appoint priests there would be male priests whom they didn't recognise, because they were appointed by a bishop they didn't recognise. If women bishops are allowed this could get murkier: each priest would have to carry his genealogy of appointment around with him. There has to be some get out for the genuine doubters, but it can't last forever.

The Synod is divided into three houses: the professional ones, the House of Bishops and the House of Clergy, are solidly in favour. The vote would need a two thirds majority, however, in the House of Laity, which is less so.

For myself I had doubts about whether a woman can become a priest, but believe the game was lost 20 years ago. The Church of England needs to approve this and move on to more important topics, like spreading Christianity and holding the Anglican Communion together.

I wish Archbishop elect Welby luck. I think they'll pass it, though.

France downgrade

All the talk among European financial folk at the moment is of France. The Economist last week had its cover picture of baguettes tied with the Tricolour made to look like a primitive bomb; Wolfgang Munchau of the Financial Times by contrast yesterday listed France as one of the things he is not worried about in Europe, suggesting that the mood of French-bashing was politically motivated. Now this morning we learn that Moody's, like Standard and Poors earlier in the year, has taken away France's AAA credit rating.

The stakes are high. France is the second biggest economy in the eurozone. Even at this early stage the effects of its downgrade will be felt: when the rescue funds are leveraged - that is to say when they start to borrow against the guarantees of the constituent members, it is now only Germany, along with tiny Finland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, which have the top rating; some lenders will not accept the collateral of a downgraded guarantor. So there may be less money to rescue the likes of Spain and Italy, should they need it.

Moodys observes that the chance of a rescue doesn't really apply to France. If Italy and Spain have to be rescued there will be no money left to help France, and if course it is in any case too big. Against that, it is tacit acceptance that France would not go under before Spain and Italy and neither of them has (yet) applied for help.

On the other side of the argument, there is a growing rift between the IMF and the Eurozone. Christine Lagarde started making impatient noises a year ago, hinting that the IMF had been set up to help poor nations, not rich currency blocs. Now she is openly stating that the creditor nations should take a haircut on their Greek debt. Der Spiegel shows how susceptible the various nations are to this. With a 60% haircut on Greek debt, for example, France would lose €55 billion, whereas the UK would lose only €2 billion. If it were Portugal as well, France loses €82 billion (UK €13 billion) and if we chuck Spain into the pot France, losing over €200 billion, would be insolvent.

But in my opinion blanket bad-mouthing is wrong. Yes, France has tied its lot too closely to the fate of the Eurozone, but that is what they all did pre-crisis. Yes, France has a problem of competitiveness, but Hollande has belatedly introduced tax breaks for small businesses, and it may well be that he is seeing the light.

France needs to watch it, and Germany needs to watch France, but it is a long way from disaster.

Killers

According to the Independent, Britain has lost 44 million birds in the last four decades.

What it doesn't mention is that the cat population has doubled in this time.

Cats are a pest and need to be culled, like badgers.

Prisoners' votes

Parliament is still, I read, tying itself in knots over the subject of prisoners voting. Prisoners have never, so far as I know, been allowed to vote in Britain, but a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights has said that they must be allowed to.

As so often, I find myself completely at odds with Mr. Cameron here. He declares himself to be outraged at the prospect of prisoners voting, but never seems to explain exactly why. It isn't a part of their sentence: the judge doesn't say '5 years in prison and no voting for you' nor is there some sort of custodial sentence with a vote '5 years but in view of there being no previous convictions you can vote.'

People are being arrested right now for saying things on Twitter the State doesn't like, on the grounds that it is likely to incite hatred. If we take away their vote they can't fight their persecution: upset the government and we'll prevent you from voting another one in. This smacks of the banana republic.

And one other thing. Aren't we supposed to be rehabilitating these people? A frightening percentage of crimes are committed by people who have just got out of prison. I should have thought an excellent way for them to get involved with society, to feel a part of it and not an outsider, would be to vote.

What does outrage me is that the decision on whether prisoners vote or not  should be made by unelected foreigners. At least we have been told that we could go against the ruling but we would be fined £100 million.

Mr Cameron doesn't seem in the least bit worried about this part. He appointed an Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, knowing him to be a great supporter of the human rights lobby, and he has no plans to withdraw from this.

If we could leave the whole thing and make our own laws it would be worth £100 million. But they would only find us 'guilty' of some other opinion they don't like and fine us for that.

We have to leave this nonsense behind and allow parliament and the judicial system to make our laws. Only when Cameron gets rid of Mr Grieve will you know that he is interested in the rights of ordinary people. And just think, when some immigrant commits terrorist acts in Britain we'd be able to send him home.

Vote to stop lunacy

The polls are open today in the UK (not London) to elect Police and Crime Commissioners. This means that, for the first time ever, the public can choose their policing policy.

It is said that very few people will vote, and I think this a great shame. One of the reasons for voting, and an excellent reason for having these elected officials, is about to become apparent.

Every year about 350-400 people are killed on our roads in circumstances where one or more drivers were over the drink driving limit. Given the number of journeys made each year by more than 30 million cars on the road, it is an astonishingly low figure. It is low compared to similar countries. And yet drink driving is an obsession with the British Police. This is for two reasons. One is that the anti-drinking lobby are well connected and have the ear of police forces, and another is its 100% success rate: the police only know about a drink-drive offence if they have detected the alcohol in someone's bloodstream so by definition they have got their man, a 100% detection and conviction rate (barring those 350 who are dead).

At Christmas they go completely mad. The latest figures I have are for 2010-11, but each year is the same or worse. In the month from 1st December to 1st January they stopped and tested 169,838 people - more than 200 an hour - and achieved just  6,613 convictions, which number includes sober people who were outraged by police officiousness and refused to give a test. That is to say more than 163,000 perfectly sober, law abiding citizens were interrupted while going about their lawful private business by these crazed policemen. More than 96% of the people they stopped were perfectly innocent and should not have been stopped. It would have been a disgrace in pre-1990s East Germany and certainly is in supposedly free democratic Britain.

A police and crime commissioner could put a stop to this. Particularly in country areas where there is no public transport and the roads have little traffic on them, it is a crime which ranks fairly low down the list. Burglaries and muggings would have been lower if the police force hadn't been occupied in this useless, politically motivated pastime.

So vote.

The BBC

The Political Editor, Nick Robinson, has said this isn't the worst ever crisis for the BBC. It is hard to share his optimism.

Here is the story so far. Jimmy Savile, who died last year, is found to be a serial paedophile. He worked for the BBC for decades and committed some of his illegal acts on BBC premises with children invited on to BBC shows. Newsnight, BBC News' investigative arm, was going to produce, towards the end of last year, a programme detailing accusations against Savile but it was pulled and instead tribute programmes were broadcast. This revelation was succeeded by scores of celebrities saying that everyone knew Savile was a paedophile.

Subsequently, the BBC went into a frenzy of paedophile revelations, and all but accused, although not in name, Lord McAlpine, a former Treasurer of the Conservative Party from the Thatcher years. The internet did the rest, in particular with 'tweets' from the Guardian columnist and leftie environmentalist George Monbiot and the Speaker's wife, Sally Bercow. It seems that the 'investigative' journalists only showed the accuser a photo of McAlpine after the programme went out and he said no, that wasn't the man.

The Director General of the BBC said that the programme should not have gone out (a penetrating analysis, weakened only by the fact that he was Editor in Chief) and resigned on Saturday night. He was given a year's salary on top of his substantial pension as a thank you from the taxpayer.

This morning we learn that Helen Boaden, the Head of News and her deputy Steve Mitchell have 'stepped aside'. This is an interesting term for language students like myself. To 'step up' is commonly used for 'to take responsibility' (not much sign of that anywhere); to 'step down' is to dismiss oneself but to step aside? We shall see. It sounds like avoiding a bullet.

Finally the Chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, has said that the BBC needs root and branch reform.

Well, he's probably right, but in what way? Entwhistle, who was taken on by Patten, seemed extraordinarily unimpressive. His performance in front of a Commons Committee was terrible. He seemed to duck responsibility, passing the buck to juniors. Interestingly his predecessor, during a previous crisis, had said he was on holiday. In the real world above about £75,000 a year you don't get holidays as such, you are on call 24/7 and have to come back in a crisis. And you have to take responsibility for your patch. Again, in this second fiasco Entwhistle seemed to think it was an excuse that he didn't know anything about it. Patten said he knew about it but didn't tell Entwhistle because to do so would be 'absurd'. It was only in his resignation statement that Entwhistle seemed to grasp that if you are in charge you take responsibility. Patten still doesn't grasp that.

There is more about the BBC culture that needs to be thrashed out. I am quite certain that one of the defining causes of this disaster has been that McAlpine was a senior Conservative in the Thatcher years. The BBC's leftie culture demonises Mrs Thatcher, and, I believe, wouldn't feel it so necessary to investigate carefully: such a person would be obviously guilty and they would have reported this with glee. The BBC has other biases, in particular in favour of the European Union and, interestingly, Patten and McAlpine have hated each other for years over just this subject. The organisation doesn't think much of the monarchy and failed to produce decent reporting of the diamond jubilee because it just didn't think that sort of thing was too relevant. Unfortunately it is to the large majority of the population.

It must be clear to even the most blinkered BBC fan that there is a serious problem and that Patten isn't the man to sort it out. He is a comforting duvet of a man, warm and fitting round any shape that's in the bed. He has worked for the Tories, he has worked for Tony Blair, he has worked in Europe; he is at home in the guilt evading soft left arrogance of the Corporation and for this reason must step aside (preferably in a downward direction).

The BBC is too large, particularly for the management it has had so far, and seems to be accountable only to itself. We should sell off more than half of it and put someone decent in charge of what's left.

Remembering

Remembrance Day (Veterans' Day in the USA, Armistice Day in much of Europe) and it hardly ever seems to be on a Sunday (although it was, in fact, in 2007).

Today we remember the soldiers who have died in our wars, of which there have been too many.

And today we learn the plight of Sergeant Danny Nightingale.

Nightingale has spent 17 years in the Army, of which 11 have been in the Special Forces. He has partial loss of memory following a brain injury.

While serving in Afghanistan Sgt. Nightingale was given a pistol by Afghan Forces whom he had trained as a counter-terrorist unit. The pistol, still in its box, was found at his home. A Court Martial, which could have given him a suspended sentence, had him imprisoned for 18 months.

Nightingale's former Commanding Officer has said that the sentence needs to be overturned immediately.

He is right.

A star reborn

A welcome return to politics for the absolutely tremendous Ilona Staller, known as Cicciolina.

A well known porn star, she entered parliament in 1987 and at the onset of the Gulf War offered to sleep with Saddam Hussein in return for peace. She subsequently made the same offer to Osama bin Laden. She regularly spoke in parliament with one breast bared, declaring 'My breasts have never done anyone any harm, whereas bin Laden's war has caused thousands of victims.'

The beginning of a new era of cynicism about the Italian political class was marked by public realisation that she was due a pension of €39,000 p.a. for her short time in parliament. 'I earned it', she said.

Cicciolina's new party is called DNA (Democrazia, Natura, Amore). She will fight against 'Auto Blu', the governmental cars given to thousands of the political caste, a project dear to this blog, and other privileges to the ruling caste, and in favour of an overhaul of the justice system and social security for everyone.

Wonderful.

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.