The solution

For much of the time, current affairs watchers like myself sort through the political tealeaves trying to spot some connection between events, some pattern. Then comes a moment when everything seems clear, albeit for just a second. This epiphany happened for me this week and I am here to share it with you.

The only way to understand British politics at the moment is to assume that David Cameron is determined to lose the next election.

He analyses the Conservative voter and finds that he is middle class and middle aged. He is a saver, so in order not to appear too popular Cameron organises economic policy such that interest rates on his supporters' savings are artificially low and the principal amount is being eroded by the consequent
inflation.

The Church of England used to be known as the Tory party at prayer, so to ensure the odium of the Conservative voting congregations and their bishops he introduces Gay Marriage, something not promised in his manifesto and not particularly sought even by the gay lobby.

Europe is important so he promised a referendum, then went back on his word then said there might be a referendum but on his terms, just to make sure no one trusts a word he says.

He knows the Human Rights Act is unpopular with the electorate so he sticks to it like glue, ensuring that terrorists are allowed to stay in the country at the taxpayers' expense.

What do you make of it? Whilst it is possible that Cameron has a sizeable bet on the election I don't think that is the reason for his extraordinary behaviour. I think he wants to see a social democratic consensus in the country and hopes Mr Miliband, the next Prime Minister, will give him some modest reward for delivering it.

Nelson Mandela

Mr Mandela is in hospital with a recurring lung infection and is said to be frail, although responding to treatment. He is 94.

This blog wishes the old boy well, not least because it dreads the tsunami of sanctimonious hypocrisy which is going to strike us when he dies. You just need to look at a British politician to imagine the sententious cant he will come up with on that dread occasion. It makes you queasy.

My abiding memory is of a friend who bought a flat in a left-wing London borough. He was posted abroad and returned to find the road had been renamed Nelson Mandela Avenue and his property was worth £20,000 less.

This blog's advice is that if Mandela's condition deteriorates block your ears, black out the windows and on no account listen to or watch the BBC.

More....

What I hope is a few final thoughts on Cyprus.

A bank is not 'open' if you can't go in and draw your money out.

A euro deposit in Cyprus, which can't be moved out, must be worth less than the equivalent euro deposit in Germany or Greece. Cyprus is therefore not in the single currency, it just has a managed and grossly overvalued exchange rate.

The deposits in Cypriot banks dropped dramatically in the weeks leading to the bailout. Who leaked it, to whom, and in return for what?

Cyprus: not the end

One area in which membership of the EU is extremely useful to a country like Cyprus is in obfuscating the norms of democracy. For the technocrats who got their own men into normally democratic Greece and Italy a little problem like the Cypriot parliament not liking the business of taking money from bank depositors was pretty straightforward. It was agreed that the parliament would pass in advance a series of easy boiler plate laws and leave the tricky haircut stuff until later. Then it turned out that one of the simple laws provided for the reconstruction of Laiki Bank and Bank of Cyprus, so they were put into liquidation without further reference to parliament but, unlike every other liquidation in the world, not all creditors within a creditor class were treated the same. Unsecured creditors under €100K were let off but those over €100K, identical in their rights, will have to take a serious bath. Depositors in other banks will be let off. Messy but, hey, the important thing is they didn't want this going through the democratic process.

The more you think about it, this democracy caper is all about ordinary people and who the hell cares about them in a modern elite-run society like Europe?

My big question is when the Greek Cypriot begging bowl makes a reappearance. There are other (bust) banks in Cyprus, there is the problem of what happens to the economy when the banking system isn't working and everyone wants to take their money out, and there is the problem of the Cyprus government debt which is going to rise but which they will have no income to repay. My guess is they are sorted until just after the German Elections this year.

and again....

A further thought: it is said that Greek Cyprus' talks with Russia have come to nothing.

The Russians must know that sooner or later they are going to lose their naval base at Tartus in Syria, about 150 miles east of Cyprus. If I were Russian, a naval base is what I would demand and if I were Greek that is what I would offer.

And this against a backdrop of the Americans pulling out of the Mediterranean because they expect Europe to conduct its own defences.

Cyprus again

As I write there is still no approval from the Cypriot Parliament for the terms of the EU bailout.

They should put it into perspective: in Britain the Government's monetary policy has caused inflation to exceed the approved level of 2% for several years,. As this ate away at our savings we were given the double hit of artificially low interest rates. Savers in Britain have been losing out at least 2% a year, sometimes 3%, which over the three year life of this government amounts to what the Greek Cypriot depositors are being asked for in a one-off. The difference is that we can look forward to the same thing happening for another three years.

They should pay up and be grateful they aren't in Britain.

Osborne

All politicians have an image, of course, sometimes one well cultivated by the spin doctors, whereas sometimes the spin is tempered by popular perception. For me, when I think of Gideon 'George' Osborne I think political strategist, I think senior member of Team Cameron, but I don't think Chancellor of the Exchequer. I have suggested before that we abolish this term and call it the rather blander sounding 'Finance Minister' and I think this would rather suit Osborne.

He became finance minister nearly three years ago aged 38 and not having studied economics or indeed politics). Of course the economy was then in tatters, and still is. In a sense he has been unlucky with the forecasters, who kept giving him estimates that a return to growth was on its way, only for hopes to be dashed each time. It might have been better if they had announced a disaster - Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here - on Day 1.

Le me say now I think history will be kinder to Osborne than seems likely at present. He has made mistakes but I believe some of them are mistakes that most of us would have made.

The first mistake was to underestimate the depth of the recession, one made by almost everyone, self included. It was clear by the time the coalition came to power that the last Blair government had overspent massively - even their socialist successors knew that, but no one thought that returning to growth would be such an elusive goal. Assuming that growth would return Osborne the political strategist decided to make things as easy as possible: he announced spending restraint but put the difficult cuts - those to current expenditure - back to 2014-15 when, he felt, things were bound to be better and he might even be able to cancel them. At the start the cuts would be to capital projects. In the meantime he would have gained a reputation with the markets as a fiscal conservative and Britain would keep its Triple-A rating and money would be cheap.

The backdating of current expenditure cuts was a culpable error. The time that it is easiest for a government to take unpopular decisions - and Osborne is supposed to be some wizzo political strategist - is on Day 1. Yes, the new administration can say, this is tough, people are going to suffer, but it was the fault of the last lot. Now this is perceived as being a long recession, people are calling for capital projects to be reinstated, airports, railway lines, defence expenditure and so on, which means further cuts to current expenditure. As things stand, Osborne has raised current expenditure by £600 billion in three years, but somehow got himself a reputation as a savage cutter. Not really a piece of political genius.

Again, like many commentators, self included, Osborne underestimated the heroic stupidity of Angela Merkel and the European Union. Instead of booting Greece and Portugal out of the euro they resolved for political reasons to keep them in at whatever the cost. That cost has been a lengthy recession in Europe, to which we are tied so closely. Half our exports are supposed to be to countries which can no longer afford them. So while the exporters desperately try to rebalance their sales - David Cameron has been on more export marketing junkets than any Prime Minister in history - the economy grinds along the bottom.

Osborne's solution is to flood it with money, the Bank of England shovelling out cash by buying its own debt with money it has printed. This means that savers are doubly hit: there is inflation whittling away their savings and artificially low interest rates meaning they don't earn anything on them. And who is most likely to vote Conservative? Yes, people with a bit of money.

On balance Osborne seems to be a not too bad, if unlucky, Chancellor and the most appalling political strategist.

The future? Every recession, if not adulterated by governments, holds the seeds of the next boom: asset prices fall, bad companies go out of business, wage rates fall and the economy turns upwards. This may happen before the next election in 2015. History will judge how Osborne has affected it.

The Press

The House of Commons meets tonight to debate regulation of the Press. At least, when I say 'debate', they will talk about the deal which has already been stitched up by the three main parties.

I am against the Press being regulated by the Government either directly or indirectly, such as by a Royal Commission set up by the Government. The reason I am against it is simple: I don't trust them. Sooner or later some hack, newspaper or blog will be warned off writing about the Government. It is thought that many of the great pieces of investigative journalism - the cash for questions articles, the entertaining series in the Telegraph about MPs' expenses, the Thalidomide scandal of the 1960s, would not be possible under the proposed system.

Much has been said by the politicians to the effect that they are supporting the victims of journalist malfeasance. Apart from the fact that I don't believe in altering the law to please 'victims', who may be emotional or unobjective, the attacks on the Dowlers and the McCanns (whose child disappeared) were already illegal. All we need is to tighten up the system of their access to the law.

If this goes ahead it will be a bad day, not just for the British Press, but for British freedom.

Cyprus going south

I find it hard to have sympathy for the citizens of Greek, or Southern Cyprus, but things are not looking good for them. In financial difficulty, they asked the European Union for a bailout. The amount required, after scrutiny of the books, was €17 billion, 70% of its GDP.

It is hard to see how any country could get into this state, but then Greek Cyprus isn't an ordinary country; it is a satellite of Greece which, as we know, is also insolvent. And it is hard not to have some sympathy with the Germans, who are on the hook for all this nonsense, not wanting to pay for it. In the end the EU said it could cough up €10 billion, and the Cypriots would have to find €7 billion.

What they did was to impose a one-off tax on bank deposits, 10% for amounts over €100,000 and 6.75% for smaller amounts. So if a poor man has his life savings of €10,000 in Laika Bank he has to fork out €675 because the government he may not have voted for was corrupt and encouraged Russian money laundering. Bondholders, that is to say professionals who have invested in the bank, lose nothing.

But there are other issues aside from the moral inequity. After the crisis the EU made all countries have a deposit protection scheme, covering up to €100,000 deposits. The Greek Cypriot crooks have got around this by saying the banks aren't bust, so the deposit protection scheme isn't triggered, it's just a tax.

Second, it is clear that it is intended that this be the the precedent for future bailouts. So if you have your cash in a Spanish bank and it looks as if there's going to be a run on Spain, what would you do? Draw it out, of course. So now just the hint of a problem is going to cause a bank run.

Today is a bank holiday in the country, Clean Monday, when, laughably, the Greeks traditionally practise flying kites. The parliament in Nicosia is meeting in urgent session, and is new president Anastasiades has been on the 'phone to everyone who matters (Angela Merkel) but the damage is done. Italian and Spanish bonds were trading higher this morning, stock markets have fallen.

Either the Eurozone supports its members or it doesn't. Which is it?

Habemus Papam!

Herewith my blog post for The Commentator

The white smoke came at around 7pm Italian Time and we waited....and waited. It must have been almost an hour but the crowds, filling St Peter’s Square, down the via della Conciliazione to the Piazza Pia and Castel Sant’Angelo, seemed happy enough despite the intermittent rain.

And then something seemed to stir, lights came on and the proto-deacon emerged to tell us of the new pope. And it was....not the bloke we all thought.

Vatican watchers trying to get the news a few seconds early try to decipher the name from the Latin and when he said Giorgium we wondered if the slightly doddery Cardinal Touran of Bordeaux had got it wrong. Our ears were tuned for Angelum – for Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan.

But, as I have quoted before, the old saying is that he who goes into the Conclave as pope comes out a cardinal. It was said that Angel Scola went into the Conclave with 50 votes – you need 77 for election – and that if it were a short conclave it would be the favourite who won: who else could garner so many votes in so short a time?. It was further said that Scola could only be beaten by Marc Ouillet (Marcum), Odilo Scherer (Odilum?), or Sean O’Malley (Seanum, I suppose). We racked our brains for someone called George.

It was Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires and he will take the name Francis. Initial reactions were that the Cardinals had played a blinder. They had looked to where the mass of worshippers was – South America. They knew that the main task of the papacy would be to sort out the Vatican, and they chose someone who knew the Curia without being a Curial insider. They had chosen someone who lives in a flat, not a palace, cooks his own food and goes to work by bus (although all that will have to stop now; the boneshaker Roman buses are enough to kill the old boy off).

The enthroning of Francis is so fraught with symbolism that people will still be reading the tealeaves years hence. He is the first Jesuit to become Pope since the Society’s founding in the mid-16^th century. He is the first pope in 1,000 years to take a new name (John Paul doesn’t count since it was merely the names of his two predecessors): a new broom? Does Francis refer to the popular St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of Italy, by the way, or to St Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuits? Francis is the first South American pope and the first in a millennium not to be European.

A new pope starts with a huge well of optimism and confidence which will last a while but not for ever. Francis needs to reassure the faithful that the scandals of the past are over. His flock will want to see a few comfortable insiders transferred to difficult locations around the world and guilty senior men resigning, as Benedict told Keith O’Brien to do. His supporters will search for doctrinal purity and humble demeanour and should be satisfied. Beginning his speech with ‘Buona Sera’ – good evening, showed an informality which the crowd loved. The progressive Europeans are unlikely to be satisfied, and to those British who want to know if he is sound on the Falklands, the answer is he’s not.

To anyone who followed my own choice of Cardinal Sandri, I apologise. I did advise you not to bet. I got the country right, but that isn’t even an each-way result.

I believe Pope Francis represents a new beginning for the Vatican, and that he is just what the Church needs. I am not expecting a long papacy – he is 76 – but an exciting one. Despite the rain, it was a good night.

The Conclave

The Conclave to elect the new pope begins today. The first smoke from the Sistine Chapel will be at 7pm Italian time and it is likely to be black: no decision yet. It is expected that the Conclave will go on for a couple of days.

The rumours are that Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan, has already got 50 of the 77 votes required. It is likely that the reason for this is that the Italians and other Europeans have put him forward as their champion, whereas the other main group, American-led and wanting a pope from anywhere except Europe, have yet to choose their champion.

The longer it goes on the more likely there is to be a compromise candidate, for which I favour Leonardo Sandri of Buenos Aires, who had Italian parents and knows the Vatican well.

But there are around a dozen papabili. They just need to get someone in place for Easter. Plenty of time.

The guilty and not so guilty

In the sometimes confused case of former Cabinet Minister Chris Huhne and his former wife Vicky Pryce the sentence has finally been handed down (by the way, BBC News Channel, a sentence is handed 'down', not 'out'): they each receive a prison sentence of eight months.

I suppose the crime of perverting the course of justice must be taken seriously. I also do not believe the argument that if someone is rich and in the public eye they can be said to have suffered enough merely in the press coverage. They must be punished the same as everyone else.

However, this really doesn't look right to me. She agreed to take his speeding points. Finish. A survey by Churchill Insurance reveals that nearly half a million people have done just this, to avoid one of them getting a ban. Strangely, the State sends you a note asking who was driving the car; that is to say you are asked to incriminate yourself, which is against natural justice. They can hardly be surprised when so many people decline to incriminate themselves in this way.

Normally in a court for someone to be found guilty there has to be some evidence against them, and I can't help feeling that it should be the same with speeding as with any other crime. But the state failed even to try to collect any evidence as to who was driving. It looks as if the whole system has been fiddled, just to cover up inadequacies in the prosecution.

Then we come to the crime of Huhne and Pryce. 'Perverting the course of justice' seems like a frightfully pompous way of describing her taking his speeding points. It is the term used for bribing a judge or nobbling a jury.

Really, the only people well served by all this are newspaper proprietors. The political editor of the Sunday Times, Isabel Oakshott, even shopped her source for the story, Ms Pryce, to the police, so as to get maximum coverage.

The couple should have been given a hefty fine and banned from driving for a year or two.

The Falklands

The Falklanders vote today on whether to remain British. Here is an interesting little side-issue

IWD

International Women's Day (IWD). I am against these 'days', often sponsored by the UN, because they seem to trivialise the often important message that goes with them.

IWD is one of the oldest, said to have been started in 1917 by Russian women demonstrating against the price and non-availability of bread. It is a case in point: they were still complaining about the same thing 75 years later.

This year the sub-theme of International Women's Day is violence against women. You won't get many politicians arguing in favour of it, yet it still goes on, and not just in third world societies. A woman who worked for the Samaritans revealed to me (they're not supposed to say anything about their work) that typically the man responsible for violence in the home was middle class, often a former officer in the forces. I don't know, perhaps the other women don't complain, which is even worse.

I suppose today might make us think a little about it. But we're not really doing anything. And there's not really anything we can do.

Total Eclipse

I mentioned last year how, unable to afford to stage the Eurovision Song Contest if we were to win it, we opted for the safe choice of Engelbert Humperdinck, a septuagenarian, who did not let us down by coming 25th out of 26.

Our tip for the bottom this year is Welsh croaker Bonnie Tyler, whose last hits, Total Eclipse of the Heart and Holding out for a Hero, were 30 years ago.

My forecast is that she won't achieve the dramatic low of Humperdinck but will do fairly..er..badly.

I yield to no one...

Jeremy Irons, the actor, has described himself as a 'flag waver' for a ban on plastic carrier bags in supermarkets. Didn't know he had a chemistry degree, did you?

Please Jerry, stick to the Stanislavski method, we don't need ignorant scientific tosh from you, just acting.

Frozen Venison

You'd think that after the global warming débacle we would cease to take our scientists seriously. But no, they are now claiming that there must be a deer cull because we have more deer than we had during the Ice Age.

Killing deer in order to have more of them. It sounds like one of the British Labour Party's economic policies.

I will venture to suggest that these 'scientists' in fact haven't got a clue how many deer we had during the Ice Age, 800 million years ago, and that it is in any case irrelevant. In fact if they understood anything about ancient temperature changes we wouldn't have had the global warming nonsense in the first place.

Chavez

It is odd for us seeing the broken, sobbing emotion in Venezuela following the death of Hugo Chavez. For us, the death of a politician marks either sober reflection or joy; no one would care much if we lost Cameron or Milliband, just as the idea of Hollande or Sarkozy falling under a bus would leave France little more than pensive.

Chavez was not, as some commentators like to suggest, either a communist or a dictator. He was a Peronist, a populist with the knack of persuading the poor they are doing better. The oil price rose during his presidency from not much more than $1 to over $100 and the money was blown on this or that programme; much of it stuck to his friends' or his ministers' fingers. Venezuela is no more an organised, viable state than it was in 1999: it is just as corrupt, just as inefficient and even more dependent on oil. A falling of the oil price would mean poverty, even hunger, for the lower classes.

Chavez will be remembered in Venezuela as a saint, in America as a bogeyman and in the rest of the world as just another south American generalissimo.

Jail shock

The newspapers in Italy and all over Europe are covering the news that Silvio Berlusconi has been sentenced to one year in prison for publishing the contents of an illegal wiretap.

Under the British system this sounds serious, but in Italy it is one of three steps before the sentence becomes definitive, with a limit of seven years from the date of the offence to the final appeal. I am willing to bet good money that Berlusconi will never see the inside of a prison.

So, don't worry, or sorry to dash your hopes, according to your view on the man: Italians can't seem to make up their minds.

Not for us, thanks

An interesting statement from Michalis Sarris, finance minister of Cyprus (which this blog recognises as southern, or Greek Cyprus), talking about a bailout of his bankrupt failed state; 'There are indications that London would participate in a package..'

This 'country' is bust because it attracted Russian oligarchs with tax breaks and the banks were allowed to take in massive deposits of largely illegal cash. The banks then invested the money in Greek Government debt, propping up the failed regime in their parent country. These Greek bonds turned out to be not such a good investment - who knew? - and when the third rescue package for Greece insisted on some people taking a haircut on their money, these banks were told to offer up their holdings for the haircut, meaning they had even less of the rubbish investments with which to repay their depositors.

Matters are now urgent because the Russians are moving their money out by the shedload and the banks can't repay them.

This has all been a conspiracy by Greece to prop up its corrupt regime using money from gangsters and now it has been found out.

Note to Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague: NO THANKS.

We'd have done better to recognise Northern (Turkish) Cyprus - at least it's run by a country with a future.

The Bonus Cap

We shall be hearing quite a lot about the European Union's proposed bonus cap, in particular because the banks are going to resort to law, probably under the now unpopular Human Rights Act, or the Equalities Act (see below) if that extends to dealers but not Dalits. Two things to note: firstly, don't blame David Cameron. The Government's power to do anything about this was removed with Qualified Majority Voting. He may be ineffective, but in this case it's not his fault. The second thing is don't believe it when you are told that even the Swiss are adopting such legislation. Typically, the Swiss one is very sensible, giving shareholders the right to vote on executive pay, a step forward rather than back for democracy and, I suppose, 'rights'.

They won't be doing this in New York or Singapore.

When considering the matter of bankers' remuneration I often turn to another highly paid profession, football. It is as if the Football League had said that all clubs north of the Watford Gap will have to limit footballers' wages and no more than a £25 voucher from Boots for scoring a goal. Clubs in the South would not be affected.

So in the North, come the opening of the Transfer Window, Manchester United, Manchester City and Bangor Athletic would be limited as to what talent they can pay for: Cristiano Ronaldo doesn't score goals for £25 and may anyway be using a different brand of cosmetics. Note that this wouldn't trouble Bangor Athletic, the footballing equivalent of Malta or Belgium, who don't have the money or the name to bid for the best players and so supported the move, dragging the big Manchester Clubs down to their level.

But Tottenham and Chelsea, the equivalents of New York and Singapore, would be cock-a-hoop, their teams full of superstars.

Such is the effect of governments sticking their oar into places where they shouldn't.

Discrimination

Vijay and Amardeep Begraj worked in a law firm in Coventry, he as practice manager, she as a solicitor. They claimed unfair dismissal against their employer, Heer Manak, on grounds of caste discrimination, in that Amardeep was from the Jat caste whereas her husband Begraj was a Dalit, or untouchable as they used to be known. They had married across the caste boundaries.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case (the judge, who goes by the splendid name of Merry Cocks, stood down, apparently after a visit from the police) it is deeply regrettable, although not unimaginable, that caste differences should have made their way to Britain.

Now Lord Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, has tabled an amendment to a Bill going through the House of Lords, which would make it illegal to discriminate on grounds of caste, as it is illegal on grounds of gender, ethnic background, religion, sexuality and so on.

The statement from the spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (how could we make a saving here?) was rather interesting. He said 'We do not believe that introducing specific caste based legislation is the best way to tackle the incidents of caste-based prejudice and discrimination that have been identified'. Apparently the government will rely on education.

Now, as it happens, I did not believe, when the Racial Discrimination Act was passed in the 1970s, that legislation was the right way to go about this. I'm not sure about 'education' but I believe a culture of tolerance has grown up in the UK in spite of the legislation. I felt the same when it was extended to homosexuals, people with big noses and that tribe which worships the Duke of Edinburgh. Battering people with bien pensant legislation, forcing them to behave as the State would want is, to me, a retrograde step, not a progressive one.

Now it seems the Government agrees. Will we see an end to the reams of ineffective laws, to the thought police who want to regulate our every whim?

Don't hold your breath.

Good luck to Mr and Mrs Begraj, who are apparently too short of money to have a retrial.

Eastleigh

The results of the by-election were

LibDems 32%

UKIP      28%

Cons       25%

Lab         10%

It is surprising how close the three top parties were - less than 3,000 votes between LibDem and Conservative. But most surprising was the rise of UKIP

Many tired old Tories (eg John Redwood, who writes an otherwise excellent blog) are saying that the Eurosceptic Right polled 53% but being divided lost the election to a euro-fanatic. The truth is that there is a party which wants to leave the European Union and a party which wants to stay in but whinge a bit.

The Tories know exactly how to eliminate the threat of UKIP. Cameron hasn't the balls to do it. After today they might just think of finding someone who does.

David's Day

St. David's Day. David was a 6th century monk, who spent his life fighting Pelagianism, which is the belief that there was no original sin, and that Adam's sin, whilst not setting a good example (I have a secret, risky thrill when eating an apple), has not cast us all into the void: we can decide what is right and wrong and act accordingly. Pelagianism is sometimes known as Limited Depravity, which at least makes it worth studying.

David was an ascetic, and his followers were supposed to eat nothing but bread and herbs, although perhaps he ate leeks.

Ha! art thou bedlam? dost thou thirst, base Trojan,
To have me fold up Parca’s fatal web?
Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.
Henry V

There is no longer a need to wear a leek on St David's day, even though you may feel it is attractive to the opposite sex.

We dun great

Today there is a by-election in Eastleigh, near Southampton. The result is due tomorrow.

All we can be certain of is that all the protagonists will say it was a good result for them.

Benedict

The name means 'blessed' and I have sometimes wondered why he took it. Previous Benedicts weren't up to much, although the last one, who reigned during World War I, was a fairly good egg. I rather think that after the papal equivalent of a rockstar he wanted to be seen as a quiet, holy man. At his inaugural address he described himself as 'a humble worker in God's vineyard' which, for someone who had been known as 'the Pope's rottweiler' was image spin at its best.

In retrospect the Vatican needed a manager and it got a scholar. Some of the reins had got a little loose during John Paul II's international whirlwind, including the child molestation issue and, as we are now beginning to learn, homosexuality in the priesthood and higher. The Vatican has always contained more than its fair share of intriguers, and left unchecked this can reach fever pitch, as it may have done over the 'Vatileaks' scandal. The Holy See needed someone who could discipline, organise and be a little ruthless, and then portray his works to an increasingly sceptical congregation; instead it got a kindly old theologian.

I am sure Benedict was a thoroughly decent man and that history will remember him as such, but now St. Peter's needs a Chief Executive and a diplomat.

Benedict will be known as Pope Emeritus, which is decent enough, and, appropriately, an oft used academical appellation. He should keep out of sight, as he has promised to do, even though scandals emerge which are, perhaps unfairly, blamed on him. He may be the Aunt Sally Pope.

Gaaaah!

This blog's award for the newspaper article you least want to read has got off to a great start with an entry from the Telegraph:

Esther Rantzen: do I dare give love one more chance?

It won't be easy to beat that.

Italy votes (3)

So, the initial polls were miles out. It is said that people don't want to admit to a pollster that they voted Berlusconi or Grillo. Berlusconi fought a brilliant, tireless campaign, coming from certain loser to parity in a matter of weeks. Grillo even eclipsed him, and without the aid of the media, which largely pretended he didn't exist. Bersani was lacklustre and boring, Monti was nowhere. In fact he was in Davos for part of the campaign.

Bersani just scraped ahead of Berlusconi in the lower house and gets a bonus of seats, giving him a working majority. Berlusconi came off best in the upper house. Italy is officially ungovernable. To have new elections would require a new president to be elected by this fractious new legislature.

So how has it come to this? Could it occur in any other country that the traditional two or three party system is interrupted by a comedian, whose movement is suddenly as big as the others?

What the papers are saying is 'Italy rejects austerity' on the grounds that both Grillo and Berlusconi disapprove of Monti's plan. But this is a respectable position: many economic commentators think that tax rises in the middle of a recession just make it worse. Austerity is unpopular but it's something else.

There are a couple of aspects to this. The first is that part of the reason Monti did so badly is that he never explained what was going on. It seems arrogance; it seemed that both he and the austerity programme had been parachuted in from Berlin, and that turned Italians against the need for the suffering it caused. Coupled with this is a burgeoning anti-euro and even anti-Europe feeling, with resentment that decisions are made for Europe, not for Italy. This supported Berlusconi, particularly in the northern industrial heartlands where the myriad small firms resent paying for everyone else.

The second feeling in Italy is that the political caste needs replacing: 'Mandiamoli a casa' shrieked Grillo: 'Let's send them all home'. A prime example was during the hustings, where a bank, controlled by a political party, was forced to fire its chief executive who immediately became Chairman of the Association of Italian Bankers! He is now being investigated for corruption. He was a member of the ruling caste, which extends though politics to industry, the trade unions and the education establishment, so he was always going to be looked after. This sort of thing - and there are countless examples - sent million into the arms of Beppe Grillo.

There is going to be considerable short-term embarrassment: Italy is renewing some €8.75 billion of short-term debt this morning and the rates will rise. But in some ways I think this election was good. It was after the Mani Pulite scandal of the 1990s, which brought Berlusconi to power, that things were gong to change, But they didn't: after nearly twenty years, for much of which Berlusconi has been in power, things are the same as they were. Now, they might indeed change. Beppe Grillo is not Garibaldi but he may ultimately be the saviour of his nation. 'Honesty,' he said, 'will come back into fashion.'

Let's hope it does.

More Italy voting

A pornstar called Amandha Fox has offered a poster of her bottom to anyone who doesn't vote. She is, apparently, keen to be mayoress of Taranto.

I'm afraid I didn't qualify for the poster.

In other news, exit polls show Bersani to have a reasonably comfortable lead, ahead of Berlusconi and third Grillo.

Italy votes again

The second day of voting (incidentally I think this is a good idea). Yesterday the turnout, as expected, was low. Around 55% of those eligible to vote have done so, although turnout is higher in some regions.

Incredibly, in a protest against Silvio Berlusconi, three half naked women threw themselves at him. The old boy acted as if this were perfectly normal.

Italy votes

Italy goes to the polls today and tomorrow in the strangest election in its history. The protagonists are a veteran left winger who while a minister pushed through reforms the right didn't dare; a 75 year old billionaire; a university professor who will be 70 when the new government is sworn in and a comedian. Bersani, head of the Partito Democratico and former minister in the Prodi government, is the youngest at 61.

It is illegal to publish polls for the two weeks before the election, but not illegal to conduct a poll and have it leaked. In this way we hear rumours, and the most common one is that Beppe Grillo will come second to Bersani, with Berlusconi third and Monti way behind on around 12%. In some ways this is good for Italy: the markets would be pleased if Bersani had to do a deal and Mario Monti got his name on the notepaper.

On the other hand, only stable governments can enact reform and this doesn't look stable. If Berlusconi and Grillo have sufficient blocking votes they can cause no end of trouble. The most likely scenario is that Italy will be voting again before long.

It is snowing in many parts of the country and people don't seem enthusiastic.

We should know something on Tuesday morning.

Our own enemies

We can, I suppose, all feel relieved that Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali are in prison. They were planning a large number of terrorist atrocities and behind bars is where we want these people to be.

Some newspapers mentioned it, almost in passing, but there is a very sinister aspect to this case. It is that these people were - are - British, born in Britain. Irfan Naseer had a chemistry degree, which we financed, and Ashik Ali had a council flat. Many among their social and family circles must have known what was going on - they went off to Pakistan for training - but said nothing. They were a community - an overused word but here with a sinister meaning: they clung together putting their 'community' before the interests of their country and the safety of its citizens.

There could be countless other small cells of fanatics all over the country (but particularly in areas of high immigration from the sub-continent).

Our solution? To keep an army in Afghanistan and elsewhere. As we speak there are secretive British special forces creeping round the edge of the Sahara desert in François Hollande's bid for popularity among his own people. They, and the regular soldiers in Afghanistan, would make an excellent border force and infiltration unit to protect the British people which, I might remind everyone, is the primary duty of the Government.

We don't need escapades elsewhere: we have our own enemies on our own shores.

Recommended reading

I blog occasionally for The Commentator, an online magazine specialising in high quality journalism. The blog section is called The Tea Room (after the Spectator's Coffee House). My latest post here.

Pistorius

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that the media are going big on the Pistorius story: a famous athlete kills a beautiful woman- it's got to be a good story hasn't it?

However I think it is worth reminding ourselves that this is just the bail hearing: it concentrates on whether he is likely to skip the country, and it is sometimes unwise for a lawyer to reveal his hand at this early stage.

But we seem to have gone miles over the top. The Sun has been vilified for printing pictures of the woman in a bikini - ironic really since she was still trying to break into the modelling business and now she is getting all the publicity in the world. Other papers had pictures of the bathroom where she was shot. I wonder what people make of this: to me it seemed that there being a news item about this couple all the information that can be gleaned about them is suddenly thrust in our faces.

It doesn't make for very good journalism.

What they're paid

Central bank governors' salaries in US$ equivalent

 

USA                199,700

UK                  465,869

ECB                493,694

Italy                   990,000 reduced voluntarily to 653,400

I yield to no one

The Corriere della Sera has published the opinions on the forthcoming elections of...Gianluigi Buffon, the Italy and Juventus goalkeeper. He supports Monti.

Wonderful footballer, of course but....

In the words of Jacques Chirac, he missed a valuable opportunity to remain silent.

Left or Right?

David Cameron is left-handed, as is Barack Obama.

Conspiracy theorists embrace all kinds of nonsense so a fear that we are being dominated by a sinister clique shouldn't surprise us. Perhaps we are.

But they should pause, because  pictures from his recent visit to India show him playing cricket right-handed.

Does he, as it were, bat both ways? Does this left and right confusion have something to tell us about his policy on welfare, immigration? On Europe?

I think we should be told.

The Red Cross

At a time of upheaval all over Europe, the battle of Solferino stands out. It was fought in northern Italy, near Lake Garda, between an alliance of Piedmont-Sardinia and France, and the Austrians. It was the last battle where all participating forces were commanded by their monarchs: Victor Emmanuel II and Napoleon III on the one side and Franz Joseph on the other. Two years later Italy declared its independence.

Out of some 300,000 troops taking part, more than 5,000 were killed and 23,000 wounded. Jean-Henri Dunant, a Swiss from Geneva,  witnessed the aftermath of the battle. What struck him was that there was no one to take care of the wounded: they were left to lie on the battlefield. He organised local people to treat them, paying for some of the medicines himself. Two years later his ideas led to the Geneva Convention and to the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose 150th anniversary is today.

Dunant died in 1910, penniless and schizophrenic but his creation lives on. It is said his last words were 'Where has humanity gone?' 

Bribes-village

Election time in Italy is usually scandal time, and we are not spoiled on this occasion for stuff coming out of the woodwork. After the scandal at Monte dei Paschi di Siena, a bank controlled by the left, we have Finmeccanica. The CEO, Giuseppe Orsi, has been arrested on suspicion of paying bribes to land an Indian helicopter contract. Mr Orsi seems to have no particular political involvement but he smells vaguely of the centre-right.
  
A journalist asked Italy's President Giorgio Napoletano whether he thought Italy was returning to the Tangentopoli (bribesville) days of the '80s and 90s. 'All this worries me but I know nothing' said the wily old communist.

I think it likely that the journalist, il Presidente, and many other people in the press and the government may not have thought through about bribery.

To receive a bribe is one thing. It means that you have been given a position of trust and that you have breached that trust. Most cases refer to functionaries employed by governments who are able to agree business contracts. It is highly common: in a South-East Asian country I heard that only 65% of contract costs go to the contract itself. More than a third is paid out in bribes. In a South American country a procurement official would write the sum of money he wanted on the bottom of his shoe and then put his feet on the desk. Receiving a bribe means that you have stolen money from your compatriots: they have to pay more for their helicopters, roads or whatever in order to enrich you. It is, purely and simply, theft.

Paying bribes is another matter. The most that can be said is that you have charged a foreign country more than you might otherwise have done for your goods or services. That country has willingly paid it. As regards your own compatriots you have helped them: there will be domestic orders and jobs as a result of getting the contract. As Berlusconi said, 'they should not be so moralistic.....companies budget for bribes because that is how business is done in third world countries'.

In my view, inside Italy, Tangentopoli has not gone away: the political caste conspires to enrich itself in ever more imaginative ways. Look at how the sacked head of Monte dei Paschi became head of the Bankers Association.

But Mr Orsi was just doing his job. If the Indian government suddenly has a problem about bribery - and it would be utterly hypocritical if it did - it should look to itself. 

And Italy has far more important things to worry about than this.

The FT

The Financial Times is 125 years old today, coming into being just after Victoria's Golden Jubilee and around the time of electric street lighting in London. The British economy was the largest in the world, although about to be overtaken by the USA, and Britain was the most industrialised economy in the world. Happy days.

The FT was printed on pink paper from 1893, in order to distinguish itself from its competitor Financial News, with which it later merged.

The FT is now and always has been a first class newspaper. I wish it well for the next 125 years.

The LoUC

It's a delicious example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Romania, trying to seem modern, has banned horses and donkeys from the country's roads. The animals, unusable for transport, are worthless except for their meat value.

A dealer in Greek Cyprus, acting for a Dutch Company, bought the meat from Romanian abattoirs, selling it to a French company. Through a distributor in Luxembourg it ended up in British hamburgers.

Odd, but in fact this meat might be safer than horsemeat from Ireland, which is largely from abandoned racehorses stuffed with drugs. Romanian farmers didn't have access to the drugs so the meat might actually be a good thing. But consumers should have the right to know what they are eating.

Some fool on the BBC News Channel Comment programme suggested that the answer to this was more EU regulation. Of course quite the opposite is true. We accept the EU regulation and in return permit such places as Romania to sell us their meat. The system of regulation has broken down.

Britain, with high standards of animal care, should be allowed to refuse imports until various places cleaned up their act. As usual, the solution is less Europe, though the EU-apologists try to persuade you we need more bureaucracy.

Cometh the hour...

The surprise resignation of Pope Benedict XVI will fuel rumours that he has decided to devote the rest of his life to Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands who also mysteriously resigned recently.

As to his successor, the last two popes having been foreign it is surely time for another Italian one, and the cardinals need look no further than Silvio Berlusconi who according to evidence at his trial, is in youthful and vigorous health and looks good in white. His election to the throne of St. Peter would be supported by all other politicians in the country.

PS the latest odds show favourites Francis Arinze (Nigeria) and Peter Turkson (Ghana)

Everyone's a winner!

It is a strange truth of British elections that everyone who participated says something like 'this has been an excellent result for us'. I even made such a speech myself in 1992 having gleaned 42 votes out of around 100,000.

And it is of course true of the European Budget negotiations. The quotes are in:

France (Hollande): The best deal on offer, France has given in less than Britain, France will save €140m  year from financing rebates, aid to French farmers will remain the same as 2007-13.

Italy (Monti): particularly significant improvement in Italy's net position, an extra €3.5bn compared to the November proposals and Italy saves €600m a year from financing rebates.

Spain (Rajoy): Spain will remain a net recipient of funds, and will get almost 30% of the fund for youth unemployment.

Sweden (Reinfeldt): Sweden's contribution to the EU budget will drop slightly

Poland (Tusk): a huge success, Poland's receipts will increase by €4bn.

Denmark (Thorning-Schmidt): Denmark went in with 3 priorities and has satisfied all of them.

I don't know who lost: probably Malta and Bulgaria. Tough luck, chaps. Everyone else is a winner.

Solidarité!

A success?

There are stories this morning that there will be a reduction in the European medium term budget (2014-2020). No details as yet and it could of course be vetoed by the European Parliament, but if this true it is a breakthrough.

The very idea that the European budget might go down as well as up was inconceivable until recently. It is a tribute to David Cameron if he, starting out as the only European  Leader demanding a budget cut, has succeeded.

I don't like or support Cameron but praise where praise is due. His fractious MPs should recognise this for what it is: a fundamental change in attitudes.

Wonderful

At the end of last year I commented on the Health Service in Britain. There have been developments and they are not good, although should come as no surprise to anyone who thinks critically.

According to a public inquiry some 1,200 people have died unnecessarily at Mid Staffordshire Hospital. Patients were left in soiled beds for days, and some were so dehydrated because the nurses would not bring water that they drank from flower vases.

Anyone in the NHS or the Department of Health who thinks this is an isolated incident is certain to be disabused. Five other hospitals are under investigation, and a further fifteen have unusually high death rates.

This is a disaster, nothing less.

Who is to blame? Not the director of nursing at the time, one Dr. Helen Moss, who has been cleared by her professional body of misconduct. Not the Chief Executive, Martin Yeates, who despite a recommendation that his conduct be investigated, was not questioned and left his job with a £400,000 payoff. And not the head of the West Midlands Health Authority, Sir David  Nicholson who got promoted to Chief Executive of the NHS and has confirmed he has nothing to apologise for.

So there you have it.

Actually there are other guilty parties: us. For years we have extolled the wonders of our Health Service (and to be fair, in the late '40s / early 50's it was internationally renowned) and then took our eyes off the ball while other nations created better, more manageable systems. For years the NHS was the largest employer in the world after the Red Army, and has only recently been overtaken by the Indian State Railways. David Cameron began his apology yesterday with 'I love the NHS'; the Olympics opening ceremony treated it as if it were a wonder; until now the British have been fulsome in their praise.

Until now.

One of the unnecessarily bereaved has started a campaign called 'Cure the NHS'. It has its work cut out. There is a culture of laziness, of bitterness among the staff. The hospitals are dirty and disease is rampant. Consultants are overpaid and idle.

The NHS needs root and branch reform, from its funding to its management. I am betting they will just tinker.

Reg Presley

RIP Reg Presley, singer for '60s band The Troggs, songwriter, actor and all round good egg.


Music from a gentler age, delivered in a wonderful Hampshire accent. When he made a fortune from another band recording his song Love is all around he said he'd spend the money analysing crop circles.

Coming this month

The euro seems safe for the moment, and, although a critic, I am not going to say otherwise. Mario Draghi's 'whatever it takes' statement, coupled with the long-term refinancing programme, seems to have taken away the immediate financial downside. The euro is riding high on the FX markets and sovereign borrowing costs are dramatically lower.

I just want to point to a couple of risks. In Spain Mario Rajoy's government is facing a grave corruption scandal. It has been suggested by the respectable El Pais newspaper that several senior members of the government have been receiving illegal payments - sobresueldos - from the Partido Popular, and that these include Rajoy. Spain is going through a particularly bad patch, with unemployment over 25% and youth unemployment over 50% and people are disgusted that the ruling class is in receipt of bungs. Campaigners outside parliament have been waving envelopes. The payments appear to have been made by construction magnates and people know it is the construction boom which has caused much of Spain's hardship. It is Rajoy's government which has towed the German line and introduced the unpopular austerity measures.

The second worry is Italy. Within a week or so opinion polls will become illegal over the election period. The country goes into this phase with Berlusconi doing well, within 5% of Bersani. Berlusconi unveiled today a raft of proposed tax cuts, including reductions in the unpopular IMU property tax introduced by Monti, the bulk of which has gone to bail out a bank run by the socialists.

If Europe wakes up at the end of February to the news that Rajoy has had to resign or that Berlusconi is in power in Italy - or both - things could look rather different.  

Non-voters

An interesting Italian opnion poll from Swg shows that following the MPS scandal the left, which owns and runs the bank, is suffering in the polls. Berlusconi is now within 5% of Bersani (27.8% to 32.8%) whilst comedian Beppe Grillo's 5-star movement is beating Mario Monti for third place (18% to 14%).

Interestingly the poll analyses non-voting intentions: some 30% of Italians have announced they probably won't vote and of these the proportion is slightly higher among practising catholics than non-practising, but on average catholics are far more likely not to vote (33%) than non-catholics (18%).

Interestingly older people (45-54) are less likely to vote (39%) than the 18-24 group (21%). People in low income groups are less likely to vote.

One interesting point the poll doesn't mention is the weather: this is the first time in living memory that the Italians have been asked to vote in winter. If it is a bad day, perhaps those wondering whether to vote or not won't bother, whereas those with a point to make (those favouring Grillo?) will force themselves out.

A summit!

It is nearly summit time in Europe which I know will please the hundreds of millions of Europeans whose future my be decided over lunch at next week's meeting of the European Council.

The event will hope to decide the long term European budget. Readers will remember that at the last such meeting in November, fully ten out of the 27 nations threatened a veto if things didn't go their way.

Now the Open Europe blog has spotted the first veto threat and it is from Mario Monti, unelected Prime Minister of Italy, who says he could veto the budget if it is not big enough. You may recall that last time he wanted Italy's contribution cut, so he wants more spending but wants to pay less for it.

This could be a difficult one and you can almost feel the tension....of tight waistbands being loosened a bit further.

The race to be second

The Italian elections are warming up, with just over three weeks to go. The electoral law says that from two weeks before it is illegal to publish an opinion poll.

If three weeks ago it looked clear cut, now, whilst the Left's Bersani remains the favourite, an outright victory looks far from certain. There are jokers in the pack, and it is hard to predict the outcome. In many ways it is a race to be second.

The first joker is of course Silvio Berlusconi. Eyebrows were raised when he agreed to be interviewed on La7, an independent channel connected neither with him nor with the State; the interview would be conducted by a man Silvio had fired, and who clearly bore a grudge against him. It was a barnstorming performance by Berlusconi, culminating in him hitting the interviewer over the head with a piece of cardboard. It was said to be worth 2% to the PdL. Today the Corriere della Sera reports that Berlusconi's hiring of Mario Balotelli for his AC Milan side could be worth another two points; this is, after all, Italy.

The second joker is Monti, who seems now to see himself as a politician. He is unhesitatingly rude to the other contestants and plots little alliances, making public advances to one party or another. He is stuck on around 15% and can hope at best to be finance minister in a weakened Bersani coalition. Bersani's supporters, who are against the austerity programme, will not want this.

The next joker is Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), the left-controlled bank which appears to have mixed an extraordinary level of incompetence with illegal subterfuge. This is heavily damaging for Bersani, whose support has come off a couple of percent since the scandal broke.

Beppe Grillo, who is having a field day on the MPS scandal, remains around 15-18%.

The most likely outcome is that Bersani's PD get a majority in the House of Deputies but fail to do so in the Senate. Unlike in Britain, the two houses are equally important. Either Monti or Berlusconi could hold the balance of power.

Time to go

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who is 74, is abdicating in favour of her son, Willem-Alexander, who is 45.

She said 'I am not abdicating because this office is too much of a burden, but out of a conviction that the responsibility for our nation should now rest in the hands of a new generation'.

More Mali

First it was a couple of transport aircraft to help the French intervene in a former colony. Then it was a surveillance plane. Then talk of training. There were to be no 'boots on the ground'. Now it is said that Britain already has special forces operating in Mali and that there will be a small contingent of regular troops.

Are we sleepwalking into another Afghanistan?

In the meantime French forces report minimal resistance as they reach Timbuktu. This is not necessarily a good thing: it is likely to mean the resistance fighters have simply melted into the crowds and that they will pursue their ends in terrorist fashion.

You can see it all coming. Franco-British forces will say they can't pull out until the country is 'stabilised' or some such word. Their very presence will cause dissent, terrorism, instability.

Someone in the British Parliament needs to ask whether we have learned the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to know who we are helping: what sort of people are they? What are their beliefs? Are we risking British soldiers' lives to install one set of brutal dictators over another? Did our intervention in Libya cause the threat from Mali? Did our recent intervention in Mali cause the In Amenas kidnapping where 38 people died?

And finally: is instability in Mali so very, very threatening to Britain? I heard some fool on the radio say that North Africa was too close to permit terrorist regimes. Mali's capital Bamako is about 4,500 km away, the same as Tehran.

Have we really any idea what we are up to?

I yield to no one

In our long running series on opinions which don't matter, the Independent today makes an early bid for the 2013 Bono Prize with a piece by actor and former drunk Bill Nighy on....world poverty. It is all caused by horrid capitalist companies who don't pay enough tax, you'll be fascinated to hear.

I yield to no one in my opinion of Mr Nighy's thespian skills, but marginal effective tax rates? Shut it, Bill, please.

Services to hypocrisy

I discussed the case of Tessa Jowell here, and looking back on it, find it ridiculous the woman hasn't got more airtime.

To recap, Jowell is the former social worker who was put in charge of the £2.5 billion Olympics budget. By the time she finished with it we had spent £11 billion.

Jowell's husband, David Mills, was an adviser to Silvio Berlusconi and was convicted in the first court and the appeal court of accepting a bribe from Berlusconi to bear false witness. He was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison. In the third, final court, the matter had passed the statute of limitations and he was let off.

Mills laundered his payment in one of the oldest and simplest forms of the art: he took out a mortgage on a property, receiving clean money, and repaid it with the dirty money. Since the property was owned jointly with his wife, Tessa Jowell, he had to get her approval to mortgage it and she had to sign the release form. They did this twice. Despite being a cabinet minister and something of a feminist, Jowell's stance was that girlies didn't trouble their silly little heads about this sort of thing and if her husband said it was the right thing to do that was good enough for her.

When he was convicted Jowell pretended outrage and declared she was separating from her husband. The couple continued to see each other regularly - they had two homes, in part funded by the taxpayer - and now they are back together again. Outrage only lasts so long, you see.

We read today that a grateful nation has made her Dame Tessa Jowell.

What a strange nation we are. Perhaps he'll get a peerage for services to Silvio.

Nice work....

Alexander 'Boris' Johnson, Mayor of London, has appointed a friend of his as 'cycling tsar' on £38,000 for a two day week.

Just as well there isn't a recession.

Burns' Night

As a public service announcement, this blog gives its advice for Burns' Night:

At all costs avoid effeminate or brightly coloured clothing, the food and the maudlin poetry, all of which can be damaging to your health. The whisky's all right.

Good luck.

The speech

Mr Cameron has made his much trailed speech. Actually it wasn't bad: it was polite but reasonably firm. He framed it such that the European Union had to change in its members' interest, and made it clear that the changes he wanted should be for all countries in the EU.

I have two issues with the content of the speech; the first concerns its scope. There are several changes he alluded to, such as the working time directive, which would be a sine qua non for his party to opt out of. I really don't think the French trade unions are going to allow their government to approve this, and the last thing the French need is a neighbouring country, also in the EU, where you are allowed to work harder than you are in France.  Indeed there is the possibility that several countries will just call Cameron's bluff, particularly since he has already conceded that he doesn't want to leave.

The second issue concerns what was not in the speech. He said he wanted to base Britain's membership around the Single Market. I think it ought to be based around a free market. Under the present arrangements what can be produced or sold in the European Union countries is heavily restricted and regulated. These restrictions apply to whether we are selling to Germany or to Zambia. The raft of regulations, tens of thousands of pages, are restricting British companies and costing British jobs. It is all well for the Chairman of Honda to say he thinks Britain should remain in the EU: developing a new model costs billions and they can afford a few extra millions in costs caused by European regulation. Small to medium sized firms cannot, they just suffer.

And Britain cannot negotiate its own trade treaties with other countries. Many possible treaties, such as with Canada, are being held up because the Belgians or the Romanians or someone want something specific; often they have their own industry to protect, so Britain is party to a host of treaties which do not really suit it, and not party to possible trade relations which would suit us but not, say, the French.

We need to change the Single Market into a Free Market, and what with everything else that needs changing the best thing to do would be to leave.

Monte dei Paschi

The suntan, the aged Latin Lover looks, the expensive haircut, these are all enough to show the experienced Italian watcher that Giuseppe Mussari is something we don't need. While in charge of Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), the oldest bank in the world, he was, what can I say?,  implicated in some 'secret derivatives contracts' which left a hole in the bank's balance sheet which could not be filled even by the strange socialist foundation which runs the bank. Politics are everywhere here.

New management was imposed on MPS, and when the new man, Alessandro Profumo, came in he found dozens of posts being held by political nominees.

This being Italy, Mussari smoothed himself into the post of head of the Italian Bankers Association, which goes to show someone has a sense of humour. As a member of the ruling caste, he is entitled to a job at the taxpayer's or the consumer's expense. And from this he has suddenly resigned, fuelling rumours we are about to learn something more.

The shares of MPS have been suspended on the stock exchange.

Someone needs to get right to the bottom of this and talk about it openly. The public has little trust in the political élite and things will be worse if they have no trust in the banks.

This time it is a socialist story and not good news for Bersani in the middle of an election campaign.

50 years of something

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty between France and Germany, signed all those years ago by de Gaulle and Adenauer. There is a joint meeting of the French and German parliaments and quite a few dewy eyed romantics have sobbed about the wonders of the thing. It is of course part of the EU-myth that you have to have treaties and regulations in order not to have war.

In fact when the Elysée Treaty was signed France and Germany had already not been at war for 17 years without any of this new best friend guff. And I remember in a campsite in France some years after the Treaty, watching a French mother rush out and drag her children away because they were talking to German children.

When the Treaty was signed Adenauer and de Gaulle agreed to disagree on how Europe should develop and those disagreements persist to this day. They did agree not to have any hostilities, as did America and Japan, Peru and Sweden, Cape Verde and Canada and indeed as France and Germany did in 1918.

Not such a big deal, really. I should have thought it an ideal time for Mr Cameron to make his Europe speech, but that is for tomorrow.

Horse****

Strange etymology: a small cake of chopped meat, called steak haché in France, polpetta in Italy, is deemed to come from Hamburg and then some idiot assumes this means it has got ham in it and called it a beefburger.

These things tend to be mushy and tasteless and with little food value. If I were buying one I should be delighted to hear that it contained horsemeat, which is very good for you and has a decent flavour.

It's just that I should want it mentioned on the packet.

Why won't the British eat horse or rabbit, which are healthy and plentiful? they are popular everywhere else in Europe.

Whilst mildly concerned about the armies of health inspectors not having spotted this before (what are they all doing? How could we make a saving here?) I am more concerned about the hypocrisy. The complainers seem to be trying to pretend they were buying 'beefburgers' expecting decent nutritious food.

I was in Tesco's cafe today and the waitress asked me if I wanted anything on my burger. I thought I don't usually gamble but I'll have £20 each way

The USA and the rest

The inauguration of Barack Obama for his second term in office takes place today in the White House. It has been described as a 'private' ceremony to which the press have been invited. Perhaps they think the hacks won't report it.

We don't know what will be in Obama's speech but we do know roughly what is going on. As regards Britain the President intensely dislikes us and it was only the fact that his principal opponent was such a manifest fool that prevented this blog from coming out for Romney.

Other than tinkering with the deficit (Americans tend to believe that they only need a boom run to sort everything out and repay $16 trillion) I believe Obama's main policy over the next four years will be to redirect America's focus from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Indeed he has already started to sow the seeds of this: 'We are a Pacific nation', he said in a recent speech, and there is no doubt he meant that with a capital P.

The implications of this are enormous. America will abandon its roots and go to the part of the world where things are happening. Things are happening economically in the Far East, and America needs to sell both its exports and its debts to the emerging rich. And things are happening politically: as China grows it becomes an ever greater threat to the region and America's role as policeman will be switched from the Russian-European border to the swathe of countries between India and Hong Kong.

But the biggest effect of this shift will be in Europe. since 1916 the Europeans have expected America to fight their battles. Since the financial boom of the 1960s Europe has had the luxury of enjoying security without paying for it and America, rightly I think, believes this wealthy continent has been swinging the lead (normally America would have singled out Britain as the exception but, as I said above, Obama doesn't like us). This first became apparent, oddly enough, in Libya. The British and French thought that something should be done and Obama said simply 'that's your patch'. The American Mediterranean Fleet slung a few missiles, and then only when it became apparent that we were woefully under equipped, but left us alone. The Germans decided not to take part at all. Now, in Mali, Mrs Merkel has contributed a couple of transport planes, nothing more. Germany still doesn't like the idea of military commitment. Someone told me once that German soldiers are not allowed to fight at night, I don't know if that's still true.

Now there is a credible argument that the presence of well funded terrorists in North Africa is not something we need worry about. But Europe does need a defence plan and it can't just rely on Britain and France having decent standing armies. Money is short and defence is expensive. The reason Europe needs to do something quickly is Russia. As the American defence umbrella is withdrawn, Europe has allowed itself to be increasingly dependent on Russian gas. President Putin, who has been known to turn off the taps when someone disagrees with him, will search for and find Europe's weakness.

Without America, Germany, as the leading economic power in Europe, will have to become a significant military power. This will require a lot of soul searching and some constitutional changes but it is about time the Germans, and several others, pulled their weight. The war ended nearly 70 years ago and pacifism is luxury which, without America, Europe can no longer afford.

Mali

Dozens of people have been kidnapped at an Algerian gas installation and two Britons are feared dead. The attack is in retaliation for the French invasion of Mali, with which Britain has conspired.

At the same time a vote was passed in parliament to increase our involvement to training of the Malian army. MPs passed this without even a debate. Why? Because it is an EU project.

I warned before that lives would be put at risk because of our needless involvement in this adventure and now two people are dead.

BBC

Further to my previous post, the BBC have in fact mentioned the MET's revised forecast here. As you can see if you can face reading it, they use the period 1971-2000 for their trends. This is in my view a bit sneaky: the world was warming in the 80s and 90s so any period containing these years will show some warming compared to the average.

The problem for the Eco-loonies is that if, as the MET suggests, there is a 20 year period of no warming, while greenhouse gas levels were rising, it challenges not just the basic warming contention but also the idea that man is to blame. 

What we are going to be seeing, from the BBC and the rest of the Climate Change gang, is the message 'Just because the world isn't getting warmer doesn't mean there isn't global warming'.

I wonder how long the public are going to tolerate this.

Climate Change: the end?

At the time of writing my post Definition Change I was unaware of a major development in the long-running saga of what is happening to the climate. The British Meteorological Office put out a note of its new findings. The note was not explicit and carried in some other data on Christmas Eve, but was spotted by a climate change blogger Tallbloke.

It said that they were not expecting any warming up until 2017. If their new findings are confirmed, coupled with previous data it means that there will have been no warming trend for two decades, which surely must kill off the global warming story for good.

As far as I know this has not been reported by the BBC (apologies if I am wrong) who had of course swallowed the nonsense hook line and sinker. We are also waiting for a reaction from Prince Charles.

The trillion dollar coin

The reason I never thought that America would fall off the Fiscal Cliff was that the consequences would have been so awful that, surely, reasonable people would have been able to compromise in the national interest. They were, but only just. A rather shabby looking patch up has been struck which will postpone disaster.

The present risk of catastrophe is that America is about to reach its Congress-approved debt ceiling and unless it is extended money will dry up. Of course, they can't agree. To my great regret the wheeze of the trillion dollar coin has been rejected. This was that there is no ceiling on the US mint printing commemorative coins. They would have minted a trillion dollar coin and deposited it with the Federal Reserve who could have used it as security.

Perhaps someone noticed that actually the last thing America needs right now is another trillion dollars of debt.

Don't bank on it, though.

Qui Mali pense

Evil be to him who thinks about Mali.

François Hollande has stepped up security in France, having been advised that his adventures in Mali will bring a terrorist reaction. It seems sensible, just as it seems the height of stupidity for Britain to get involved.

The French have a very different attitude to their former Empire from the British perspective. Whilst we were early to grant these countries independence and then left them on their own, the French have maintained their ties, sometimes to their benefit, sometimes not. Mali is very much on the French patch, whereas it is nothing to do with Great Britain.

Whether it was the boy Cameron, or his sabre rattling Foreign Secretary William Hague, our lending the French transport planes will have been noticed. Once again British lives will have been at at risk - this time civilian lives - for our policy of 'if there's a fight we want to be in on it'.

By the way, I thought we had a drastic shortage of military hardware. Since when have we had enough to lend it to other countries to pursue their own wars? 

Just when....

....you thought it safe to g back in the water. This year's 'flu came in two stages for many: a bad cold and just as you thought you were getting better a hacking cough. Due to a fake vaccine scandal supplies of the preventative were low, and the professionals said it wasn't much good anyway. I have been sitting in front of the screen almost unable to see what I have written, comforting myself that at least I haven't had the vomiting virus (or perhaps that is stage three).

Anyway, my blogging footprint has been light and I hope the year will get off to a delayed start now.

They're getting worried

Further to the previous post about our relationship with the EU, there has been a torrent of comments from people who clearly want us to stay in.

First, the Irish, who hold the rotating presidency, as opposed to the other three, van Rompuy, Barroso and Schultz who are, shall we say, static Presidents. The Irish Foreign Ministry says that everyone must abide by the same rules so we can't just pick and choose which bits of the EU treaties we like. Of course Ireland is going to be in deep do-do if there is a large nation on their doorstep not bound by all the regulations and red tape that they are.

Most interestingly the Americans have got in on the act, saying that they want Britain to be a 'leader' in a European bloc. There are two reasons they have come out with this. The first is that the State Department likes to see things in blocs: North America, South America, Asia and so on. Just as they are getting an answer to Henry Kissinger's question 'When I want to speak to Europe who do I call?' (the answer is any one of the four Presidents, rotating or otherwise) the only country which thinks remotely the way they do seems to be leaving. And this is the second reason: America is terrified of an inward-looking, regulation-bound socialist Europe with high taxes and no military and felt Britain was the main antidote to that.

There was nothing from the State Department as to whether America would like to be governed by an unelected bureaucracy based in a foreign country. I think we can guess the answer.

The more you hear them all insisting we stay, the more we can be certain it's time to go.

Speech of the Decade

Not an exaggeration, I think. In a couple of weeks' time David Cameron will set out his ideas for the UK's relationship with the EU. The speech will possibly be made in Holland, rather as Mrs Thatcher's major European policy speech was made in Bruges, Belgium.

The speech is important because in Parliament the euroseptics are scenting victory and will no longer be fobbed off with a poor effort at negotiation, as when Tony Blair gave away part of the Thatcher Rebate in return for a promise from the French (!) that they would reform agriculture.

And forty years after joining the EU, the British people are clear that they are ready for a change. Now we shall see what sort of change Mr Cameron is offering.

He starts off badly in that he says he wants to stay in the EU. This is bad for two reasons. Many, perhaps most, Conservative MPs want to leave the EU and secondly, as Cabinet Minister Michael Gove has pointed out, we're not going to have much success with the negotiations if we're not prepared to threaten to leave. Cameron wants to stay in the Single Market, although what good he thinks it is doing us he doesn't say.

Cameron's plan, it is said, is to start negotiations after he is re-elected in 2015. This means we have to trust him without knowing what he might achieve, or might be willing to achieve. Anyone who has experienced his somewhat shady integrity in the forming of the coalition will be unimpressed. He believes he can tempt voters away from UKIP with this vague promise of starting negotiations in a few years' time. I fear there will not be enough meat on this bone to make any difference to the sceptical voters either inside or outside the Conservative Party.

It is said Mr Cameron will offer a referendum, perhaps in 2017, on whether to accept the terms he has negotiated or leave the EU. This is so late that the EU will have done its reorganisation before he gets to the negotiating table and he will have no bargaining chips to use.

The time to demand clarity on Cameron's proposals is now. Let's hope he can explain them.

Definition change

One area where 2013 will be little different to 2012 or indeed 2011 is that we'll be hearing a lot about Climate Change.

But wait: we used to call it Global Warming, didn't we? Why the definition change? We were all certain, were we not? (apart from a few nutters like this blog), that Global temperatures were going in only one direction: up. By this time most of Europe would be an arid desert. The new nomenclature would seem to cover everything whether it is getting hotter or colder, presumably unless it stubbornly stays the same (it never does).

To explain this we have to go back to the leaks of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, in November 2009. One of them said 'It is a travesty (I think he meant tragedy, but let it pass) that we cannot explain the recent cooling'. We can learn three things from this: that they are trying to put a particular vision across to the public and it is unfortunate when the facts fail to meet their predictions; second, that there had indeed been cooling; and third that they couldn't explain it. Or as Michael O'Leary, the head of Ryan Air said 'It's horse****. It's people who can't tell you what the weather will be like next ******* Tuesday, telling you what it will be like in a hundred years'.

In truth to go in for this stuff you need to believe three things: that there is indeed warming, that it is man made, and that we can do something about it. I am sceptical on all three. As regards the third, though, I note that the Kyoto Protocol came to an end on 31st December. It had agreed that by last week there would have been a 5% cut in carbon emissions compared to 1990 levels.

In fact there has been a 58% increase. And it's bloody cold here in Umbria.

Here we go

We went down to the heel of Italy - Puglia - for the first week of the year. Small cities with beautiful cathedrals, savage countryside, great fish; it's certainly worth a visit. It's bit run down, and I must admit we arrived in a car park to find so many helpful youths standing round that we reckoned if we left the car it wouldn't be there when we got back. But by and large it is peaceful and charming. The Puglians produce excellent wine and are superb bakers so it's not great for the waistline.

So 2013 for me starts today. I am in detox and a little grumpy.

We had a lousy 2012 and my only prediction is that the world will have a lousy 2013. America seems to have saved itself (just), Europe is plunging into recession, Japan looks as if it will never get out of recession.

The war in Syria will continue, with 60,000 deaths so far. There is and will be unrest in Egypt and the Arab Spring seems to have taken power from one set of tyrants and given it to another. More soldiers will die needlessly in Afghanistan. Argentina is in such economic difficulty that it may have to mount a doomed invasion of the Falklands to preserve public confidence in the failed presidency of Christina Kirchner-Fernandez. In Venezuela Hugo Chavez will die but the nonsense will continue.

I shall be monitoring the Italian elections, in which almost any result is currently possible, and the possible departure from France of Brigitte Bardot, if the government doesn't cure elephants from TB; and I shall be trying to decide which of the two stories is the more absurd.

My advice to readers is the same as last year: keep low and keep moving.

Death of a scientist

If I had to give the perfect example of a scientist, I would choose Rita Levi-Montalcini, who has died aged 103. She was discriminated against as a Jew and as a woman. During the fascist era, when Jews were not allowed to hold senior university posts, she studied in secret in an attic, working on nerve growth in chicken cells. In 1986, in her mid 70s, she was awarded the Nobel Prize.

She was still doing a couple of hours of research a day, until her death.

Happy New Year

My best wishes to everyone for the year to come.

If you are regretting that final drink - it was just that one, wasn't it? - ponder this. Today is the 40th anniversary of Britain joining what was then the European Economic Community, one of the worst decisions in British political history leading to the worst hangover as bad decisions often do.

Shed a small tear for Britain, and if you have the strength for anger, write to your MP.