New Year Predictions

In common with many others I have decided to make some New Year predictions:
1. We will suffer public sector strikes although there will be little public sympathy for them as the recession will affect those in the private sector more.
2. The coalition will stick to its guns and survive despite Tory rebellions, in particular on the EU and Global Warming.
3. The AV referendum will be lost although there will be other constitutional changes. The Bishops will retain the right to attend and vote in the House of Lords which will be part elected and part appointed.
4. The Bank of England will increase interest rates which will give many who have taken out mortgages a problem.
5. The coalition will introduce measures to encourage growth which will have to be bolstered at a later date in the year.
6. The LibDems will win the by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth.
7. Assange will be extradited to Sweden. Wikileaks will cease to function.
8. Iran will explode a nuclear bomb.
9. The eurozone will continue to flounder and inflict misery on the PIIGS and possibly even France.

10. England will win the Sydney test.
11. We'll have more snow in London this winter.
12. Ed Miliband will step down as leader of the Labour Party.
I've stuck my neck out on one or two. No point being a wimp when doing this kind of thing but I do not promise to eat my hat if I get my predictions wrong, even if I owned one. Happy New Year.

The A21

When you take the A21 from the M25 in a southerly direction it starts as a dual carriageway but after the exit for Tonbridge reduces to a single two way road causing a tail back made worse by other traffic filtering onto it from the left. The A21 continues as a two way road until you get to the roundabout at which you can turn left into Pembury hospital and right onto the industrial estate with all the super stores. Since John Lewis opened a month or so back the congestion is horrific and the tailback from the Tunbridge Wells direction is unspeakable. Once the new Pembury hospital takes over the A&E from the Kent & Sussex hospital it is possible to imagine that ambulances will be stuck for up to half an hour before being able to exit the roundabout. Whoever is responsible for this lunatic piece of planning deserves to be sacked as does whoever is responsible for the traffic management in Tunbridge Wells itself. No doubt the last government, out of malice, refused to agree to the A21 becoming a dual carriageway down to Hastings as it was against both the South East in general and areas that returned Conservative MPs and Councilors but the area deserves much better not least because if it were not for the wealth created by the area the country as a whole would be a poorer place. It is the biggest earner after London. Let us hope the new government will sort this nonsense out. If Blair could have the A43 from the M40 to Northampton turned into a dual carriageway in next to no time (in order it is said to satisfy Silverstone) this government can surely arrange for the same to be done for the A21.    

Russian Spy

Wonderful to see that the attractive Anna Chapman has joined the Putin Young Guards. Her elevation to this august body has been seen as a reward for being discovered as a sleeper spy and being forced to return to Mother Russia. Of course in these days of total transparency in the Russian superstate it would have been expected that her life as a spy in the USA would have been revealed to the world. The modern Russian state has responded in exemplary fashion by making Anna a hero of the Soviet Union Russian Federation for having been so successfully unfrocked and for having appeared in a number of lingerie advertisements. Why though was Anna not photographed completely in the nude? There is a feeling of disappointment in some circles and a worry that Russia has not yet fully joined the rest of the world in the transparency stakes. A source within the FCO was heard to say that Russia's reluctance to have Anna pose completely naked could have a detrimental effect on the START treaty with Bummer Obama and feared such reluctance might be reflected in Putin being coy about revealing his nuke. This seems unlikely as Putin was not at all shy in exposing his torso while riding a horse in deepest Siberia.     

Cable

Self love is something politicians understand. With a few notable exceptions it is something politicians indulge in. After all who else can love them, apart from, I suppose, their mothers? Vince is a leading exponent of this deeply unattractive personality flaw as witnessed by his extraordinary statement that he he has the power to bring the coalition tumbling down. His departure would pass totally unnoticed after a day or two but it is clear he is not going to be sacked, yet. He is going to be left in office to swing in the wind, to squirm on each occasion he makes a decision against his stated preference. Murdoch's News Corp will now have to be given the go ahead to acquire the shares in BSkyB it does not already own since if Vince were to refuse consent his refusal will be seen not as the result of an objective finding but as one of pure prejudice. LibDems may be able, like socialists, to get away with decisions made out of malice on the local scene but not nationally. Although I am wrong about socialists. Under Blair and Brown they blatantly took decisions that favoured cronies rather than the country. Knowing this how could Heffer be a fan of Blair?    

Interest Rates

I suspect that the CBI is right and that interest rates will rise next year to combat inflation. The rise will have to be steeper and last longer than it needed to because of The Bank of England's quantitative easing policy. Many commentators warned that this would be the effect of QE and there is no doubt it is a major factor in the inflation we are now experiencing. Next year is going to be a particularly difficult year for the Government what with the increase in interest rates and the cuts. This will give the Unions an excuse to flex their muscles and make matters worse through strikes although I hope that there are no further riots on our streets. The weather will have improved by then but it is interesting that people on Jeff Randall Live this evening were talking about having to think about dealing with snow in a different way if it is going to become a more pronounced feature of our winters. Perhaps Boris Johnson's article in this morning's Daily Telegraph has hit a cord. If I were the Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond, I would be saying that there is something wrong with the Meteorological Office's forecasts and that there must be an enquiry to determine why. The Meteorological Office forecast a mild and damp winter and the Government will have planned its bad weather and gritting policy on the back of that prediction. So how come the Met Office got it so wrong whereas Piers Corbyn through his study of the sun got his forecast so right?      

What is going on?

The Royal Mail has to be sold because the EU says so. It is being sold without any provision about the use or non use of the Queen's head on our stamps. We are spending billions a year on wind farms because the EU tells us to. We are spending millions on a palace for an EU President who, even when Van Rompuy ceases to hold this joke position, will still still be a Van Rompuy nonentity. We are spending millions on an EU foreign service for what possible benefit to those who have no interest in being represented by the EU. We are paying a huge salary to the EU foreign secretary, another joke. Soon there will be the President's yacht, the President's plane and a directive that we have to fly the EU flag from every building. Let those who are keen on the EU pay for these things. Why should the rest of us subscribe? We have neither asked nor have been asked to pay for any of these things. Why? We are not part of the Eurozone but we are having to pay for the damage the euro has caused because some piece of EU legislation that relates to the environment is being used to make us do so. Why? Why is our government not saying no? The EU parliament is toothless but even if it had teeth would it fight against this waste? Very doubtful as its whole ethos is to spend, spend, spend taxpayers' money. We need a referendum about whether or not we stay in the EU.  

Christmas Weather

This is not another blog about global warming, nor about the inaccuracy of even the short term forecasts put out by the Meteorological Office. Neither is it a blog about the beauty of snow observed from afar nor about what a curse even a little of it is when you want to venture abroad, particularly when it melts a bit and then freezes leaving roads and pavements a slippery nightmare. Tunbridge Wells, like Rome, is built on several hills and following the short sharp blizzard yesterday the roads became grid locked there as drivers realised their vehicles had lost traction on the icy streets. People drove very, very gingerly if they advanced at all. Will this weather last a month? It is to be hoped not as otherwise we shall all miss those outings and Christmas parties and in effect be confined to barracks. We might even have to buy provisions we had not planned on buying because we were bidden to the rellies or, if expecting guests,  to eat turkey and Christmas pudding without end if they fail to turn up. The mind boggles. Time for a drink, I think. A pity there is so little global warming this year.    

Is Huhne Pointless

The answer is certainly yes. With the temperature in London now at 1 degree celsius Huhne has announced 'green' energy package which is going to cost all of us an extra £500 a year for us to heat ourselves. Huhne can of course afford this nasty little stealth tax but what about the rest of us? What is particularly galling is that by ruining the country side with wind farms and solar panels, all of which are pretty useless as we know for producing electricity, he refuses to make any significant investment in other alternatives including gas, shale and nuclear. Why is this? It is almost as if there is a conspiracy amongst governments against the continued use of existing fuels. Surely to God there are those amongst our politicians who are as aware as the rest of us that global warming warnings are dubious at least. Why don't they speak up? Why, apart from Lord Lawson, is there no well respected politician out there putting the argument for a re-assessment of the 'science' of man made global warming. Of course we should preserve the environment, that has always been a Conservative tenet, but not in this extreme and unnecessarily costly way which is itself so destructive of this green and pleasant land. And what about this rubbish carbon market - words fail me.....     

Pastor Terry Jones

Should the Home Secretary ban Pastor Terry Jones, the leader of a church numbering 12 members in all, from visiting this country and speaking to members of the English Defence League? Terry Jones is the person who was going to burn the Koran on the anniversary this year of the 9/11 atrocity but who was eventually persuaded not to do so. By backing down, albeit under considerable pressure, it shows that he is not a totally unreasonable person. The fact that he backed down is not the point though and neither is his threat to burn the Koran. On what basis should the Home Secretary refuse him entry to attend and speak at a rally organised by the English Defence League?  Only if the speech contravenes our laws. In the name of free speech etc we have allowed extremist Muslim preachers into the country and done nothing when they have spouted inflammatory nonsense so why not Mr Jones, who seems a bit of a joke ayway? There were too many occasions when the Labour government refused entry to persons with awkward views for no good reason other than prejudice and their need for electoral reasons to appease extremist Muslim opinion. This must stop and so we must allow those with views we may find abhorrent to come here and make speeches even to frightening organisations like the English Defence League. It is most essential that we demonstrate that this government respects freedom of speech and all that that means and if necessary protects Mr Jones and the English Defence League from being attacked by that equally frightening organisation, the Anti Nazi League.    

Warm as Toast in Brussels

The Coalition are doing a great job trying to sort out the deficit, education, welfare, transport, the prisons, the NHS and the Armed Services amongst other things and perhaps do not have the time to concentrate on issues like Global Warming and the EU. This is a great pity as a vacuum has arisen which needs desperately to be filled by a statesman with foresight and the guts to shrug off the opprobrium his speeches would attract. Such statesman's message would be twofold - first that for the EU to survive the Euro has to be wound up and secondly that before another penny is spent on the Global Warming strategy a proper scientific investigation needs to be carried out in a transparent manner. This does not mean that this ranter has change his mind about the EU - he passionately believes we would be better off out but that the only way to exit is in an orderly manner which cannot be achieved whilst the Euro problems are the focus of the EU leaders. This does not mean either that this ranter believes in Global Warming, man made or otherwise, but is prepared to abide by the findings of a properly balanced scientific inquiry as I'm sure it will vindicate the conclusions of the scientists who do not accept the views of the warmist scientisits. By good argument and perseverance a statesman could achieve both these aims. He would have to be a Government minister perhaps or at least someone with the necessary clout and stature. But who? There's the rub. I had hopes for Hague but he seems to have lost the fire in his belly that he had when he was Leader of the Opposition. Cometh the hour cometh the man, as they say. Well I damn well hope so.     

Nothing Changes

Listening to the leftie students trying to justify the violence at their demonstration against the increase in tuition fees was like a walk down memory lane. Every time the Conservatives are in government it is always their policies, according to the left, which are to blame for violent demonstrations and not those thugs amongst the protesters with their own agenda who set out to damage to people and property. The leftie logic or excuse is that these thugs are not responsible for their own actions. If so then the thugs are all lunatics and should be dealt with as such. Why is it that when in opposition the Conservatives only protest by democratic means against measures brought in by Socialist governments? It is of course because Conservatives are true democrats and believe in the rule of law whilst many on the left are still believers in the communist - as we saw or heard from the pathetic mutterings of those representatives of the National Union of Students yesterday. By their language it seemed that they were condoning violence. One wonders whether they knew there was going to be violence in advance and even encouraged it. Will the new leader of the Unite Union be following where the students have led? His curious remarks about resistance could be construed that way. As Eisenhower said 'the price of freedom is eternal vigilance' and I trust the Coalition appreciate that. Many had thought that with the passing of the Communist regimes we could relax our guard against the extreme left but it seems the gene pool lives on. How disappointing.   

Boring Students and Other Things

What a pack of spoilt brats the students are. It is frankly staggering that so many of them can take off so much time for purely selfish reasons i.e. in order to save having to pay for something that is of considerable benefit to them. I have run out of patience and any sympathy I might have had for them to begin with has long since dissipated. Anyone would think that the whole tuition fee issue was a matter of life and death whereas it is only of peripheral importance in the great scale of things.  The LibDem to-ing and fro-ing on this issue has been nothing but extraordinary and humiliating, mercifully resolved to a degree with their ministers quite rightly deciding to vote in favour of the changes. Why though are David Davis and other Tories going to vote against the proposals? They hint they are being altruistic but I for one am against having to spend more on student education when so much of it seems to go to so called Universities for gormless courses. Enough is enough. Much, much more important is the economic disaster that the clowns who believe in global warming want to bring down on us by saddling us with £20 billion of extra costs each year to tilt against a non-existent problem. Much, much more important is to escape from the bonds which tie us to Europe. Once we had a global view but now our horizons are restricted to a European perspective for the first time in our lives. Shame on us. Shame on us for not promoting our view of life and protecting ourselves against the Napoleonic and Sharia notions of civilisation and the rule of law, the pettiness and constrictions of which I reject as a free born Englishman. 

Julian Assange

Scotland Yard has announced that it has the appropriate papers to enable them to hold Julian Assange of  Wikileaks and bring extradition proceedings against him at the request of the Swedes. If the form of extradition proceedings follow the old format  a case to answer will have to be proved before Assange can be extradited. During the process the wikileaks will presumably continue to appear as they will no doubt afterwards, whether Assange is extradited or not, as it seems there is no way in which these leaks can be stopped. It appears the leaks have caused real upset amongst a number of those named in them and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is having her work cut out apologising to foreign dignitaries. One wonders why these leaks have been made. Money, revenge or a hatred of the USA must surely come into it somewhere and possibly all of them for one or more of the 'leakers'. I find it difficult to believe that anyone could think they were being altruistic in making the leaks. Why for a start do the public need to know what is being revealed? I for one feel somewhat guilty reading the leaks - it feels like prying into someone else's diary one has accidentally picked up and finding out all sorts of things that are interesting but that one really shouldn't know. We know, because we were told so as children, that eavesdroppers only hear bad things about themselves. In our case that we are 'paranoid' about the special relationship.      

Tax Protesters

So protesters closed down Topshop for an hour yesterday because they don't like people making money and so arranging their tax affairs that they pay the minimum. I wonder what contribution to the general tax take these protestors make. Polly Toynbee, who was present at the protest, makes some contribution but I do not get the feeling that she wishes to pay over the odds, owning I believe more than one house. 
The protest was to draw attention to the £1.2 billion dividend paid to Lady Green by Arcadia, the owners of Topshop, which the protesters say should have been subject to UK tax but which wasn't because Lady Green is a resident of Monaco. However if the protesters are interested in increasing the UK's tax revenues why did they stop Topshop trading, thus making more profit and thus paying more tax? Curious logic. The logic of jealousy and spite.  

The Congestion Charge

At long last Boris is getting rid of the westward extension to the Congestion Charge Area. Why isn't he getting rid of the congestion charge altogether? We all pay taxes to maintain the roads and those of us who live in London also pay to park our cars on the street. Why therefore should we have to pay to use the Queen's Highway? It is not as if London streets are some sort of private club, they are a public concourse. What is more a town is a congestion of people, houses, businesses, shops, restaurants, roads and cars so why impose a double tax on cars. The argument that it controls the level of traffic is dubious at best. Basically the congestion tax is just another stealth tax and a regressive one as well as it hits the poorest hardest. It should be abolished.

Chutzpah

One has to admire the chutzpah of the committed global warming believer who tells us that this year has been one of the hottest on record despite temperature readings and empirical evidence which show otherwise. It is like the Serco representative who despite empirical evidence to the contrary could not accept that the variable speed limits on the M25 created jams rather than helped the traffic flow. The chaos algorithm Serco used was possibly too conservative - in any event in my view it kicked in a reduced speed limit too soon and to too slow a speed. Better not to have interfered with nature. The same surely goes for global warming which, if it is happening at all, is a natural not a man made phenomenon.       

Why is it that so many African countries are unable to handle the results of elections? It seems that despite the Electoral Commission announcing that the Opposition leader had won and the UN representatives involved in the election believing likewise the President's man on the Electoral Commission has now ruled that the President won after all. Another example of chutzpah or gall every bit as breathtaking as Woolas's statement that today's High Court judgment has created uncertainty, which of course he would not have said if the judgment had gone in his favour.

World Cup

So we didn't win it. A great disappointment for football fans although much less so for the rest of us. Even though it would have brought coin to these shores would it really have made a profit? Many think that unlikely knowing how cost overruns on projects of this kind spiral out of control. A relief therefore for the taxpayer and yet an irritation that we only garnered two votes and that Russia won even without Putin making a trip to Zurich. Could he have known it was already in the bag and thus did not have to make any extra effort? If so, I wonder how he knew and why FIFA decided on Russia. We will probably never know the full story. Save for one or two of them the FIFA members are a motley crew. I would hate to go tiger hunting with them. I think they and Russia deserve each other. Does the way these things happen remind you of the Eurovision Song Contest? I think we should resign from both and set up our own institutions which we control. 

Chanukah

If you go to Conservative Home playpolitical.typepad.com/uk_conservative/2010/12/william-hagues-chanukah-message-to-jews-in-britain-and-around-the-world.html you can see William Hague sending a Happy Chanukah message to Jews around the World. Was it really meant for ED Miliband or to show that Hague is even handed when it comes to Israel and the Arabs and thus unhelpful statements that Hague is keener on the Arabs than Israel are wrong? Whatever, it's a nice touch.

Hysteria or what?

Did the Armistice terms in 1918 make World War 2 inevitable? The conventional answer is 'yes' but had the Powers that be taken notice of the multiple and some would say obvious signs from Germany of the disastrous effects of the Armistice terms on that benighted country and had the Powers that be been intelligent and forceful enough to do something about it the answer must be 'no'. Is Europe sleep walking into a similar disaster by persisting with the Eurozone? The conventional answer is 'no' but are the Powers that be failing to take any notice of the multiple and some would say obvious signs from the 'piigs' (or rather currently only Greece and Ireland) of the disastrous effects of the bail out terms being imposed on them by the ECB and others and will the Powers that be fail to do something sensible and intelligent in time the answer must be 'yes' - there is no evidence to the contrary. It will thus be up to countries like Ireland to do the right thing. What is the right thing for Ireland to do? Only time will tell but today it seems obvious that the present Irish Government will be defeated at the upcoming General Election and that the coalition that takes over will include Sinn Fein with its policy of bail out rejection. It is not clear though that Sinn Fein will have enough clout to persuade their coalitionists to reject the bail out terms. I never thought I'd say this but I hope they do. Common sense needs to prevail since without it we could even descend into another European war.        

Taxes

Now that Osborne accepts that lower taxes are a good thing for stimulating growth, viz. the 10% tax on profits from intellectual property researched and developed here, why does he not take the next logical step and abandon the 50% tax rate and reduce other taxes. It is well documented that lower taxes produce greater tax revenues. The reason is not hard to understand as those allowed to keep more of the money they earn have a greater disposable income to use in a myriad of ways. All of which use will benefit the private sector thereby increasing its wealth and that of the individuals in it who by earning more will pay more in taxes. QED.

Wikileaks

Hardly interesting to learn that before the General Election the Governor of the Bank of England expressed great concern to the US ambassador about Cameron and Osborne lacking experience. A statement of the blooming obvious most would say. Neither had been in Government before but neither had Blair or Brown before they crashed the economy and Osborne seems to be doing rather better than that. It is to be hoped that ex member of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee Danny Blanchflower and current member Posen's gripes against Mervyn King will be ignored as they sound very much like sour grapes to me.

Hardly interesting either to learn that Brown and Miliband D considered asking Hillary Clinton to emphasise US support for a 'strong' Europe (a euphemism for support for the EU apparently) as a way to highlight Conservative schisms on this subject. Brown and Miliband D it seems were also using Britain's role in the EU (and one assumes the Conservative attitude to the EU in contrast to the then Labour Government's attitude) as an example of Conservative economic and foreign policy 'isolationist' tendencies. What a joke as the only international tendencies of the left have been those of the Red Flag as evidenced by their love of the fascist EU regime.