Regime Change

I am becoming increasingly impressed by this government and the quiet way it is going about its business. Such a relief from the shenanigans of the Labour government over the last 13 years.  I was talking to a retired councillor today who was explaining how many staff they had to take on to deal with the regulation/laws that spewed forth from government over the 13 years and how contradictory a lot of it was. The  amount of energy Labour put in to getting a headline each day rather than on governance is still possible to imagine. How many Law and Order and Terrorism bills did they enact and are we any better off than we were before? One thing they left us though was our right to vote and in a way that does not skew the result. The AV proposal must not pass as it not only skews the result but weakens democratic choice. We do not have a proportional system and I hope we never do as I want to vote for a person and not a party. All elections in this country should be conducted in the same way as current Parliamentary elections and the referendum on AV should be extended to cover this issue too. Pity the Arab world though with its democratic deficit and Egypt in particular at this time. In order to keep the country from falling into the hands of another autocrat Mubarak should move quickly to hold truly independent and democratic elections in which he is  not a contestant and hand over to his successor whoever it is. That way he can leave the stage gracefully and with some honour. Small hope though. He will go messily in the end and leaving a vacuum to be filled with turmoil to be sorted out by the army. This will lead to another general becoming president who will no doubt throw a few crumbs to the crowd but will otherwise rule in the same way as Mubarak. These people can't help themselves.   

Balls and More Balls

We are in for a very boring time as Balls continues, as he did today on the Andrew Marr Show, to propagate the lie that the UK financial crisis was caused solely by the banks and had nothing to do with the Labour government and the Coalition repeats the truth over and over again that government 'investment' was just spending gone mad. Balls has to propagate the lie because that way he hopes if you say something often enough people will believe it, that when people get fed up with taking the deficit reduction medicine they will delude themselves into believing Balls is right and that the cuts are unnecessary and that the reputations of himself, Gordon Brown and Labour as paragons of virtue on the economic front will be restored to the level achieved by the lies of Alistair Campbell and Blair. I do not care how boring it becomes but the Coalition must keep on and on telling the truth about who is to blame for the deficit, that government spending is not investment but simply spending other people's money which all of us know is always spent less well than by the person who has earned it. Archbishop Cranmer http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/ would like us to concentrate on more dangerous issues (see his blog post today 'Egypt and Islam: democracy or dictatorship') and I am sure that he is right but we cannot let the economic argument be lost to a statist bully like Balls. Balls needs to forced to become more androgynous.     

Egypt

Is Egypt condemned to having an authoritarian government of a socialist or capitalist kind or could it be the first Arab nation to have a fairly elected government which holds general elections at regular intervals? It is curious that so many well educated leaders of countries have failed to learn from the many, many examples of autocracies being more or less bloodily overturned at some point or other that they do not seek to put themselves forward for election from time to time and to accept the result even if it goes against them. Is it all to do with the money or their fear of what would happen to them if their sins were found out and exposed by their successors or is it some Islam or macho thing or perhaps a bit of everything? If Mubarak had stood for election at various times during his rule would the Muslim Brotherhood now be in a position to take power? I doubt it as they would have been exposed as the extremists they are - despite the BBC saying they are now jolly decent chaps - and quite likely defeated. Even if they were to win it is possible, although unlikely, that they would also hold regular elections. Failure to do so would though leave the defeated leader and his party holding the democratic high ground. Why can't the Arabs be more like the Indians? I think the Mubarak regime is likely to fall and fear that the Muslim Brotherhood will take over the revolution. On balance the devil you know is better than the one you don't know. I'm glad I'm not Egyptian. I'm very glad to be an Englishman and to have Cameron as Prime Minister. He has certainly upped his game this week and his speech to the Davos Forum today proves his credentials as a democratic supporter of capitalism.  

Publish and be Damned

First of all I do not understand why anyone would want to know what that buffoon John Prescott was saying over his telephone, even when he was a minister, and secondly I find it very difficult to care whether his or anyone else's 'phone was hacked. No great story or scandal has been revealed to the public as a result of the hacking although I acknowledge that some have suffered embarrassment as a result of their intimate conversations being reported in the press. Is the hacking we are talking about any different from someone listening at a keyhole and then reporting what he or she has heard to the world? I do not believe there is a crime involved in listening at keyholes so why should the police waste its time and our money on bolstering the egos of celebrities vying with each other to complain about their fatuous conversations being overheard and reported. Presumably all those celebrities who have complained to the police are on the 'A' list. Pity the poor celebrities whose conversations have not been 'hacked' and reported. They must be wondering what it takes to get onto the 'A' list. The answer though to those who worry about their conversations being 'hacked' is not to say anything controversial over the 'phone and not to read the newspapers that instead of reporting real news report on overheard conversations - in other words the tabloid press. As Wellington said in not dissimilar circumstances all those years ago 'publish and be damned'.

Soros

Soros, the champagne socialist, enemy of Britain (he played a big part in our ignominious exit from EMU) and of the Tories, has come out with a statement today at Davos that mimics the Labour/Balls line i.e. that the Tory policy of dealing with the deficit is flawed and will drive the UK back into recession. How does he know and how is he any more able to judge these things than the rest of us? Why should we listen to him? He is a trader and gambled and won on the EMU but I wonder how many of his other gambles have come off? Presumably he has been invited to Davos because he is thought of as some kind of guru but would he have been invited if he had not made a bob or two on sterling all those years ago? I wonder if he lives in the UK and pays his taxes here? He may, of course, be proved to be right but as the cuts have not even begun to bite yet I would say that his statement is a little premature. Cameron did not make this point in his responses to Miliband but made it very clear that he will continue with the deficit reduction programme. Speaking of Cameron I think that his performance today at PMQs was one of his best. It was more measured, less arrogant and somehow more magisterial. He appeared to be more at ease. He should adopt this format in future. He even, surprisingly, answered more fully.

GDP Shock

To make an understatement the news this morning that GDP contracted rather than grew or flat lined in the last quarter of 2010 was disappointing. This has come as a late Christmas present for Labour and you can visibly see them gloating. I have considerable faith in George Osborne though to remain both unflappable and focused despite this news. I went to a Centre for Policy Studies event shortly after Osborne was appointed Shadow Chancellor where at the age I think of 34 he gave the most accomplished speech to 100 or so of us and satisfactorily answered all the questions put to him, many of them somewhat hostile. Osborne impressed me then by his coolness and intelligence and I just sincerely hope he resists the huge pressure he is now under to change tack and that he uses the budget to announce some really significant measures to boost growth. The country cannot afford to go back again to the bankrupt policies of the last Labour government as personified by its present leaders, Miliband, Balls etc. What a catastrophe they were.  

Political Correctness

Well the Sky football presenters Messrs Keys and Gray have fallen foul of the political correctness brigade by making somewhat derogatory remarks about a female football linesman. Frankly who cares about a couple of old boys making silly and offensive remarks that were not intended to be broadcast. Clearly Sky does as it was the lead story on Jeff Randall Live this evening, if you can believe it, although it was cleverly used as a lead into McDonalds's sponsorship of grass roots football teams, training and so on and an interview with Ms McDonald (I assume no relation), the head of McDonalds in the UK. Surely having their words broadcast and thus showing how out of touch they are with present thinking would be punishment enough rather than suspension and other, as yet unspecified, but promised disciplinary action. Keys and Gray must feel like right idiots for having made such a stupid mistake. If I were they I would want to know which busybody made what were recorded private conversations available to Sky management. The person who shopped Keys and Gray is not someone I would like to have as a friend as you have to have a very strange mindset in my view to think that by telling tales out of school you are righting some wrong.

Peter Sissons and the BBC

Today's DailyMail has an extract from Peter Sissons's book that is due to be published next month. In the Daily Mail piece Sissons writes  about the inbuilt left wing bias of the BBC. It is apparently impossible to get a promotion if you mention that Margaret Thatcher is one of your favourite politicians. What Peter Sissons says is hardly news but it is confirmation, if confirmation were required, that it is definitely not before time that the BBC were cut down to size and made to employ journalists of the right as well as of the left. Those of us who have never trusted the BBC for the palpable slant it puts on every story have seen this bias again this week over the Andy Coulson story which has been presented in a way that no story about anyone in or attached to the Labour party would ever be presented. The assumption you get from the BBC's version of the Coulson affair that he is lying and thus gulity. Did the BBC ever report the story of McBride's departure as Brown's press officer in the same way? McBride was found guilty of making stories up about the Tories which of course was a nasty little trick learnt from that excrescence Alistair Campbell who is still peddling rubbish on the BBC about the Tories. The only reason the BBC has anything to do with him must be because he is a man of the left. There is nothing else to recommend him. He's not even funny or interesting.    

Resignations

It seems the gossip about the reason for Alan Johnson's resignation yesterday was wrong. It was not he who was having an affair but according to the papers it is his wife who is alleged to have had one with Johnson's bodyguard. Scotland Yard are investigating!

There is another resignation to speculate about - that of Andy Coulson. Andy Coulson has stated in his resignation letter that "continued coverage of events connected to my old job at the News of the World has made it difficult for me to give the 110% needed". He also confirmed that he stood by what he had said about those events "but when the spokesman needs a spokesman, it's time to move on."

Driving to a meeting and not wanting to listen to Tony Blair any further (lovely line from Peter Oborne in the Telegraph today describing Blair at the Chilcott enquiry as being 'tanned, expensively groomed, fluent - and evasive') I turned to Radio 2 only to hear the utmost drivel on the Jeremy Vine show from people emailing or texting with their reactions to the news of the Johnson and Coulson resignations. I do not know whether or not the BBC chooses which emails and texts they read out on air but none that were read out were from a Tory or coalition supporter and thus they were all sympathetic to Johnson and unsympathetic to Coulson. It can't surely be true that only Labour supporters have the time during the day to listen to the Jeremy Vine show whilst all the Tories, except for ones like me, are working. Interesting thought though.

Balls

So Alan Johnson has resigned as Shadow Chancellor out of love for his Civil Servant mistress and if the stories are to be believed it was Balls's special adviser who let the cat out the bag about twice married Johnson's affair. I am not sure whether Johnson resigned because he knew the affair was going to become public or whether the information about it was made public after he had decided to go. It would be logical to assume that Johnson knew the story was about to break anyway and that was why he resigned. In any event it has worked out well for Ed Balls who thinks he is cleverer than any other politician and that his view of the benefits of state intervention are those that should be imposed on the country. After all he does not agree that the deficit was caused by policies he and his boss Brown pursued. More objective observers however believe differently. There is no doubt that Balls is combative and that the Coalition will have to squash him continuously (after all the price of freedom is eternal vigilance or in this case clever and effective put downs) but there is also no doubt that he does not have the most attractive of personalities. He has the air of a bully and of someone who is not quite straight. It will be interesting to see how Osborne copes with him.

Spending

Fascinating the statement by Sir Nicholas Macpherson that the Labour government lost control of spending at the Ministry of Defence and the Departments of Health and Education. Not that one is surprised but how Labour can now say that the deficit was solely as a result of the global banking crisis, a fall in tax revenues, the increase in unemployment and the need for a fiscal stimulus beggars belief. Nothing whatsoever to do ith the policies and the loss of control over the finances of this country. Labour also mismanaged certain EU payments in the agricultural sector and as a result we are going to have to pay the EU £1 billion in fines. In view of the failure of the EU to deal with fraud, which is costing this country considerably more than £1 billion, I think we should set off all fines against the money stolen from us. Such a set off would put pressure on the EU to get its house in order. If we cannot have a proper democracy in Europe we can at least ensure that we only pay what we have agreed to pay net of all fraud.    

Inflation

Those of us who lived through the years of high inflation in the '70s and '80s know how badly inflation affects the lives of us all. It is like a huge tax hike and to get rid of it involved a lot of pain. Whichever index you look at (Brown's CPI, preferred because it leaves so many essentials out of its calculation, or the more honest RPI) inflation is now rearing its ugly head again and despite Mervyn King's reluctance to do so the Bank of England must start doing something about it. Not to do so will be an act of criminal neglect and should result in the Chancellor dismissing both King and the other members of the Committee charged with keeping inflation under control - or at least those members who month after month vote to keep the interest rate at 0.5%. My view of Mervyn King was somewhat neutral but is now highly suspicious since I do not remember who pointed out the other day that he was one of the 300 odd economists who wrote to The Times to denounce Thatcher's method for dealing with inflation. All those economists ended up with egg on their faces as the Iron Lady's prescription won the day. I wonder what position the Labour party will take on this issue. They are now going back into their comfort zone as a party of opposition. Almost without taking a breath they are now railing against some policies that in office they had claimed as their own, e.g. education and the national health. So much easier for lefties to oppose. In contrast the Tories are not so good in opposition and generally speaking much better in government. Long may that continue!       

Brian Cowen

Brian Cowen, the Taoiseach, Prime Minister, of Ireland has asked his members of the Dail to vote next Tuesday on a motion of no confidence in his leadership. His foreign secretary has announced he will stand against him for the leadership of Fianna Fail but not for the role of Taoiseach. The opposition are seeking a vote of no confidence in Brian Cowen as Taoiseach and there is apparently to be a general election in March anyway. Unless there is the kind of unrest in the Fianna Fail party as there was in the Labour party here against its leader prior to our last general election there seems little point in having a no confidence vote. If the Labour party had changed its leader it might have done better at the polls but a self serving no confidence vote amongst his Dail party members which Cowen is most likely to win will be seen as a stunt by the electorate and the hoped for boost for Fianna Fail from Cowen winning will fail to materialise. Anyone within Fianna Fail who is a serious contender for the leadership will do well to keep quiet for the time being. The time to stand for the leadership is after the general election has been lost. It is unlikely that the opposition call for a vote of no confidence in the Dail will succeed and, if it does, even more doubtful that it will result in an opposition win this near to the election. Despite Cowen using the bankrupt Brown argument that as he took Ireland into the economic disaster they are now in he should remain and lead them out of it as he has the expertise etc., etc., he would be better off concentrating on how to improve the lot of Ireland in the few weeks he has remaining as Taoiseach. He would at least be giving something back to Ireland. Wishful thinking I know but there is no harm in dreaming.     

Old & Sad

As predicted Labour won this by-election and the Tories came in third. It is difficult to see how anything will be affected by this result and thus the anguish expressed by some Tories is in my view overdone. I have to say that Lady Warsi's comments about the Tory right's supposed reaction were overdone as well and indeed rather irritating. I regard myself as being on the right of the party but, like I'm sure most Tory voters,  I'm infinitely happier having the coalition than not having Labour in power. I would be happier still having a Tory government although save in two or three cases I'm not sure whilst Cameron is in charge how different its policies would be from those of the coalition. In concluding that the by-election result will change nothing I have taken Ed Miliband's comments on the outcome into account. With the best will in the world Miliband's response can hardly have inspired many in his party when he said that the result shows the coalition's economic policies are wrong. Labour has some way to go yet before a majority will believe that they can be trusted with the economy again. Why a majority would ever believe that is beyond me since history has shown that Labour has left the economy in a God awful mess each time it has been voted out of office. Much better not to vote them in the first place.    

French Cries

It is reported that the French Prime Minister is coming to London today to ask us to help out with the Euro crisis by agreeing to greater integration. The French have a habit of asking us to help out although I do not recall what thanks or help we have ever received in return. Where was the help we needed against the Argentine as the French continued to sell our enemy exocet missiles? Where was the help we needed when we were are under enormous pressure before our ignominious exit from the European Monetary Union? Of course we must not talk about the last World War. We must, as de Gaulle would have done, say NO. There will be those who will say we should help out and use the occasion to seek a quid pro quo. When have we ever had the better of the negotiations with the cheating, lying fascist bureaucrats at the EU? We do not have a long enough spoon to deal with the EU tricksters. Let the eurozone countries go hang and clear up their own mess. This is a real test for our government, a real test for Cameron and its timing could not be more propitious, coming as it does after the vote on the EU Bill  in Parliament yesterday.

Obama Loves French Fries

Bummer is at it again claiming that the French are the United States's greatest ally. Bummer has of course to distance himself from everything Bush  said and did but the Americans felt very differently when they were frustrated by the French whilst trying to get a resolution about Iraq through the Security Council at the UN. So angry were the Americans that they even refused to eat French Fries and a number of restaurants changed their menus by calling French Fries something else. One has to laugh but on the other hand Bummer is showing all the gift for government that our late lamented leader Mr Brown showed. I do hope someone puts him out of his misery by beating him at the polls at the next election. I hope so for our sake as neither he nor the third rate Hillary is a friend of this country and I do not trust them to do the right thing in an uncertain world. We have been lucky so far that there has been no international crisis of the kind that occurred in the Bush years as I have no confidence that they could do any better, indeed as they are bleeding heart liberals they will inevitably do worse. Of course Bummer has to go to to Tucson but there is a nagging thought that says the real reason he is going is for party political purpose not for national interest. Until the mid-term elections he had demonstrated his Brown like tribal roots and I don't think that he's suddenly become more impartial or even handed. 

Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa on the Kings Road does a three course lunch for £9 and sells its house wine at £10 per bottle. It is the best value anywhere in London and the quality of both the food and wine is not that bad either. As you can imagine that kind of price attracts an eclectic crowd from manual labourers to those of the more intellectual kind. It is a fascinating place if you enjoy people watching. I was there for lunch with my elder brother yesterday and we were talking about education. We agreed that with the rest of what the government is doing it will have to ensure that the politics of the teacher training colleges is changed so that the spirit of those like Ms Birbalsingh is fostered rather than suppressed. I had also reminded my brother how two of my children had passed through teacher training college having been called to see their respective tutors in one case only once and in the other case only three times and wondered what else these tutors could have been doing to earn their salary, if anything. It was at this point that a rather powerful but unshaven and scruffy chap at the next door table interrupted us. I was a little afraid that he might want to thump us. However he excused himself by saying that he was a teacher but had become so disillusioned he had taken a year out to travel to Australia and India and had only just returned. His disillusionment had arisen as a result of three main issues - firstly, the employment over the last 10 years of middle management and the increased bureaucracy and waste that this had inevitably generated, secondly, the stifling of any individual thought or action making teachers afraid to make any complaint against a manager or support a colleague wishing to do so for fear of losing their job and lastly grade inflation where what was an exam question at GCSE had now become an A level question. He also mentioned that the emphasis on course work for exams had had the result of making it easier for girls to pass rather than boys who work better under short term pressure, nor was he in favour of sats. He hoped the coalition government would re-balance the education system and rid it of the unnecessary jobs worths and allow teacher enthusiasm to flourish for the benefit of the children.      

Quangos

Quango burning has not it seems been as effective as first hoped. Indeed according to the Public Administration Committee the bonfire has failed to result in greater accountability and in a reduction in spending. One of the Committee members, Charles Elphicke MP, has said that quangos spending our money to lobby for more money from us is wrong. He's right and it should be prohibited. The Telegraph believes Mr Maude should think again and I agree with them. Whilst preparing further quangos for the bonfire Maude should also look at the Charity Commission and repeal the Labour Charities Act. It is appalling that charities can now engage in political lobbying. It is a misuse of the donations given them by their supporters for the charitable purposes for which they exist. Whilst repealing the Charities Act the present chairman of the Charity Commission, Suzi Leather, should be dismissed. The only reason for her appointment was because she was a Labour party apparatchik and would ensure that the goal posts for becoming or remaining an educational charity would be moved to the charity's detriment for naked political purpose.  

The Deficit is a Deceit

Ed Miliband says the Government is being deceitful about the deficit. He says that Labour was not to blame and that the deficit was not caused by chronic overspending but by the global financial crisis. From 2002 the Labour government spent billions in excess of tax revenues and racked up a huge deficit even before the global financial crisis hit us in 2007. There is no deceit - unless Miliband is deceiving himself. I don't think he's that stupid so the only other conclusion one can come to is that he is telling a big fat lie. Die hard Labour supporters like Mr McCluskey, the new leader of the Unite Union, no doubt believe in what Miliband is saying - they would do wouldn't they. McCluskey also believes in fairy tales since he told Jeff Randall on Sky this evening that the cuts are being imposed for no reason other than an ideological one and that the first thing to do in order to deal with the deficit was to stop all tax avoidance. According to McCluskey there are £40 billion of tax to be raised by abolishing tax avoidance (Jeff Randall quoted a figure of £25 billion). How does anyone know how much could be raised by banning tax avoidance and how would you do it particularly when it is perfectly legal to arrange your tax affairs in such a way that minimises the tax you have to pay. McCluskey also wants to increase the rate of tax for high earners. In his estimation obviously he should be able to put his hand in a rich man's pocket for all his needs.
       

Mohammed

Apparently this awful name is now the first (I hesitate to say Christian as we all did when I grew up, including my Jewish friends) name given to most boys born in this country. Furthermore we learn that not only is Britain a Mecca for Hamas in its campaign to 'delegitimise' the Israelis here but also that there has been a record number of conversions of Her Majesty's subjects to Islam. This is all quite frightening to those of us who never thought for a moment that our country would be changed to something we never wanted nor were asked to vote on. We all know the world is a small place and that we must expect globalisation here at home, particularly as a result of the legacy of Empire but God save us from those appeasers who would accept Sharia law and other such obscenities. We must stand up for our rule of law, our English way of life and even our feeble Church or, in the words of Dad's Army, 'we shall all be doomed Captain Mainwaring'. Already London has changed out of all recognition from my youth and I am well aware that there are other towns in this country which are predominantly peopled by those from abroad as if we were a new sparsely populated country needing significant numbers of immigrants to grow. We have as usual been let down by the Labour party and in part also by the Conservatives. Damn all politicians for their arrogance in thinking they know best.    

Monbiot and Other Nonsense

For those who do not know Monbiot he is a warrior for those affected by global warming and ungreen policies and now it seems those wanting a roof over their heads. According to his article in the Guardian this morning he has discovered that there is an enormous number of houses with excessive bedrooms, i.e. bedrooms that are never or hardly ever used. He thus wants these bedrooms to be allocated to those who are unable to get pads of their own. The Soviets tried this and indeed house sharing of some sort or other is still probably being practiced in parts of those countries now freed from having to hide behind the old Iron Curtain. It was certainly still alive and well and greatly resented by those forced to live with others in Hungary when I was there 10 or so years ago. What is it with these people who want to dictate how others should live their lives? What makes them think they have any idea worth imposing on others? I suppose though useful idiots do have a function by giving the rest of us something to laugh at. Sadly though his support for the global warming nonsense is costing us all a huge sum of money and will continue to do so until the pseudoscience is slain. On this topic I see that the Met Office is saying it did not publish its long range forecast of a cold winter because it was concerned about the reaction to it. It seems though that whilst it forecast a cold winter it was still publishing charts on its website showing rather the reverse - see http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100070451/how-the-doomed-met-office-tried-to-spin-its-way-out-of-trouble/