Chatham House Gets It Wrong

Yesterday evening I went to hear Anna Hashimoto play the clarinet sublimely in the Cadogan Hall. This evening I went to Chatham House to hear an on the record talk on what should be done about far right extremism in Britain. We were all given a report of the findings thus far which I have not yet studied but from what was said by the two authors of the report and the panel of experts it seems the extreme right wing is very dangerous and needs to be studied in greater depth. It was made clear that the authors would like additional funding to enable them to carry out the further study deemed absolutely necessary to understanding the extent of the problem and what needs to be done to sort it out. The report equates the BNP with UKIP, which I suspect will upset 99% of UKIP members. They are both labelled as movements to the Right of the centre-right Conservatives although of course we know that the BNP is a national socialist party and therefore of the extreme left. Why can those on the left never accept that the Nazi party is a socialist party and thus a scion of the left? A significant number of UKIP members share the same concerns apparently of BNP members about immigration and Islam. I wonder how many members of the Labour Party do likewise. Perhaps if the authors of the report get their further funding they will be able to find out. The BNP exists for the same reason all political parties exist but there are very few who vote for their particular policies which it seems to me are born of fear of being made to live in a land of immigrants, in a land with a different culture and in a land with less likelihood of being able to get a traditional job. We have failed these people by giving them no education and allowing the BBC to talk down to them. The wonder is that millions of our fellow citizens are not out on the streets demanding redress for the failure of our politicians for whom the Labour party must bear the greatest blame. There were two questions that it would have been interesting to have heard the answers to (a) did the panel think the BBC could be responsible for a reaction to the stories they put out day after day on the benefits of immigration, multiculturalism and so on and (b) how many others do they think also resent the unbridled immigration and the manner in which they have been forced to adapt in a short space of time to significant  changes in our culture? I do not believe there is a significant risk of violence from the BNP and the idea of any risk if violence from UKIP is risible. I would be more worried about violence from the left of which we saw specific evidence in the recent riots. Chatham House would be much better off investigating the extreme elements of the left, including the trades unions.          

Lies, Sex and Marriage

The Tory modernisers tell us that the party must change to persuade voters that we are not the nasty lot portrayed by the BBC, the Guardian and the rest of the left wing media. The campaign to paint us in the nasty corner was highly effective and one to which the Tories sadly had no answer when it started after we crashed out of the EMU. It seems to me it all began with the lie pushed by Alistair Campbell, he of the piss poor bagpipe playing skills, that John Major tucked his shirts into his underpants. In order to detoxify the party we have had to embrace all sorts of things including, until it became obvious to all that the Labour way of running the economy was batty, Labour's spending plans. Amongst other changes we abandoned our perceived anti homosexual stance by supporting the repeal of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 which had prohibited the intentional promotion of homosexuality in schools. We supported as well the Civil Partnership laws allowing homosexuals to enter into a form of relationship similar in law to marriage. I well remember as a young lawyer being told by one of my partners that homosexuals should be allowed to have the same inheritance rights as married couples. This comment came about because the partner had a barrister friend who lived in a happy and stable relationship with another man who acted in all respects as a wife and had no other occupation and so who on the barrister's sudden death was left impecunious with no right to the barrister's estate, the barrister having died intestate. The Civil Partnership legislation thus makes undoubted sense. We have though now arrived at a point where the modernisers, including Cameron, wish to go further and change the rules of the Established Church so that homosexuals can marry even though the marriage service itself specifically refers to man and woman, husband and wife and procreation. Some of us have a great problem to this day with the way the Church has modernised the beautiful language it inherited from our forebears by making what was poetry mundane and thus diminishing the stature of the Church. To go further and to allow marriage between a couple of the same sex is to my mind a step too far and must be resisted. Although it is probably not an issue which exercises most of those who have an historic connection to the Church of England I sense that there will nonetheless be disquiet at the way that yet another of our traditions is being traduced for no good reason. The idea that all discrimination should be abolished is nonsense since it cannot be achieved. Sensible anti discrimination laws should recognise this and allow us our preferences whilst ensuring that our preferences are transparent and not used to diminish another person. Marriage is for men and women whereas civil partnerships are for same sex couples. What is wrong with that?        

A Toast to Derry Irvine

According to a friend of mine Tony Blair is a very nice guy. I knew Blair, albeit when he was at the bar. For reasons which are too tedious to explain I instructed him on some commercial matter, or rather I instructed the urbane and claret loving Derry Irvine but at some point was passed on to Blair whilst Irvine was involved in some industrial tribunal matter. Blair was not a patch on Irvine and came across as somewhat inane. We found ourselves and our respective spouses at a wedding where the champagne flowed like cement. The Blairs knew fewer people than us and try as we did to rid ourselves of them they stuck to us like leeches. We all know why - I had some good clients that Blair epoux and epouse would have liked to have worked for. I can't complain about that but it was rather tedious nonetheless as both of them were as dull as ditch water with no scintilla of fun about them at all. This was way before he became an MP or the PM of a disastrous administration that we are all suffering from and will continue to suffer from for years to come, and I didn't even vote for his party. My view of Tony and Cherie was not altered by the fact that my wife had known Carole Caplin since she was born. Why am I saying all this ? I'm not really sure save that this friend who told me Tony Blair is such a nice chap has made me want to do so. If not in awe of Blair Cameron acts as if he is or did so until recently, that is a big mistake. That Miliband is now trying to ingratiate himself with the Blair supporters in his party by meeting with him and reporting that Blair says he should be himself. Cameron needs no advice from Blair. Despite his weaknesses in my eyes he is worth ten of Blair. He is also worth ten of Clegg and has no need to mollycoddle him. Cameron must now stand up for Conservative policies as they are the only policies that will get this country moving again. Osborne should also be reminded of the need for Tory policies and to stop trying to out-finesse everyone and everything. There is a time for being blunt and that time has now arrived.          

Russia's Western Journey

Putin has won the Russian Presidential election in the first round of voting. It seems that having potential opponents in prison and banning some parties from putting up candidates had the desired effect, presumably because the majority would not have voted for the extreme parties anyway. It seems likely also that there were some irregularities in the way votes were cast and possibly counted but not in sufficient numbers to affect the outcome. Medvedev has now called for a review into the legality and basis of the convictions of Khodorkovsky, Lebedev and others regarded by some as political prisoners. It is difficult understand why Medvedev has decided to ask for this review now. I hope it is because Medvedev, who seems  a straight kind of guy and who I believe, unlike Putin, accepts that Russia should always support the rule of law, wants to do something in the last two months of his Presidency to demonstrate that Russia will right wrongs where they manifest themselves. There is considerable evidence to support the view that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were found guilty for political reasons but it cannot be certain that that is so. If the review is held entirely in public and the evidence produced to it is also available for all to see and the result follows the evidence then whichever way the verdict goes all parties should welcome this as a further step on Russia's path to a respected place in the world. If this is not the point of Medvedv's intervention but is something more cynical then the 20 years or so on Russia's journey from a communist state to a respected member of the western world is going to take longer.

We Need More Steve Hiltons

There is a requirement in this country that you have to pay people working on the shop floor in your factory the same amount per hour whether they are experienced or learning their trade. A small or medium sized business and possibly even a large one does not want to pay £90 an hour to someone who has to be taught how to do the job and will take five years before he has the experience to be able to perform the work as it should be done. A friend explained today that his company can only compete by taking on experienced workers and that that is what they do. They would take on the inexperienced if they could pay them at the rate that reflects the fact that they are inexperienced operatives. Indeed my friend said that they could take on youth workers in other jobs if they did not have to pay the minimum wage, which is a real disincentive to doing so. One wonders why the government, which surely knows the effects of this rule, doesn't do something about it. Steve Hilton is said to be leaving Downing Street in part because he has found it so frustrating to get things done with the Civil Service blocking even sensible changes. We all know how the Civil Service blocks or delays policies it does not like for one reason or another but if the stories are true that Steve Hilton is not the only able and ambitious one to have left the government in the last few months to pursue a career outside because of the frustration of getting any change through the Civil Service it is about time the Civil Service were booted out or that at least a clause was inserted in their contracts that to frustrate the stated policy of a minister is grounds for instant dismissal without pension. Apparently despite the need for root and branch reform of for example the monopolistic BBC and the atrophied EU the Civil Service will not allow this to happen. Pray the departure of Steve Hilton does not mean the end of agitators like him. Pray that he will be like the many headed hydra and that his going will sprout many more Steve Hiltons to push through the reforms we so desperately need in this country. We certainly need one to push through the NHS reforms, even of the kind referred to by Charles Moore in his depressing article in the Telegraph this morning which you can read here.

A Horse For Harriet

When you are invited to go riding you must make sure that the horse lent to you is not one that has been involved in illegal activities like being lent by a third party to your friend who has invited you to ride it. Your friend could after all be a crook or someone of dubious reputation and may not be paying for the upkeep of the horse or its stabling and may not even own the saddle and bridle with which the horse is 'dressed'. To be caught riding such a horse is of course a truly serious offence and deserving of not only the equality guru Harriet Harperson's censor if the mount you were lent to ride were a mare or worse still a gelding but also of several column inches of articles and other media reports castigating you for this truly awful offence. In future I would advise Cameron to have every horse he's lent for hunting or hacking to have it hoof printed by the Metropolitan Police with the results put through the special horse hoof digital identification system known by its acronym SHHDIS to make quite sure it's not on the wanted list. Some may say you need never go through this rigmarole as you can always tell a shifty horse by the way it glints at you out of the corner of its eyes, stretches its nostrils, snorts, minces about on the tips of its hooves and generally tries either to nip you or to turn its backside towards you to give you a kick. Such horses should immediately be hobbled, handed over to the police and deprived of all lumps of sugar until they have gone through rehabilitation. Better still to be handed over to Saint Harriet for gender recognition equality programming until her garden has been fully manured.

Why do Climate Warmists Lie?

It is quite flabbergasting but not surprising that with all the money our government and many others are pouring into projects to save us all from so called injurious climate change that anybody has the gall to say that deniers are funded by big business. Bishop Hill has a chart here that gives an example of the amounts spent by warmists and deniers respectively. Since almost the beginning the warmists have taken the view that in order to galvanise governments into action they had to 'shock and awe'. This they have done by lying and cheating on a massive scale. Goebbels is alive and well and proud of his warmest pupils. Apparently though it is alright to lie if you are a warmist. Even James Garvey of the Guardian thinks that lies that benefit the warmist cause are justified which gives the lie itself to the Guardian's claims to be an ethical newspaper free of hypocrisy. Despite the lies and the extraordinary amounts spent on the warmist side it is the arguments of the denier side which are at long last making headway. Not nearly quickly enough to bring in a change of policy to stop the billions of taxpayers' money being spent on pointless, wasteful projects. Hopefully sense will prevail in the end and that all the CO2 targets will be abolished. Osborne should follow his fellow conservatives in Canada and use his budget to stop this nonsense. As for people like James Garvey, ridicule is the best antidote.