Very British (Political) Subjects

2009-06-28T22:27:00.000+01:00

Welcome to Very British

(Political) Subjects

Editor Peter Troy

The Sunday Quote

2009-06-28T01:28:00.001+01:00

"I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French."

Charles de Gaulle - Leader of the Free French 1940 -45 and one time French Prisident.

(Editor - I love it ... I simply could not resist it!)

Armed Forces Day

2009-06-27T19:01:00.002+01:00

Max Hasting's in The Daily Mail picks up on General Richards' speech – and much else – using the topical hook of Armed Forces Day which is being celebrated today for the first time.

A very British Review

2009-06-27T17:08:00.014+01:00

The odd thing about the American defeat – if such a word can be used – in Vietnam is that it came about through internal problems, not military defeat. The Viet Cong were beaten. The North Vietnamese Army was beaten.

The bombing of North Vietnam was shockingly effective (although this was not appreciated at the time.) The US effectively won the war. It was defeated by the home front and an astonishingly effective propaganda campaign. Not for the first time, the communists probably didn’t believe their own success.

The odd thing about the British "victory" in Southern Iraq is … well, it was a defeat. Worse, it was a defeat that came about because of flawed political and military decisions, taken not by the men on the spot, but men in Whitehall.

.The scale of the disaster was never understood by the home front – even I didn't know the half of it, and I am as well-informed as any civilian could reasonably hope to be – due to a compliant media and a sheer lack of comprehension. The British government preferred to believe its own "spin" rather than the truth. In doing so, they betrayed the British soldiers who went to war without the right equipment and no clear plan, and the country itself. Charges of treason would not be inappropriate.

That is the conclusion, of this remarkable book. There are actually relatively few British writings on the subject of Iraq, although Sniper One and Eight Lives Down provide some insight into the lives of the soldiers there. It should be noted that Sniper One paints a picture of Basra – and Iraq – that was at variance with the official government-promoted version of events. Ministry of Defeat provides an overall history of the occupation – something that has been sorely lacking – and details, in a very "take no prisoners" attitude, just went wrong in Iraq.

The core of the matter, Dr North writes, is that the British Government refused to recognise that it had a serious problem on its hands. As the militias gained power in Basra, the government preferred to believe that it wasn't a serious issue – little more than a public order issue – and convinced itself that Britain's expertise from Northern Ireland gave it an advantage over the US. That might have been true if the expertise had actually been used (it wasn't) … but in any case, Basra was not Northern Ireland. This little piece of self-delusion cost lives, Mr Blair!

The troops in Ireland had far better intelligence and much higher troop levels. Much has been made of the shortage of American troops after the Fall of Baghdad, but the British had the same problem and, unlike the US, the MOD learned fuck-all from the experience.

If that wasn't bad enough, the equipment procurement process was badly screwed up. When the RAF was being allowed to spend billions on the Eurofighter, the Army had to make do with the Snatch Land Rover – which Northern Ireland experience had shown was badly under-armoured – which caused the deaths of many British soldiers.

The issue was not that the British Army was under-funded – although soldiers were being underpaid for their role – but that the money was being spent on long-term programs that would not provide useful equipment (if that) in time to be useful.

It is quite typical, as Donald Rumsfield pointed out years ago, that countries go to war with an army that is unprepared for the task. It is rather less typical that a country would go to war, find itself in serious shit … and then continue blithely developing technology that was effectively useless, prepared for the wrong war. Instead of fighting the last war, the UK was looking towards a hypothetical European RRF, one of Tony Blair's pet projects. Billions have been spent – for nothing.

Common sense would tell someone of Blair's intelligence – surely – that a European force wasn't on the cards. When has the EU ever agreed on an enemy?

The British media also comes in for bashing. Not, it should be noted, for the largely American left-wing media army bashing, but for being the dog that didn't bark. The MOD generally tried to spoon-feed propaganda to the British TV, which largely ate it up and came back and begged for more. Early signs of trouble were ignored, or taken out of context, and even when the media did pick up on signs of trouble, they never understood the underlying factors behind the war.

The media did pick up on problems with the Snatch vehicles, but took the "under-funded military" line rather than realising the truth. Reporters who questioned the Army line, such as Christina Lamb in Afghanistan, found themselves blacklisted.

The core reason for British "success" in Iraq, Dr North notes, was that the UK never really had control over Basra. The Shia inhabitants of the area, after the events of 1991, preferred to organise themselves rather than trust the coalition. Iran was seen as a better ally by some, a deadly threat by others, but always as a far more significant player than the coalition. Under constant attack, the British forces were slowly withdrawn from the area, conceding control to the militias, who started to loot, rape and slaughter at will. The inglorious end to the story – the retaking of Basra by Iraqi forces with American support in 2008 – was barely a footnote in the British media.

The contrast between Iraq and the Falklands is staggering. The Falklands were another "come as you are" war, one fought by a far more determined PM for limited goals … and one that Britain came closer to losing than anyone would like to admit. After that war, the lessons were learned and incorporated into new developments. Iraq seems, instead, to be the forgotten war. If that wasn't bad enough, most of the mistakes are already being repeated in Afghanistan.

This is an angry book, written by an angry (and very British) genleman. It isn't pleasant reading for anyone with a British heritage, but it is necessary reading. God help us.

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Ministry of Defeat by Dr Richard North is the first and only forensic examination of the political and military failures by the British during Iraqi Freedom.

The Sunday Quote

2009-06-07T17:35:00.004+01:00

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"What a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place."-

UK - Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressing House of Commons, June 6, 1944.

It's War

2009-06-07T17:05:00.002+01:00

It is an interesting reflection of the much talked about current political crisis is that much of the reporting is couched in bellicose terms, borrowing freely from the military vocabulary.

Thus, resort is being made to a "war", to "battles", "attacks", "campaigns", "coups" and other such terms, including reference to a "wounded" prime minister.

When it comes to the real war out in Afghanistan, however, the political classes are strangely silent, showing as Booker reports in his column today, almost complete indifference to the plight of our armed forces in that increasingly perilous theatre.

This picks up on Dr North's observation on Thursday, when at one point in the debate in The House of Commons when only ten MPs were in attendance.

The Voters

2009-06-02T21:33:00.004+01:00

There has been a great deal of comment – also some huge "entertainment" – over the details of MPs' expence claims in the UK media. If the allowances are treated as a salary supplement and thus part of the overall remuneration package, the claims take on a wholly different complexion.

What it comes down to is that MPs, unable or unwilling to make a case to the public – their paymasters – for higher basic salaries, have gone round the back door and awarded themselves a covert pay increase.

That, in itself, is bad enough, but what is really offensive is that MPs then created a tax-free status which then puts them above all us mere plebs who must give their all to the tax man, on pain of fearsome penalties.

It is this cavalier arrogance of our political classes is a message that voters will not forget.

Wot No Queen?

2009-06-01T21:03:00.013+01:00

This week the French Government will do what they do best - insult the British.

Monty addresses D-Day troops, June 1944
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''D-Day'' is regarded by many as one of the most important military operations of all time. The Normandy beaches are famous for the part they played on 6th June 1944, when despite heavy losses, American, British, and Canadian troops broke through Hitler's Atlantic Wall defenses and began the long-awaited invasion of occupied western Europe, leading to the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany.

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The Normandy Landings were the first operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy, also known as Operation Neptune The landings commenced on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), beginning at 6:30 British Double Summer Time (H-Hour). The D- Day assault was conducted in two phases: an air assault landing of American, British and Canadian airborne troops shortly after midnight, and landings of Allied infantry and armored divisions on the coast of France commencing at 6:30. The land forces were commanded by General (later Field Marshal) Montgomery, arguably one of most brilliant military commanders of the 20 th centuary.

The number of personal involved was enormous. The operation was the largest single-day amphibious invasion ever, with 160,000 troops landing the morning of June 6, 1944. There were 195,700 Allied naval and merchant navy personnel in over 5,000 ships were involved. The landings took place along a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coast divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The eviction of the Nazi's from France was a huge operation by mostly British, US and Canadian troops.

Last week sections of the UK media picked up on the the French Government's amazing snub to the Queen by not inviting Her Majesty to the official 65th anniversary celebrations of the D-Day landings on 6th June is an insult to the British and Commonwealth Veterans who will proudly salute their fallen comrades as well as an insult to the memory of 17,566 British and 5,316 Canadian troops who died. in the battles for the liberation of France.

Rather than paying due deference to the surviving veterans of the forces that liberated France. President Sarkozy is making much political capital of the hugely popular US President Obama's attendance, yet French officials have been dismissive of suggestions the the Queen as head of State of the UK and Canada should also be included in the events. Massive media attention is to be given to the French and US Presidents jointly attending the key events. The French snub is particularly disrespectful when one considers that Queen Elizabeth is the only present Head of any State in the world to have served in military uniform during the Second World War and indeed personal met many of the troops prior to the invasion in the summer of 1944.

Britain will not be without representation at the official ceremonies in Normandy next week, the UK Prime Minister, the Junior Defence minister and other British politicians having at the last minute requested invitations from the French when they realized that they would lose out on the publicity opportunities when they were informed that Barak Obama and consequently most of the world's press corps will be attending; every one wants to be seen to be best friends with the most popular politician on Earth. One could be forgiven for thinking that the politicians are more concerned with their image rather than remembrance.

As arrangements stand though there are no plans by the French organizers for Gordon Brown to visit any of the three beaches that were stormed by British and Canadian troops, nor will the Prime Minister attend the final march of the Normandy Veterans Association prior to their disbandment. Shame on him and shame on the French government.

So there we have it, 65 years after the start of the liberation of Western Europe, at a huge cost in human lives, the most long standing and respected Head of State in the western world with direct personal connections with the events that are to be commemorated in Normandy is to be shamefully excluded. This is clearly because it is feared that Her Majesty's presence would upstage the overtly image conscious, self focused French and US Presidents. In that assumption the French Government is correct.

The Sunday Quote

2009-05-31T18:19:00.001+01:00

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'' When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.

James Boren Quoted in The Official Rules by Paul Dickson, 1972
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Politics Today

2009-05-31T16:57:00.003+01:00

A Populus poll for The Times published yesterday has the Tories on 30 percent for the euros with UKIP in second place on 19, relegating Labour to third place on 16. The Lib-Dems get 12 percent, the Greens poll 10 and the BNP are on 5 percent (eight percent in the North of England).

What is interesting about this is that Cameron's speech about needing a "massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power ... from the EU to Britain ..." seems to have made no difference to UKIP's fortunes. Nor indeed has his apparently unequivocal pledge to give us a referendum on the Lisbon treaty.

Would be Conservative voters are it would apear abandoning the Conservative Party in favour of UKIP.No doubt this is because the majority of people did not believe that Cameron meant what he said, doubt that was – it appears – entirely justified from comments in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday. In that paper, Andrew Porter interviews Cameron asking him outright whether he will "finally promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, even if it has been ratified elsewhere?" And the reply is the stock Tory answer: we will "not let matters rest, I think everybody understands this, if the treaty is ratified by everyone and the election isn't until 2010 and the Irish vote yes then obviously I won't be content with that."

Thus, as suspected all along, the apparent promise to hold a referendum come what may was not a promise after all. Mr Cameron was playing word games and nothing at all has changed. By coincidence though, William Hague is interviewed by The Spectator, where he tells us that: "Trust in politics is now at an unprecedented low point; the shameless and deliberate abrogation of a binding manifesto pledge [on the treaty referendum] is surely one of the reasons why."Another reason is that thinking votors know that the Conservatives are playing word games on the possibility of a referendum on the Niece Treaty. Empty promises, it seems, are the politicians' stock in trade – and people are getting a tad sick of them.
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On the back of the Populus poll which brought us the current expectations of UKIP success in the euro-elections also come indications of support for "radical" reform of parliament. These included provision for a "recall", referendums on "important issues", fixed-term parliaments, more "free votes" in parliament, a cut in the number of MPs, stopping MPs having second jobs and a fully elected House of Lords. Also proposed was a change to proportional representation.

It almost goes without saying that all proposals got a favourable reception. Seventy-seven percent went for more referendums, 74 percent backed fixed-term parliaments and 73 percent wanted more free votes. Even proportional representation got 56 percent support, a small but clear majority in favour.

What precisely is the point of conducting this survey is not clear. Asking people, the majority of whom most probably have a limited grasp of how parliament works, much less of governance in general and constitutional theory, what is needed to fix a broken system, seems to have limited utility.

The whole process is akin to taking a broken-down car to the garage, to be confronted with a list of possible repairs, with the family being asked to vote on what should be done.The great danger of this approach is that it gives spurious legitimacy to changes which will not necessarily fix the problem. With Gordon Brown also mooting changes, including proportional representation, the whole process is in danger of getting out of control.In days gone by, before even considering changes, we would have had something like a Royal Commission, thoroughly to explore the problem and to produce a report, following which there would be widespread discussion and debate.

Whatever else, we must avoid knee-jerk reactions and quick-fix Elastoplast solutions. Above all, the politicians – who have made the mess in the first place – must not be allowed to dictate the terms of any reforms, with or without opinion polls.

2009-05-17T21:40:00.001+01:00

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The Editor's 'Sunshinelady',

Churchill Gardens Jersey CI

The Booker Column

2009-05-17T18:34:00.004+01:00

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Expenses but not as we know it; see Christopher Booker's column today, who has been doing some background research into the MP's expenses/allowances issue.
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The Sunday Quote:

2009-05-17T11:53:00.006+01:00

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“...It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

.“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God's help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.

.“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”

Oliver Cromwell, addressing 'The Rump Parliament in 1653, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly before being made Lord Protector of England.

Perhaps we need his help now, just a thought!

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Our Parliament

2009-05-16T19:29:00.006+01:00

On the popular ToryBoy blog Tim Montgomerie points out that Parliament (he means the House of Commons but it is a common mistake) needs more MPs like Douglas Carswell. He is probably right. Douglas is a good MP and shows commendable independence and strength of character, consistently attacking Speaker Martin (not just when that becomes fashionable) for not doing his job and being a government stooge; speaking his mind on various issues; and joining the Better Off Out campaign. Not that it is particularly clear what the latter will achieve.

There are, of course, similar people in the House of Lords but they do not receive handsome remuneration or indeed appropriate publicity and the upper House's work goes mostly unrecognised.

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Not for the first time, political commentator Charles Moore has put his finger on the spot in The Daily Telegraph, today. The headline and strap – accurately reflecting the text of his column – which exactly articulates the salient point: "The House of Commons is ours, not theirs. Don't ruin it, reclaim it

… Our thirst for revenge over the expenses scandal is understandable but there is an alternative."Writes Mr. Moore, "We must save the House of Commons. I never thought that, in writing such a sentence, I would be swimming against the tide of British public opinion, but people are so angry about the revelations of MPs' expenses that they seem not to care what happens to the entire institution."

Nothing in the torrent of coverage in the past days, led by The Daily Telegraph, has served to strengthen Parliament and many of the proposals for "reforms" will not in any way improve the situation, while the claque - always easily pleased – rushes in to applaud Mr Cameron for his "leadership", what he proposes is essentially a statist solution which does nothing at all to reinforce the primacy of Parliament.

In fact – as one might expect – he is simply reacting to events, his measure in part being damage limitation and in part and attempt to make political capital out of the situation. But his response has been of a party leader – which he is – not that of a parliamentarian. Thus, the "Cameron way" – as outlined by Moore

…… is to decide that MPs have been so despicable that they need to come under greater control. Some external authority – as yet undefined – will watch over them. They will work exclusively as MPs. If they are housed at our expense, it will be in barracks, with prefects to make sure they are all in bed by lights-out at 10.30.

There will be regular inspections of the contents of their boots. The logic is that if you cannot trust MPs, you cannot allow them to have much power. So parliamentary government collapses.

This is the wrong move. As a party leader, soon to become Prime Minister, Cameron has a vested interest in fostering a weak, compliant parliament. Its job will be – as it is now – to constrain the executive, which he will lead.

In strict terms, parliament is the "enemy" of the government, as indeed governments are the enemy of the people. We should tolerate them only because the alternative – of not having a government – is far worse.

Importantly , at every point, it is governments – not parliaments – which should be bound, hamstrung and constrained by rules which limit their freedom of action, their powers and their reach. What the Telegraph and the media is doing is turning Parliament - our Parliament, into the enemy, while the claque rush gleefully into the trap, and rejoice at the prospect of a Parliament in chains, not realising that those chains will be their chains.

Thus, the task, as Mr Moore avers, is to reclaim Parliament, to rehabilitate and to strengthen it. The baying of the crowd has never been a rational guide for action, and it is not now. Citing Edmund Burke, writing about the French Revolution, Moore quotes him saying, "Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation and foresight can build up in a hundred years." It remains, writes Moore, a useful warning.

Putting it more prosaically, we are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water. And, in this, one needs to remember that The Daily Telegraph is a commercial operation – its primary concern is to sell newspapers. That it has achieved, spectacularly. But, despite its protestations, that does not mean it is a friend of democracy.

Enough is Enough

2009-05-15T08:02:00.003+01:00

Fact: MPs regarded their additional cost allowances as an "entitlement", following which a system was set up to enable them to claim them. They represented a covert – and largely tax-free – pay rise implemented on the sly by a legislature which did not have the bottle to make the public case for higher salaries.

All the rest is detail and, however odious they might be, it is unfair to pick on individual MPs. Collectively, they are all guilty – some were just more creative than others in the paperwork they submitted which allowed the fees office to give them the money to which, under the system, they were entitled.

The fact is also that the political journalists – and many others – knew all about the system. It was put in place in 1972 and has been part of the remuneration system ever since.The basic mistake the MPs made, of course, was not to adopt the European Parliament system, where the MEPs are given a block grant, no questions asked, and no receipts required. Thus, perfectly legally, and with only minor and occasional protests, MEPs are able to trouser £45,000 a year as "office expenses", nearly twice the amount paid to MPs for their "expenses", with no damning paperwork that can be used against them.

Thus, for the media now to indulge in a feeding frenzy, touting its high moral – but incredibly selective - principles and "outing" individual MPs, is little short of hypocrisy. The system is at fault but, for more than thirty years, MPs have kept that system in place and the media have conspired in allowing it to continue.

Fixing the system, however, will change nothing. If anything, it will make it worse. With the intense media scrutiny now directed at individual MPs, many of those who might have thought of becoming MPs will now think otherwise. The net effect will almost certainly be a continuation of the trend towards hiring professional MPs, colourless, apparatchiks, whose main claim to fame will be their ability to keep their expenses accounts in order and tick the right boxes on their claim forms.

What will not be addressed – and nor is it being addressed – is the competence of MPs and the performance of Parliament as an institution. Egregious examples of its failure are seen even today, but they are lost in the torrent of prurient outrage over what amounts to trivial sums of money.

Thus do we say enough is enough. The madness of the crowd is upon us, from which there is no escape when it is all over Parliament will not be a better place. We will not be better off. We will have achieved nothing.

The Sunday Quote

2009-05-10T01:41:00.006+01:00

"In Germany they came first for the Communists,

And I did not speak up because I was not a Communist,
And then they came for the trade unionists,

And I did not speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
And then they came for me

And by that time there was no one left to speak up’’

A German, Pastor Martin Niemoller, Nazi Concentration camp survivor.

This posting is dedicated to the memory of Peter Painter a 17 year old Victoria Collage School Boy from Jersey CI who was arrested one day in the summer of 1943, deported to occupied Europe along with is Father by the German Military Occupying forces. According to a French resistance survivor, interviewed in 1946, Peter died in a squalid cattle truck in his Fathers arms on a frightful railway journey to the notorious Belson Death Camp during 1944. Their 'crime' was to have listened to the BBC on a hidden Wireless, this was forbidden under Occupation Rules.

The Jersey civilian informers who provided the information to the German Military Police were exposed in an article titled: ''I accuse'' written by the then Jersey News Editor William Troy, printed in the Jersey Evening Post 64 years ago today. Peter Painter along with his father who it is assumed perished on arrival at Belson have no known grave. Lest we forget.

ID Cards

2009-05-10T00:25:00.002+01:00

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It was reported recently that the controversial ID cards scheme will be piloting in Manchester in the autumn. This, in spite of the fact that the scheme is estimated to cost billions per year, and is entirely unnecessary. Both main opposition parties in the UK have vowed to scrap the scheme, seeing it for the waste of money it is... - Read More
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Unintended Consequences

2009-05-09T20:17:00.005+01:00

Commenting on the expenses controversy, Iain Watson, BBC political correspondent, makes a statement of the blindingly obvious. He writes, "Seemingly endless stories about MPs who, in the main, have not broken any rules - even if the rules themselves are being questioned - diminishes, from a low base, any remaining public trust in politics."

A worrying issue is the opportunity cost. While the political claque is indulging in its feeding frenzy, over what is in effect little more than bicycle shed syndrome, all sorts of things that should be in the news are not being reported by the MSM.There is an awful lot happening out there at the moment but the media seems to have given up trying, while the British political blogosphere is retreating into its own bubble and pulling up the drawbridge. This orgy of introspection is not healthy, since most people are politicaly apathetic at the best of times.

All too soon, we will see another immutable law kick into action – the law of unintended consequences. Ignore certain issues, or do not protest and politicians have a nasty habit of leaping up and biting you hard when you least expect it. At which time it is too late, thus is how political extremists win!

Some Of Our Millions are Missing

2009-05-07T21:11:00.008+01:00

In a detailed piece we are invited to get worked up about EU missing millions. Not only are they missing, the EU and UN have abandoned investigations into what happened to £60 million worth of funding for Kosovo, with allegation of serious fraud and corruption.

The funds for "economic reconstruction" to help rebuild a war-shattered Kosovo ten years ago were hit by at least 11 scandals involving 12 cases of alleged criminal activity and 27 examples of alleged breaches of rules on the awarding of contracts and nepotism.The trouble is, no one is really going to get interested. There is nothing anyone can do about it. No one will be held responsible. No one is accountable the fact of life is that people have better things to do with their lives than rail over things over which they have no influence, the course of which they cannot change.

So those of us who follow these matters mutter into our real ale shrug and move on to mutter about something else. The sad bit is that an MP whose partner has claimed £10 for a porn movie on parliamentary expenses, Ah! That's something people relate to feel some how they have some influence over and relate to it as if a plot in a soap opera.There in lies the difference between UK and EU politics.

Not reported this week was an interesting exchange in the House of Lords about the EU budget. Lord Campbell of Alloway, asked:

Her Majesty's Government what is the justification for the projected increase in the United Kingdom's net contribution to the European Community Budget to £6.5 billion in 2010-11.

Not an unreasonable question at a time of financial difficulties.

The response by Lord Davies of Oldham was the usual one - we really do not like the system and we really would like to rectify matters but as we can't we shall just have to keep handing the money over. I wonder if all those people who promise such reforms ever bother to read these replies and ever ask themselves why the situation is as it is. (Yes, Open Europe, Libertas and Taxpayers' Alliance, I am referring to you.)When he was pressed by Lord Campbell, Lord Davies became so snappy and rude that their lordships expressed their displeasure. He then proceeded to snarl:

My Lords, the House will appreciate that, if such a solution were available, all—or the majority of—European states would follow the strategy. However, the issues are more complex because the problems with accounting in the European budget are largely the fault of expenditure that is partly controlled by the member states; so it will not do to say that the issue relates directly to the European Commission or any other institution. Member states, too, must improve their standards of accountancy and effectiveness, which is exactly what the United Kingdom has been doing.

That last sentence is questionable in view of the fact that statistics have become meaningless under this government, what with all the shifting of goalposts and chaning of parameters.The question of enlargement was ignored and the subject of the surrendered part of the rebate, raised by Lord Waddington, pooh-poohed. Then Lord Lea of Crondall got to what his side see as the crux of the matter:

My Lords, is it not the case that the thesis, "We want our money back", is demeaning for a country in our position in the world after the G20 and all the commitments that we have entered into? The Conservative Party policy, "We want our money back", would mean that there would be no EU, which is what the Conservatives are driving at.

Well, actually, there is nothing demeaning in a country's representatives taking good care of its money, however rich that country might be.Which politician was respected more, Margaret Thatcher who got the rebate or Tony Blair who gave it away?

Anyway the soap opera continues while more and more billions of UK taxpayers money is given to the EU and millions upon millions is lost, in return for what exactly?

The not so accurate weather forcast

2009-05-06T00:29:00.005+01:00

The Met Office is forecasting a ''barbecue summer after two summers of rain''.

Welll now , given the shortcomings in past summer forecasts from the Met Offoce in London how much credence should we give this one?

Remember the summer of 2007? On 11 April of that year, the Met Office chirped: "The summer is yet again likely to be warmer than normal. There are no indications of a particularly wet summer." - the wettest summer for England and Wales since 1912. Temperatures were below average.

In April 2008, the Met Office projected: "Summer temperatures are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average." That didn't prepare people for one of the wettest summers on record, with high winds and low sunshine. Chief meteorologist Ewen McCallum said: "We can expect times when temperatures will be above 30C (86F) - something we hardly saw last year."

Mr McCallum admitted recently in a news conference that seasonal forecasting is still in its infancy - a cross between climate change prediction and tomorrow's weather forecast.But he said normal forecasting had massively improved, with the four-day forecast now as good as the one-day forecast when the Met office started more than 30 years ago.

I think I have spotted his problem, the Met Office was actually founded in 1854. So as with so much of what he says he is actually technically correct, in that it is more than 30 years ago, but hardly accurate!

As time moves on ....................

2009-05-06T00:03:00.006+01:00

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The media and the blogosphere are buzzing with that anniversary. Thirty years ago the Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher, won the first of four elections and began a government that proved to be the most radical in its reforms than any since Attlee's 1945 one that sealed this country's socialism. One can discard the left-wing canard that Mrs Thatcher destroyed this country's economy and political life. Britain in the 1970s was not a happy or efficient country.

A more insidious myth is propounded by some of the younger Conservatives that in 1979 the country deliberately voted for radical reform. Absolute rubbish. The country rather hesitantly voted for the Conservatives, anyway, and nobody outside the immediate circle around Thatcher knew that she had any ideas beyond the widely shared rather vague assumption that "something needs to be done" with a country that had, apparently, reached rock bottom.James Callaghan who lost in 1979 also promoted the idea that there was a sea-change in opinion because it suited him to say so. In actual fact, he lost the election because he was perceived to be a bumbling incompetent. The third question that needs to be asked is whether those radical reforms have really changed the country or were they as Mark Steyn says in a recent article, largely about Obama, just a blip, a slowing down in the collapse?
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In retrospect it can be argued that Mrs Thatcher was not a conservative – she was a liberal. Her free market ideology was influenced by the economist Milton Friedman and the author Friedrich Hayek, both of whom described themselves as liberals. Furthermore, conservatism has not traditionally supported the ideas of any particular type of economic system, free market or not. Traditional conservatism has sought to maintain social stability through maintenance and gradual progression of the current social order. The market system which Thatcher imposed upon Britain radically altered our society in a very short period of time – some of the effects of which we are only just beginning to feel now. It was an economic revolution rather than a slow and gradual process.

Better Off Out

2009-05-05T23:48:00.005+01:00

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In the wake of that BBC poll that showed 55 per cent of this country's population would like to see us out of the European Union and in the midst of a huge financial crisis (made far worse by our own government as well as the EU, to be absolutely fair) Better Off Out is being relaunched as a cross-party group in both Houses.

The Better Off Out website gives the full press release as well as some other information about the group. The aim is to co-ordinate a parliamentary campaign of questions, both oral and written and, whenever possible, debates, thus raising political and public awareness of the EU and its dire influence on this country. Needless to say, this blog stands with the group and is ready to assist its work in every way possible.

Our Best Friends

2009-05-05T20:49:00.016+01:00

Monty 'Sunshinedog'

Green Island Jersey CI

.Man’s best friend could be just the rescue package Brown needs
By David Williamson of the Western Mail
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IF YOU visit a pet shop within walking distance of Westminster, do not be surprised if a hefty man with a deep Scottish brogue is examining the merits of a selection of puppies.

A politician’s career would be fried if he attempted to deflect a tough question in a press conference by playing a banjo. But play with a dog and photographers will drown out bleating inquiries about bail-outs for billionaires with the snap of flashbulbs.

Times are tough for Gordon Brown and a canine could be a source of solace and spin.

In the run-up to the 2001 election, Tony Blair attempted to rekindle the youthful euphoria of 1997 by arriving at Downing Street with a guitar case. What are the chances we will soon see Brown clamber out of his car with a five-week-old wolfhound?
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Global fascination with the arrival of the latest White House dog demonstrates the genius of President Obama’s news-spinning and contrasts with the clunking despair at the heart of the Labour machine.

On the night of his election, Obama promised his daughters a puppy. This was one campaign pledge that was quite easy for the press and public to track.

He soon added a new twist by announcing the hound would have to be hypoallergenic to protect the health of his eldest daughter. This portrayed Obama as America’s super-dad. Yes, he was cautious and hyper-intelligent, but he was not a closeted boffin; just as his daughters would have to wait for a safe puppy, so the populace could not expect an instant solution to financial malaise.

Economists will argue for years about the merits of his stimulus package and political opponents will disparage early claims that the nation is on the road to recovery.

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But each time Americans see Obama’s daughters frolicking with Bo, the Portuguese water dog (the decision not to imitate JFK and buy a Welsh terrier should not be taken as a snub), they will remember that their president is a man who keeps his promises and their hearts will throb with hope.

Choosing to announce the selection of this pooch as he approaches his 100th day in office is a honeymoon-prolonging masterstroke.
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Brown’s spin-hacks should have been e-mailing each other ideas for interesting pets (or, if they wanted to be radical, great policy concepts) {Right, Sunshine Bella, in deep thought} rather than concocting lurid nonsense about rivals’ family lives.
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Mr Brown should be advised not to imitate ostrich-loving music legend Johnny Cash who was nearly killed by his giant bird.
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All Prime Ministers long for a place in the history books, but being the first forced out of office by an ostrich is an accolade nobody wants.

Just a thought

2009-05-05T20:25:00.009+01:00

No matter how often and how carefully one explains, as I do to overseas clients from time to time, that the UK not having a presidential system prime ministers are not elected, too many people respond by complaining (to put it politely) that Gordon Brown or whatever stupid nickname they decide to give him was not elected.
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Indeed not and neither was any prime minister, especially not those who took over between elections. That would be Churchill in 1940, Eden in 1955, Macmillan in 1957, Douglas-Home in 1963, Callaghan in 1976 and Major in 1991 as well as Brown in 2007. It is the party that is elected and it is the party that decides who is to be the leader.
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In many ways this is unsatisfactory and shows up once again that there is no real separation of powers in the UK with the Executive being part of the Legislative and, consequently, strongly in control of it. That, rather than the existence of parties, imposes constraints on MPs. (We are assuming that MPs, unconstrained, would actually be decent human beings.)One could argue that with a smaller majority the Legislative would acquire more control over the Executive.
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Given the fact that between seventy and eighty per cent of our legislation comes from the EU with Parliament either knowing nothing about it or being unable to reject it, control of government is all our parliamentarians can hope for - power they cannot have and, apparently, they do not miss it.

Assuming that the UK country will one day be independent and sovereign again, should we not think of a different political system, one which would separate the two branches of government? Should the resignation of a Prime Minister necessarily entail a general election, thus allowing the people have some say in the matter of the next leader of the country?

Alternatively, could we not have something resembling the American system in which the head of the Executive is elected separately from the Legislative and then chooses his cabinet, which is then approved of or otherwise by the Legislative? The question there would be how to reconcile that with a Monarchy, which is still the most popular body in this country and has many useful attributes, not least keeping politicians in their place.

It used to be the case that an MP who accepted a paid governmental position or an "office of profit" had to resign and a by-election was called. Though this principle is enshrined in the Act of Settlement (1701) and Act of Union (1707) and is still adhered to in the United States where it was enshrined in the Constitution. Since 1919, however, we have abandoned the notion in Britain and MPs are merrily accepting emoluments under the Crown without having to face the electors again. Despite the howl of outrage that would follow such a suggestion, a return to the ideas written into the Act of Settlement could be a first step towards a better regulated political system of separated powers. Well it was just a thought!
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In my View

2009-05-05T20:18:00.006+01:00

Banking is too important to be left to Bankers is the conclusion of a report issued last week. The effects of the continuing banking crisis will be felt for generations, a committee of MPs has warned last week.

The Treasury committee, in its second report on the crisis, said that it had been caused largely by the banks' own reckless behaviour. "Bankers have made an astonishing mess of the financial system," said committee chairman John McFall MP adding "The culture within parts of British banking has increasingly been one of risk-taking, leading to the meltdown that we have witnessed''. Though as most small business operators will confirm that risk taking has not in fact been with banks lending to small businesses - the risks were taken, as is now well recognized, with reckless domestic mortgage lending and irresponsible and unaccountable high risk strategies in the complex and mysterious world of hedge funds, dodgy derivative bank securities and over investment in overseas emerging markets.

The scale of the losses incurred by the banking sector is difficult for most people to comprehend the figures are truly colossal. The total losses of British banks so far are a huge £207 billion of which only a third has so far been written down. The much troubled euro zone banks have lost £600 billion but have only so far written down 17 per cent of that loss. The low ratio of write downs by the banks is an indication that the banking sector's woes are far from over, the crises has yet to reach rock bottom and the consequential misery is likely to cast a further cloud over the business world, particularly small businesses.

This recession unlike the recession before or indeed the one before that is different in that this down turn in the economy is bank lead. The solution to the economic crises thus cannot be found within the banking world for they are the problem not the solution.

Contrary to the claims being made by banks many small businesses whose growth is fundamental to the economy are finding it very hard to obtain loans, except with much higher charges and fees. This is a situation that is being closely monitored by the Federation of Small Businesses' FSB Bank Watch scheme. Their detailed scrutiny of the banks will need to be long since despite optimistic noises from corporately closeted bankers there are dark storm clouds building in Europe which will threaten recovery on our shores.

We will do well to pause and remember that back in the '90s British bankers with the support of most of the corporate world (but not small businesses) and many politicians were spending vast amounts of money urging us to join the single European currency, the euro. Had this powerful group had their way the banking crises and economic cries that we are all in some way suffering from today would have been far worse than it is.

A large slump in the economy in Europe and the increasing likelihood of the collapse of the euro - a currency that is used by 16 nations in the so called euro zone - is a huge storm in the waiting. The most important fact about the euro as a currency that is not understood by most people is that it is a political construction and is therefore doomed to failure; it is only a matter of time. Recently I emailed five investment managers from large corporate fund managers seeking their opinion on the effects on equity markets of the demise of the euro. Without exception the answers I received demonstrated an acute (a depressing) lack of understanding of the political reality of the euro; an example that investment 'experts' work in a very self focused bubble.

The euro is not the product of a market driven economic process but is rather the product of a political idea. This means that from it’s inception, European monetary union (the euro) has served a political function to which economic and financial realities were always to be subservient. In short, when times get tough it won’t work and sorting out the mess of the euro's inevitable collapse will cost the banking world and the tax payer huge amounts; this will impact further on the UK despite the fact that we rightly rejected entering the euro twelve years ago.

The arguments for not joining the euro club at its inception are more true today, particularly the fatally flawed notion that one exchange rate and one interest rate are appropriate for economies with very different and disparate histories, structures, performances and sovereign governments. There are also institutional problems with the management of the euro which are now causing big problems, notably that the institutions of the European Union suffer from a well known ‘democratic deficit’. The European Central Bank that controls the euro lacks the kind of transparency that characterizes both the Federal Reserve Board in the US and the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England.

When the euro fails as one day soon it will, the cost to the people of Europe will be huge, some of that cost will inevitably impact on the UK economy which we can ill afford on top of the cost of the current rescission.

So there we have it a very gloomy state of affairs. The lesson, in my view, is that Corporate Bankers, Investment Managers, Politicians when left un challenged cause economic mayhem, that is all the more reason for an effective well informed media and attentive lobbying organisations.

North of Bradford

2009-05-05T19:53:00.000+01:00

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Dr Richard North continues his Afghan "season", with another offering over on Defence of the Realm.
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Thirty Years Ago

2009-05-05T19:17:00.002+01:00

The media and the blogosphere are buzzing with that anniversary. Thirty years ago the Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher, won the first of four elections and began a government that proved to be the most radical in its reforms than any since Attlee's 1945 one that sealed this country's socialism.One can discard the left-wing canard that Mrs Thatcher destroyed this country's economy and political life. Britain in the 1970s was not a happy or efficient country.

A more insidious myth is propounded by some of the younger Conservatives that in 1979 the country deliberately voted for radical reform. Absolute rubbish. The country rather hesitantly voted for the Conservatives, anyway, and nobody outside the immediate circle around Thatcher knew that she had any ideas beyond the widely shared rather vague assumption that "something needs to be done" with a country that had, apparently, reached rock bottom.James Callaghan who lost in 1979 also promoted the idea that there was a sea-change in opinion because it suited him to say so. In actual fact, he lost the election because he was perceived to be a bumbling incompetent.The third question that needs to be asked is whether those radical reforms have really changed the country or were they as Mark Steyn says in a recent article, largely about Obama, just a blip, a slowing down in the collapse?

In retrospect it can be argued that Mrs Thatcher was not a conservative – she was a liberal. Her free market ideology was influenced by the economist Milton Friedman and the author Friedrich Hayek, both of whom described themselves as liberals. Furthermore, conservatism has not traditionally supported the ideas of any particular type of economic system, free market or not. Traditional conservatism has sought to maintain social stability through maintenance and gradual progression of the current social order. The market system which Thatcher imposed upon Britain radically altered our society in a very short period of time – some of the effects of which we are only just beginning to feel now. It was an economic revolution rather than a slow and gradual process.

A taxing Issue

2009-03-15T10:44:00.005Z

The Scottish government's "radical plan" to introduce a minimum price for the sale of alcohol has a serious obstical to implimentation - EU Law.

However, in a comprehensive piece in The Times, we are treated to an explanation of how this plan would almost certainly fall foul of the all embracing EU.

This is on the basis of a legal opinion from the law firm Lovell's, a specialist in EU law, which contradicts Nationalist ministers at Holyrood who until now have claimed that minimum pricing would not be challenged by Brussels.

The legal firm argues that the effect of minimum pricing would be to prevent alcoholic products imported from other EU member states from having a competitive advantage against UK produced drinks that they would otherwise enjoy as a result of lower production costs. This, we are told, could amount to an unlawful restriction contrary to Article 28 of the European Community treaty ... which states that restrictions on imports and all measures having equivalent effect shall be prohibited between member states.

This issue, it seems, has already been tested in the ECJ in respect of tobacco, in a case between the EU commission and the Greek Government which had argued that setting a minimum price was necessary to discourage tobacco consumption in Greece.

The Court stated: "It must be observed that Article 30 of the (EC) Treaty enables the member state to apply national provisions that restrict intra-community trade in order to protect the health and life of humans.

"However," it stated, "measures based on Article 30 of the Treaty cannot be justified unless they are necessary in order to attain the objective pursued by that article and that objective is not capable of being attained by measures which are less restrictive of intra-Community trade." From this came the killer line, "In this case it must be observed that the objective of protecting public health may be adequately attained by increased taxation of manufactured tobacco products, which would safeguard the principle of free formulation of prices."

What this boils down to is that governments are entitled to raise prices by means of taxation, in order to restrict consumption, but they cannot interfere with the market mechanism in such a way that it eliminates competitive price differences between domestic and imported products. However, this is not the only problem faced by the Scottish government.

Not mentioned by The Times is the case of Klas Rosengren and Others v. Riksåklagaren of 5 June 2007. This concerned the attempts by the Swedish government to restrict imports of cheep booze, whence the ECJ found that the prohibition of the importation into Sweden of alcoholic drink by private individuals amounted to "an unjustified quantitative restriction on the free movement of goods."That measure, it added, was inappropriate for attaining the objective of limiting alcohol consumption generally and was not proportionate for attaining the objective of protecting young persons from the harmful effects of alcohol.This rather stymies the Scottish government as it would not be able to stop the flow of booze from across the English border.

One could thus see hordes of Scots storming over the border, not stealing sheep this time but buying cheap English booze.

Although this might be good news for Scottish drinkers, it could have longer-term implications for all of us. Faced with the near impossibility of making unilateral measures work, one can see heavy lobbying by the Scottish government for action this side of the border as well.

There could only be one possible outcome – higher booze taxes for us all. I am sure Mr Brown will be only too happy to oblige, to save his fellow Scots.

The Sunday Quote

2009-02-15T14:05:00.006Z

''I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'' - Voltaire (1694 -1778)

The above quote is inspired by the subject this week of - Geert Wilders the Dutch MP and his the treatment of him by this country – my country. Last weeks reaction by the Government makes me feel as if I am living in a foreign land. Is this reallythe UK from which he was turned away because 'we' do not like what he says? Is this the same country which so egregiously, for so long, permitted the hate-filled preaching of Abu Hamza, before finally doing something about it?

Philip Johnston makes the point well in The Daily Telegraph, as do many many more right across the political spectrum. Johnston thinks that the refusal to admit the oddball Dutch MP to Britain yesterday "marks a further retreat from this country's traditions of free speech." He is quite correct; any right-thinking person would agree.

Over and above the loathsome behaviour of our government, however, is the attitude of Her Majesty's "loyal opposition", the once great Conservative Party, which is reduced to this.

Did we not hear so very recently from our MPs, a strident dissertation about the "privilege of freedom of speech", enjoyed by Members of Parliament, this being "in truth the privilege of their constituents."

Well … Mr Wilders is an MP. Or does freedom of speech apply only to Conservative MPs and their constituents?

For the avoidence of doubt any doubt, I do not agree with the views of Geer Wilders he is clearly bonkers, but the point is however, freedom of speech is a very basic right in any proper democracy.

Peter Troy
Sedgefield. County Durham

Banking Regulation

2009-02-14T14:21:00.001Z

With news today that the Lloyds TSB/HBOS Banking group is in serious difficulty it is amazing that despite the acres of newsprint, it seems that many people still do no understand the nature of the crisis and its root causes.

A key point this is not being recognised is that, while the financial system was globalising, so was the regulatory system – with the Basel Banking Regulation committee and other international bodies taking the helm.The net effect was that we in the UK were saddled with an inflexible, slow moving and wholly inadequate system of regulation and, as importantly, it was one over which no single – or any – nation had control. As was the global financial system out of control, so was the banking regulatory system.

It is curious therefore, to see that the response of our government has been to in effect nationalise most of the UK banking system, with more to follow. The effect of that is to reassert national control. But there is no recognition that the other half of the equation – the regulatory system also needs to be nationalised.Thus, in effect, we are getting the worst of all possible worlds.

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While most of our Banks are being bought up by the government with public funds, the very regulatory system which allowed them to go to the brink of destruction – and even beyond – is being left almost completely untouched, its role wholly unrecognised as a primary cause of the banking problem which is particularly adversly effecting small businesses.

In many ways, Gordon Brown is as much a passenger of events as are we all. That is the really terrifying thing – nobody is really in control. The mighty machine of global finance is falling apart and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Parliament is Cavalier about Democracy

2009-02-10T19:39:00.003Z

Charles Moore suggests in The Daily Telegraph that "Few people would fight for Parliament today," questioning whether anyone would "defend democracy in today's political climate."He is reviewing a book about the English Civil War – Cavaliers and Roundheads, and all that – adding his "take", writing that:

Because voters are so angry – rightly – about "sleaze", they have almost forgotten that those they elect must have "privileges". That is to say, they must have rights against the power of what is still sometimes called the Crown, but which means, in reality, the might of government and the power of "Europe".

Parliament has sacrificed these privileges, preferring material ones, and has therefore lost respect. If we had a civil war today, few would fight for it. That is fair enough comment, and if you move over to The Times you will see a graphic illustration of what has happened to parliament's power.

Way down the list, this is a nasty little story about how a drinks manufacturer, Sovio Wines, is appealing to the High Court against a Food Standards Agency (FSA) ban on its products. There is nothing wrong with the product – in fact it is extremely popular and has been welcomed by health campaigners as an excellent idea.

What the company has done is use a pioneering process in order to take high quality wines and to reduce their alcohol content to just eight percent without in any way altering the taste or texture of the wines. But the "mistake" it made was then to label its product wine, thereby falling foul of EU law which specifies a minimum of nine percent alcohol for a product to be thus labelled.

Enter the FSA which claims that, because a breach of EU law is involved, it has jurisdiction over its distribution, whence it moved in to ban its sale. In so doing, it has "paralysed" the company's business. Stocks worth tens of thousands of pounds, held at a bonded warehouse since the 2007 banning order, have been rendered undrinkable and therefore unmarketable because of the wine's short shelf-life.

The company's chairman Tony Dann thus notes that: "The Government is urging the drinks industry to provide a wider range of lower alcohol products, consumers want to drink them and yet the FSA is seemingly trying to kill a product that everyone wants".The problem, of course, is that the government – in Whitehall – is no longer in charge, and neither is Parliament. This is a law made in Brussels, untouched by parliament because it is an EU Regulation, which contradicts British government policy. It is being enforced by an Agency – not a Quango – paid for by us, which is not answerable to Ministers or parliament. It is acting solely and exclusively in defence of EU law.

Now look at Melanie Phillips. She writes in respect of the financial crisis:

Ultimately, however, such re-arrangement of the political furniture is unlikely to make much difference. For the public are terminally disenchanted with the entire political scene. Totally bemused by the financial meltdown, they perceive that no politician appears to have a clue either. MPs themselves hardly exude any more confidence in themselves. With their woeful attendance records, long holidays and shorter hours, and with ministers making announcements anywhere but in the Commons chamber, there is a palpable sense that power has moved elsewhere.
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By diverse and several means, parliament has rendered itself impotent, irrelevant to the government of this country, toothless, self-obsessed and venal. Would we fight for it? Of course not. We would be happier driving the tumbrels.
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The only mistake Charles Moore makes is in confusing parliament with democracy. We have not had true democracy in this country for some time. The proof is in incidents like the one affecting Sovio Wines. We would fight for democracy, but not for the people who gave it away.

Press Accountability

2009-02-10T10:27:00.002Z

An interesting item in The Independent opens up a hornet's nest on the issue of press accountability and, more generally, on the performance of the media.

For those who hold – as we do – that an effective and well-founded media is an essential prerequisite of a functioning democracy, the report which spawned the piece, from the Media Standards Trust, is an important contribution to an ongoing debate.The report itself can be found here, with a summary/press release here, the essence of which is retailed by The Independent report.

This tells us that financial pressure and the introduction of fast-paced new technology could combine to increase the risk of press intrusion and inaccuracy. This is backed by a survey carried out by YouGov which finds that few people (7 percent) trust newspapers to behave responsibly and three-quarters (75 percent) believe papers frequently publish stories which they know are not true.

The Media Standards Trust uses this as a platform to argue for a "more accountable press" calling for urgent reform of the industry's existing self-regulation system, the Press Complaints Commission, describing it as "insufficiently effective" and "largely unaccountable". "Without urgent reform, self-regulation of the press will become increasingly ineffective at protecting the public or promoting good journalism," the Trust concludes.

One can entirely sympathise with the Trust's views on the adequacy of the PCC, experience with it over the Qana affair being less than happy, leading us to conclude – as with other matters – that it is a toothless and largely useless body.

However, we cannot help but feel that the Trust's emphasis on more or better regulation is somewhat misplaced, as the PCC and the other issues it focuses on are – in our view – only the smaller part of the problem.As we pointed out in an earlier post, the bigger problem is not so much what the newspapers publish, but what they do not. Much of the distortion in the media comes from its inability – or unwillingness – to carry out its basic function of reporting the news. And no amount of regulation is going to change that.

Further, another pressing problem is the competence of many journalists, whose knowledge of their subject and their ability to carry our basic research and fact-checking is extremely suspect. We saw a classic example of that recently, where the media got hold of completely the wrong end of the stick and, as a result, gave a completely wrong account of an important story.

However, the Trust's report concludes that, "Public trust in the press has fallen below the level necessary for it to perform its proper role in a democratic society,” then adding that: "Until the system is reformed there is little chance of trust being raised.”The response of PCC chairman Sir Christopher Meyer illustrates that we have an uphill battle. Even to the relatively mild criticism offered, he reacts by saying the report is "careless and shoddy", and then pours out defensive bureaucratese, which demonstrates that he is not even past the starting gate when it comes to understanding that there is a problem.

At this point, of course, we could offer the view that the "new media" will overcome the shortcomings of the "dead tree media", except that there is no sign of this happening. The blogs and other web-based output is as much part of the problem as the old media.

Where we go from here, therefore, is anyone's guess, but it is interesting to see that a body which this blogger didn't even know existed is taking on a debate which needs to happen and needs to be resolved.

Orwellian Britain

2009-02-09T00:21:00.003Z

When one looks around you at the state of our economy, consider the falling standards in our education system, think back to the money poured into unreformed public services that has wasted or even weigh up the consequences of the approaching energy gap time bomb, one could be forgiven for wondering if our dear Government is capable of doing anything well.

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But the fact is there are some things this Government does well. There are some things this Government does very well indeed. The problem is nearly all of them concern measures that are designed to restrict our individual freedoms, infringe our civil liberties, invade our privacy and ever more closely monitor all our activities.

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The latest example of the United Kingdom's transformation into a surveillance state is reported upon in The Sunday Times, as it is confirmed that:

The Government is building a secret database to track and hold the international travel records of all 60m Britons.
The intelligence centre will soon store names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat reservations, travel itineraries and credit card details for all 250m passenger movements in and out of the UK each year all (wrongly) in the name our safety; supposed ant-terrorist measures.

The population of the United Kingdom is supposed to enjoy the right to go about its lawful business unmolested by the state. However the Government is clearly now determined to turn that inviolable protection on its head and do all it can to molest innocent and law abiding people - but to do so remotely, using technology so as to give people the illusion that they still enjoy privacy. It is a concerted assault on two of the principles of a free society - individual freedom and limited government.

This burgeoning surveillance state is utterly determined to log every place we go, the services we use, the money we earn, the people we associate with and even how we spend our leisure time. It is turning our legal status of innocence until proven guilty on its head.

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As the House of Lords Constitution Committee made clear just last week, this country's traditions of privacy and democracy are under threat from pervasive and routine electronic spying and the mass collection of personal information.

The people of the United Kingdom are now in danger of being considered guilty unless excluded by the bewildering array of overt and covert technological surveillance methods; Orwell's state as predicted in his classic satire '1984' has truly arrived.

The Sunday Quote

2009-02-08T19:27:00.004Z

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Those who are too clever to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are not so clever. ~ Plato (424-348 BC)
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Global Warming Snow

2009-02-08T18:39:00.004Z

With huge amounts of snow this week and more on its way, the climate change industry is moving into high gear to defend it's turf. It gets a hearing in the Telegraph which runs a story headed, "Snow is consistent with global warming, say scientists".

Britain, it tells us, may be in the grip of the coldest winter for 30 years but the current cold snap does not mean that climate change is going into reverse. In fact, the surprise with which we have greeted the extreme conditions only reinforces how our climate has changed over the years, how amazing.

Confronted with this speciousness, most people have difficulty suppressing the sniggers, except that these people are deadly serious. There is no way they are going to let go of the gravy train and admit reality.

Thus we get one Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at Department of Physics, University of Oxford, leading the charge. "If it wasn't for global warming this cold snap would happen much more regularly. What is interesting is that we are now surprised by this kind of weather. I doubt we would have been in the 1950s because it was much more common.” "As for snowfall …" Well, Dr Allen has an answer for that. It "could actually increase in the short term because of global warming. We have all heard the expression 'too cold to snow' and we have always expected precipitation to increase." Thus, "All the indicators still suggest that we are warming up in line with predictions."

So there you have it from the horse's mouth. If it is hot, its global warming, if it's wet, its global warming, and if it's cold, it's global warming, if it snows, it's definitely global warming.

With Britain being so unprepared for the current round of global warming though, we hear from David Frost, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce. "I wonder," he says, "whether we have become a bit too complacent or we are being a bit too bowled over by the constant talk of global warming and the fact that temperatures are always going to rise, and therefore when something like this does happen we are caught very much on the hop."Mr Frost adds that, "We should be perhaps planning on the basis that there is more freak weather about and we shouldn't just buckle to it. There should be more planning going into it."

He has a point. on that last issue. Our political masters need to ask themselves how many times the nation has been brought to a halt by the magnificent heatwaves we've all been enjoying recently, and how that compares with the estimated loss of £3 billion to the economy brought about by this very modest layer of the white stuff.

The Booker Column

2009-02-08T18:34:00.001Z

Christopher Booker is having great fun today in his column. He draws the parallel between the religious fervour of the warmists and the Darwinians, noting how both camps share the common traits of blind faith in their beliefs and their fanatical intolerance of anyone who dares question their dogma. One might also add the euro-fanatics whose enthusiasm for the "project" has quasi-religious aspects, and who also display the same fanatical intolerance of the warmists and Darwinians.

In My View

2009-02-07T18:51:00.003Z

At the centre of the industrial action by some 300 staff at the Lindsey oil refinery near Immingham on the east coast is an important national issue. This is not because the site on East field Road is the third largest refinery in the country but because it raises a key issue of the consequences our membership of the European Union.

The essence of the matter is summed up by shop steward Garry Scales who was reported in a national newspaper as saying: "We are angry that workers have been taken on from outside the UK when people here are out of work."

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After many years of ignoring the details of our membership of the all embracing European Union and pretending that the vast waves of intrusive legislation was not really happening, it is now leaping up and biting politicians, trade union leaders, business people and the public at large and most do not know what to make of it. Clearly our politician do not understand the issue and are alienating themselves further with their crassly out of touch comments.

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For example, Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary – and former union leader – has been talking about the need for "fresh directives" in order to make it clear that British workers cannot be undercut on their own turf. Trade Union leaders are calling for "a new EU directive "to overturn two '' European Court '' cases; they are clearly failing to understand that all the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was doing was clarifying that which has been in the Treaty of Rome since 1957.

What is actually needed is not so much a new EU directive as a new EU treaty – which of course can not happen within five years at least. Our politicians are in effect thrashing around looking for a way out of an intractable problem, that being the complexity and intrusive EU but not admitting, if indeed they understand, that the problem lies deep within the ethos of the EU.

It is quite depressing watching the former MP for Hartlepool and one time EU Commissioner and now Secretary of State for Business Lord (Peter) Mandelson squirming, trying to explain to us that its "alright chaps" – you can go and get jobs in Italy adding that us that there is "no problem" with EU rules as Total Petroleum – owners of the Lindsey oil refinery – have provided "full reassurance" and dispelled the "perception" that Britons had been discriminated against. Paul Kenny, leader of the vast Trade Union the GMB was less than impressed, spitting with rage, declaring that, "For Mandelson to come out with the Norman Tebbit line to get on your bike and go to Brussels is outrageous.” Well fine, in my view Mandleson's let them eat cake attitude is less than helpful and surely misses the essential point but so to does Mr Kenny by not attacking the long standing Europeanization of our country.

Our much beleaguered Prime Minister isn't having an easy time of it either making himself yet more unpopular with his fatuous slogan, "British jobs for British workers," he is now telling these ardent jobseekers, looking for rapidly vanishing stock of British jobs, that these "wildcat strikes" are "not defensible". They were "not the right thing to do". Well what is the right thing to do Prime Minister, turn our back on the interference of the EU perhaps?
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The Lib-Dems have been warning that challenging EU labour laws would be a "huge, self-defeating step too far", as they desperately seek to prevent their much loved EU gurgling down the plug hole as British workers finally get wise to the joys of being so 'European'.

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William Hague added to the tension this week by wanting it both ways. The Conservatives "strongly support" the free movement of Labour within the EU; oh dear perhaps he should have said something about Labour isn’t working.

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The fundamental point is that when the UK joined the then Common Market back in 1973, our political masters at the time accepted on our behalf the right of nationals of any other member state automatically to live and work in Britain. However, at that time there were only eight other member states, all of them prosperous and unlikely to trigger large migration to the UK from what is now the European Union with a population from 26 other member states to look for jobs.

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When, union organiser Bernard McAuley addressed workers in Lindey last week he clambered on to a flatbed truck to tell them that it was "wrong to ship in workers from the continent when north Lincolnshire had plenty of unemployed builders who could do the job." He did not say that is what the EU is all about... British workers do not have any rights (of their own any more); they have no more rights than the itinerant Latvian who is wants to drop in for a job.That, actually, is the real issue issue and one that our politicians do not tell us. If a nation is to mean anything, it means being able to control access and our government (accountable to us) to decide who can come in and work, and who cannot. It is not the principle of whether foreign workers should come in and take jobs. It is that our government in the UK has no control over the matter; we are now ruled by the EU, mostly from Brussels.

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The realities and the consequences of the huge amounts of EU regulations and directives that are integrated automatically into UK law are well known to the army of UK small business owners, which is why delegates from the Federation of Small Businesses have twice voted to demand the UK leave the European Union. Perhaps now is the time for the British public to have their say.

.The posting above was published on 4/02/08 in The Journal

A North of England Newspaper

Painful Reading

2009-01-18T22:55:00.003Z

Mr Booker's column today makes painful reading. It is the final chapter in the destruction of our once-proud and profitable industry, torn apart by the combined depredations of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy and the wilful zealotary of our own loathsome officials, permitted by the acquiescence of our politicians and the stupidity and malign myopia of the media. This is a policy which, as Booker observes, has 82-year old Doreen Hicks weeping in the dock after being given a criminal record, fines and costs of £3,500, on threat of imprisonment, just because she was named as a part-owner of her family's fishing boat.

The Sunday Quote

2009-01-18T12:50:00.002Z

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''The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth."

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
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The EU - Bad for our Health Service

2009-01-18T11:01:00.002Z

Another example of the malign capability of The EU comes in The Sunday Telegraph today, which headlines a story, "New EU working laws will be disaster for NHS". This is the Working Time Directive , Dr North has already pointed out the effect this will have on the British retained fire service. This is much worse.

According to one of Britain's top surgeons, the changes required by the directive to hospital working hours - coming into force this summer – will be "disastrous" for patient care and result in "major service failure".

This quote is from John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons. He makes no bones about it (to coin a phrase). The new rules are "an impending disaster" which will "devastate" medical training because no surgeon will be able to work a shift long enough to gain proper experience. The multiple handovers of staff needed to comply with the rules will mean that patients do not see the same doctor for more than a few hours. There could be "dangerous" lapses in patient care, especially at night. "With nobody able to work more than 48 hours a week from August, the effects on patient care in the NHS are potentially disastrous," Mr Black says.

He goes on, retailing a litany of woes which all point to the fact that going to hospital will be that much more dangerous than it is already. People are going to die, unnecessarily, sometimes horribly. And the EU will be to blame.

Black is meeting Alan Johnson, the health secretary, in February to propose a "speciality opt-out" and an upper limit on surgeons' hours of 65 to 70 hours a week. "I have no doubt we will be told that it is impossible to alter or bypass the European law. I do not believe this," he says. "All manner of EC law must have been bent or ignored in nationalising a bank in 24 hours. The government can do it if it has the political will."

But what is terrifying is the Orwellian response from Department of Health. Instead of acknowledging a very serious problem, it offers the anodyne statement that, "A few hospitals have implemented the maximum 48 hour week across all rotas. We are monitoring the situation as some smaller specialities and isolated hospitals may find meeting the deadline more challenging."

Never must it be admitted that the EU is tearing our nation apart, much less that it is going to kill people. No, the bureaucrats merely "monitor the situation" and, in due course will find nothing wrong at all. Such is how we are now governed.

The Sunday Quote

2009-01-11T12:05:00.004Z

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'' If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same,

If you can walk with crowds and keep your vertue,

Or walk with Kings, nor lose the common touch,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run,

Yours is the earth and everthing that's in it, ................''

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
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Better off out (or at least a loosening)

2009-01-11T11:52:00.009Z

Opinion Polls which confirm the general public antipathy towards the European Union (EU) are always good news, one such appears in The Sunday Telegraph today, carried out by YouGov, commissioned by the Tax Payers Alliance and Global Vision.

Headlined, "Loosen Britain's ties with European Union, say two-thirds of voters", it tells us that almost two-thirds of voters want "a significant loosening" of Britain's ties with the EU including "an end to the supremacy of the European Court of Justice. ECJ)" (One wonders, incidentally, whether all those polled know the difference between the ECJ and the Court of Human Rights - a lot of journalists do not and confusion is very common.)

As to the detail of the poll, 16 percent of voters want Britain to withdraw from the EU, while 48 percent want a "much looser relationship." Added together this makes 64 percent in favour of weakening Britain's ties with the EU. By contrast, just 22 percent favour full membership including the Lisbon Treaty. Additionally, 64 percent oppose the euro, while only 24 percent support membership. However, the choice between outright withdrawal and "looser ties" is false and indeed impossible.

Membership of the EU is not an à la carte option where you can pick and choose from existing treaties and reject those bits you don't like, while keeping the others. In particular, in respect of the supremacy of the ECJ, that is so fundamental to the very essence of the EU that rejecting its dominance would amount to a rejection of the EU in its entirety. You can imagine, say, if you accepted traffic laws, but rejected the authority of any court to fine you for speeding, what would happen, which is why the EU would never allow the authority of its "supreme court" to be challenged.

One can see the tactical advantage, though, of posing the "looser ties" question, but it would make much more sense in a future poll to have another question. This one should pose to the "looser ties" bods the scenario that no changes can be made to existing treaties and, therefore, their original choice is not an option. In that scenario, what is the preference: in or out?

Faced with that stark choice, some "looser ties" advocates would fall by the wayside, unable to countenance the idea of letting go of nanny, but the likelihood is that we would see a much higher proportion than 16 percent who now say they want to leave.

Even then, 16 percent could be electorally significant. Potentially, those who want to leave – despite the massive tide of propaganda that says we can't or shouldn't – could be influenced to vote for a party that promised our departure, that 16 percent is well over twice the margin between the two main parties. Arguably, the party that made the promise could win the next election.

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The problem actually is that, for many years , the political classes and businesses organisations have fudged it, holding out the false hope of "reform", keeping alive the myth that the EU can be changed into a more acceptable form of construct or that lobbying can have an effect. It can't, and the EU makes this very clear – "take it or leave it" is its ethos. Buy the whole EU package or nothing.

Only insignificant concessions can be found as 'lobbying' success stories which perpetuate the myth that the EU is other than a rigid machine producing a frighteningly fixed agenda. Soviet style licenesed dissidents are permitted with in the EU system and to those that properly understand the ways of the EU, the so called lobbyists prostitute their principles when caught up in the vast egos of the eurocrats. On the subject of elections, the poll also asks about voting intentions for the election to the European Parliament in June this year. It puts the Tories at 35 percent, Labour on 29, Lib-Dims at 15, and UKIP on seven. The Greens get five percent, BNP four, and the Nationalists also four. These figures are pretty meaningless though since they don't give the "don't knows" and the "don't cares", which probably exceed in number those who would vote for any specific party.

All this is borne out by another result, which finds that some 45 percent of voters believe none of the three main political parties adequately reflects their views "on Britain's future relations with the EU." We also get 59 percent wanting UK Ministers to disregard the EU's VAT rules if they feel a further cut in VAT is necessary, which is an interesting idea but would result in the UK being fined in the ECJ if they took that action.

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The UK's small businesses community - which now counts for 55 per cent of the UK's GDP - has constantly been skeptical of EU membership.

Back in 2001 a resolution proposed by Peter Troy (editor of this Blog) and seconded by Colin Stratton now head of the recruitment division of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) was presented to many hundreds of delegates and passed by a majority of over two to one at that years Federation's Annual Conference, in it has to be said the face of considerable objection from the FSB's establishment. Despite that resolution seven years ago and a previous successful motion in 1995 ahead of vast EU regulation (particularly anti-entrepreneurial employment law) that was about to impact on the UKs business community the FSB Board failed, amazingly, to adopt a withdrawal policy from the EU.

What is now clear is that the people of the United Kingdom do not want to live with the constraints and vast cost that comes with membership of the EU. The price of the combined direct and indirect expenses of EU membership is now very much in the public's mind. The propaganda fondly promoted by government agencies and moronically repeated chant like by business agencies has lost acceptance by true business practitioners. The vast wrath of regulations and directives is bad enough, the financial cost is now huge. In 2008 the EU costs Britain £55.775 billion. Set out in the latest Bruges Group research document where the full financial burden to Britain has now been calculated.

The conclusion is clear in 2008 there has been dramatic increase in the financial costs of the EU as well as a continuing erosion of our national sovereignty a process that started in 1973. Clearly the people of the United Kingdom (if not the managers of the nation's business representitive organsistions) are now accepting that membership of the EU is at a cost they cannot afford.

One hopes that Her Majesty's Subjects in ''our dear Channel Islands'' (Churchill's broadcast May 1945) will wake up to the gradual occupation that is marching up their path and into their business and domestic front doors, but that is a piece (or perhaps a campaign) for an other day.

The Cost of EU Membership

2009-01-11T09:58:00.000Z

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The price of the combined direct and indirect expenses of EU membership in 2008 costs Britain £55.775 billion. Set out in the latest Bruges Group research by Gerard Batten, the full financial burden to Britain has now been calculated. They show a dramatic increase in the costs of the EU A price Britain cannot afford. Click here to read the full analysis online
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Independent Spirit

2009-01-04T18:12:00.005Z

Since this is the first post of the New Year the Editor and his cat (Hector) wish all our readers best wishes for 2009.

While most of the UK slowly gets back to work and the reality of the economic downturn impacts (as our political masters like to say) feelings in The Republic of Ireland are running some what high.

The arrogance of the EU is starting to rile the quiet independent spirit of the Irish. A cartoonist has managed to put into picture form the anger rising in Irish hearts against the unreasonableness of the EU. A picture is worth a thousand words. Ireland we recomend should adopt the new powerful cartoon as the banner of the movement to keep its freedom from bossy eurocrats. The masterpiece is posted on The Tap Blog

The Sunday Quote

2009-01-04T17:57:00.004Z

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Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
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The Power and the Properganda

2008-12-28T15:10:00.004Z

Christopher Booker is in an optimistic mood today in his column, declaring that, "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved".

To support his thesis, he points out that all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. He thus tells us that last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Making the point is a piece in The Times - business section headed, “Blackout fear as UK power plants face axe.”The story is interesting because it tells us that the effects of the EU's Large Combustion Plant Directive is going to be more damaging than predicted. The nub is that, when power plant operators made their decisions to opt out of the directive and thus close down a number of coal plants by 2015 rather than pay the exorbitant sums needed to conform with the directive, it was assumed that these plants would only be used for peak generation, working on limited hours.

Because of the recent price distortions in the energy market, however, these plants have been working more or less full time, providing base load electricity and thus becoming worn out faster than anticipated. With major refits being economically unviable, given the limited lives of the plant, many will now have to close down early.

The first of them, Scottish Power's 1.2GW plant at Cockenzie, which generates enough power for 1m homes, will close as early as September 2010 based on current rates of electricity production. The "energy crunch" is thus predicted to hit us by 2013 rather than 2015, as we lose some 7.6GW of electricity – ten percent of the UK's total capacity.The seriousness of this issue is such that it is this, rather than their fatuous obsession with "climate change", on which our policy-makers should be concentrating, to say nothing of the anticipated shortfalls in crop yields that will come as a result of the extended bad weather.

Unfortunately, therefore, while Booker is undoubtedly right – the miasma of "global warming" having now lost whatever credibility it ever hand, the dark shadow of obsession still afflicts our ruling classes and they are not even beginning to budge.

One suspects it will take catastrophic failures in our own electricity supply system, and famine on a global scale before reality percolates the dismal thinking of our politicians.

The Sunday Quote

2008-12-28T11:56:00.004Z

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''By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.''

Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

A Subject of Cost

2008-12-28T04:15:00.000Z

A visit to The Daily Telegraph website reveals that each member of the House of Lords now costs us nearly half a million pounds a year, the total costs of running the "most exclusive club in London" now reaching £305 million in the last financial year. In 2002-2003, the total cost was £110 million.

From the current inflated sum, direct expenses paid to peers top £18 million, with some 17 peers claiming £60,000 each in "tax-free perks". They include Britain's most expensive lordship, Labour's Baron Brett of Lydd in Kent, a former trade union leader, whose expenses totalled £66,197. He registered an address in Cumbria as his main home. Lord Kinnock, the former Labour Party leader and EU commissioner, submitted claims totalling nearly £22,000 after being made a peer in November 2007.

The Daily Mail runs a similar story, but focuses more on the individual gravy-train riders, attracting over 200 comments on its website – all of them hostile to the peers as far as I can see. Needless to say, by far the greater number of their Lordships with their snouts firmly in the trough are Labour peers.Where their Lordships – and the Commons – seem to have been highly productive, however, is in creating new offences, The Telegraph running a story which tells us that the government has been creating an imprisonable offence once every four days over the past ten years.

Strictly speaking, it is not the government as Parliament – the House of Commons and Lords combined - must approve any measure that introduces an imprisonable offence. Of course, it is a long time since that Parliament took any interest in such matters and, the record shows us why.

With the members of both Houses now more interested in lining their pockets than doing their jobs – debates on MPs' expenses being among the best attended – it is easy to see that they have little time to attend to the liberties of the Queen's subjects.

What this really does reinforce, though, is how far our ruling classes have become detached from any sense of reality. If they had they slightest grip, they would not be milking the system but, given that there seems to be little connection between them and the real world, they are quite happy to justify their increased takings.

It cannot last. It never does. The tumbrels will eventually roll. But, for the time being, we have to suffer "their noble parasites" – as they preside over the wreckage of what was once a proud and useful institution.

Boxing Day Quote

2008-12-26T08:56:00.003Z

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''We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. ''

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
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A Christmas Ramble

2008-12-25T10:11:00.010Z

I have always quite liked Scrooge before he went all wet and sissy and started buying turkeys that were too big to roast in time. (I mean when did the Cratchits actually get round to eating that bird?)

Several things have always struck me as interesting about that book, apart from the stunning writing. One is that it is a very fine example of Dickens's usual inability to understand that wealth is created by people who work. He really hated the idea of people being employed. They are always miserable and the bosses are either complete slave-drivers or they do not require their subordinates to do anything at all. Clearly in those days HR management was less well developed but our Victoria forefathers (and mothers) created an economic wealth that was the bedrock of the 20th century advances that we have all enjoyed.

Secondly, it seems that in the far more religious Victorian age Christmas day was not silent with everything that could be, closed. You could buy a turkey and you could get it roasted at the local bakery, though there is some talk in the novel of the kill-joys wanting to close down the latter. Well, they have succeeded.

Thirdly, one cannot help wondering why Bob Cratchit doesn't get a better job or stop having children or both. The truth is that he is no more responsible than Mr Micawber and considerably less entertaining. A bit of self empowerment would perhaps help!

Anyway much can be forgiven a writer who can start a novel with the words "Marley was dead. Dead as a doornail."Well, there we are. I have done my share of bah-humbugging, well almost!
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Next year will be difficult for many a point that was highlighted by nany newspapers yesterday, on the front page of The Daily Telegraph, they reminded us ''Recession will be worse than forecast''.
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That the economic resession will be deep and long is very certain though I had to control my temper when further I read: ''Experts at the Royal Bank of Scotland said more than 400,000 jobs could be lost the first three months of 2009''. That indeed would be the worst rise in unemployment over a quarter since 1980. Those same experts who now only retain their highly (over) paid jobs at the expense of the British taxpayer were unable or unwilling to announce in advance that the actions of their greedy incompetent bosses would contribute in a large part to the economic recession that will continue to cause misery on many of their customers.

Those corporate clowns (so called experts and executive bankers) at the RBS/Nat West Group who are typical of so many corporate employees that are apart of the economic ills of the western world. Nothing short of a spell of working in the reality end of business (small business) as soon as possible in the new year will introduce them to the reality of the business world.
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It goes without saying that Christmas is supposed to be the time of peace and goodwill to all people (though corpoarte clowns must be an exception) even if the divorce rate soars after the holiday.

Christmas is also supposed to be a time of reflection, and a break from the more worldly things - even if more people are expected to log on today for on-line shopping than attend a religious ceremony.

It is also a day off for many, although for too many it is just one day in a period of enforced idleness, with many companies extending their breaks for a month in order to cut costs and stock inventories, necessitated by the recession.

Christmas is not what it once was. From a celebration of new beginnings – perhaps – it has become nothing more than a temporary cessation of hostilities, since in many ways that is how the business world has become, hostile.

Christmas is a time when 'the enemy' has taken some days off. However, there is a good precedent for that, as pictured above, with the 1914 unofficial truce in the trenches. Basically, what that amounted to was a day off from trying to kill each other. For that reason alone, it would be nice to have 365 Christmas days in each year – or even for just one year – when humanity collectively decided to take a break from killing or even excessivly aggressive attitudes.

To those who risk their lives on our behalf ever day , the Men and Women of Her Majesty's Armed Forces Forces as well as the Civilian Servives they deserve at least one thought from us today. Today is the anniversary of that day when, 94 years ago, their predecessors spontaneously decided they should take a break from conflict in the bleak trenches of northern France.
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A very Merry Christmas to all our readers, may your God and if it is possible also your loved ones be with you.
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Peter Troy
Sedegefield
County Durham

Peter Troy is Chairman of Peter Troy The Publicist Ltd. www.the-publicist.co.uk

A Christmas Game

2008-12-24T12:23:00.003Z

For those who would like to engage in a good Christmas game there is a posting on the Conservative History Journal blog that takes up an idea first proposed on the New Culture Forum: a list of fifty historical dates that everyone must learn because of their importance. Some suggestions are up already and Very British Subject readers might like to contribute to the discussion, in between eating turkey and playing with new presents.

The Sunday Quote

2008-12-21T10:38:00.007Z

''If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time with a tremendous whack.''

Sir Winston Churchill, FRS, OM. PC

(30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965)
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British Withdrawal from Iraq

2008-12-21T10:14:00.006Z

General Sir Mike Jackson has written today in The Sunday Telegraph about the impending departure of British forces from Iraq, telling us that the withdrawal "represents a most significant achievement after what will have been a very difficult and challenging six years."He thus tells us that Britain’s Armed Forces "will leave Iraq with heads held high" and that they "should be proud of their efforts".

That is fair enough, applied on an individual and unit level, where the courage, tenacity, skill, dedication – and suffering – of our troops (and airmen and sailors) is to be applauded, unreservedly. They did what they could, and many did more than we had any right to expect of them.

However, we – and they – should not run away with the idea that the campaign was a success. At best, we could describe it as an "heroic failure". Our armed forces were under-resourced, undermanned and ill-equipped from the very start, given a job that they could not hope to achieve; thus, predictably – but with no reflection on those at the cutting edge – they failed.In the end, after abandoning the outer provinces, with their ignominious retreat from al Ahamrah, forced on them by the pitifully inadequate resources allocated to the Maysan Battle Groups – they were driven out of all but one of their bases in Basra, until they were hunkered down in the former Basra airport, out of the game.

It took Iraqi troops, with the support of the US – including its massive air power – to recover Basra from the Mahdi Army and it was not until June that they did likewise with al Amarah.

The new Iraqi government, "expectations of immediate economic improvement were understandably but unrealistically high" according to the General. Their frustration at not seeing this realised quickly turned to anger with the Coalition forces thus this volatile situation was "much exacerbated by the security vacuum created by Washington's appalling decisions to disband the Iraqi security forces and to de-Baathify the public administration to a very low level; the latter marginalised the very people who were best placed to help."These decisions, asserts General Jackson, "may well have doubled the time it has taken to get to where we are now."

Then there was the Iranian backing for Shi'a "militants", which was a further difficult complication. And there was also "the lack of a coherent reconstruction plan and the failure in Coalition capitals to understand fully the complexity of the situation."

All this may be true, and no one will disagree that the Americans made some appalling mistakes. But so did the British. Immediately after the invasion, they failed to recognise that a Shi'a insurgency was building up round them, initially attributing attacks to Saddam loyalists and the remnants of his forces.

Instead of taking on the militias, they gave ground to them, made deals with them, and then eventually handed southern Iraq to them on a plate.Much of that was entirely the responsibility of the politicians, and Tony Blair in particular, who lacked the courage, in the face of the growing unpopularity of the war, to commit the resources and the men to do the job properly. Instead, his "spin" machine went into high gear, painting a wholly false picture of a "success" that was belied by the fact that the security situation was getting worse, and worse and worse.

Writes Jackson, "the campaign became a long haul – we had to have the strategic endurance to see it through." But we didn’t. We did not have the "strategic endurance" nor the political endurance, nor the political will. So it was fudged.

Thus, while the Americans may have made all the mistakes in the book, they learned from their experiences, adapted and then prevailed. Despite the courage and dedication at the cutting face, the high command failed to adapt, failed to meld the Army into an effective counter-insurgency force, and failed ultimately to provide the leadership that the Army needed.Genaral Jackson writes of "the announcement that Britain is largely to close down its military role in Iraq by May 31, 2009," not acknowledging that the date is not one of our choice. It has been set not by Mr Brown, but the Iraqis. The reality is they have kicked us out.

Even then, that date might not be the final word. When Gordon Brown so confidently announced it last week, he forgot to tell the world that this was a provisional agreement, subject to ratification by the Iraqi parliament. Without its agreement, our mandate ceases at midnight on 31 December, after which we are required to leave.

But the Iraqi parliament has not agreed. Yesterday, it threw out the draft law which would have permitted the extension of our stay to 31 May – by a massive 80 votes to 68.Another vote is due next week but there is a strong caucus in the parliament which want to see the back of the British. Not least is Nasser al-Issawi, an MP loyal to Muqtada Sadr. He has hailed the rejection of the draft as a "great national achievement", and said he hoped the foreign troops would be forced to leave when the UN mandate ends.

If the parliament finally rejects the law, it will be up to Nouri Maliki to save our blushes by exercising his executive powers and signing individual agreements directly with each of the foreign states with troops remaining, giving them – and us - a legal basis to remain. This would be a messy solution, but rather appropriate for a messy war; lest we forget the facts.

A Bizarre Confrontation

2008-12-15T12:15:00.002Z

Imagine that a Franco-German MEP, invited to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, plonked down in front of her an EU "ring of stars" flag, insisting that she hoist it over the palace alongside the Royal Standard, and then proceeded to address her in a deliberately insulting way. The British people, if news of the incident leaked out, might not be too pleased.

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On Sunday in his column, Christopher Booker picks up on a bizarre confrontation in Hradcany Castle which confirms the inablilty of the Euro-elite to accept anyone else's opinions.

Inquest: Jean Charles de Menezes

2008-12-14T18:04:00.012Z

The Front Page of yesterday's Daily Mail thunders: ''Stockwell Jury dams police cover-up'' under a picture of Jean Charles de Menezes, the young Brazilian Electrian who was killed by ''Police'' (possibly SAS) armed officers over three years ago.

All the UK national newspapers and other news services comment in detail on the verdict of the killing which took place on 22 July 2005.

The Jurors returned an open verdict which was the most strongly critical option available to them after the judge instructed them that there was insufficient evidence to rule that Mr De Menezes was unlawfully killed.

In effect the ''Police'' who killed Jean Charles DeMenezes in front of a train carriage of passengers that day were effectively called liars by the Inquest Jury. Furthermore, in response to specific questions put to the Jury by Sir Michael Wright a High Court Judge acting as Coroner in this case, the jurors responded by rejecting almost out of hand the official version of events provided by the Metropolitan Police. This is clearly a huge embracement particularly (and crucially) that the excuses by the Police that they were under extreme pressure on the day of the shooting was not accepted as valid.

The label below this post leads to other postings that were posted on this blog at various stages in this sad story and cover most of the details, there is little point in chewing over all the depressing aspects of this case again. The string of intelligence and communication blunders which led to Mr de Menezes being wrongly idnentified as the terrorist suspect Hussain Osman - on the bases of a grainey photograph on a gym membership card were rightly condemned at the Inquest.

The obvious sobering key facts are now well established, the Police operational plans 'Cratos' failed, key officers on the day failed and the cover-up after the event by various Police officers (thankfully) also failed.

It is difficult not to conclude that much of the shambles on that fateful day was not down to Cressida Dick, the officer in charge of the ill-fated operation, who has since curiously been promoted. Miss Dick and her senior colleagues left the officers who unloaded the fatel shots in an impossible position, equiping them only with garbled messages and seriously bungled intelligemce.

While the plight of the firearms officers on the day deserves considerable sympathy, it is a matter of grave concern and indeed a damning indictment of the police's fallen standing in our society- that the jury did not belive their account of events.
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If the option of returning an unlawful killing verdict had been open to the Jury, there is a good chance that it would have done so, someting that the de Menezes family will be challenging in the Courts. The conclusions drawn by the jury in the £8 million, three month long trial have quite rightly huge implications for the future operational mangement of Policing in the UK.

It has also to be said specifically that the poor performance of many senior officers of the 'Met' during and since the killing is a matter of considerable public concern. Those senior officers are paid vast amounts of tax payers money to be wise before the event and not after it; quite simply it is their duty to perform to acceptable standards. It is not acceptable that they give poorly preprepared crassly insulting statements about ''lessons learnt.'' to journalists in the wake of official reports and court cases.

When business people grossly fail in their work they suffer the consequences of humiliation, loss of income almost certainly their job and frequently bankruptcy. It is a reflection of the institutionaly corrupt public sector that when senior public servants seriously fail that they are increasingly getting away with making statements saying sorry we will get it right next time. We the public must demand far greater accountability. The inevitable consequence of not demanding that accountability of our very well remunerated and expensively trained public servants is quite simple, the terrorists will win and the public will continue to suffer.

Global Cooling

2008-12-14T15:40:00.006Z

One can be excused for wondering if all this information (or misinformation) about global warming is reality. This year as most of us are aware has been the coldest start to December since 1976.

Since 1 December, the meteorological start to the season, the average UK temperature has been only 35.1F (1.7C), well below the long-term 1971-2000 average of 40.5F (4.7C) for the first 10 days of the month.

It is the coldest start to December since 1976, when the average was 33.4F (0.8C). With Arctic and continental winds have dominated the weather since mid November, bringing colder conditions than normal.

On 3 December the temperature dropped to 9.1F (-12.7C) at Tulloch Bridge near Fort William in the Scottish Highlands and Tyndrum in Central Tayside, while Copley in County Durham received more than eight inches (21cm) of snow the next day.

While forecasters consider the first day of December as the start of winter, many people consider the season to start on the winter solstice, which this year falls on 21 December, next Sunday.

Nick Grahame, the Met Office's chief forecaster, said that did not signal a change in the pattern of weather, with colder air set to return early next week. He said: "The start of the weekend will bring a spell of wet and windy weather as milder Atlantic air attempts to push across the country. However, colder air looks set to win the battle again which means that frost and ice will become hazards with the risk of snow in many places".

Well, not good outlook for the supporters of global warming!

The Sunday Quote

2008-12-14T02:25:00.008Z

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''Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases. If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it.''

Ronald Reagan - 40th US President (1911-2004).
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The Voice of the People

2008-12-13T02:38:00.000Z

The Daily Telegraph tells us to today that our MPs are about to take the longest Christmas break for more than 10 years. It will start next Thursday when the MPs pack their bags and return to their constituencies, not coming back until 12 January.

Quite rightly, Tory Diary expresses some dismay but since parliament has become so marginalised that it has little to do. The MPs might just as well go home, for all the good they can do in Westminster.

Some MPs themselves are unhappy with the situation, and we are told that the long break has "renewed accusations that politicians are out of touch with the working lives of ordinary Britons". But this is not merely a question being "out of touch". Parliament is these days regreatably impotent. What it says and does now is of very little importance and the fact that MPs can be summarily packed off home tells you all you need to know.

The trouble is that our Parliament does have a purpose. It is (or should be) in effect, the voice of the people, its debates articulating their concerns. Thus, if parliament is silenced, the people are deprived of a voice.

As can be seen in currently in Greece, when that happens, people go elsewhere to express their views. While MPs enjoy their break, therefore, they may care to reflect that it is more fundamental – it is a quite serious break between themselves and the people.

Misinformation in the Newspapers

2008-12-12T20:56:00.005Z

One significant difference between this recession and the last (and the ones preceding it) is the way newspapers are being hit – mostly through a devastating fall in the amount of advertising, although there are many other factors.

Quietly, the big titles are downsizing, reducing the number of journalists they employ. Then, with the burgeoning number of pages and supplements they have to offer, plus podcasts, TV clips and the rest, journalists are actually being asked to do more and more, giving them less time to devote to research and real in-depth reporting.

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An important side-effect of this is that, increasingly, the news is not generated by newspapers but by the various agencies. Much of the copy is now simply a "cut and paste" job, with a few tweaks, the less honest of the papers then simply adding their journos' names to the final result.Where this gets important is that a very few news agencies (and then a very few journalists within those agencies) are essentially controlling the print (and indeed much of the rest of the electronic) media. Through this means, one sees insidious distortions and simplifications which completely change the context of the political debate. Thus, like water flowing through the cracks in the dam, they percolate everywhere, finding their way into thousands of print and online journals, influencing the way people think about the world.

By way of example, today we have today a comment by Declan Ganley and Jens-Peter Bonde on the scandalous behaviour of the Irish government, in forcing through another referendum on the constitutional Lisbon treaty. As to what is put to the Irish people, "Not one word or legal obligation will be changed," they say. "The same content will simply be put in a new envelope, just as Valery Giscard d'Estaing said about the change from the Constitution to the Lisbon."

Then we have AP briefly reporting on the same issue, under the heading, "EU: Ireland will vote again on treaty next year". This will be repeated a thousand-fold across the world, to be read by millions.The distortions are well evident, but only to those who know. It tells us: "France, which holds the EU presidency, says Ireland would hold a second vote in return for changes in the treaty." Then, of course, we get the bog-standard formula for describing the treaty: "The document is meant to streamline EU decision-making and boost its role on the world stage…".As the Ganley – Bonde duo rightly point out – the best the Irish can get is a few meaningless "declarations" which have no legal effect. There will be no changes to the treaty … there cannot be. But this is not what AP is projecting. Its idle simplifications are a complete distortion. They project something which is quite simply not true.

As for the intent to "streamline EU decision-making …" etc., one could write an essay on how wrong that is. But the canards survive, because they are convenient, mindless formulae for the agencies to churn out in their bid to supply the endless pap to fill the pages of the world's media.

At the receiving end, you have production-line journalism, concerned only with filling in spaces – not one whit of sentient thought between copying out the agency text and pasting it onto the virgin page. Worse still, this process is not a deliberate attempt to deceive. But that makes it all the more dangerous.

Media bias, in this context, has never been more real and more dangerous, but the source is not in the offices of the media so much as the agencies which supply them; the drip of misinformation is endangering the political process.

Financial Crises

2008-12-08T21:08:00.001Z

Europe's financial crisis has hardly begun. The loss of $500 billion by Europe's banks into the US Sub-prime fiasco is only the starter as far as the full picture is concerned. Europe's banks have also been shovelling out loans into the hands of dubious borrowers for a decade or more and impecunious third word regimes. Now the downturn has struck, the chickens are finally coming home to roost. The biggest share of third world loans, it should be noted, are held with European banks. Read more posted on The Tap Blog

Booker on the Blizzard

2008-12-07T22:34:00.005Z

In his column today, Christopher Booker takes on the recently published Turner report, full frontal, under the apposite headline: "Blizzard of mad proposals descends on UK."

Published last week, the report is the first formal production of the government's Committee on Climate Change, chaired by Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, a committee that was appointed in February to give "expert advice on how the UK can best meet its climate change goals."Its full title is "Building a low-carbon economy – the UK's contribution to tackling climate change", and it is available online as a .PDF document running to 511 pages.

That Mr Booker is one of the few journalists to deal with it is critical terms is depressing enough but what is uniquely depressing is that he – or anyone else - should have to expend any energy at all in so doing.

As our friend points out so lucidly, in the limited space he has, the report is a catalogue of the most unremitting tosh, page after page of the most unrealistic, unscientific wishful thinking that does not have the remotest chance of coming to fruition.

In a sane world, this report would have been killed at birth, long before it got anywhere near the printing presses - and its stock of 75 percent recycled paper. Someone on the lower reaches of government would have taken one look at it and tossed it into the waste-paper bin, then composing a stiff memo to his minister, suggesting that Turner and his committee should be put out to grass. But we are not in a sane world.

Interestingly, in The Sunday Telegraph today, we have another piece which addresses the "wind power targets" and the claims by the Turner committee that wind power can supply a third of Britain's electricity. These, we are told, "have been condemned as wildly optimistic by leading experts."Actually, they are not "wildly optimistic". They are barking mad, so way beyond any possibility of achievement that their inclusion transcends mere myopia and stupidity and descends into the realms of lunacy. Yet – by government and so many others – they are being taken seriously, as if they were the production of sane, rational human beings.

The huge problem, though, is that despite the Turner report being a policy document created by blind technocrats, it will be adopted without input from the political classes. There will, for instance, be no debate in parliament on the report and, even if there was, it would be a low-grade, lacklustre affair as the main political parties have bought into the "climate change" miasma and argue only over detail rather than substance.

So it is that the debate lies outside the realm of formal politics, witnessed by Mr Booker's columns on the issue routinely occupying the top slot on the "most viewed" section of his newspaper.

The Sunday Quote

2008-12-07T13:46:00.002Z

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It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.

W H Audin (February 1907 – September 1973)
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The right kit

2008-12-07T12:52:00.002Z

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Without the right kit, our armed forces cannot function effectively, no matter how brave and well-led they might be. Thus, the apparently arcane issue of defence procurement is of vital importance to the well-being and effectiveness of our military. A recent contribution to the debate on procurement is the book "Changing the Dinosaur's Spots" by Bill Kincaid, himself an "insider" who spent 18 years in the MoD, recomended reading.
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Sobering Words

2008-12-07T11:57:00.009Z

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Charles Moore was rampant in The Daily Telegraph yesterday giving vent to "New Labour'' buried deep in his piece are some sobering words. Of the Speaker, and of Parliament as a whole, he writes:

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Mr Martin does what so many MPs have done in the face of the draining of powers to Europe, Whitehall, the courts and the media. He has settled for bigger offices, more pay, larger expenses and a massive pension - preferring a mess of pottage for himself to the birthright that is ours.It has been saddening in this rumpus to see how little the general public seem to mind the mistreatment of Parliament - saddening, but understandable. We believe less and less that it belongs to us: we are right.
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He is absolutely right when he notes "how little the general public seem to mind the mistreatment of Parliament." Far from universal outrage over the presumed breach of parliamentary privilege, what is clear at the time of the first reports was amusement, observing that most ordinary people rather enjoyed the prospect of an MP's pad being turned over by the Old Bill.

Interestingly, Moore refers not to the "privileges" of MPs and parliament, but to "rights" and it is undoubtedly because MPs as a collective are so heedless of our rights that we care so little for theirs.

.The most important of ours, of course, is the right to have a legislature which makes our laws and is accountable for them, rather than outsourcing them to Brussels and the legions of anonymous officials in Whitehall and elsewhere.Taking Moore's piece in the round though, we on this blog would not disagree with his condemnation of New Labour. But what is dislikeable about Tory tribalism is the easy fiction that history begins in 1997. It is this that allows all the ills of our society to be laid at Labour's door.The processes by which the authority of parliament has been eroded, however, started long before Labour took office, not least in 1972 when we joined the EEC - under a Conservative administration.

Another giant step in its decline was the ratification of the Maastricht treaty, where John Major rammed through the amendments to the ECA in the teeth of opposition from his own party, a trauma from which the Conservatives have still to recover.But another gigantic step was Baroness Thatcher's ill-conceived reforms of the civil service with introduction of "Next Step" agencies in 1988, and in particular the creation of regional government. These, above all else, broke the link between parliamentary accountability and huge tranches of public administration; that, combined with the increasing resort to Statutory Instruments – which saw its biggest leap forwards in the Major era as a handy mechanism for introducing EU law without the inconvenience and embarrassment of a parliamentary debate - and the scene was set for New Labour, which has continued rather than started the process of decline.

The other neglected issue is the nature of our parliamentary system which is, at its very heart adversarial. The system relies not only on good government but good opposition. The one goes with the other to make a whole.

It is here that we as a nation have been so badly let down. Not only have we had to suffer an uniquely bad government but we have been thus saddled at a time when the opposition has also been weak and ill-directed. The failures we see therefore, are not simply those of the government but of the system as a whole, the lack of robust and effective opposition being a significant contributory factor.Whether or not the situation is recoverable, others can argue but one suspects it has gone too far down the road to destruction.

Certainly, it is going to take a lot more than a debate in Parliament. What will make the difference will be when MPs start to realise that they are in Parliament not to defend their rights but ours.

Frankly it isdifiult to see this happening in the short term and until it does, there will be very little general public sympathy for MPs, even if the Old Bill turns over the whole damn lot of them. It is rather a variation on the theme of "mind over matter". We don't mind, because they don't matter.

Indeed they don't matter to us, because we don't matter to them. In the meantime the ripple effects of corporate banking incompetence ripple through the engine room of the British economy without any real apparent understanding from our elected officials.

Only the Ignorati will be impressed

2008-11-25T18:08:00.004Z

"Gordon Brown borrowed us into this mess, and now he would like to borrow us out of it. We now know what he means by PSBR (Public Sector Borrowing Requirement). It is the Price of Subsidising Brown's Re-election.

."That is from Bruce Anderson in The Independent responding to Darling's pre-budget report, they don't get much more left wing than The Independent. Yet, this paper gives a right-wing commentator house room when he writes, "Brown is not after economic recovery, he's after votes."The trouble is, Brown may get them.

Mr Darling in his speech yesterday said, "Inflation is forecast to come down sharply, reaching half of one percent by the end of next year." He adds: "Lower commodity prices and lower interest rates, which boost incomes and help business profits, together with the fiscal reaction across the world, will also help."Add to that the cut in VAT, the increase in pensions, Christmas bonus and pension credit, the increase in child benefits, an increase in the child element of the child tax credit and our Mr Darling claims to be helping 15 million people. Taking into account the drop in inflation, those people will be winners and by the time of the 2010 general election they will feel marginally better off.

While others chase the "yoof" vote, as a rule of thumb, pensioners are five times more likely to vote than people of the age 25 and under, giving Brown a tactical advantage, while he passes some of the costs of his bonanza on to people who would not vote for him anyway, or simply will not be voting. By the time his target voters go to the polls, Brown's "luck" may have held out and, despite the prognostications of today, he could pull off an historic fourth term for Labour.

The trouble is that the political commentators are too clever by half. Much of the detail of this pre-budget speech is highly technical and will wash over most people who will neither understand it nor care. And nor have they noticed that Darling, undoubtedly with the approval of Brown, is gradually adding to the burden of "green" taxes.Most, for instance, will have missed his reference to including aviation in the ETS from 2012 yet that will pull him in possibly £400 million a year and rising, without a single voice in protest from the political classes. Add to that an increasing amount from the energy companies though the existing ETS auctions and, before too long he is looking and extra billion a year flowing into his coffers, going up as the years pass.

Another little twist to the speech is his commitment to extend the renewables obligation for an additional 10 years to 2037. That will guarantee a source of income for wind farms and the like at no cost to the exchequer, but will add significantly to electricity costs as more renewables come on line, that this might eventually cost £6 billion a year, but not just yet, allowing Darling to claim, that he is supporting the green agenda, without people noticing the cost.

Combine that with a Conservative front bench which no longer seems to be able to talk in coherent sentences and relies on an ever-increasing diet of pre-cooked sound-bites and the electoral game seems far from over.

The only question is, given all the pain that Darling seems to be storing up for after the election, who would want to be in office after 2010?

But then it is difficult to fathom what politicians think – if indeed they do that, in the end, may be Brown's most effective ally. The ignorati far outnumber the chatterati.

The Sunday Quote

2008-11-23T22:47:00.002Z

For everything there is a season,

And a time for every matter under heaven:

time to be born, and a time to die;

A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

A time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to seek, and a time to lose;

A time to keep, and a time to throw away;

A time to tear, and a time to sew;

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate,

A time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Fishing

2008-11-23T22:28:00.004Z

In the wake of last week's report on a "new" Tory policy on fishing, Christopher Booker has this week in The Sunday Telegraph taken a wider look at discarding in his column.

The issues are personalised around Mick Mahon, a Newlyn fisherman who has done much to bring to light the criminal madness of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy. After 25 years of living with the lunacy of the policy, Mick has had enough and has decided he will discard no more. Instead, he is "waiving the rules" and landing all the fish he catches. He gives them away to the Fishermens' mission for charity.

This has so bemused the local fisheries inspector, whose officious zeal has made him the most unpopular man in Newlyn, that his only response do far has been to threaten the mission with prosecution for accepting Mick's charitable gifts.

Of course, if every fisherman in the country did likewise, and was prepared to stand up to the tide of regulation that is progressively destroying the industry, then at least we would have a fighting chance. But, over the years, most fishermen - and especially their representatives - have sought accommodations with our government, in the hope that they could continue to make a living.

The Sunday Quote

2008-11-16T13:12:00.005Z

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''There is one just one rule for politicians all over the world. Don't say in power what you say in opposition. If you do, you'll only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.''

John Galsworthy, Maid in Waiting, 1931.
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This Is Not Time For Tea

2008-11-16T12:25:00.005Z

By Dr Richard North

To the disgust of some of the commentators on the Tory Diary blog – but applauded by others – Robert Winnett sketches out the timeline on "How the Conservatives lose the next election".

Separately, The Sunday Telegraph lead editorial declares, "The Tories should be as angry as the rest of us", pointing out in lucid terms quite why that should be. It then remarks that "the place where there is a dearth of the splenetic anger felt by the rest of us is on the front bench of the Conservative Party."Behind the posturing and preening of the Tory front bench, there is manifestly lacking that outrage at the appalling mismanagement of the current government, which means that the Tory leaders fail entirely to transmit to the nation sense of conviction or seriousness.

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In September, just before the Conservative Party conference and after a series of carefully crafted posts not least this one, I called for a clear statement of policy on energy - an absolutely vital need if we are to stop the lights going out.Of course, we did not get that statement – nor even a proper speech on energy – at the conference. Instead, as we later discover, we instead got the Friends of the Earth.

As with energy, so it is with defence, we get the same lack of coherence. Instead of an energentic and principled attack on the government, we see the Tory opposition staring at an open goal and then sauntering off to the pavilion for a cup of tea, leaving the balls unattended.

In this context, please spare the time to have a look at this piece. It tells the horrifying and desperately sad tale of Sergeant Hickey, which cannot help but move you. Tears do not come easily to me but, after a long interview last night with Sgt Hickey's mother, Pauline (on which this account - heavily revised from the original - is partially based), I struggled with this one and still do.

Of course, it goes without saying that one harbours a deep, unremitting anger at the government for sending gallant soldiers like Sgt Hickey into the battlefield (and that it was) so unprepared that their horrible deaths were all but inevitable. But, if you can spare a little bit more time to read this, you will see that the failures and dereliction were not entirely on the side of the government. We convey in this piece a stark illustration of how the opposition too failed to do its job.

I do not accept – as some argue on the Tory front bench - that oppositions are powerless, or that they cannot control or dictate the political agenda. Careful, research-driven, forensic opposition always yields results – that is how Thatcher won her first election. But this is something the Conservatives, under the tutelage of David Cameron, have forgotten how to do.

Thus, I agree with the thrust of The Sunday Telegraph pieces this morning. As long as this is the prevailing image of the Tory front bench, then the paper has it right. The Tories are on their way to a defeat at the next election. That will be a catastrophe for them but, as it stands, a Tory victory would be an even bigger catastrophe for the country than a continued Labour administration. And that, dear reader, the tragedy of our times. All that is on offer from our political classes is a choice of catastrophes.

2008-11-15T23:22:00.000Z

Welcome to Very British Subjects

Left Peter Troy, Editor.

The Eleventh hour

2008-11-11T21:44:00.010Z

The hour cometh (11o'c on the 11 th Day of the 11 th month) and some of us were silent for the two minutes. Others, of course, will be silent for eternity, and it was those we remembered, those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and those who did their duty to their country and have passed away with the passage of time. We salute them all.

But fine words and moving ceremonies are more for us than they are for the dead. Those who serve our country and those who in the near future and beyond are put in harms way, like some of their comrades before them, some will not survive the experience. That is the way of war. It is unutterably sad, but that has been the way of things since the dawn of time. But some of those, in the past, should not have died.

Their fall arose, albeit though the direction action of our enemies, but compounded by the stupidity, ignorance, laziness or even the corruption of men and women whose duty it was to care for them and minimise the risks. They should be remembered especially.The purpose of so doing is to remind ourselves that, even in war, terrible though it is, death is not always inevitable. Even the arena of battle life should be treasured and respected.

Remembering those who have fallen, and who should have walked away alive, we remind ourselves that it is our duty – collectively as is the case in a democracy – to do our best to ensure that those who do serve now and in the future are not put needlessly at risk.We owe that to those whom we and who then serve, and die.

For those who say that today is not a day for politics, the answer is yes it is, ever more so. Politics is important; it is politics that sends young men and women to their deaths. It is politics which protects them and brings them back safe. That is the real stuff of politics – not the prattling in the chamber of theatres that has become the House of Commons which is now over reported in our mainline media.

The reality of life and death is not some abstract issue for us to watch on the television from the comfort of our living rooms, but something which – even in our small ways – we have the power to affect.

So, while we remember the dead, we must also remember the living and those about to die. We owe them that.

The Sunday Quote

2008-11-09T20:52:00.009Z

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Above: PC Jennifer Troy (centre) Marching to the War Memorial in the City of Leicester for the City's Annual Service of Remembrance today.

''As far as the Armistice itself was concerned, it was a kind of anticlimax. We were too far gone, too exahausted really to enjoy it. All we wanted to do was go back to our billets, there was no cheering, no singing. That day we had no alcohol at all. We simply celebrated the Armistice in silence and thankfulness that it was all over. I believe that happened quite a lot in France. It was such a sense of anticlimax. We were drained of all emotion. That's what it amounted to.''

Corporal Clifford Lane

1st Battalion, Herfordshire Regiment.

The Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, recorded in 1972.

A Very British Issue

2008-11-09T19:26:00.006Z

One of the mysteries of our time, Booker writes, is the perennial reluctance of so many politicians and journalists to explain how much of the mess we are making of the business of government in this country derives from the avalanche of new laws, policies and decisions pouring out of our hidden government in Brussels.

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Everywhere we look, businesses (particularly small businesses) and other organisations are struggling in the miasma of confusion this creates, where it is no longer clear who is responsible for the laws they must obey, or what those laws are or are meant to say.

The stories, in the press, speak for themselves, all pointing to one thing – that government is now so diffuse and complex that no one really understands it, or even knows where the centres of power lie.The problems go far beyond "Europe". The European Union, as much as anything, has become a portal for a proto world government in all but name.
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Since the system of EU Government has become so utterly obscure and Byzantine in its complexity, it has the hacks and the chatterati diving for cover, seeking refuge in their individual comfort zones as they seek to avoid the reality of the mess modern government has become. Clearly the top and bottom of this is situation is accountability.

Government of a modern nation is a very complex affair – we have to work with other nations, agreements have to be made and deals struck. Much of the internal administration of the nation has to be delegated, left to the ranks on anonymous officials who exercise power in a myriad of ways.

What matters is that, when things go wrong, someone must be accountable and be brought to account. The mechanisms must then exist to remedy matters and, as far is possible, to undo any wrongs. This is traditionally the role of Parliament, and the threat of it exercising is power is both the safety valve and the ultimate deterrent.

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The fact is though, it no longer works. There is no single place where the buck stops. The buck stops nowhere. Because everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible, leaving Parliament an idle, empty talking shop, full of vain, posturing idiots who fill their time with prattle and useless gestures.

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On a day when a great newspaper offers a diet of fantasy politics, he points to the miasma that fogs our society. We are lost in that fog, leaving us leaderless and confused. And that is the way it will stay, unless or until we demand that Parliament re-asserts its authority in our name, the name of the British people.

The Sunday Quote

2008-10-26T15:50:00.001Z

''Where there is great power there is great responsibility .... where there is no power there can, I think, be no responsibility.''

The Rt. Hon Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill KG OM TD CH FRS - 28 Feb 1906

From The Square

2008-10-19T17:37:00.012+01:00

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.... Or perhaps more accurately from The Editor's Telegraph.

The Booker column today has a heart-warming tale; It describes how a couple, Graham and Sara Blackmore who ran a small skip hire company in Cardiff, had been turned over by officials from the Environment Agency and finally, having had their "day in court", had come away found innocent of all charges.

The story speaks for itself and is well worth reading on the link provided. But, what does not come over from this tale on its own – but will be apparent to regular Booker column readers – is one essential feature that makes it news. That "news" is the very fact that, despite being "framed" by the Environment Agency with a series of malicious, trumped-up charges, the couple were actually found "not guilty" in a court of law. This is not always the case and in a distressing number of instances, innocents are found guilty of "administrative" offences by courts which too often support "their officers" – the officials – right or wrong. I recall many such situations in my 10 years as an activist with the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

A particular case is that of Janet Devers, featured heavily in The Sunday Telegraph today the week before the last the hapless lady was found guilty by Hackney magistrates for offences under the Trades Description Act.Apart from the issues involved – the sale of goods measured using the Imperial system – a review of the evidence demonstrates that the trading standards officer did not prove his case. There were major technical flaws in his evidence, in key areas he was shown to be lying and evidence was given from a number of witnesses that events the TSO claimed to have happened – which were essential to secure a conviction – simply did not take place.

On those grounds alone - without considering the general merits of the issue - the case should have been dismissed. But the Magistrates chose to believe the version of events offered by the officer – even though, under cross-examination, he had admitted they were not true – and convicted Janet. She is now to appeal; as one who has won more than one appeal against the injustice of lower courts as well in other cases of over over inflated small minded egos have needed to be brought bang to right, I wish Janet every success.

Yesterday we must note with concern that The Daily Telegraph was headlining – front page in the print copy – the "victory" by the metric martyrs. It is not a victory; far from it (Anyway the Metric Martyrs title is a misnomer, they should be the Imperial Martyrs but that is an other issue).

The EU regulations have not been changed and until they are nothing has changed. All that is being proposed – and then only in the next few months – is that UK local authority "guidelines" on prosecution are to be changed.What can so easily be changed administratively can, in a few years time – when everybody has forgotten the "victory" and moved on – can be changed back again; even then, this is just a "guideline" which, can be ignored anyway. It has no legal effect what so ever.

The key to all this though is the Rt Hon John Denham, the Innovation Secretary, he apparently issued guidelines that prevent local authorities in the UK taking traders to court. He is cited as saying: "It is hard to see how it is in the public interest, or in the interests of consumers, to prosecute small traders who have committed what are essentially minor offences."But who is Mr Denham's boss? None other than the Prince of Darkness himself, Peter Mandelson now Lord Foy - the master of spin.

I have had more than one conversation over recent years with his (now) Lordship. There is no doubt whatsoever about his intentions on full European integration which includes metrication (presumably he has now or for the time being at least , dropped the 'Stalinist' regionalization plans so favored by his fellow New Labour lovies!)

Small businesses in our once great nation have much to concern themselves about at this time, not least the ripple effects of incompetent senior bankers across the globe (with the notable exception the ''the worlds local bank'' the HSBC) officials and bueaucrats driven into action by EU regulations that quite simply do not have public support (or indeed logic). The FSB as the UK's biggest business organisation, is also, according to its web site '' the leading voice of small businesses at the heart of the European Union'' (EU).

Through their dedicated (small) office in Brussels, and their EU team, they no doubt try to ensure the voice of very British entrepreneurs is heard but it is clearly impossible (when one understands what is actually happening with the implementation of so much EU regulation) to make any difference what so ever.

Thus this is how we are now governed in the UK and many of us are getting fed up with it. One wonders what the Federation of Small Businesses can actually do other than support members to the hilt when ''the Inspectors call''. No wonder as I am fond of repeating FSB representative members have twice voted (1995 and 2001) to demand a withdrawal from the EU.

So there we have it, I feel a letter to Colin Stratton (FSB NE Regional Chairman) coming on or perhaps (or indeed both) a visit to the North East Regional AGM on the evening of the 6 November to (the now very referbished ) Grand Hotel in Hartlepool, I know they will be pleased to see me I am after all a member; I was once very active in the FSB, the largest business organisation in the Realm.

Peter Troy
8&9 The Square
Sedgefield.

The Sunday Quote

2008-10-19T09:26:00.007+01:00

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''We must be clear about this it does mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent European state … it means the end of a thousand years of history. You may say, "let it end". But my goodness, it is a decision that needs a little care and thought.''

Rt Hon Hugh Gatiskell (1906-1963) leader of the Labour Party from 1955 until his death in office in 1963.

In October 1962 Hugh Gaitskell electrified the Labour Party conference with his 105 minute speech, wholly dedicated to the Common Market, he delivered the singular and now oft-quoted passage that has proved to be horribly prescient.

Time for Tea

2008-10-17T02:02:00.007+01:00

(Flash back, Tea time with Troy on board HMS Trincomalee, 20th September 2005.Graphics courtesy of Radio Hartlepool).

What is happening in this country and indeed the world with regard to the banking crises is so enormous that it is almost too scary to think about. That is, of course, why so many people do not think about it.

That phenomenon is a variation of this, a very natural human reaction to something which is just beyond the capability of most people to deal with.In fact, it is more akin to the reaction of the archetypal housewife on being told that World War II had broken out, busying herself making a pot of tea. At times like this, we all retreat into our comfort zones, close our minds to the impending disaster and hope for the best. But disaster there will be – we are already in the opening phases, and "making a pot of tea" is not going to solve it. But this is not a "sky falling in" type of disaster. That is the wrong analogy.

This is more like the "Temple of Doom" movie. We are trapped in a room, with the ceiling – complete with wicked spikes - getting lower and lower, threatening to crush us all. But every now and again, the ceiling judders to a halt in its downwards path. We breathe a sigh of relief, and hope it is all over. Then it lurches into action and the nightmare continues. One of those "lurches" happened this week, with the stock exchanges plummeting worldwide and the FTSE falling three percent on Thursday, driven by "fears of a recession".

Not only are we reaching into the depths of banking theory which, frankly, very few people (particularly senior bankers) understand we have the overlay of highly complex regulatory systems, framed at national, regional and global levels, together with national and international politics and, of course, the drama of the events themselves.

One yearns for some wise soul to reach out and explain it all, in very simple terms, telling us what to look for, what matters, what is fluff, and to where all this is leading. That, of course, is the stuff of dreams – of child-like fantasies. In truth, there is not one problem but many, all interwoven, and the complexities of modern politics, played out on an international tableau, are such that they defeat even the most experienced commentator.

How about tea with Troy ? It won't solve anything, but at least it'll make us all feel better.

2008-10-14T21:35:00.003+01:00

Peter Troy. Editor of this blog

Photographed during a recent visit to Jersey CI.

Reaction

2008-10-12T15:55:00.008+01:00

The implications for the future of the banking industry of the domino effect of the great banking crises hardly bare thinking about.

There is a mass of comment available across the UK media today and blogosphere; it is impossible not to feel a frisson of panic at the idea that not only bank machines might run out of money but also that the engine room of the British economy - that's the small business community - will soon run short of vital support from banks who could shortly be powerless to support vital lending facilities.

It has to be said that in the face of the global banking crisis the reaction of our government and that of the US could not have been more different in terms of openness.

In the US a plan was formulated in broad daylight, subjected to intensive public scrutiny and debate, put before both the US Congress and the US Senate for approval and again subject to massive debate before being approved by the democratically elected representatives of the country and put into action.

In contrast here in the UK what do we see ?

As the Banking crisis developed , our government dithered – it reacted to events rather than taking the initiative with a pro-active strategy. The main action was a series of meetings with the institutions of the European Union behind closed doors and completely misunderstood by business lobby groups and the national media.

It is only after a closed meeting of EU finance Ministers (Ecofin) last week, we see action taken. Parliament is not consulted, there is no public debate. Both Parliament and the people are simply told what is going to happen, there is no vote, no approval just a done deal.

Therein lies the difference – on the one hand in the United States we see, with all its imperfections, a functioning democracy in action. Here in the UK by contrast, in Britain the mother country of modern democracy, we see a cabal of rulers working behind closed doors, coming out into the daylight only to inform us what they have done and how much it is going to cost us.

Thus is how we are now governed in Britain secretly, badly and from Europe.
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The Sunday Quote

2008-10-12T15:07:00.002+01:00

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''Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies''

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826) 3rd President of the US.
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Faulty Regulation

2008-10-12T01:04:00.001+01:00

Dr Richard North has discovered cast iron evidence that the EU commission has known for at least a year that there have been disastrous "shortcomings" in its system of financial regulation. This system include the measures for the application of the "mark to market" rules which lie at the heart of the current banking crisis. His post on EU Referendum is recomended.

Banking Crises Update

2008-10-08T21:31:00.005+01:00

Gordon Brown has promised that the Government will "do what it takes" to help families deal with the effects of the global economic crisis such as rising food and energy costs.e effects of the global economic crisis such as rising food and energy. Sounds fine but the UK government is not in charge! costs.

The Daily Telegraph running out of hyperbole proclaims that the sky is falling in the banking industry and the situation is getting even worse. Christopher Booker in The Daily Mail reckons that this crisis could not only sink the euro, but the whole of the EU as well.
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The British media haven't begun to understand what is going on Ruth Lea for example who is writing about the British government having been "dithering" - ignoring the fact that it is ''Europe '' (EU) that is in charge. With increasing clarity, it is emerging that Messers Brown and Darling were waiting for the go-ahead before acting. That is why they took no action on Monday – they could not until they had had their marching orders from their political masters in the EU. Thus, overnight on Tuesday and into the early hours of this morning was the first time they could have acted, having been given the green light at Luxembourg to break the EU rules.
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Thus is how we are now governed.

Dithering Darling

2008-10-08T11:18:00.003+01:00

Today, after days of "dithering" Chancellor Alistair Darling suddenly launches "a drastic rescue of Britain's high street banks in move designed to head off a cataclysmic failure of confidence."This just happens to be a day after an emergency meeting of the finance ministers of the 27 EU member states. Is this a coincidence?

At the (EU) Ecofin meeting yesterday, two things happened. Firstly, the ministers effectively gave the green light to member states to break the EU's own state aid rules.Secondly, they turned their faces away from initiating structural reforms to the regulatory system, which might have freed the logjam in inter-bank lending – preferring instead to make one minor and largely cosmetic change.

Now, today, we see Mr Darling introduce a scheme designed specifically to free up inter-bank lending, including the provision of at least £200 billion to banks under the Special Liquidity Scheme and the injection of £50 billion capital into a select group of British banks - to the general approval of the Europhile Tory hierarchy. Thus we see an alternative and far more expensive plan aimed at achieving that which the EU members states collectively failed to address.

Furthermore, it is one which, in its totality, almost certainly breaches EU state aid rules, as well as being "discriminatory" – two of the EU's mortal sins.

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Whilst this is clearly not the end of the current banking crises; it could just possibly be the begining of the end of the EU as we know it!

The Sunday Quote

2008-10-05T11:19:00.003+01:00

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'' Human behaviour flows from three main sources, desire, emotion and knowledge''

Plato

2008-09-29T23:28:00.001+01:00

Peter Troy

Blogger,Publicist

but not a Golfer

The Peter Troy -The Publicist Ltd Golf team (Captain Chris Williamson second from the left) at the Hartlepool and District Hospice Tornament recently. http://www.the-publicist.co.uk/

Photo. Mike Gibb

Oh Dear Me!

2008-09-29T21:15:00.008+01:00

The US bank bailout has been rejected. Wall Street has nose dived.

'No' vote crushes DowDow falls as much as 730 points as the House rejects the $700 billion bank bailout plan. more . Now what?

Bailout plan rejected - supporters scramble House leaders trade partisan words after historic financial rescue goes down in defeat.

In the meantime according to Deutsche Welle, the German government has been injecting "billions of euros" into troubled commercial property lender Hypo Real Estate (HRE). This, we are told, is the first German blue-chip company to seek a bailout in the global financial crisis.

The German Finance Ministry in Berlin is reported to have said it had provided HRE guarantees for an emergency credit line totalling €35 billion (about £25 billion), although there are no plans to nationalise the bank. A spokesman for the finance ministry said the commitment was needed so that [other] banks could bail out HRE.In different times, this might have made front-page news but such is the torrent of financial news that it is hardly surprising that it has been given less than star treatment by the bulk of the UK media.

To be fair, The Times has picked it up, together with the news of Glitnir, "the struggling Icelandic bank". This was partially nationalised today as the Icelandic Government bought a 75 percent stake in it for €600 million (£478 million) "to ensure broader market stability".The Icelandic bank move was not unexpected but problems with HRE were not widely signalled.

The Times has Bundesbank, and financial regulator, BaFin, confirming that they were involved in the efforts to bail out HRE, and has their spokesman saying: "The Bundesbank and BaFin now assume that Hypo Real Estate Group is secure."On the other hand, Kiri Vijayarajah, an analyst at Citigroup, counters: "Hypo Real Estate also has other problems. It has exceptionally high leverage, which may no longer be viable. Also, we believe it is likely to experience losses on real estate loans, causing more damage to earnings and capital."When blue-chip German banks start feeling the strain, it is time to wonder where it is all going to end.

The BBC website today helpfully publishes the full text of the government statement on the nationalisation of the Bradford & Bingley bank and the sale of parts of the business to Spanish banking giant Santander.

The current status of the deal is confirmed by Reuters which reports the EU commission saying it had been in touch with British authorities over a rescue plan, "and expected them to notify the EU executive of state aid in the course of Monday".The agency cites Jonathan Todd, spokesman for EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes, who states: "We've been in very close touch with the UK authorities throughout the weekend ... Our understanding is that the UK authorities will notify rescue aid to us today."

A similar process is in hand with the rescue of the Fortis Bank. The Forbes agency, relying on a Reuters feed, is reporting that EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes have been consulted on the Fortis rescue and had been "close touch with the Belgian government all weekend.

As Tony Blair once said: ''it can only get better''.

The Sunday Quote

2008-09-28T11:23:00.000+01:00

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''We should claim, in the name of tolerance the right not to tolerate the intolerant''

Karl Popper (1902-94) Austrian born British philosopher, The Open Society and its Enemies (1945).
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EU Denial

2008-09-28T11:02:00.028+01:00

.....................................................The British political classes including commentators and lobbyists are in denial, determined to ignore a reality and carry on as if it was "business as usual". They all still behave as if London is still the centre of government of the UK ; is not.

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It is point that the edtor of this dear Blog has made many times particularly when he was a very active person (which he may well be again) in that large small business organisation the Federation of Small Businesees.

The dynamic of this EU denial is actually quite subtle - absolute refusal to come to grips with the reality, acknowledgement of which would then require an acceptance that the UK government had in many policy areas become a marginal backwater of very little importance.

Intrestingly what is happening at what used to be central government level happened many years ago in local government in the UK shortly after the 1973 local government reorganisation. Unappreciated by many, this reorganisation was accompanied by a major "reform" of local government management, heralded by the 1972 Baines Report, a yellowing copy of which still resides on my bookshelf.

The key element of this was the creation of super-departments with chief executives who acquired a huge tranche of delegated powers, making a vast number of decisions that were hitherto reserved for councillors, to be discussed and debated in committees and full council. At a stroke, the bulk of local government shifted from political control to managerial governance. Councillors became, on many issues, largely redundant and council meetings were stripped of their true meaning.
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The response of the councillors was interesting. Instead of dealing with the deadly dull but vitally important issues of council management, they devoted more and more time to party political bickering, with heated debates about political issues which often had no relevance at all to council business. Council meetings became theatre – hugely entertaining at first, if for no other reason than for their novelty value. Soon enough though, the novelty palled as we realised that so much of this was empty posturing.

The politicians were left to bicker amongst themselves, largely ignored by the electorate who knew instinctively that their mouthings were devoid of meaning.

The equivalent of their Baines Report for national government was the Treaty of Rome and the subsequent treaties, which gradually stripped them of many of their powers and turned political government of the UK into managerial governance, centred on Brussels.The transition is not yet complete, as there are some policy areas which do remain as "competences" – in the modern jargon – of the London government, but most of the power has gone elsewhere.

A graphic illustration of this comes with yesterday's Environment Council in Brussels, which has produced a 26-page communiqué, stuffed with detail, agreeing initiatives of enormous importance to our daily lives, many with multi-billion price tags and timetables for implementation stretching into decades. It is well worth having a look at the document, just to appreciate the vast range of issues it covers.

Some of this was elaborated upon by environment commissioner, Stravros Dimas, in a speech yesterday to a conference in Brussels. Yet, despite the importance of the issues covered, such was the dullness and the lack of any personality recognisable to the British public, that the only media coverage I can find was in the official Chinese press agency Xinhuanet, and that was only a partial account.

On the eve of the Conservative Party conference, the British political Journalists are far too busy to care. They are preparing themselves for the theatre, analysing and dissecting the personalities and readying themselves to write yards of extruded verbal material on their speeches.

If one were to ask any one of them to identify the person in the photograph above, many of them would not have a clue. Yet, Stavros Dimas, as environment commissioner, is probably one of the most powerful politicians in Europe (and thus Britain) using powers delegated to him by the Single European Act in 1984 when, with the approval of Margaret Thatcher, "evironment" became an exclusive European Community competence. Few though, have ever heard of him. Fewer still would recognise him.

That fact though is so hideously uncomfortable and unpalatable that there will be no mention of it at all at the Conservative Party conference next week; such is the nature of British Political Subjects these days.

The Last Straw

2008-09-26T09:25:00.002+01:00

The Daily Mail today chooses to devote its front page to a warning by the National Grid that electricity supplies will be tight this winter, with the real possibility of power cuts.The story, in typical Mail style, is luridly written, but there is a germ of truth in what it says.
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What is especially remarkable of the Mail story (online edition), is the number of comments – 243 at the time of writing. That is unusually large and can be taken as indicative of widespread public interest.After the economy, there can be no doubt that this is the most important issue in the book and, if the current economic crisis is resolved – at least temporarily – there is every reason to suppose that energy will leap to number one, especially if we do start seeing power cuts. In any event, even if the economy does go belly up, the lights going out could be the last straw.

Raised Voices Needed!

2008-09-21T20:06:00.006+01:00

This week those of us that follow politics will watch as Government ministers and their followers at the Labour Party Conference try as hard as they can to convince us that ''it can (yet again) only get better''.

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The British Labour party like the world banking system has gone belly up and can survive only if it is rescued by outsiders with new methods and ideas. While key Labour party figures are publicly declaring loyalty to Gordon Brown they are behind his back still managing to undermine him.

Against this background Labour party politicians and delegates will be implored to 'Keep Trade Local' by the Federation of Small Businesses, (FSB) the UK's largest member based business organisation. Whilst the FSB's campaign against the growing threat of corporatism is aired to the good bad and ugly of British politics the far bigger threat to small businesses is the recent ripple effect of the so called credit crunch on the economic engine room of the British economy, small and medium sized businesses.

John Wright the former Trade Unionist (NALGO) and now National Chairman of the FSB would be best advised to use his Labour Party membership to great effect in the next few days - when he enjoys the new Labour's beer and sandwiches - since his members are about to never have it so bad.

If being more taxed an any time in modern history or more regulated than ever before has not been bad enough then the consequences of grossly incompetent bankers which will mean a serious lack of cheep business credit (or any credit at all in many cases) is about to provided the biggest threat to non-corporate business Britain (and the 'western' world) in living memory.

The message from the representitives of small businesses should not be so much ''keep trade local'' as for the government to truly understand the basic needs of trade which is less official interference, less support agencies and less taxation. But of course our true government is the European Union not the Labour Party. Perhaps small businesses need to raise their voice (not least so it can be heared in Brussels) since they will mostly soon be fighting for their very survival.

Ryder Cup - Hijacked

2008-09-21T19:11:00.004+01:00

The Ryder The Ryder Cup tournament, the 37th event in Louisville, Kentucky, is supposed to be the ultimate expression of the "European" ideal, having been hijacked (like so nany other events and indeed organistaions) by the European Union which is taking every opportunity to display its hated emblem the ring of barbed wire, whoops sorry stars!

.As Dr North explained the background to this last year, the EU – and the huge publicity budget devoted to promoting their "European identity" – the idea hasn't really taken off. Certainly, the very British fans pictured above do not seem to have got the message, thank goodness.

The Cost of The Credit (and Green-con) Crunch

2008-09-21T15:18:00.008+01:00

Taxpayers in Britain face up to 5p in the pound in extra taxes because of the credit crunch created by the banks, leading economists have warned," says The Sunday Times, bemoaning in its leader that, "It's the ordinary folk who carry the can."

Indeed they do - particularly small businesses - and it was ever thus but, while the paper is rightly getting excited about this latest raid on our wallets, another one is around the corner which will cost us, potentially, even more.

That being the EU's emission trading scheme (ETS) which, with other levies and taxes, is set to add anything up to £15 billion a year to all our bills (no one knows precisely how much – so this is a conservative estimate) – also, by some strange coincidence, equivalent to 5p in the pound in extra taxes, and that is likely to be only a start.

.Worst still, this "tax" is regressive, which means those on lower incomes are hit proportionately harder than the wealthy.Amazingly, the political classes in Britain seem to be totally unaware of what awaits us. This is perhaps indicated by a post in Conservative Home today which "reveals" the exclusive news that a senior frontbencher has told the site that, "as part of an ongoing review of economic policy, higher green taxation is very unlikely to feature in the next Conservative manifesto."

.So "can politicians be that ignorant?" Can they be so ignorant that they are apparently so heedless of what it to come that they can make statements as utterly facile and meaningless as appears on the Conservative Home site.

Well yes es they can! – which makes Booker's column today a timely corrective.In his piece, he picks up the connection between Lehman Brothers and the climate change industry, and between the company and those two great climate change evangelists, al Gore and James Hanson. What drives this development is the growing realisation by European governments – and the EU commission – that the emissions reductions targets they have set themselves for 2020 and beyond are unachievable without massive damage to the economies of developed nations and, in particular, the need to force electricity generators to shut down their plants, leaving their customers cold and in the dark.

That Bankers Lehman Brothers – and before them Enron – were so keen on this scheme tells you all you need to know. It comes from the same stable as the securitisation packages of sub-prime mortgages, a financial empire built on foundations of sand.Many people warned of the dangers of the "credit crunch", but some of those who are popping up now are exposed to accusations of being wise after the event.

Yet, in the "green-con boom", the wiz-kids are preparing the ground for another financial bubble – a "climate change crunch" if you like - the consequences of which will be just as damaging as the present crisis. As The Sunday Times so rightly observes, "It's the ordinary folk who carry the can." Christopher Booker, (Booker's column today) as he is so often, is being wise before the event.

The Sunday Quote

2008-09-21T15:16:00.002+01:00

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''Bank failures are caused by depositors who don't deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement ''

Dan Quale 44th US Vice President (1989-93).
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A Very British Brigadier

2008-09-21T11:50:00.042+01:00

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The life, military career and example of an eminent Jersey soldier has been commemorated by the presentation of a trophy, to be awarded annually to the ‘best senior cadet’ at Jersey’s public school (founded 1852), Victoria College.

Brigadier Terence (‘Terry’) Troy CBE, who died on 1 December 2007 at the age of 85, had not only a very distinguished army career, but also the capacity if inspiring great loyalty among those whom he met or who served under him both as an army officer and during his active retirement in Jersey.

The trophy was presented by his nephew, Peter Anthony Troy, to Calum Forrest, sixth-former at Victoria College and Chief Warrant Officer in the RAF section of the Combined Cadet Force. After leaving Victoria College he is going to Bath University to read biology, and hopes later to join the RAF.

The CCF is the successor of the Officers Training Corps, in which the young Terence Troy served as a schoolboy in the late 1930s, before escaping from Jersey in 1940, just before the Occupation, to enlist in the British Army.

Brigadier Troy was commissioned shortly afterwards in the 15th Punjab Regiment, Indian Army; he fought in the Arakan Campaign, the Battle of Kohima, and later took part in the advance through Burma to Rangoon, including the battles of the crossing of the Irrawaddy and Pegu Yoma.

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Above right, Terry Troy at 15 (front row on the left) in 1938 in the OTC.

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He was selected by the Commander of the XIV Army, the then General William Slim, to be an aide-de-camp, and in 1946 at the age of 24 became the youngest Brigade Major in either the British or Indian Armies.
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In 1947 he transferred to the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and became the Commanding Officer of the First Battalion. Staff appointments followed, and he was promoted to Brigadier in 1973. Upon retirement in 1977, he returned to Jersey, where he became President of the Jersey branch of the Royal British Legion.

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During the Battle of Kohima he experienced the atrocious conditions imposed by heavy casualties, monsoon rain, mud and entanglements of barbed wire. On one occasion as he bivouacked overnight in a small crevice, and was awoken by the discomfort of an obstruction underneath him. He shone a torch, and realised it was the body of a dead British soldier on top of which he had been sleeping.

In his retirement years, he regularly recited the Kohima Epitaph at Remembrance Services at Jersey’s Cenotaph: ‘When you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow, we gave our today’.

Left, The Brigadier in October 1999. (Photo PT)

Peter Troy presented the trophy at the Victoria College annual prize giving ceremony on Monday 8 September, in the school’s historic Great Hall, in the presence of the Island’s Bailiff, Sir Philip Bailhache, the Earl of Jersey, school governors, head master, senior boys and parents.

He said later: ‘The family of my late uncle were very keen for there to be a living memorial to him – and his own character meant that a park bench would have been a very inappropriate choice!

‘This award is in keeping with his own eminent military career. As a youth he was a member of the Victoria College Officer Cadet Corps, the forerunner of the present Combined Cadet Force, and I am sure he would have approved of this trophy. As a family, we hope that competing for it will provide inspiration for young people to train to serve Queen and Country in the Armed Services.’

Mr Troy, who lives in the North-East of England, commissioned the shield, which is of silver mounted on Brazilian wood. It was designed by Diane Ellis, who knew the Brigadier for 20 years and bears the crests of Jersey, Victoria College, and the Combined Cadet Force.

His company (Peter Troy The Publicist Ltd) is also arranging the publication of the late Brigadier Troy’s autobiography, which has a preface written by Jersey’s Lieutenant-Governor, Lieutenant-General Andrew Ridgeway CB, CBE

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The Brigadier TM Troy CBE Trophy - Commisioned by Peter Troy, Designed by Diane Ellis, manufactured by Clockworks (Hartlepool) under instructions from Advocate Brian Troy (Royal Court of Jersey) the Executor of the Brigadier's Estate. (Photo Mike Gibb)

Above, Peter Troy addresses the Victoria College Combined Cadet Unit - 5 September 2008 on the life and times of Brigadier Troy aided by extensive notes from the Brigadier's Brother (Peter's Father Kevin Troy - also late of Victoria College)

A tribute to the Brigadier - Advocate Brian Troy (Executor to the Brigadier's Estate) with Peter Troy place a wreath of Jersey Lilies on the Grave of Terry and Patrica (died 1979) Troy, saluted by Calum Forrest, Chief Warrent Officer CCU Victoria College Jersey.

We did it bloody properly

On the morning of Terry Troy's death Brian Troy and I opened a file we found amongst my Uncle's personal papers marked '' Funeral Arrangements and other instructions''. The extensive document concluded: ''I do not expect that all my wishes will be complied with but please do it bloody properly''. I truly believe we complied with all of my Late Uncle's wishes and indeed we did it properly.

Peter Troy, Sedgefield,County Durham.

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All photos (unless otherwise stated) photo reportage, Jersey. 01534 858751.

Big Business Hijack Greenie Agenda

2008-09-20T08:15:00.006+01:00

It was the great economist and philosopher Adam Smith who wrote:

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People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Now, they do not even bother to hide their intentions – they just cite "climate change" and lobby the government so that they can "compete for the lucrative business" made possible by its measures.

Such is clearly the motivation of the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change which, under the aegis of the Prince of Wales's "Business and the Environment Programme", have written a letter to the prime minister and the leaders of the opposition parties calling for "the cross-party effort that is essential to deliver a low climate risk economy."

What, in effect, they are asking for is a suspension of the political (i.e., democratic) process, their stated aim being to encourage "a new cross-party political consensus" on the scale and speed of change required, and a constructive political debate on how their "lucrative business" can be delivered.

The companies signing the letter are Anglian Water Group, B&Q, BAA, Centrica, E.on, F&C Management, Faber Maunsell, John Lewis, Johnson Matthey, Lloyds TSB, Reckitt Benckiser Group, Shell, Standard Chartered Bank, Sun Micro-systems, Tesco, Thames Water, Unilever and Vodaphone.

Most of these, in one way or another, stand to gain financially from implementation of climate change measures, some more directly than others. The energy companies Shell, Centrica and E.on in particular stand to make money from the ETS and the allied emission mitigation measures.Companies like Faber Maunsell, a "multi-disciplinary, award-winning consultancy specialising in the planning, design and engineering of buildings, transport systems and environmental services" also stands to make a packet out of climate change mitigation contracts. Johnson Matthey, which just happens to produce components for fuel cells, is also nicely placed to grab some of the "lucrative business".

The multi-billion international investment company, F&C Management is also a very interesting example of self-interest in action. It has actively lobbied the US congress for "cap and trade" and is keen to follow in the footsteps of al Gore and make a tidy fortune out of carbon trading.The same "lucrative business" opportunity awaits Lloyds TSB and the Standard Chartered Bank, the latter gleefully talking up the prospects for the carbon trading market.The Anglian Water Group is heavily involved in renewable energy, as indeed is Thames Water, which is already the largest generator of renewable energy within the M25 and is very keen on developing electricity generation from sewage sludge.

B&Q stands to gain considerably from increased retail sales of insulating materials and energy saving devices, as do – to a certain extent – Tesco and John Lewis.For these two latter companies, their involvement also – in their own eyes – confers a PR bonus. Being seen to be "environmentally conscious" is good for business. That probably explains the presence of BAA - anxious to demonstrate its corporate responsibility - the involvement of Vodafone (although the latter also sees product development opportunities as well) and of the Reckitt Benckiser Group.PR is certainly one of the motivations of Sun Micro-systems. However, Vinod Khosla, co-founder of the company is pumping millions into developing biofuels using "synthetic biology".

Unilever is also heavily into biofuels and is actively promoting second generation biofuel.Thus, although this initiative is presented as business expressing "concern" about climate change, the letter to the prime minister is nothing more or less than a naked expression of pork-barrel politics.

Ironically, Greenpeace is accusing some of those involved of "hypocrisy of a previously unknown magnitude". In so doing, however, it misses the point, the greenie agenda has been hijacked by big business, who see in the raft of climate change controls huge money-making potential.

The letter to prime minister is just another example of that dynamic, where the players have recognised the scam for what it is, an opportunity to plunder the private purse.

Adam Smith must be turning in his grave.

Sunday Quote

2008-09-07T19:28:00.001+01:00

Oh! what a snug little Island, A right little, tight little Island!
(The Snug Little Island)
Thomas Dibdin
English songwriter, 1771-1841

Cutting Their Own Throats

2008-09-02T18:57:00.005+01:00

It is not encouraging to read in last weeks newspapers that the ratchet of big State involvement in every imaginable nook and cranny of people's lives is quietly working on those things that national Governments have yet to invade.

The British Government certainly qualifies (as we are fond of saying and small business people are aware) as big, invasive, over-regulating, cumbersome, and combined with the EU's obsession with the contents of our waste bins casting its dark shadow over British Government Policy additional taxation is now inevitable. There are we are told plans afoot to tax disposable items such as nappies and razor blades as luxury goods in order to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill sites. This is one of the options set out in a 200-page report commissioned by DEFRA aimed at halving the amount of waste produced on average by each person from 800 to 400lbs a year. Another possible option is the much rehearsed idea of a new rubbish bin tax, based on the amount of waste produced.

All this in the same week as The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate of the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions indicates that British taxpayers pay £19.6 billion a year more than is necessary, even the British Government's own estimate shows that we the hapless taxpayer are paying £7.9 billion too much in so called ''green taxes''.

The "disposables tax", which seems to be the government's main new tactic to cajole and increasingly unwilling population into conformity with yet more EU rules. The idea is to impose punitive taxes similar to those imposed on alcohol and tobacco on basic domestic items that cannot be re-used or recycled. Products targeted include what a recent DEFRA report calls "the usual suspects", such as disposable nappies and plastic carrier bags. However, it also suggests taxes could be applied to other disposable goods, such as paper plates, plastic cutlery, disposable barbecues and even disposable razors, increasing their costs five-fold at a time of already alarming prices on the high street.

Instead of addressing the complex but technically solvable problem of how to lower the ever increasing price of groceries in our shops and encouraging us to be responsible our government appears to be totally bogged down by the task of taxing us all even more.

Whilst the idea of a nation weaned on modern hygienic disposable razors, reverting to the old fashioned and dangerous cut-throat razors is an amusing one, the idea of another tax on already over taxed nation most certainly is not.

Already, there is considerable resentment at the government's enthusiasm for so-called "green" taxes (in reality an excuse to extract more money) and additional taxes and duties on a wide range of essential purchases are not going to be popular either with the men of this country or I might add the HSE (Health & Safety Executive). The thought of standing in front of the bathroom mirror using my newly sharpened razor, a knock at the bathroom door, man in suit with clipboard – Sir, have you completed your Risk Assessment Form for this procedure? Is indeed one to savour.

Our 'brave new Labour' (Brown version) government might have something in common with the men they seek to force into using non-disposable blades for shaving – they will all be cutting their own throats.

The Sunday Quote

2008-08-31T20:26:00.003+01:00

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''The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.''

Eugene McCarthy (1916 - 2005), Time magazine, Feb. 12, 1979
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Your Cake .... But Don't Eat It!

2008-08-31T20:04:00.008+01:00

Since optimism is one of the few things which the government has not yet got round to taxing, regulating or banning it is perhaps safe to assume that things can only get better.

Though it is not encouraging to read in The Irish Times (as one does) that the ratchet of big State involvement in every imaginable nook and cranny of people's lives is working again. Those things that national Governments have yet to invade of their own accord, it seems, are increasingly being trampled by the EU instead.

Whilst British Government certainly qualifies as big, invasive, over-regulating, cumbersome, costly and inefficient in its behaviour, this is a stark reminder that it still has a way to go to catch up with the EU. With their tens of thousands of bureaucrats in Brussels slaving over hot keyboards, in their wisdom and zeal they've regulated the highly dangerous extreme sport of...baking competitions at fairs and fetes. That's right, they've banned anyone from consuming the cakes except for the mouthful the judges have to consume in order to assess the baked goods.

After the initial assessment sample has been consumed the cakes must be destroyed, not eaten. What exactly is the point of this regulation? Why must innofensive events be regulated at all? Worse, why did countless bureaucrats and Commission legislators even bother to draw this law up in the first place - and make us pay them for their trouble?

Some Thing Wrong with our World

2008-08-31T19:08:00.007+01:00

Today sees another penetrating article on the climate change lobby by the excellent Christopher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph. Booker examines the 'evidence' that has been presented to the political class and taken at face value, resulting in a race by politicians to 'out-green' opponents by pledging to dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions.

Booker goes on to explain why the information being used by politicians to underpin 'green' policy can - putting it politely - be reasonably considered to be wrong. He covers topics that he has visited in the past, but in doing so continues to build a convincing case for not blindly accepting the various claims and scares. Booker goes to town today on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), charting the intellectual and political corruption behind what must the biggest (and most expensive) scam in the history of the planet.

Perhaps though the greatest evil perpetrated by the IPCC is the way it has distorted public policy, elevating "climate change" to the top of the political agenda and thus skewing expenditure priorities and the focus of public administration.

No more so is this apparent than in the energy field where, instead of addressing the complex but technically solvable problems of providing cheap electricity for the masses, policy is totally bogged down by the fantasy of providing for a "carbon-free" future.

Worse still, if we are entering a period of global cooling – which even the "warmists" admit is on the cards, the policy responses required are entirely different from those needed to deal with the warming scenario postulated by the IPCC.In that sense, the IPCC is directly responsible for a huge diversion of resources, on a global scale, sanctioning policies which have no foundation in reality while diverting attention from the nuts and bolts of good public administration that are needed to keep society functional.

That this group of self-serving politicians and politico-scientists have been able to get away with it, though, is one of those latter-day marvels which defies explanation. As Booker demonstrates, so transparent is their fraud that it is almost inexplicable that the perpetrators have not been run out of town.Instead, they preen and posture as they collect their Nobel prizes, while the media laud them and perpetuate their propaganda. There is something very wrong with this world, and it ain't global warming.