Cazzy Jones: Deep Blue, Red Hot

The Way We Are Governed In The UK

2011-10-18T05:45:00.000-07:00

Participating, directly or indirectly, with UK funds in the Greek bailouts in order to keep the Euro alive.

Placing ill thought out trust in the merits of wind turbines for energy production and ensuring in consequence that our fuel bills continue to increase to painful levels.

Giving aid to Pakistan.

Rendering the country unable to deport foreign terrorists and other undesirables by leaving the Human Rights Act on the statute book.

Leaving the ordinary citizen vulnerable to bullying and browbeating by agents of the state, directly or indirectly (think of the DVLA helping out pirate parking firms), who never pass up a chance to go after a soft target.

Maintaining a hostile attitude towards grammar schools.

Fuelling inflation via quantitative easing.

Turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the plight of would be wealth creators burdened by excessive regulation.

And maintaining that the UK's membership of the EU is a good thing.

Policies of the socialist government with which we were enslaved for 13 years, all left untouched by the Coalition whose sole aim appears to be managing the legacy and the resulting decline rather than pursuing truly bold reforms.

One wasted year so far, and the threat of four more. Thank you, political class. You're all right, and nothing else matters.

On that note, let's bring an end to these occasional comments on UK politics and current affairs. Barring a truly seismic event, such as the break up of the Euro and the consequent collapse of the EU - we should be so lucky - there's little point in complaining. No one is listening.

Defying the EU: Slovak Beer, Please

2011-10-13T00:51:00.000-07:00

On a distant occasion when the Danes stood up to a piece of EU lunacy, I thought it merited a symbolic celebration with Danish bacon and Carlsberg (not at the same time, though).

The decision of Slovakia to stand up to the latest Greek bailout insanity raises two questions. The first, when will they be browbeaten into submission just like other EU members who vote in an manner unacceptable to the Commission? The second, where can I get a Slovak beer - as opposed to a Czech Republic beer - here in the UK?

My Country's In Ruins: Come On, Rise Up

2011-10-12T05:31:00.000-07:00

It is interesting to realise that Bruce Springsteen's song of despair and hope My City Of Ruins from The Rising was not a 9/11 song in its own right, but a reflection on the sad state of Asbury Park and the significant amount of blight it had suffered. The element of hope, as the Wiki entry confirms, can be found in the Boss powerfully imploring the city to "rise up" from the decay in the chorus.

Here and now in the UK, plagued as we are by Labour's destruction of the public finances, the EU's destruction of Eurozone economies and its browbeating of the UK into bailout participation, our sky high energy bills in the name of fighting climate change, and the ostrich mindset of the Coalition in the face of these problems and many similar, we can only wish that the message and spirit of that song might be taken up by an individual or group with the determination and ability to do something about it.

Sadly, it's more likely that we'll just end up Dancing In The Dark while we wait for anything of the kind. Especially if the EU forces closure of the power stations before their replacements are built and while the turbines stand idle.

Air Passenger Duty and The Law Of Unintended Consequences

2011-10-10T06:03:00.000-07:00

So George Osborne has admitted, via a leaked letter, that APD "is fundamentally a revenue raising duty and currently raises around £2.5 billion per year", despite being dressed up as an environmental measure designed to discourage air travel.

Well, there's a surprise. But just as the 50p tax rate may result in less revenue being raised, as the high earners turn their back on the UK, does it not occur to him that the APD levy may in fact be utterly counterproductive, as long haul flyers head for Schiphol and Frankfurt, regardless of the collateral damage to the UK economy that this brings?

Or is this more along the lines of a concealed environmental measure, where such wreckage to British industry is looked upon as a small price to pay for being seen to be doing something green?

SCRAP APD NOW, CHANCELLOR.

Bag It And Bin It, Welsh Assembly

2011-10-04T01:04:00.000-07:00

Hard on the heels of the Prime Minister's outburst against plastic bags, another live example from up here in Wales. With effect from 1 October, a new regulation from the Welsh Assembly requiring supermarkets to make a minimum charge of 5p per bag. Well, that will really help fight climate change, won't it. Even if the law of unintended consequences will mean that more household litter goes everywhere because there are fewer bags reused, more instances of dog deposits being left (no, let's not go down that one).

But one irony stood out at a Tesco shopping trip a few days ago. The checkout assistant offered two cardboard bottle containers free of charge, and without obtaining any pledge that they would be reused. They're not that good for lining waste paper baskets (etc), of course. And what was their production cost compared to a couple of plastic bags? And might Tesco have been giving them away free just to put two fingers up to the Welsh Assembly?

Bag It And Bin It, Prime Minister

2011-09-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

One of Margaret Thatcher's more cringe making moments when PM was the long forgotten anti-litter campaign where she acted a little scenario for the cameras, carefully picking up rubbish before finishing with the slogan "Bag It and Bin It, That Way We'll Win It". No mention in The Downing Street Years, but it was picked up by Philip Johnston just over 6 years ago.

Fast forward to today and we have David Cameron jumping on the bandwagon of the absurd war on plastic bags, all no doubt in the cause of having to be seen to be doing something to fight climate change and regardless of the fact that one or two more problems relating to the UK economy, the Eurozone and Greek bailouts, and our astronomical energy bills might just need more attention.

I once speculated whether that Scottish bloke called Gordon something or other, when he was ranting and raving about plastic bags rather than the outcomes of his own economic mismanagement, might ever have realised how useful plastic bags were when clearing up after a labrador had answered a call of nature, and whether he might appreciate being sent a specimen. It would perhaps be unreasonable to tar the current PM with such wilful ignorance, so I will refrain from making the same offer. As long as he promises to apply Bag It And Bin It to his latest silly outburst.

Eurocrats Should Be Slayed - By Slade

2011-09-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Capitalists@Work, here's a rewrite of an old Slade classic that's only too symbolic here and now: -

Do you remember the crash of September
The Eurocrats lied every day
Do you remember they conned every member
As Greece just kept squandering away

Chorus: -

If you’re in for a euro
You gotta be in for a pound
‘Cause over and over
They pissed cash all over the ground
So look around
Play the refrain
Waste it and waste it and waste it again

Did you discover they all ran for cover
When Greece took a tumble or two
Were you surprised when they tried on their lies
And bit off more than they could chew

(Chorus)

Do you remember the night they surrendered
We wanted to boil them in oil
How they had squandered as Greece madly wandered
The prophets foretold we’d be foiled

(Chorus)

Littlejohn Names & Shames A Jobsworth

2011-09-27T01:16:00.000-07:00

How often in years gone by, when reading of yet another instance of The Mad Officials (to use Christopher Booker's phrase) in action, blindly following procedures but not common sense, have we wanted the journalists to go that one step further and actually name the rubber desk johnnies personally responsible for making ordinary people's lives a misery, rather than for their articles to be left hanging with "a spokesman for Squandershire District Council said....."?

Well, all praise to Richard Littlejohn today for not only naming Lance Kennedy the "Tortoise Tyrant" of Cornwall Council responsible for the persecution of a St Austell tortoise sanctuary and its owner, but also publishing his full job title (Cabinet Member and Portfolio Holder for Community Safety - as Littlejohn himself would put it, you couldn't make it up), work address, email address and phone number, third story down in the linked article after those about the released Islamist suicide bomb terrorists and the talking litter bins. Here's to the thought of a new trend?

Greece and the EU: Taking the Piss

2011-09-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

Daniel Hannan relates a witty anecdote about the disappearance of the Greek head of state's fountain pen at a Cabinet meeting.

I am reminded of an ancient joke about the primary school teacher who discovered a suspicious puddle in the classroom after letting the children out for a break. When they return, she asks who was responsible. No one owns up. Thinking that the culprit must be too embarrassed to do so in front of the whole class, she says that she will turn the lights out and draw the blinds, and enable the culprit to own up via the pen and paper on her desk. In total darkness, she hears a suspicious hissing sound followed by the pen scratching. She turns the lights back on and steps in a new puddle, before discovering what is written on the paper: -

"The phantom piddler strikes again!"

Is there just a vague echo here of what Greece is doing to the EU - or perhaps what the EU political class is doing to its member states?

Crap Jobs: Another Atlas Shrugged Echo

2011-09-22T05:40:00.000-07:00

Jenny McCartney tells the tale today of how John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development - there's a passing reminder of the classic "Personnel? That's for assholes!" from Dirty Harry Calahan in The Enforcer - explains the attitude of so-called disadvantaged youths towards the employment market as being markedly influenced by employers not sufficiently addressing the big issue - "the world of work is so crap".

While Jenny M's analysis is entirely correct, it reminds me of the scene in Atlas Shrugged where Hank Rearden has his hectic working day interrupted by his resentful mother, for the sole purpose of begging him to give a job to his wasteful idler of a brother Philip. And not just any dirty old job amid his blast furnaces, but an office job with a nice desk. Rearden's most telling response, apart from reminding his mother that he was running a steel plant and not a whorehouse, was "But he'd be no use to me whatsoever!"

Indeed. A sentiment echoed up and down the country by thousands of small business owners whenever they take a look at the legions of unemployable chavs and chavettes, many of whom would not lift a finger to seek to trade their state benefit existence for the said crap jobs. To say nothing of the barely literate applications and CVs that might come in, and the hopeless performance at interviews of any who make it that far.

If Mr Philpott cannot answer his own rhetorical "what is the point" question with an answer that involves having to start at the bottom in order to better oneself, perhaps he too is in a crap job.

Chris Huhne and a Joni Mitchell Tribute

2011-09-21T00:43:00.000-07:00

I am indebted to niconoclast for the passing reference to Big Yellow Taxi on one of yesterday's ConHome threads about our beloved Secretary of State for Energy, particularly the thought that he probably thinks of the song as Big Green Taxes. Let's take this a step further, shall we: -

They paved paradise
And put up a turbine plot
With its bird chopping blades, a racket
And a swingeing landscape blot
Don't it always seem to go
That they waste cash they ain’t got
‘Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a turbine plot

They praised fashions green
Put industries in a museum
Then they charged the people
Billions in tax just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go,
That they raise tax you ain’t got
‘Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a turbine plot

Hey, Coalition
Put away green energy
Give me cuts on my fuel bills
And leave me my car and TV
Please!
Don't it always seem to go
That they print wads they should not
‘Til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a turbine plot

Late last night
I dreamt the Commons door went boom
And the men in white coats
Came and took away Chris Huhne
Don't it always seem to go
That they inflate the whole lot
‘Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a turbine plot

(Repeat ad nauseam)

Chris Huhne: Tough On Energy Prices - But Not Tough On The Causes Of Energy Prices

2011-09-20T00:40:00.000-07:00

If there was one question we were all burning to ask Chris Huhne today, it would not be "Did you get your ex-wife to take the rap for your speeding offence?" It would be "To what extent are our gas and electricity bills ramped up to such obscene levels as a direct consequence of the lunatic green policies of your government and their fanatical pursuit of EU targets for renewable energy?"

With every new story of how foreign wind turbine firms such as the Danish company Dong Energy (just about says it all) are being paid not to produce electricity when the wind blows really hard, and how wealthy landowners like the Prime Minster's father in law are coining it in for their part in despoiling the landscape with the said monstrosities, it is difficult to know whether to laugh or to cry. And the chance of Huhne the Eco-Loon getting tough on himself is sadly just as likely as the chance of his multi-millionaire Cabinet colleagues ever being able truly to feel the pain of the governed classes when the energy bills get higher and higher.

Chris Evans and the EU: Is The Tide Turning?

2011-09-19T01:04:00.000-07:00

It was verging on astonishing to hear the dialogue between Chris Evans and his co-presenter just before the 7.00 news this morning. Having proclaimed that everybody knows that Greece is going to default on its debts, he went on to enthuse about the growing calls for a referendum on EU membership (notably from Mark Pritchard today) and in turn to say that he would vote to leave the EU even though he did not really know why.

Well, there's a startling revelation. Given how the skids were put under his predecessor Sarah Kennedy for many supposed political gaffes, including one about how Enoch Powell was the best Prime Minister we never had, how long before the fanatically pro-EU Beeb apparatchiks focus their sights on Chris Evans? Or would they fear to do so, knowing deep down that he has accidentally spoken for the majority, not just of his listeners but of the nation as a whole?

Greece And The Euro: Three Wheels On My Wagon

2011-09-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist...

Three wheels on my Euro,
And I’m still rolling along
The bankrupt Greeks are making shrieks
Savings fly, right on by
But I’m singing a happy song

I’m singing a higgity, haggity, hoggety, high
EU bureaucrats never say die
A mile up the road there’s the Brussels cave
And we can watch those greasy Greeks
Go galloping by

SPOKEN: “Silvio, they’re not sucking up to us!”
“Get your unshaggable lard arse back in the wagon Merkel!”

Two wheels on my Euro,
And I’m still rolling along
Them no good Greeks, bust in weeks
Market fears burn my ears
But I’m singing a happy song

[Chorus]

SPOKEN: “Duh, Rumpy Pumpy? Are you sure this is the right road?”
“Will you hush up? You and your maps!”

One wheel on my Euro,
And I’m still rolling along
Them flat broke Greeks, up shit creek
We’re all in flames, financial chains
But I’m singing a happy song

[Chorus]

SPOKEN: “Nicolas? Should I get a ban on treats and junkets?”
“Merkel, I know what I’m doing!”

No wheels on my Euro,
So I’m not rolling along
The desperate Greeks deserted me
They look mad, things look bad
But I’m singing a happy song

SPOKEN: “C’mon all you greasy Greeks sing along with me!”

Higgity, haggity hoggety, high
EU bureaucrats never say die…

Greece and the Euro: today Deja Vu, tomorrow Je Ne Regrette Rien?

2011-09-15T00:59:00.000-07:00

In a strange, twisted way, it is verging on humorous to see Merkel and Sarkozy putting on the Comical Ali act to convince themselves – but clearly not their own electorates, nor the markets – that Greece is a valuable member of the Eurozone and must remain so (I almost added “at all cost”).

There are echoes here of how Norman Lamont was proclaiming the virtues of the ERM right up until sterling was ignominiously withdrawn from it on Black Wednesday, or until he finally saw the light on Wonderful Wednesday if you prefer. Not long afterwards, of course, he became the fall guy, but John Major’s reputation and government never recovered.

So what will be the song of choice for Merkel and Sarkozy, as and when Greece defaults and they will be proved to have inflicted wanton financial destruction on their own economies simply in the name of the European ideal? Je Ne Regrette Rien just doesn’t ring true. How about “Three Wheels On My Wagon, And I’m Still Rolling Along?”

Sarah Palin: End The Aristocracy Of Pull

2011-09-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

Time for another dip into Atlas Shrugged. At his wedding reception, Jim Taggart proclaims "We will build a society dedicated to higher ideals, and we will replace the aristocracy of money by - "

"- the aristocracy of pull." Thus Francisco D'Anconia completes his sentence, as a prelude to his famous Root of Money speech.

One reasonable definition of this phrase and its practical illustration: a group of powerful individuals who have reached their status not through talent or initiative, but through political connections.

Today James Delingpole reports on Sarah Palin's speech to a rally in Iowa on 3rd September. Just to take one passage: -

"Yeah, the permanent political class – they’re doing just fine. Ever notice how so many of them arrive in Washington, D.C. of modest means and then miraculously throughout the years they end up becoming very, very wealthy? Well, it’s because they derive power and their wealth from their access to our money – to taxpayer dollars. They use it to bail out their friends on Wall Street and their corporate cronies, and to reward campaign contributors, and to buy votes via earmarks. There is so much waste. And there is a name for this: It’s called corporate crony capitalism. This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. No, this is the capitalism of connections and government bailouts and handouts, of waste and influence peddling and corporate welfare. This is the crony capitalism that destroyed Europe’s economies. It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest – to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners – the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70% of the jobs in America, it’s you who own these small businesses, you’re the economic engine, but you don’t grease the wheels of government power."

Sarah Palin may be a divisive figure. She may be a little bit eccentric. But when she can speak as electrically as this, and subconsciously identify the aristocracy of pull as something that is the cause of so many political problems and has to be stopped, doesn't she have a point? And if the USA does not want her in the highest office, can we have her over here in the UK, please?

GO and GQ: What A W****r

2011-09-10T04:59:00.000-07:00

I have never rated George Osborne as Chancellor or shadow chancellor. A donkey with a blue rosette could have come up with the (broken) pledge to scrap inheritance tax that supposedly stopped Brown calling a snap election all those years ago. The vacuous prior pledge to share the proceeds of growth only lent itself to the Paxmanic "what if there is no growth?" Here and now, as John Redwood's talents remain wasted on the backbenches, there is something not quite right about a multi-millionaire trust fund beneficiary without tangible experience of wealth creation or preservation being in charge of the nation's purse strings, especially when his enthusiasm for decarbonising the economy continues to wreak havoc on fuel and energy prices. We can look back to the days of financial giants such as Howe and Lawson, and indeed to some extent Lamont (remember he took us out of the ERM), and despair when comparing the present day.

And would Howe, Lawson, Lamont or Redwood have gone to a GQ awards ceremony and told smutty jokes that demeaned one of the great offices of state? Not in a thousand years. But of course Osborne is the PM's mate. Which is evidently all that matters nowadays. We could even think of a comparison with the Blair reaction to the Prescott jab - "George is George". How sad.

Niger and Gaddafi: Follow That Camel

2011-09-08T05:24:00.000-07:00

What might spring to mind if asked to come up with any interesting facts about Niger? Assuming that the response was not “Duh…”, or “Nee-zhair? Don’t you mean Ny-juh?” (or another embarrassing pronunciation despite the lack of a second letter G), there might be scope for a mention of its landlocked status. Or that fact that it comprises a large amount of Sahara desert, leaving its population based largely in the far south west corner. Or the fact that one of the WMD related allegations about Saddam was that he had supposedly tried to obtain yellowcake uranium or from there. Or that for a brief period of time in 1999, after a coup that was not long followed by another, it was governed by a President Wanke (and his surname was indeed two syllables long).

That’s about it, really. So would they really want to become suddenly in the forefront of world awareness for offering Gaddafi a safe haven in exile? Perhaps the thought of a shadowy figure with dark flowing locks galloping towards the frontier on a camel is too much to resist.

PC: It's Just Not Cricket - Pass The Anaesthetic

2011-09-06T01:48:00.000-07:00

As ever it is painful to read of the threats to the livelihood of Christopher Booker’s village cricket team in Somerset, whose fate rests in the hands of functionaries in Bromley and Liverpool all because the club had not made it sufficiently clear that it “would not discriminate against any one-legged Inuit lesbian Druid pensioner who might wish to join”. Leaving aside the fact that such a new member’s presumed difficulty in running between the wickets might be outweighed by the reduced probability of an LBW decision, we can only dream that one day there might be an anti-political correctness court or tribunal to which anyone affected by such bone headed stupidity could immediately apply for an Order Nisi quashing the PC decision with immediate effect, and leaving the apparatchiks with the burden of objecting to an Order Absolute on pain of a large costs penalty if they did so and failed.

But at least the fightback may have started. What a joy to read that one of the exasperating health authority adverts that was supposed to end up with one of the usual platitudinous pieces about diversity actually concluded with the message "the usual rubbish about equal opportunities etc". At least this paraphrasing would have been an accurate reflection of the non-anaesthetised thoughts that go through our minds when we read the customary "we are committed to promoting equality and diversity" with which all such adverts normally tend to conclude.

UPDATE: the Mail has now published the original ad in all its glory. Priceless.

Keir Starmer and the Art of Starming

2011-09-04T01:27:00.000-07:00

So Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, believes that “riot justice is too tough”, that there is no need or justification for the naming and shaming of juveniles who took part in the aggravated theft, criminal damage and arson that afflicted our cities barely weeks ago, and that the Human Rights Act is a worthwhile and valuable piece of legislation that should be left in place exactly as it is. Why is this clown poking his nose into matters beyond his remit and not just getting on with the job of directing public prosecutions? Could it be anything to do with the fact that his background is not in the prosecution of criminals but in human rights – which some might argue to involve a great deal of appeasement and assistance of criminals – and that he was upon any objective standard a Labour placeman to this role?

Perhaps it is time to coin the noun “starmer”, and its associated verb “to starm” and participle “starming”. The noun’s definition: “an individual who not only remains in public office despite the defeat of his ideological appointers, but also overtly uses that role to thwart the objectives of the successor party.”

Let's Punch The EU's Lights Out

2011-09-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

Were we allowed to vote on the EU's ban on the manufacture and import of 60w incandescent light bulbs? No, of course not.

Is this ban a popular one? Judging by reports of the bulk buying prior to the ban coming into force, no, of course not.

Is it any different from the way in which we are now governed generally, where our supine politicians may raise token objection to proposals of this nature before washing their hands of the issue and proclaiming that it is out of their control? No, of course not.

Would we vote to remain in the EU and to continue to be subjected to such petty bans and overregulation all in the name of fighting climate change, if given a chance?

iPads for Binmen: Bury, Bad News

2011-08-30T02:22:00.000-07:00

So Bury Council is to spend £9,000 on iPads for binmen, so that it can monitor households that are not recycling.

There's clearly scope for some mission creep here. On the positive side, the rubbish crews could use the technology to make sure that they'd never miss a lady's bin when in a hurry. And keep a log of any items that might have been mistakenly thrown out, such as tigers' heads.

But there would be just as much of a risk of the new kit being applied for purposes never contemplated. Such as a surreptitious log of who never gave tips at Christmas, guaranteeing rubbish spilled on their step. Or of the lonely widows who could be invited to jump up on the cart. There might even be times when the golden hearted dustmen might do their wedding lists on the iPad during their working time.

So not such a good idea, then. Let's finish with some practical advice: -

"Next time you see your Council

Squandering cash like mad

Don't hit the poor old dustman

You might break his iPad!"

CERN and Free Scientific Enquiry

2011-08-28T02:59:00.000-07:00

Dr Robert Stadler, one of the bad guys in Atlas Shrugged, is noted in his early appearance in the story as having said "Free scientific enquiry? My dear Miss Taggart, the first word is redundant." His subsequent involvement with the State Science Institute, and his dismay in realising that it is not people like himself who end up ruling the world when politics controls science but people like the loathsome looter Cuffy Meigs, is a joy to behold.

Today we see James Delingpole reporting on how CERN is evidently clear that - to coin a phrase - the science is settled, in that global warming is demonstrably caused by solar cosmic rays and not human activity. But the Director-General of CERN, one Rolf-Dieter Heuer, would prefer this not to be widely publicised, supposedly because it would involve straying from presentation to interpretation. So much for free scientific enquiry.

Well, with so many vested interests that would be severely upset at wider publicity for a modern day Galileo "And yet it moves!" revelation, perhaps this is not surprising. But it might also take Delingpole's fiction novel scenario out of the realms of Michael Crichton. And into those of Dan Brown.

Throwing Words Out Of The English Language

2011-08-24T00:17:00.000-07:00

Faced with the news that "aerodrome" and "charabanc", amongst others, had been deemed to be obsolete words that no longer had a place in the English language, Ed West of the Telegraph asks out loud which other words should be thrown out. If we stick to words rather than phrases, where Christmas Shopping, Climate Change and Labour Government would no doubt feature high up in the list, I have a couple of suggestions, both based upon irritating suffixes.

First of all, every occasion where the last syllable of an office complex in Washington DC, which in its own right is a form of barrier that can be opened and closed, is invoked to describe some kind of scandal. Yes, "-gate". "Hackgate" is one of the latest abominations of this kind. "Mittalgate" to describe one of Peter Mandelson's resignations. "Kellygate" for the alleged cover up over the strange death of the weapons inspector. The list goes on.

Secondly, in the context of addictions, the illiterate, inane and incomprehensible expansion of a perfectly legitimate and proper suffix - the two letters "ic" - linked to one of the most widespread addictions that it describes. Is someone who cannot tear himself away from his job addicted to workahol? Or is a compulsive shopper addicted to spendahol? A confectionery addict to chocohol? No, of course not. So why the blazes did we ever allow the word "alcoholic" to be corrupted in this exasperating manner? At least we don't yet have "webaholic" or "blogaholic" to describe compulsive net surfers and bloggers. But we'd better not speak too soon.

ACPO and SOLACE: Cops and Robbers

2011-08-23T00:12:00.000-07:00

How amusing to read that Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers and aspiring candidate for the top Met vacancy, stands accused of wearing a fictitious uniform and fake plastic badge in an apparent attempt to look the part for his campaign. Well, given that ACPO is evidently in truth a private company that allegedly profiteers from use of the national police computer and comes across as spending much of its time blurring policing and politics, it may come as no surprise that this particular emanation of the ruling class is somewhat fake when you look beneath the surface.

But we cannot take solace in SOLACE. Ever wonder why it is that the individuals formerly known as town clerks and now proclaiming themselves to be "council chief executives" have somehow managed to create a self fulfilling machinery to ensure that they are paid as well as captains of industry, despite the fact that they do not have to make a profit (only balance a budget) and have captive mandatory funding from council taxpayers rather than a base of actual and potential customers that is up for grabs with plenty of competition from rivals? Here's an answer. Solace Enterprises, the recruitment arm of the self evidently self fulfilling self serving and self perpetuating Society Of Local Authority Chief Executives, ensures that salaries are astronomical and that ordinary council taxpayers have no say in the process. Another triumph for the political classes.

Yes, it's not just the cops that need a massive shakeup. It's the robbers too - the robber barons of the town halls.

The Riots: "Alienated, Disaffected Youth"

2011-08-21T02:42:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I recalled how Auberon Waugh had put down Shirley Williams for using the phrase "unwanted, angry kids" to describe rioters and looters, evidently without any recognition on her part that she was describing the products of her own education system.

History clearly does have a tendency to repeat itself. Tony Blair, playing his trendy vicar role once more, pops up today to describe the big cause of recent riots as "alienated, disaffected youth". If only Waugh was still alive to observe that Blair was subconsciously describing the products of his own premiership.

Pirates' Needs: Call For Vladimir

2011-08-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

So one essential element of anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa is a pirate cultural adviser to cope with the very special needs of captured pirates, according to Richard Littlejohn today (scroll down half way).

If rumours attributed to one of the Russian operations are correct, Vladimir Putin did not take long to work out those special needs. An open ocean, nicely populated with sharks. A boat without fuel, communications equipment, food or water, and possibly nursing a slow leak too that would see it scuttled within a few days, but not too quickly. That should do nicely. Just fill the boat with captured pirates.

So here's hoping that the special needs post will soon be occupied. By someone called Mikhail, Yuri, or Anatoly.

Energy Sense Is Common Sense

2011-08-18T01:08:00.000-07:00

I am reminded of an episode of The Good Life in which Tom invents a bird scarer comprising a collection of old tin cans with stones in them, strung across his seed beds by a wire. The rattling of the tins in the wind, he thought, would scare the birds away. Barbara immediately identified the flaw. “What if the wind doesn’t blow?” Tom was left to utter the reprimand “You and your stupid ideas!” to the goat.

Now that was over thirty years ago. Clearly the geniuses who thought that the vast sums lavished at our expense on wind turbines would be a universal panacea for the UK’s energy needs must have missed the episode.

Tom was not, however, completely bereft of good ideas. He cracked the Surbiton power supply problem by means of a generator fired by gas from animal dung. Which leads me to the title of this entry. Just before The Good Life hit our screens for the first time, we had a real life energy crisis leading to frequent power cuts. The government of the day came up with what they no doubt believed to be a great slogan for TV advertising and billboards: “Energy Sense Is Common Sense – Save It”. The pause marked in print by the hyphen was filled on TV by the sound of a rubber stamp coming down from high and leaving the last two words in printed form on the screen, “Save” above “It”. They appeared in similar fashion on the billboards. Leaving the graffiti artists of the day free to exercise their undoubted wit by adding the letters S and H before the second word.

Now although the scriptwriters of The Good Life would never have spoiled Tom’s ingenuity by linking it with a vandalised billboard message, we may just wonder whether the monumental folly of politicians obsessed with green energy might lead in turn, as and when the threat of power cuts in consequence of this folly makes its appearance, to a desperate suggestion – via the adoption of the vandalised billboard message as a serious proposal - that we should all emulate Tom Good.

Riot Sentences "Too Severe": Who Says?

2011-08-16T23:08:00.000-07:00

According to the BBC, "MPs and justice campaigners" say so. OK, let's have a closer look.

Well, there's an MP saying so, but in the singular, and it's a Lib Dem who in all probability will be spending a lot more time with his muesli and sandals after the next election. Whereas two other MPs say the sentences are quite right.

Then we find representatives from the "Howard League for Penal Reform", the "Prison Reform Trust" and "Justice", all of whom have this disturbing tendency to come across as supporters of the criminal classes and indifferent to their victims whenever they take to the media. Perhaps they never had their offices burnt out and looted or felt any first hand danger to life and limb last week.

Then, a leading criminal barrister (vested interest), and finally a friend of a scumbag who went down for 18 months for handling stolen goods ("the punishment was disproportionate, given that he had pleaded guilty straight away"), whose reaction might just have been somewhat different if the stolen goods had been his.

Nice one, BBC. Whose side are you on?

Changing A Light Bulb

2011-08-15T01:50:00.000-07:00

So farewell then to production of the traditional 60 watt light bulb. Another battle won in the war on the most evil phenomenon of the modern age, man made global warming.

Of course we only hear about it by reading articles like this one from the Telegraph, or by seeing the apologetic notices on the shelves at B&Q. Leaving aside the wave of looting and the slow collapse of Euroland, why are ministers not seizing the airwaves and taking out full page newspaper features to proclaim their latest triumph in the fight against climate change?

Well, perhaps because this is a legislative change ordered by the EU. Not surprising then that our government's reaction will have been token protest at the beginning, then a judicious kicking of the issue into the long grass and prolonged silence, so that when the change comes in they can just wring their hands and say that nothing can be done about it. Regardless of the fact that this ban has no popular support whatsoever. But that is the way we are governed.

The Riots: Sympathy For The Dog

2011-08-13T01:37:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph's report about the 12 year old Mancunian wine thief just about says it all.

"On Thursday he was given a 9 month referral order requiring him to see a probation officer once a fortnight..." "The 33 year old [mother] lives in an end of terrace house on a run down inner city estate with her son and 14 year old daughter. Her boyfriend, the father of the two children, is in prison..." "She also claimed he was 'not a bad kid...he is really good at school and wants to be a footballer'..."

And a last word to the pre-teen thief himself. "I am gutted my picture's in the paper and now I have a record."

But in fact his two pictures in this article - one in flight with the looted wine bottle, one with his mother at home - show his face pixellated. Likewise his mother's. Now the first, and entirely reasonable, reaction to this is to ask out loud why they were not, to coin a phrase, named and shamed. Surely even the lowest ambulance chasing no win no fee bottom feeding opportunist lawyer would not touch these scumbags with a bargepole if they were to have the temerity to start asking after kom-pen-say-shun, as Richard Littlejohn would put it.

So what's the second reaction? Just this. If mother and son merited pixellation, why not the poor innocent dog sitting between them? What has this lovable mutt done to deserve being displayed to the world in association with this low life?

The Riots: Recalling Auberon Waugh

2011-08-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

The late, great Auberon Waugh once set about his one of his particular bête noires via a Spectator article that began: “The expression ‘unwanted, angry kids from Handsworth’ used by Mrs Shirley Williams to describe the products of her own education system surely deserves a place in the vocabulary of contemporary social studies.”

Waugh diverged subsequently in the same article to put down another gem: “Sir Kenneth Newman suggests gassing them and shooting them with plastic bullets, which seems, on the face of it, quite sensible. I have often thought that metal tipped stockwhips might be useful in riot control, although the French experience suggests that nothing is so effective as the baton charge with pick handles.”

His main theme, however, was picked up equally well via the following gem: “It would seem that 40 years of Doctor Spock have finally succeeded in producing a generation which is not only so ignorant and undisciplined as to be unemployable, but also so unpleasant and aggressive as to be unliveable with. The problem is now to contain the amount of nuisance which they can create for the rest of us.”

Now, that article was published in October 1985. Looking at our TV screens and newspaper headlines today, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that if only Margaret Thatcher had put Waugh in the Lords in 1985 and made him Home Secretary and Education Secretary simultaneously, with free range to trample on as much political correctness as he wished and slaughter as many sacred cows as he thought fit, much of this might never have taken place. As matters stand, we can only contemplate where a further 26 years’ worth of comprehensive education and community policing has taken us.

August 2011: The Markets In Perspective

2011-08-08T05:52:00.000-07:00

Amid all the stock market turmoil and the gloom and doom mongers fearing financial Armageddon all round, there may be a case for a more sober and detached look.

The prices that sellers of shares will be offered, here and now, are of course markedly lower than they were a week or so ago. So for those who have no need or wish to sell, and can cope with a heartfelt grimace at the financial pages in the knowledge that all historical panics are eventually corrected and left behind, it may be no big deal to see some froth blown off.

Especially, as Questor helpfully points out, if there are some buying opportunities for what seem to be screaming bargains. Utility and insurance stocks, tobacco and telecoms, whose income streams are unlikely to take such a short term hit that they end up having to slash a dividend that is already way in excess of savers’ interest rates. To say nothing of the likely bargains in emerging markets. Think of a ten year investment from scratch, starting here and now (well, perhaps after giving it another day or so).

But that is not to say that those who created the mess that led inexorably to the panic – Trichet and Barroso, Merkel and Sarkozy, all those clowns who thought in times gone by that it was sensible to bind Greece and southern European nations to Germany, and all those clowns here in the UK who thought then and still think now that the Euro as a concept is worth preserving – should be let off their preferred fate of being locked in the stocks and pelted with rotten vegetables by those who cannot or will not simply grimace at the financial pages and leave it at that.

E-Petitions: Panem et Circenses

2011-08-05T05:03:00.000-07:00

The ancient Roman satirist Juvenal, commenting in his usual acidic manner about the way in which the politicians of his day went about winning the votes of the poor, observed that cheap food and entertainment - "bread and circus games" - seemed to be all that the hierarchy thought the lower orders wanted. And sadly the apathy of the population appeared to prove their point. Thus contributing an apt modern day metaphor for a superficial means of appeasement.

Here and now, when the colossal folly of the Euro and the blinkered stupidity of the EU's top rankers have together inflicted a massive blow to UK and world stock markets, which affect everyone's prosperity in one form or another, what do our own ruling classes throw out to the ruled classes as a token of their supposed ability to listen? A Parliamentary debate on capital punishment, via the ultra-exciting new e-petition system. Well, I just can't wait. Clearly a circus game, involving a pretty stale loaf. Superficial appeasement par excellence. Especially when what we all really want is a Parliamentary debate leading to our immediate withdrawal from the EU.

The Physiognomy of Abu Izzadeen

2011-08-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

Whoever, upon thinking of David Miliband, first coined the phrase "he has a face I would never tire of punching" will have struck many a chord.

I am reminded of this witticism when reading the latest Richard Littlejohn column, in which he treats us once more to an update on the activities of various Islamist rabble rousers such as Ram Jam Choudary, formerly Andy from Waltham Forest, and his partner in crime and former jailbird Abu Izzadeen, formerly Trevor Brooks from Hackney. Some of us with long memories may recall Trev noisily heckling former Home Secretary John Reid with "how dare you come to a Muslim area".

To be specific, whenever the Mail's redoubtable columnist publishes a photo of Trev to illustrate the latest outbreak of lunacy, such as the one in his latest article (scroll down a bit), I fear that I cannot help thinking that Trev has a chin that just cries out for a haymaker.

Perhaps someone ought to tell David Haye, if his efforts to secure a rematch with Wladimir Klitschko prove fruitless.

Cloud Cuckoo Land - the European Union

2011-08-02T00:32:00.000-07:00

“Where does the phrase Cloud Cuckoo Land come from?”, many people will not have been asking after various senior Lib Dems used it over the weekend to describe the place of residence of those advocating the scrapping of the 50p income tax rate. The quick answer, “The Birds” by the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes, in which the mystical city of his principal characters was named Nephelococcygia, the translation neatly breaking down into its three component elements.

The plot of The Birds is of interest. The main player, Pisthetaerus (evidently “Trustworthy Fellow”), persuades the world’s birds to create a new city in the sky to stand midway between men and gods and thereby to gain control over all communication between them. The play reaches a charming end when Pisthetaerus is transformed into a bird like figure and replaces Zeus as the pre-eminent power in the cosmos.

Now, think of a much despised political institution closer to home. Think of its architects in time gone by, planning to create a new body that will stand between electors and their national governments and will eventually aspire to gain control of all powers of legislation and taxation. Think, perhaps, of Roy Jenkins as a dodo, Jacques Delors as a cuckoo, the likes of Thorn, Santer, Prodi and Barroso as a flock of seagulls, and Van Rompuy as a vulture. And think finally of how a city built in the clouds must have foundations that are even more shaky than the house of the Biblical foolish man on the sand, and will one day collapse to the ground in a heap of rubble, the sooner the better.

Yes, it is all too apparent. Yesterday’s Cloud Cuckoo Land, today’s European Union.

RSPCA: Right-on Society for the Persecution of Carers for Animals?

2011-07-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

It is hard not to become very angry upon reading the story of how 71 year old grandmother Pauline Spoor, too old and confused to think that it would be fair to have her sick and elderly dog put down, was convicted, given a curfew and tagged (!) in consequence of the RSPCA having evidently pressed for her prosecution rather than sympathised with her plight and found her a rescue dog as a replacement. A classic example of how a household name charity is just getting too big for its boots and losing sight of its true purpose. Perhaps a sharp drop in donations might bang the point home.

In the meantime, given the waste of RSPCA resources on cases like that, are we to expect the ruthless tracking down and prosecution of the gypsy gang who hounded a pony to death by drowning in a lake three weeks ago? Don't hold your breath. Not a soft enough target.

From Amy Winehouse to Rush: Heresy

2011-07-27T05:49:00.000-07:00

No, not a heretical switch between musicians, but a switch to a heretically themed song from the Roll The Bones album. To be precise, a song about the fall of Communism and related matters, concisely summed up by Neil Peart: "The deconstruction of the Eastern Bloc made some people happy. It made me mad. For generations, those people had to line up for toilet paper, wear bad suits, drive nasty cars and drink bug spray to get high...and it was all a mistake? A heavy price to pay for somebody else's misguided ideology, it seems to me, and that waste of life must be the ultimate heresy."

So, by reference to current day topics ranging from thirteen wasted years' worth of economic destruction here in the UK thanks to Blair and Brown, to another arguably wasted year as the Coalition has shrunk from the real tough decisions on cutting the deficit that are so deperately needed, and more notably to the devastation inflicted on the Greek economy and that of the other PIIGS thanks to blind faith Euro-fanaticism and adherence to the single currency, and indeed to the wider harm caused to ordinary people's prosperity and freedom thanks to the all-consuming, all-legislating, all-wrecking EU, may I present the lyrics to Heresy: -

All around that dull gray world
From Moscow to Berlin
People storm the barricade
Walls go tumbling in

The counter-revolution
People smiling through their tears
Who can give them back their lives
And all those wasted years?

All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?

All around that dull gray world
Of ideology
People storm the marketplace
And buy up fantasy

The counter-revolution
At the counter of a store
People buy the things they want
And borrow for a little more

All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?

Do we have to be forgiving at last?
(What else can we do?)
Do we have to say goodbye to the past?
(Yes I guess we do)

All around this great big world
All the crap we had to take
Bombs and basement fallout shelters
All our lives at stake

The bloody revolution
All the warheads in its wake
All the fear and suffering
All a big mistake

All those wasted years
All those precious wasted years
Who will pay?

Amy Winehouse, St Lucia and a baseball bat

2011-07-24T13:57:00.001-07:00

I once met Amy Winehouse. As had evidently been an occasional habit at this St Lucia resort - an all inclusive resort, by the way, so those tabloid stories about staff refusing to sell her more alcohol were a little way off - she dropped into the hotel piano bar midway through the evening, and when her attention span had become a little more focused than that of a butterfly, she sat down at the keyboard and treated the guests to some memorable singing. Knowing that she was said to be working on a new album, my other half and I agreed that it would be a masterstroke if she were to include a cover version of "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood". We also concluded, giving her the benefit of the doubt, that she was more in need of a big hug than a big slap.

How sad, then, that she never managed to sort herself out and died in such a squalid way. An utter waste of talent from someone who, tragically, let herself be misunderstood. RIP Amy. You'll be missed.

In the meantime, to think of someone who featured in her life all too much and does not even deserve to be named, I can only invoke a classic quote from Bill Bryson's Notes from A Small Island, speaking of the star of the long forgotten mystery series Jason King: "The most remarkable thing about the programme was that, though I saw it only once more than twenty years ago, I have never lost the desire to work the fellow over with a baseball bat studded with nails."

Greece: A Shattered Vassal

2011-07-22T00:49:00.000-07:00

In the snowy depths of last winter, my attempt to master the expanded version of that great computer strategy game Civilisation was thwarted at one stage when the artificial intelligence announced that a nation that I was about to attack with great force (call it Burma) had become a vassal state of another mightier power (call it China), the practical effect being that if I had attacked Burma it would have led to an unwanted conflict with China, despite my underlying good relations with it. I backed off.

I am reminded of this when reading Peter Oborne's view of yesterday's Eurozone deal, and his comment that as far as the likes of Greece and Portugal are concerned, "their economic sovereignty has been obliterated; they face a future as vassal states, their role reduced to the one enjoyed by the European colonies of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They will provide cheap labour, raw materials, agricultural produce and a ready market for the manufactured goods and services provided by the far more productive and efficient northern Europeans."

Well, a simplistic definition of a vassal state, echoing my Civilisation experience, is that it provided military assistance and tribute to the superior state. Here and now, the tribute may indeed comprise the ready market he describes. But how long before the present day European vassals, thanks to the common currency, become subdivisions of a German super state in all but name? As Oborne goes on to say, "Yesterday’s witching hour of the European Union means that Germany has come very close to realising Bismarck’s dream of an economic empire stretching from central Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean." Now that, at the risk of massive understatement, is creepy.

Why Not The Eurodong?

2011-07-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

From many years ago I recall my first experience of travel in a country with a really soft currency, Vietnam, when any hypothetical ministerial proclamation about striving for a harder dong would have comprised a rallying call against currency dysfunction, not erectile dysfunction. The banknote bricks obtained in exchange for even modest quantities of dollar travellers’ cheques rammed the point home (stop it!), and even today the exchange rate is around 30,000 dong to the pound.

But the finance ministers would not have troubled themselves with any such rallying calls. Granted, the chance of any ordinary Vietnamese being able to travel the hard currency world and flash his dong around (I’ve told you once…) would be minimal to non-existent, but they were clearly perfectly happy to stay at home and trade with each other, and the country was a magnet for frontier tourists and a good long term bet for foreign investment based on its low overheads.

Any lessons for Greece and the fellow PIIGS here? Daniel Hannan suggests that an alternative to fiscal federalism – and indeed to the scrapping of the euro altogether, which the EU elite would never contemplate until the bitter end – would be to oversee the unbundling of the euro into more manageable units, or in plainer English to leave the PIIGS with the legal carcass of the euro after the sounder northern countries had broken away. The Mediterraneans might be trapped in their own countries for many years to come, unable to afford foreign travel any more than the Vietnamese, but they could try exporting their way back to prosperity and they would attract tourists in their thousands in the meantime.

In which case, why not call the new Club Med currency the Eurodong? After all, it would remind those nations for evermore that their economies had been screwed by a bunch of EU federalist pricks (that’s it, you’re in detention).

Another Greek Bailout, Trial Doubt, Cop-Out

2011-07-20T05:06:00.000-07:00

Luke Walker from Brierley Hill, having been imprisoned in Crete then bailed on condition that he must not leave, is evidently to face a further 12 month delay before he is tried over the alleged murder of his girlfriend in what is said to have been, at most, a bar brawl, where his version of events is that she was the victim of an unfortunate accident and that he is the victim of - let us say - the Greek police wanting to clear the matter up with a tick in their preferred box.

Let's leave the determination of the issues for the judge, and try also to set aside memories of the scandalous case of Andrew Symeou and the use of the European Arrest Warrant. If the issues in the present case had involved two Greek nationals in a nightclub in Broad Street, would anyone seriously believe that due process of law here in the UK would have involved a prison remand and then a bail detention lasting over two years? And this is the kind of country that we are expected to bail out with a straight face when its legal system is evidently as dysfunctional as its economy?

PAs for PCs - for PR on PC?

2011-07-18T00:10:00.000-07:00

Amid the petulant resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson, begging the question whether his defence of only having signed the non-resigning deputy NotW deputy editor rather than the resigning editor was to try to sweep the Champneys freebie under the carpet, might we just ask one thing. Why on earth does a chief constable need a personal adviser on the public payroll anyway, when he should be well supplied with experts in the prevention and detection of crime and when great predecessors such as McNee and Anderton only ever broke their anonymity to say something sensible?

Perhaps that's partly the answer to the question. So many diversity forms to devise and fill in, so many racism awareness courses to organise and attend, so much of a need to be seen to be doing something, and so much of a demand to come up with slogans such as "Crime Has Fallen" by way of echo of the Animal Farm sheep's refrain "Rations Have Been Increased". No wonder PCs can't do their job without a PA to the CC to peddle PR on PC.

$161m Lottery Winner To Buy Greece

2011-07-14T22:53:00.000-07:00

In one of those developments that genuinely takes the world of politics and commerce by surprise, it was announced today that Luke E. B'Stard, the winner of the £161m Euromillions lottery jackpot, would be using the winnings to buy Greece. When asked about this apparently surprising decision, Mr B'Stard responded "A unique win calls for a unique new home. Why settle for a boring mansion back in the UK when there's an entire country on the market? South Sudan was a possibility but it was slightly beyond my budget."

A spokesman for the Greek government, Costas Mustavapis, returning from a flight to Switzerland, brandished an empty suitcase at reporters and said "For weeks now, we have been urged by doom mongers to default, devalue and decouple. No one ever thought that another solution would present itself so easily." Flanked by his finance minister Stavros Largepenis and his EU ambassador Andreas Cokeupisnos, Mr Mustavapis continued: "It is all too easy to accuse governments of Euroland members to be willing to sell their country's very heart and soul before they would ever contemplate withdrawal from the Euro."

Carbon Capture, Surfball, and Digging Holes

2011-07-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time Peter Mandelson, warming to his task of promoting the Millennium Dome - that great white elephant for which we all paid through the nose – waxed lyrical about Surfball, the exciting new sport of the future. Well, a combination of two syllables involving an all American image and the spherical object comprising the very bedrock of sport could hardly go wrong. Or could it? No sign of anything remotely resembling Surfball throughout the course of the Dome’s brief and costly career. Perhaps it just could not be invented.

Today we have Eco-Loon Chris Huhne waxing just as lyrical, possibly as an attempt to disguise his realisation that wind turbines (another nasally costly albino pachyderm) are no energy panacea, about Carbon Capture, the exciting new technology of the future. Well, a combination of two syllables involving an evil substance and the promise of its effective control can hardly go wrong. Or can it? What’s the betting that after so many more billions have been squandered on green energy initiatives, all talk of carbon capture will go out of the window because it simply cannot be invented?

And let’s suppose for one moment that capture was possible. With capture would go storage. It’s not as if CO2, a natural gas of life perpetually produced in vast quantities whether you like it or not, can be buried unobtrusively like spent nuclear waste. Are we to anticipate the countryside littered with compressed CO2 tanks, next to the wind turbines? And what if it leaked? Or is the politicians’ answer to problems of this kind equivalent to that of the site foreman who answered his navvies’ question about how to dispose of a few tons of surplus soil with “Dig a big hole and bury it”?

Phone Hacking: how significant an issue?

2011-07-11T05:34:00.000-07:00

What we have learned from the phone hacking revelations to date may be summarised as follows: (1) some journalists behave in a very underhand way (2) some police officers may be corrupt (3) some newspaper editors and proprietors appear to believe that winning the circulation wars will justify any methods to obtain eye catching exclusives for publication (4) some politicians are too close to press barons.

Nothing new, then.

And however much the words "it's outrageous" may have been spoken or thought in the last week by the electorate at large, have the phone hacking revelations affected their lives as much as, let's say, the soaring cost of energy and fuel when weighed up alongside the ongoing squandering of taxation and borrowing receipts upon aid to Pakistan, the fight against climate change and Greek bailouts?

USA Reflections: Casey Anthony, Al Capone and gas prices

2011-07-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

Endless media coverage of the trial of a 22 year old trailer trash chavette acquitted of murdering her two year old daughter discovered in the swamp a month after her unreported disappearance, during which time the defendant went out clubbing and partying. Jurors giving TV interviews perhaps best summarised as "we wanted to convict but the evidence of murder just was not there". Members of the public calling for her lynching once the sentence of "time served and a bit more" for lying to police expires shortly. Asylum in the UK to follow, then, shacked up with a Bulger killer or Maxine Carr?

Al Capone clearly knew a business opportunity when he saw one. Prohibition - a moral high horse issue for Twenties politicians, some of whom no doubt saw scope (along with the odd senior cop here and there) to pocket a Caponian bribe just to look the other way while the man himself got away with murder only to find tax evasion as his downfall. Now think of the phone hacking revelations in the UK.

So Barack Obama is under fire, as the next Presidential election beckons, because the price of gasoline is around $3.50-$4.00 a gallon and has doubled on his watch. That's £2.20-£2.50. As Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen might say as they reminisced on their own plight, "Luxury. I had to get up at two o'clock int' morning, work 18 hours a day to make enough money to buy a litre of unleaded, then pay 'undred and sixty per cent o't pump price in tax to fund ruddy wind turbines and Greek bailouts."

Greece Is The Word

2011-06-23T00:52:00.000-07:00

Off to the USA for two weeks today, and thinking back to a previous visit which coincided with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Could this one coincide with the collapse of a medium sized country on the shores of the Mediterranean? Yes, Greece is the Word. Well, if Greek bankruptcy was to cause the EU to self destruct, bring it on.

In the meantime, by way of tribute to Frankie Valli, John Travolta and the rest of the crew from that iconic film of the Seventies, with a hat tip to Jonathan Sibun of the Telegraph's City Diary for the inspiration, it is indeed time for some alternative Greece is the Word lyrics: -

They cause us problems, they don’t see the light
They’ve got a spending thing – we’ve gotta feed it? Right?
There’s every danger they can go too far
Let’s start believing now that they can’t be where they are

Greece is the word

They think the Euro’s just a short term pain
Why don’t they understand, it’s just the EU’s game
Their lips are lying, only real is real
Let’s stop the bailouts now, we’ve go to end this bad deal

Greece is the word
It won’t move, it’s demeaning
Greece is the riots, it’s the lies, the commotion
Greece is just bankrupt and reeling

Greeks take our loans and they’ll get thrown away
Cash and prosperity belong to yesterday
But there’s a chance that they might make it afar -
Just quit the Euro now, then you can be who you are

Greece is the word
It won’t move, it’s demeaning
Greece is the riots, it’s the lies, the commotion
Greece is just bankrupt and reeling

This is the life of illusion
Right trouble laced with confusion
What are they doing?

Greeks take our loans and they’ll get thrown away
Cash and prosperity belong to yesterday
But there’s a chance that they might make it afar -
Just quit the Euro now, then you can be who you are

Greece is the word
It won’t move, it’s demeaning
Greece is the riots, it’s the lies, the commotion
Greece is just bankrupt and reeling

Greece is the word, is the word, is the word

"The Fat Crook Has Stolen My Pension!"

2011-06-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

Thus spoke Flo, long suffering wife of Andy Capp, in a Private Eye spoof of the news that Robert Maxwell, former editor, publisher and proprietor of the Daily Maxwell, had plundered the Mirror Group pension funds. Andy Capp himself, not shifting from the sofa, merely commented “If he wasn’t dead – I’d kill him!”

Inaccurate as it may have been to call Gordon Brown a fat crook (many other appropriate terms of abuse being readily to hand), one of the acts of wanton economic destruction for which he will be best remembered is his plundering of UK pension funds. The disguise – an alteration to the treatment of dividend tax credits within pensions, as spun in his first budget – attracted little attention at the time, but when the full consequences of his raid sunk in, it led to well deserved invective and condemnation, including Richard Littlejohn’s memorable label The Man Who Stole Your Old Age.

And the supposed justification for this, the funding of a hairbrained scheme called Welfare to Work or something similar, can only attract hollow laughter now as we see the results of his reckless firehosing of taxpayers’ money. As Tom Bower put it in his Brown biography: “As predicted in 1997, his withdrawal of the annual £5 billion tax credit from pension funds and the inevitable decline of the stock market had wrecked the retirement plans of tens of thousands of Britons.”

So that’s the kind of catastrophic mistake that no Tory government would ever consider making, then. Not according to the Sunday Telegraph. Front page headline: “Plan For New Pensions Raid On Middle Classes”. Read it and weep.

Cost of the scheme upon pension funds, the principle being the axing of higher rate tax relief on contributions: £7 billion. Supposed tangible benefit, namely a plan to provide a significant increase to the value of the basic state pension: nebulous. Practical effect on middle class pension savers: see bold type in Bower extract above. Insult to injury factor, in circumstances when proceeds of alleged deficit reduction so far are being squandered on aid to Pakistan and bailouts to Greece (with the threat of more to come): immeasurable.

We were once told that the benefits of personal pension savings could be summed up in four words: tax, tax, tax and tax. Tax credits on dividends received into pension funds. Tax relief on contributions. No tax on capital gains made on sales of assets within the funds. And a tax free lump sum on retirement.

The destructive Scottish socialist Gordon Brown wrecked the first benefit. Now the multi-millionaire trust fund beneficiary George Osborne is said to be considering an attack on the second. How safe are the third and fourth? And will these well pensioned politicians ever stop and think about the law of unintended consequences, namely that if they lose sight of how desirable a goal it is to encourage ordinary electors to provide for their retirement, they (or more accurately their successors) will get it in the neck big time when the retired classes start making even more demands of the state, or when school leavers and graduates find jobs even more difficult to come by because oldies have been forced to defer retirement and keep working?

Ode To Joy: alternative EU National Anthem

2011-06-14T01:13:00.000-07:00

"Where would we be without British music?", asks Daniel Hannan, before noting that the only non-British song from the Desert Island Discs all time favourites is Beethoven's 9th, "maddeningly appropriated by Eurocrats as the official EU anthem". Given the history of its adoption and the Tower of Babel it is meant to embrace, it is perhaps not surprising that there are no official lyrics.

In looking to rectify this sad omission, some inspiration can be found from "Joyful Joyful, We Adore Thee" by Henry van Dyke, expressly written to fit the Ode to Joy passage. Yes indeed, we could just imagine the likes of Herman von Rompuy, Jacques Delors and Tony Blair thinking that a song like this was written for them: -

"Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!"

So with all due acknowledgments to van Dyke's original, here is a possible alternative to "Joyful..." that may serve as a far more appropriate echo of popular sentiments towards the European Union: -

"Mighty EU, flexing muscles, trampling on democracy
Lording o’er us all from Brussels, bastion of bureaucracy
Yours are clouds of sinful madness, driving light of hope away
Giver of unending badness, inflict laws and make us pay

Lobbyists with joy surround thee, auditors reject thy books
Cash rich fonctionnaires around thee, brushing off our filthy looks
London, Dublin, Copenhagen, Athens desperate to be free
Referenda? Not a glimmer, ne’er allowed to vote on thee

Thou art taking and forsaking, ever cursing, ever cursed
Wellspring of fake global warming, health and safety, it gets worse
Thou our Emperor, Rumpy Pumpy – not much choice, it might be Blair –
You just make us loathe each other, leaving us in dark despair

Voters, join the rising chorus, smash that cursed ring of stars
Stop the EU reigning o’er us, bureaucrats, commissioners
Ever singing, let’s march onward, free ourselves from Brussels strife
Joyful music, lead us sunward – quit the EU, enjoy life!"

Bunter Balls' Blinky Bluster

2011-06-10T05:39:00.000-07:00

“Bunter!”

The Head’s voice was deep. He looked solemnly across the desk as the Fat Owl quaked inwardly.

“It wasn’t me, sir…”

”Grant me patience, Bunter. This is a very serious allegation. You have been accused of undermining your form master and plotting to destabilise the smooth running of your form, all at a time when the school was facing a grave crisis. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Not for the first time, Bunter’s inability to withstand temptation to do anything for vast quantities of tuck had caught up with him.

“But this is all history, Sir…”

The Head raised an expressive eyebrow. Words were unnecessary. Bunter blundered on.

“I never helped write any rude notes about Quelchy – I mean, Mr Quelch. I didn’t suggest Smithy described him as muddled and shallow. I never helped Smithy put a booby trap over the form room door. I wasn’t in class that day, I was in the tuck shop with a stinking cold – I mean, in the sanatorium eating a pie – and it wasn’t a bag of flour, only a Latin dictionary! I never went anywhere near the Masters’ Passage yesterday, and Quelchy’s study door was locked anyway, and I never put gum in his inkpot, and it wasn’t me laughing outside the window when he came in to mark our prep, and I didn’t just want to get in Smithy’s good books to share in his hamper…”

”That is quite enough, Bunter. There is nothing that you could ever say to me now that I could ever believe. Bend over that chair.”

The Head reached for his cane. Moments later, earsplitting howls echoed down the corridor.

[Now think of Ed Balls and today's Telegraph revelations.]

Cali Cartel: Coke Joke - Provoke, Poke, Choke

2011-06-09T23:58:00.000-07:00

"Dear Messrs Smith and Powell – and should I include Mark Collins, the Western Union runner – in this too?

I trust you have had a pleasant weekend, wondering if you were going to be arrested at any moment for attempted fraud. It would have been fascinating to see the looks on your faces when it finally dawned on you that you were not after all on the verge of ripping off some “innocent fools” (to coin a phrase) to the tune of around $10,000, but might have been in correspondence with a much bigger and powerful criminal organisation that had set out to use you instead.

I don’t expect you would have passed up a possible chance to relieve a tired traveller of a large amount of cash, so I trust you thoroughly enjoyed your vigil at Lagos airport hoping to attract attention with a sign that did in fact convey a rude message to the Cali Cartel. You probably looked a little out of place at the hotel too. Nice to know too that you had at least one wasted trip to the Western Union office – I bet the clerks can tell your kind a mile off.

I’m sure that I’ll end up framing the bank draft for $27 million, but your fake driving licence was a bit of a let down. One of these days, you and your kind might really master the art of matching the overtyping with the original stolen document.

Let this be a lesson to you. I’ve had a great deal of fun at your expense over the last 10 weeks. You’ve sailed very close to the wind and you won’t necessarily be so lucky next time. You could always quit this silly game now, of course, before you do run into a bigger crook than yourself, or make the mistake that lands you behind bars. You choose.

Cazzy"

BSE, Foot & Mouth, and German E.Coli

2011-06-08T04:12:00.000-07:00

Less than a week after the outbreak of E.Coli in Germany, it is announced that the European Commission is tabling a £116 million aid package for farmers and that the UK will be picking up £16.6million worth of this despite the fact that the outbreak has not left the continent.

Where is the ban on the export of German fruit & vegetables?

Compare and contrast with the EU's lightning fast moves in years gone by, in the face of the BSE and foot & mouth outbreaks, to ban the export of British beef and to encourage the contiguous cull of healthy cattle.

Where was the immediate aid package for British farmers?

Development Superpower: Oxymoron from Moron

2011-06-07T01:08:00.001-07:00

So in the opinion of the millionaire International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell, we should be as proud of our £12 billion foreign aid bill as we are of the Army. It makes us a "development superpower". And there we ignorant ordinary people were, thinking that it simply made us a Lady Bountiful, gratuitously squandering borrowed money to buy BMWs, arms, whisky and cigars for dictators and apparatchiks in Third World bottomless pits.

At least there's a useful addition here to the thesaurus of oxymorons. "Development superpower" - yes, it lines up very neatly alongside "socialist worker", "rap music", "government efficiency" and their like. Ironic too that the conference at which this ivory tower clown was speaking rejoiced in the title of "Conservative Intelligence".

Cali Cartel: Holy Smoke - Not Phones But Coke

2011-06-06T05:41:00.000-07:00

"Dear Mr Smith and Mr Powell

I represent a law enforcement agency that took steps last night to seize and secure the office with which you have been communicating since the end of March, supposedly in the context of doing a deal with a local company in the telecommunications industry. This has followed two months of covert monitoring on our part of all concerned.

For ease of communication I have taken over this e-mail account and you should respond to this message in the normal manner.

Did it never occur to you from the contents of those messages that you might have been corresponding with the Cali Cartel – a Colombian cocaine trafficking organisation with a worldwide reputation on the same level as the Mafia?

You may take it that the individuals whom you understand to have travelled to Nigeria will be of no further concern, save in the context of the due processes that invariably apply when anyone is arrested for offences of this kind.

The pressing question now is whether our local agents should now proceed to take you both into custody for questioning about your role over the last two months. You may take it that we know who and where you are. If you can convince me via your response to this message that you have been nothing more than innocent fools all along, there will remain scope for a more lenient approach that does not involve any arrest.

I await your urgent response. It is imperative that you explain yourselves without further delay.

Yours truly

Commander J.W.Pepper
Federal Intelligence Agency"

OK, once they had finished decorating their keyboards, monitors and (let’s not beat about the bush) chairs with whatever they might have been eating over the last few hours, horrified at the thought that Interpol might be marching purposefully towards their lair at that very moment and wondering if there might be scope to do a bunk (with or without clean clothes), would they have stopped and thought again about the identity of the officer from the FBI – or is it the CIA? Probably not. However, if any of them had been familiar with Roger Moore’s debut as James Bond in Live And Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun, they might have remembered the hapless cop from the Louisiana State Police who managed to take a bath in a Bangkok canal courtesy of an elephant, prior to an unorthodox river crossing manoeuvre and his own inadvertent arrest by the Thai police. Yes, J.W.Pepper rides again.

Nearly over - catch up via the above tab.

Shooting The Milky Bar Kid?

2011-06-06T01:43:00.000-07:00

My first reaction to a quick glance at the Telegraph’s front page today, with the headline “Ban on paying children to sell toys and food”, was misplaced. The strong and tough geeky wimp from our childhood nostalgia bank can live on for now – the government’s latest nanny state idea, clearly reflecting a burning sense of priorities and most likely EU inspired, takes aim instead at the promotion of such products by children at school or on social networking sites (what’s wrong with the word No?). Whether our lords and masters might one day take this a step further and indeed shoot the Milky Bar Kid, via a ban on paying children to advertise toys and food, is today’s satire, but we all know what that might become.

But one use of children to promote desirable goals is not lost on the EU. As Daniel Hannan describes today, reporting on an accidentally hilarious but inherently ghastly cartoon strip, the EU once concluded a report with: “Children can perform a messenger function in conveying the message to the home environment. Young people will often in practice act as go-betweens with the older generations, helping them embrace the euro.”

Well, indeed. Toys and food, and anything else that might boost the profits of greedy private sector capitalists, bad. Pro-EU propaganda via pester power, whether for fashionable causes like climate change or for the inherent benevolence of the institution itself, good.

Cali Cartel: A Scammer Gets Both Barrels

2011-06-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr Smith

What the hell do you think you’re playing at, speaking to me like that? If you are saying you cannot open the attachment, can you not just say so - how am I supposed to have insulted you?

I am having a very difficult morning. I have just had a long call with a thoroughly exasperated Cazzy who told me that your number rang out endlessly when she called it from the hotel. Can you please let me have it again in case there has been an error somewhere? She is not best pleased about losing a full day already when her return flight is on Saturday evening and when she had hoped to get this business done alone before Sr Garcia-Gonzalez returned from Port Harcourt on Friday night. I can only suggest in any event that you go to the hotel now where Cazzy has been patiently waiting for hours.

I hope we can put our differences behind us and finish matters off, but I seriously advise you to keep a civil tongue in your head. This language is helping no one.

Gabriela Carmen Sanchez
CalicarTel

Me-ow! How’s that one going to go down?

Nearly done, a couple more to follow. The full tale so far is on the above tab.

Gimme Dat Banana: Political Incorrectness Writ Large

2011-06-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

Interesting piece of nostalgia on YouTube in the form of a 1977 Top Of The Pops performance of the novelty song Gimme Dat Banana by the one hit wonder group Black Gorilla.

Any alarm bells yet, 34 years later?

Let's imagine a BBC do-gooder looking through the proposed playlists if the song was up for airplay here and now. First tut of disapproval, the title. Suspicious looking reference to bananas, and isn't "Dat" rather than "That" going to be offensive to those for whom ethnic accents and street slang are second nature? The group - two words, one "Black", the other "Gorilla"? Oh no, no, no, we can't have that. Just leaving the cue for utter apoplexy after a precautionary read through the lyrics, followed by an outbreak of screaming rage upon hearing the sound of the jungle noises and Tarzan calls interweaved with the chorus chant of the song title: -

"Another day of fear for the monkeys in Zaire
What they shout it's all about, it ain't exactly clear

The panic doesn't stop, they're creeping in the crop
The black men of the jungle picking their banana shrub

All the chimpanzees are high up in the trees
They're hiding their bananas, feeling kinda ill at ease

What does black man do, ain't nothing strange and new
They bungle in the jungle, throw the monkeys in the zoo..."

And yet if the modern day Beeb apparatchik had watched the band performing the song, or seen a photo of them, he would have been astonished to find out that they were as multiracial (or, to use the modern term, diverse) as they come. Instead, we could probably imagine the long suffering Top Twenty show DJ meekly obeying instructions, and announcing "You've just heard 'Thudding Beat' by the Ibiza Disco Clubbers. At number 15 this week is a song called Give Me That Banana, and climbing six places to number 14 you're about to hear....."

Whose Lavish Expenditure?

2011-06-02T05:19:00.000-07:00

"The ********** spent more than £8m on private jets, limousines, resorts and cocktail parties, according to an investigation.....spokesmen accused the ********** of acting like a mediaeval monarchy.....they also bought expensive gifts for guest speakers as their financiers and taxpayers fought budget cuts, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found."

Thus runs a front page sampler, slightly adjusted. Groan, not another Third World kleptocracy in action as usual, doing what it's best at doing with other people's money, we may think yet again. So who is it this time? Nigeria? Pakistan? The Democratic Republic of the Congo? Scotland (whoops)? No - it's the European Commission, the executive of the EU. Third World no, kleptocracy yes. And we are paying for it all.

Douglas Carswell reminds us that our government has consistently voted to give them the money, dissenters being permanently confined to the backbenches. And Daniel Hannan reminds us of Animal Farm. Indeed. For how much longer is the UK electorate going to be expected to bleat "rations have been increased" and to slave away all hours building a windmill, before it looks in through the farmhouse window at the political elite and concludes that where EU policy is concerned, it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between Socialist and Tory?

Cali Cartel: Debut of the Cartel's PA

2011-06-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

Now for Gabriela’s debut. A reasonably polite one initially.

Dear Mr Smith

Cazzy and Carlos have now set off for their flights, and Cazzy is going to be out of direct contact until she makes it to the airport at Lagos tomorrow at 16.45 as planned. In the meantime, please continue to correspond via these channels and I will deal with everything.

You should now tell your assistant Mark Collins to go to the Western Union office and give the clerk the following number: 46851 99362. He should describe the sender as “Gabriela Carmen Sanchez of CalicarTel.” For extra security, we have added a refinement to the question and answer. The question will be “name a car and its owner.” The answer, “Volvo – CalicarTel.”

One further point about Cazzy’s arrival arrangements. I would like you or a colleague to send me a message as soon as she arrives to confirm that she has met up with you as planned. She mentioned some time ago that she lost her cellphone on one of the recent Bolivia visits and she has heard conflicting reports about the reliability of local network connections. If by any chance you do not meet her off the flight, again please confirm straight away and I will make enquiries of the Eko Le Meridien and revert to you.

Yours sincerely

Gabriela Carmen Sanchez
Assistant to Carys Jones
CalicarTel
District of Columbia, USA

Polite but firm. And if the hotel receptionist or the Western Union clerk are both suitably worldly wise, there might be a touch of consternation when a local turns up and starts asking after guest representatives or payments from the Cali Cartel.

Full story to date on the above tab.

Invest, Spend or Subsidise?

2011-06-01T00:33:00.000-07:00

Today's 7.00 radio news bulletin carried a story, reproduced online, that there had been a call for "more investment" in the fight for a cure for the HIV virus. The spokesman, one Bertrand Audoin, proclaims "It is the right moment.....to invest more time and money..." and "But if we don't invest in the science, the epidemic will go faster than our work on it..."

Now, as a matter of simple economics, if the drug companies foresaw a realistic chance that the research and development time and capital consumed in attempts to bring a new drug to market were going to be made more worthwhile than simple break even as a result of profits on sales, that would of course comprise true investment. But that's not what the likes of M.Audoin appear to be calling for. Not when they refer to "donor governments and other funding organisations". That's just spending or subsidising. And however worthy the cause is perceived to be, it might even extend to squandering.

Of course in situations of this kind, it might be all too tempting to speak of "social investment" instead. But as we all know from examples such as social engineering, social justice and social worker, the application of this adjective usually only serves to destroy the meaning of the original noun. As it would in the context of investment.

Labour's Legacy: accepted, not disclaimed?

2011-05-30T01:18:00.000-07:00

Three items from the blogosphere have stood out over the last few days.

The first, the open thread from Douglas Carswell that invited his readership to comment on five irrefutable "Friday Facts": Immigration up. Government spending and borrowing up. Taxes up. Inflation up. Growth down.

The two others, a couple of ConHome threads here and here on the subject of pledging not just to maintain but to increase overseas aid, at a time when the UK is insolvent.

Disclaiming Labour's toxic legacy would surely have involved a massive programme of expenditure reduction and legislative repeal that would have ensured that no independent minded backbencher would ever have to open a thread in that way. Are we really faced with no option other than to conclude that the forming of the Coalition twelve months ago has simply served to entrench acceptance of the Labour legacy via a choice of continued slow decline rather than rapid decline?

Cali Cartel: Medellin Mob and Baron Charlie

2011-05-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Martin

Please excuse the lack of response over the last two days. We have had a major corporate problem to deal with – one of our greatest trading rivals, Mediterranean Ellineation Mobiles (“Medellin Mob”) - approached us unexpectedly on Wednesday and proposed that we left our mutual hostilities behind us and considered a trading alliance. They seem to think we can sew up demand for our products over the whole of Western Europe by working as a team. It’s taken a vast amount of time already to think about the fine details, and we’ve finally managed to persuade them to give us longer, above all to enable Carlos and me to deal with next week’s business in Nigeria as planned.....

.....I do not have a problem with the advance of $1,500, but the particular bank account from which this money is to be paid (and the advance that John Powell has sought) has just been used for a major payment on account to our Bolivian producers. We have had to make special arrangements because of the political risk I told you about earlier. The fresh inflow of funds into the account from one of our best customers, Baron Charlie O’Caine of the UK, will most likely arrive on Monday and we can deal with it then.

In view of the fact that Carlos and I will be flying to the UK on Tuesday, to connect with the Lagos flight on the Wednesday, my assistant Gabriela Sanchez will look after any matters arising while I am in transit, including payment issues, and will be using this e-mail account for that purpose, so please do not feel surprised if you see her name on any message next week.....

Regards

Cazzy

That should get them thinking. Not that it would be likely to get them thinking about the occasion when the Colombian drug cartels were said to have made an informal approach to the country’s government and proposed that in return for being left alone indefinitely to carry on their trade, they would pay off the entire Colombian national debt. Small change to the Cali Cartel and the Medellin Mob? Given that this proposal was presumably turned down, what might tempt them to pay off the Greek national debt here and now in 2011? But I digress. Note the arrival on the scene of a new character – no, not Baron Charlie O’Caine (go on, work it out, it’s a real snorter) but the CalicarTel PA Gabriela Sanchez, not merely a near echo of the deceased provider of the scammers’ non-existent loot, but a formidable lady whose hair trigger temper knows no bounds, with the ability to kill a scammer stone dead at twenty paces with one blow of her Send button. Watch this space.

Full tale on the above tab for catching up.

Eurozone Bailouts, Spines and Balls

2011-05-25T05:28:00.000-07:00

Years ago, when the Winter of Discontent was raging and when a medical TV show called The Body In Question was a surprise hit, a newspaper cartoon combined the two with an image of Dr Jonathan Miller announcing: “Tonight I was going to show you a heart and a brain, but unfortunately I’ve dissected a NUPE picket”.

Fast forward to yesterday’s debate on the legality of Eurozone bailouts, and the apparent sabotage of the motion tabled by Mark Reckless MP in favour of a watered down version inspired by the whips that would in practice mandate the government to suck its teeth and tut in disapproval at a bailout request rather than stand firm against it. Cue Dr Miller: “Tonight I was going to show you a spine and a pair of balls, but unfortunately I’ve dissected a Member of Parliament.”

Well, at least there were 30 anatomically complete Tories at this debate, along with 18 opposition members, with four female MPs sporting honorary testes for the occasion. What a pathetic shambles otherwise.

Cali Cartel: a flight, and a nose for a Freudian slip

2011-05-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

"Dear Martin

I am now back from Bolivia. Fortunately our further trip appears to have worked as we had hoped, and our primary supply lines are secure again. The politicians will no doubt carry on gratuitously poking our business into their noses, but we are realistic business executives and we recognise that in our line of trade it is often necessary to put a sweetener or two in their direction. That is what modern communication is all about.

Moving onwards to our business, I am working on the further bank arrangements, and am pleased to note that you are evidently able to deal with the meeting and greeting when I arrive in Lagos. I now have a precise flight time – it is VK292, out of London Gatwick, scheduled arrival time in Lagos 16.45. Sr Garcia-Gonzalez will then proceed privately to Port Harcourt and I would be obliged for your confirmation that you or one of your colleagues can meet me when I arrive....."

Well, some politicians have been known to do exactly that. And of course it might have been more accurate to say "meet the flight", rather than any particular person on it.

Catch up on the full tale via the above tab.

Interpreting Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention

2011-05-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

It is often fairly said of modern judicial interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights, as enabled via the Human Rights Act, that no one could ever have foreseen that principles laid down with a view to preventing the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi Germany ever recurring might one day be used by the hordes of malcontents and whingers who come flocking to the courts to bleat about their human rights being violated.

We should, of course, give our judiciary some credit for the deemed intelligence and wisdom that led to their being entrusted with the right to make binding decisions via the courts that may not only burden the public purse but also curtail individual freedom to act in a manner that would otherwise seem perfectly reasonable.

So why in God’s name, may we ask, is the formula "Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence", as embodied in Article 8 of the “Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, agreed by the Council of Europe at Rome on 4th November 1950”, and given legislative force via the Schedule to the Human Rights Act 1998, being interpreted by our judiciary as a privacy law that can extend to the protection of (amongst others) married footballers who lack the self control to respect their wedding vows and keep it in their trousers?

Discuss.

Super Injunctions: Ironic Imogen Anagram

2011-05-20T00:56:00.000-07:00

The judgment of Eady J in the Imogen Thomas case repays careful reading. A lot more to it than meets the eye, albeit all on an interim basis where nothing can be taken as proven without a full trial. And it is a trite general observation that if an allegation of blackmail turned out to be ill founded, the libel lawyers might be interested, to put it mildly.

Ironic, then, with the criticism of the defendant published here, that Imogen Thomas is an anagram of I'm Hot So Nag Me.

Cali Cartel: Marching (Not Powder) Into Bolivia

2011-05-20T00:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Martin

You may not have heard, but the new President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, recently took steps amounting to the virtual nationalisation of the country’s gas and oil resources, and did so without any warning whatsoever. Given that Bolivia is, as I mentioned before, one of our major production centres, this panicked Carlos so much that he insisted on dashing down there straight away and taking me with him. We think that we have lobbied well enough to ward off any threat to our own industry – after all, what would a place like Bolivia do without a reliable foreign telecoms investor – but it really took a lot of effort on our part and of course it’s held up everything else we were working on.

Anyway, I’m barely off the flight, half dead from the altitude (you wouldn’t believe how high La Paz is) and I’ve lost my cellphone down the Potosi silver mine where some pompous politician insisted on taking us for a tour after the main meeting – I don’t expect I’ll ever see that again. Some peasant miner is probably running up a huge bill on it at my expense at this very moment.....

As far as our flight to Lagos is concerned, I am now looking at some time in the week commencing 29 May to take care of this, with some hope of bringing it slightly forward. Unfortunately we are going to have to go back to Bolivia for a longer session – possibly an entire week – next Friday, not only to lobby some more politicians but also to make contingency plans to protect the most valuable parts of our infrastructure in case President Morales widens the scope of his asset seizures. Frankly, the number of politicians who poke their noses into our business is almost beyond parody.....

Regards

Cazzy

Carys Olwen Jones
PA to Carlos Garcia-Gonzalez
Calicar Telecommunications Inc (“CalicarTel”)
District of Columbia, USA

Where politicians poke their noses is perhaps best not addressed in too much detail. However, if these scammers can be induced to poke theirs in the direction of the juicy carrot being dangled underneath, in the form of an actual week for the incoming flight, so much the better. And why not dangle a further carrot under the merchant banker’s nose, namely the scent of a large quantity of cash?

Use the above tab to catch up on the full tale.

Vince Cable and Doc Morrissey

2011-05-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

Aficionados of the original Reginald Perrin TV series may fondly remember one of the support characters, the bumbling Sunshine Desserts medic Doc Morrissey. Memorably introduced to the audience in a scene where he deftly dropped his porno mag under the desk as Reggie entered his consulting room, he would ask what seemed to be probing questions about Reggie’s medical problems, only to admit to feeling the same way himself and not to have a clue about what was causing them, before handing over two aspirins.

He then proceeded to get himself sacked from Sunshine Desserts for diagnosing CJ’s concussion as death, and in a later reincarnation at Grot he attempted to excuse his ignorance about Reggie’s health related bluffing by claiming that there had been a whole lot of new parts of the body invented since he was at medical school. Overall, a harmless buffoon, way out of his depth albeit with a certain degree of charm, and definitely someone who should not be let anywhere near serious problems linked to the profession with which he was supposedly closely associated.

Now think of Vince Cable.

Cali Cartel: Coals to Newcastle - or Coke to Nigeria

2011-05-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Martin

Good news indeed. The bank is evidently already satisfied with all that has been done so far, because it has confirmed the raising of a bank draft in my name in the sum of $27 million. There has been no mention of interest, which must in itself be a sizeable sum if Mr Chavez deposited it in 1998, but this can be left for separate discussion.

The only requirement they have imposed is that it is personally collected from their branch in Tinubu Square, Lagos. As it turns out, I think this is going to be a sensible arrangement, for three reasons: -

1. Less risk of it going astray;

2. The need for you and me to deal with the agreed division of the proceeds, with the draft being in my name;

3. A sudden pressing need for my boss Carlos to make a business trip to Port Harcourt on import and export issues. Without wishing to trouble you with great detail, there would be considerable problems if we ever tried to make a substantial import into the US of a product shipment directly from our main plant in Bolivia, so we always have these consignments taken straight from Bolivia by sea to a secondary foreign port and transferred to the US at one step removed. The scope to save on import duty and avoid other difficulties far outweighs the extra transportation costs.

In other words, we can combine a trip. I would need to be suitably looked after while Carlos makes his connection from Lagos to Port Harcourt, so would you be willing to meet me at the airport and escort me to the bank on the following day? While I would describe myself as a seasoned traveller, I’d hesitate to navigate Lagos on my own.

Awaiting your earliest response.

Regards

Cazzy

Carys Olwen Jones (Miss)
PA to Carlos Garcia-Gonzalez
Calicar Telecommunications Inc (“CalicarTel”)
District of Columbia, USA

How very convenient – one of the directors of the Cali Cartel needing to visit a port of convenience so as to overcome direct Bolivian shipping difficulties. One such difficulty being the fact that Bolivia is landlocked, over and above its greater proximity to the west coast of South America, but these fine details are hardly likely to trouble a scammer with dollar signs before the eyes.

Continuing on the above tab.

Scotland: Management Buy Out?

2011-05-16T05:27:00.000-07:00

You’re in charge of a PLC that’s a pale shadow of what it once was. One of its lesser divisions eats money as if there was no tomorrow, does not produce enough earnings to meet that expenditure without inter-group transfer payments on a major scale, and has a track record for sending managers to main board executive meetings who only want to carry on squandering at other divisions’ expense.

Suddenly there are moves for a management buy out. Do you take the “family silver” approach as notoriously adopted by the Earl of Stockton in opposing utility privatisation, or do you see the clear benefits of the MBO to the productive remainder of the PLC, especially knowing full well that the seceding division will still want to continue to sell its unique products to you, and with the added bonus of a golden opportunity to renegotiate terms of membership of a burdensome trade association, or ideally leave it altogether?

Now, think Scotland, the Barnett formula, its Labour MPs, the rise of the SNP, the remote possibility of huge tariffs ever being imposed on whisky, tartan and haggis. And the chance to get out of the EU once two new nations came into existence. Are the sentimental attractions of keeping the UK together for its own sake really worthwhile? Or, putting it another way, how far would quality of life for the English and Welsh be damaged if Scotland went independent?

Cali Cartel: Fingernail Extensions and Mobile Phones

2011-05-16T01:26:00.000-07:00

OK, Smithy, let’s see if this puts your mind at ease, alongside the first of many cocaine references. No, I’m sure we couldn’t picture Tania from Footballers’ Wives putting on her cuticular appendages merely to make the most efficient use of her mobile phone.

"Dear Martin

Thank you for your message. I am still trying to sort matters out with the bank, who have provided a lawyer’s name (John Powell) but no contact details. Given that he supposedly has the deposit certificate that I need before I can move matters on, it would help if you could ask him to send this to me if you were in contact.....

I’d better leave it at that for now. We’ve just been approached to find out if we’d lend our name to a range of – would you believe it - fingernail extensions, no doubt to assist in the convenient use of our main product line. It’s hard to believe that it can be so difficult for some to tap out numbers on a keypad…

Regards

Cazzy"

Hit on the tab above to catch up with the full story.

Huhne The Eco-Loon: A Driven Man

2011-05-15T15:07:00.000-07:00

Well, if the story that the Sunday tabloids are determinedly focusing upon is proved to be true, our wind turbine-hugging nuclear power-hating SecState for Energy and "Climate Change" is likely to be taken for a long, slow, leisurely drive in the not too distant future. In a Black Maria. So what song to parody by way of insertion of the boot? The Beatles' Baby You Can Drive My Car? Or how about Madness and Driving In My Car? No, what's the point. The unamended lyrics of "Drive" by The Cars are just right: -

Who's gonna tell you when
It's too late
Who's gonna tell you things
Aren't so great

You can't go on
Thinking nothing's wrong
Who's gonna drive you home tonight

Who's gonna pick you up
When you fall
Who's gonna hang it up
When you call

Who's gonna pay attention
To your dreams
Who's gonna plug their ears
When you scream

You can't go on
Thinking nothing's wrong
Who's gonna drive you home tonight

Who's gonna hold you down
When you shake
Who's gonna come around
When you break

You can't go on
Thinking nothing's wrong
Who's gonna drive you home tonight

Cali Cartel: Checking Colombian Fields

2011-05-11T00:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Martin

I have just returned to the office after a fields visit to check on seasonal production levels, and have today caught up with outstanding correspondence.

My message to Russel Adam is on its way. I’ll be in touch when I hear from him. In the meantime, are you in a position to forward the affidavit and change of beneficiary documents yet?

I note and agree the proposed split. You would not regret taking out an investment with us, knowing the reaction when another consignment of our products hits the streets. I would certainly share your views about a beach home in Hawaii one day, even though our board of directors tend to the view that their profits come up whiter than white in the Caymans. I’ll see what might be available to recommend.

Regards

Cazzy

Carys Olwen Jones (Miss)
PA to Carlos Garcia-Gonzalez
Calicar Telecommunications Inc (“CalicarTel”)
District of Columbia, USA

Yes, it's so exciting when the latest brand of mobile phone hits the street, affixed to the user's ear in fairly short order> Nothing, of course, to do with another type of product hitting the street and destined for the nose rather than the ear.

Full tale unfolding on the above tab.

Osama Bin Whacked: Boris and Tom Clancy

2011-05-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

[Spoiler Alert] Towards the end of Tom Clancy’s “Executive Orders”, there is a memorable passage when President Ryan makes a live broadcast to the nation following the biological warfare attack on the USA, cutting to satellite footage of a suburb in Tehran where a Special Ops team are in place with their laser guidance equipment focused on a house roof (no, not a letterbox) as a stealth bomber flies above. Announcing that the man responsible for the atrocity was the leader of the United Islamic Republic, the President concludes “and this, Mahmoud Hadji Daryaei, is the response of the United States”. The bomb completes its descent and detonates, the ayatollah’s abode is blown to smithereens, and the ayatollah himself – having spent a lifetime bringing people closer to Allah – is hoist with his own petard. Almost straight out of the Road Runner cartoons.

So when Boris Johnson finished drawing his conclusions that Bin Laden was executed and for good reason, and winds up his article with “it is at least plausible and emotionally convincing to say Osama Bin Laden was a Clear And Present Danger [my emphasis] to America; he had it coming and the President had him killed”, might he have been paying an accidental dual tribute to Tom Clancy by also invoking one of his earlier novel titles?

(Anti) Europe Day

2011-05-09T05:32:00.000-07:00

Bit of a misnomer, in truth. It should of course be Anti EU Day. As the preamble to Daniel Hannan's commemoration goes, we can at the same time love Europe but believe that the European Union is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free.

In the meantime, the sticker featured above and many others like it can be obtained here.

Cali Cartel: the nature of the business

2011-05-08T14:48:00.000-07:00

Here we go with another unfolding scambait, then. This is where the scammer is first led to understand that Calicar Telecommunications Inc - or CalicarTel for short - is an up and coming telecoms business, nothing whatsoever to do with the world drugs trade. Heaven forbid, perish the thought, how could anyone be so naive etc.

"Dear Mr Smith

Thank you for your response.

You have now mentioned a split of 40% for CalicarTel and 60% for yourself. Your original message said that the split was to be 50-45 in your favour with the balance earmarked for expenses. Clearly there is no sense in splitting hairs too much over such a windfall, but as this might have a bearing upon medium term export budget financing for us, can you confirm which it is?

I am very pleased that you are minded in principle to make an investment in the USA out of your share. I can do no more than assure you that our line of business, which I am sure you have realised to be mobile telecoms, continues to enjoy great success on the streets of major US cities, and our production yields reflect the ongoing and almost inexhaustible demand for what we supply.

Of course I recognise the need for your professional intergrity to be maintained and I have no problem in ensuring that this transaction is kept wholly confidential. No one other than this company’s board of directors and their professional advisers will be involved.

My full address is set out below. You may treat the USA as my country of domicile. I expect that you will be looking for this matter to proceed in my personal name, even though the real interest at this end will be via CalicarTel.

Regards

Cazzy Jones

Carys Olwen Jones (Miss)
PA to Carlos Garcia-Gonzalez
Calicar Telecommunications Inc (“CalicarTel”)
Barranquilla House
4th Street
Washington
District of Columbia, USA"

That's just for starters. The full tale will unfold via the tab above, with the highlights published here as with the others, every couple of days or so.

Big Society, Big Public Sector Payroll

2011-05-06T00:04:00.000-07:00

Those awfully nice people at Unison, as part of their poster campaign to encourage people to vote in the local elections for a party that they could not bring themselves to name (clue: it rhymes with "neighbour"), evidently believe that the Big Society involves "fewer ambulance drivers, fewer 999 operators, fewer bin men..." and so on via an endless mantra - you get the drift.

It does of course invite parody, along the lines of "because Labour councils would rather cut front line services than get rid of equality officers, diversity officers, climate change coordinators, teenage pregnancy liaison officers, five a day coordinators, anti smoking coordinators, outreach liaison coordinators..."

Bin Laden: Was It A Reindeer?

2011-05-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

The initial account of Bin Laden's demise is now said to be riddled with errors. If it does not affect the end result, it hardly matters. But it's a worthy excuse to reproduce one of the great Bob Rivers parodies in full: -

Osama got run over by a reindeer
Right outside his cave on Christmas Eve
Some folks say there’s no such thing as Santa
But now even the Taliban believe

Osama thought we'd never find him
But even little children know
Santa knows who’s been real naughty
In those hard Afghani mountains capped with snow

Al-Qaeda found him Christmas morning
Face down on that mountain pass
There were hoof marks on his turban
And a broken reindeer antler up his wo-ho-ho-ho-ho

Osama got run over by a reindeer
Right outside his cave on Christmas Eve
You can say there's no such thing as Karma
But if you saw those hoof marks you'd believe

Osama got run over by a reindeer
Now he's not around on Christmas Day
He was hoping he'd be meeting Allah
The only thing he met was Santa's sleigh

Merry Christmas

Ooh, that's gotta hurt!

Bin Laden Dead: Gotcha, Rejoice - and Buy These Men A Pint

2011-05-02T12:44:00.000-07:00

What scope for original comment about Bin Laden's long overdue demise? The Sun will no doubt find it hard to resist "Gotcha!", and the equally applicable "Rejoice!" is also doing the rounds. For intelligent analysis of one specific and somewhat uncomfortable issue, namely the proximity of Bin Laden's hideout to the Pakistan equivalent of Sandhurst, where better than Paul Goodman's article on Conservative Home.

OK, here's a thought. Remember how Glaswegian airport worker John Smeaton used his impeccable technique to bring down a suicide bomber - a kick in the bollocks - and soon found himself the accidental beneficiary of a Buy This Man A Pint online campaign? What better tribute for the members of this US Special Forces team, even if the proceeds were to be passed on to a charity for Islamist terrorism victims in the sure knowledge that these men will anyway never have to buy themselves a beer for the rest of their lives? They'd surely appreciate that as much as the Congressional Medals of Honour.

And another thought. Today's dead terrorist is tomorrow's shark shit. Pity in a sense that he could not have suffered the intended fate of Hannibal Lecter at the hands of Mason Verger. Feet first. But I suppose that would have been animal cruelty.

Aid to Somalia: A Snowflake On Boiling Toxic Sludge

2011-04-30T00:44:00.000-07:00

Enoch Powell, in illustrating the futility and harm of taxpayer funded foreign aid, once described it as having about as much useful effect as a snowflake on boiling water. He went on to assert that what Third World nations needed was not capital, but capitalism.

Yesterday we saw the Minister for Africa at the Foreign Office writing to the Telegraph to assert that the long term solution to Somalia's piracy problems "lies in building rule of law and governance in Somalia, in which the Department for International Development’s four-year £250 million programme will play a crucial role". Groan. Millions of pounds' worth of snowflakes disappearing into thin air upon contact with the boiling toxic sludge of a failed state.

OK, so capitalism may not stand much of a chance of gaining a foothold here. In that case, why not just put it into receivership or liquidation? Give the UN a constructive role for once and let it sell Somalia off to the highest bidder - the Chinese might be prepared to pay 250 million yuan for another colony - or just break it up and sell (or indeed give) chunks to its neighbours. And make sure to disqualify its former leaders and warlords from holding office ever again.

Constable Savage Goes Forth Again

2011-04-28T00:31:00.000-07:00

"Now then, Savage. I'd like to talk to you about some arrests you've been making recently."

"What would those be then, sir?"

"Well, there's the one for Singing Kung Fu Fighting In A Loud Shirt Without Just Cause During The Hours Of Twilight."

"Any more, sir?"

"Indeed. How about the one for Drawing A Hitler Moustache On A Poster With Intent To Cause Stress And Anxiety?"

"Well, it sounded like a hate crime, sir."

"And I almost forgot - there was your confiscation of a shotgun belonging to a law abiding member of the public who complained about being threatened by gypsies."

"Thank you, sir."

"I'll get straight to the point. There's no room for you in my force any longer. You've been recommended for fast track promotion to the chief inspectorate. The intensive diversity awareness modules start tomorrow, and after that you'll be on the five day residential course on motorist persecution for the modern police service."

"I'm delighted, sir."

"And stop calling me Sir all the time. Deference to superiors went out with Dixon of Dock Green."

"Sorry, Dad."

(Just look at today's Richard Littlejohn column for the source material. In the great man's own words, you couldn't make it up.)

Money for Brussels, (take the) Mick for Free

2011-04-21T00:02:00.000-07:00

Good eye catching headline from the print version of the Telegraph this morning - "£400 per family demanded by EU" - even if the online version is less punchy. Anyway, the underlying story of the EU's proposed budget hike is as scandalous as anything emerging from that despised institution, and if its collection was in practice as the headline put it - let's say, an army of EU tax collectors going door to door and shaking down every family in the UK for its levy - there would surely be an outcry.

But of course that's not how it works. The EU lodges its demand with the UK government, and as with any government it can raise cash by taxing, borrowing or printing. The assumed capitulation on our government's part, whatever the level of increase, will then indirectly find its way down to those who ultimately pick up the tab. And it won't be every family, only those who work and contribute.

And it's all regardless of the dire straits that we're in, thanks to the last government. If only there was a chance of lining up with some brothers in arms, in one world of solidarity, to get so far away from this outrage (if need be, to ride across the river) and tell Von Rompuy "you can stick your latest trick", leaving him to conclude that he'd underestimated David Cameron because the man's too strong (if only). Why worry about outrage from bureaucrats when it would be so attractive to be doing the walk of life away from the EU's dead hand for once and for all, and stop giving away money for nothing?

Working On The Highway

2011-04-18T01:17:00.000-07:00

"Working on the highway, laying down the blacktop/Working on the highway, all day long I don't stop/Working on the highway, blasting through the bedrock/Working on the highway, working on the highway" - Bruce Springsteen sums up that great American spirit of the blue collar worker and his enthusiasm to do a vital job and get traffic moving. Just think of how quickly Los Angeles was fully back in action after the last earthquake, with some contractors justifiably rewarded for solving the most horrendous problems eight months early.

Now look at our M1 problems, where it is all too easy to picture an elf'n'safety jobsworth or two with a clipboard and a miserable expression, and a gang of labourers on yet another tea break, and cones as far as the eye can see, and a minister wringing his hands and hoping that it will fully reopen towards the middle or end of next week.

Any chance of borrowing some American spirit here in the UK?

Best Before Dates, Nannying and the EU

2011-04-17T00:46:00.000-07:00

Two cheers only for today's proclamation that Best Before Dates on food packaging are to be scrapped in an attempt to reduce the amount of perfectly sound food thrown away uneaten because of slavish obedience to a printed date rather than the application of taste, smell and common sense.

The remaining cheer would have been in place had it not been for "retailers will in future have to produce labels which give details of the health risks associated with individual foods that remain on shelves or in the fridge for a lengthy period before being consumed. Prawns and eggs, for example, would be more likely, under the new guidelines, to carry detailed warnings of potential risks of food poisoning if they were eaten after a certain date." The taste or smell of a prawn or an egg that had become unfit for human consumption would surely be a bit of a giveaway.

On reflection, however, perhaps they deserve no cheers at all, because it's evidently an issue of EU Regulations, and the prospect of the Brussels bureaucrats allowing the repeal of a regulation that satisfies so many vested interests and keeps so many in well paid non-jobs will be somewhat remote. Pity. Decent Sunday newspaper headline to give the impression that the Coalition is well intended, but one that will be quietly forgotten in the face of UK impotence. Until we leave the EU.

Action for Happiness and the Behavioural Insight Team

2011-04-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

What is the Behavioural Insight Team? Evidently it is the government body responsible for nudging the population into doing things that the man in Whitehall thinks they should do, and refraining from doing things he thinks they should not. Running in parallel, possibly, with the suspicious sounding body Action for Happiness, which may be wholly unaware of what Ronald Reagan once said about the mantra "I'm from the government and I'm here to help".

Clearly a trick has been missed somewhere. In these straitened times, where public bodies can be encouraged to save resources by merging, these two could combine to form the Behavioural, Unhealthy Lifestyle Liaison, Social Happiness Insight Team. To be known for evermore by its acronym BULLSHIT.

Pirates Provoke Putin, Paying Perilous Price

2011-04-13T08:31:00.000-07:00

Three cheers for Vladimir Putin. In marked contrast to the spineless approach that the crew of HMS Cornwall were evidently ordered to take (by whom? Name and shame, please) after they had captured 17 Somali pirates in February - meals, medical check ups, a nicotine patch and their freedom rather than custody, trial and imprisonment - it is so uplifting to read the following summary from Vlad's tame president Dmitry Medvedev of the Russian approach to piracy: -

"Last summer, Russian special forces stormed the Moscow University oil tanker, killing one of the 11 pirates holding the ship. The authorities claimed to have released the rest of the pirates, but then mysteriously reported that “they could not reach the coast and, apparently, have all died”. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, gave some indication of what that meant when he said the country would “have to do what our forefathers did when they met the pirates until the international community comes up with a legal way of prosecuting them”."

Yes, if we may speculate for a moment, there's nothing quite like casting the scum of the earth into open ocean on a boat without power or fuel, perhaps with a slow leak too courtesy of some Spetznaz hardware, and leaving them to the mercy of the elements and the sharks.

I do wish Vladimir Putin could be our next Prime Minister. In the meantime, rewarding him with the Freedom of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden would be a good start.

Balls: "Britain Does Not Exist As An Island"

2011-04-12T07:42:00.001-07:00

Many years ago, in the heyday of Not The Nine O'Clock News, a spoof version of Question Time saw a member of the audience asking the panel for their reaction to the news that the Soviet Union had launched hundreds of ICBMs at the UK, and that their impact was only 4 minutes away. Over and above the parody of Clive Jenkins - "Robin, at a time like this, I wonder what Nye Bevan would have done, and I'm pretty sure he would have shat in his pants" - there was a classic Lord Carrington, depicted by Rowan Atkinson as a slow, ponderous, bumbling diplomat type. "Well, you have to look at these matters in global terms. You see, Britain is not an island..."

Now that piece of geographical ineptitude was supposed to be satire. But here is Ed Balls, pontificating on the Vickers report and the problems that he and the last government created, and amongst the testicular wisdom expounded in a BBC interview, he comes up with "But Britain does not exist as an island."

Perhaps we could invite him to demonstrate his proclamation by means of a long distance walk - to Paris, perhaps, or to Frankfurt if he was feeling really determined to lose some of his considerable weight - on condition that his feet stayed in contact with the surface of the Earth every step of the way, regardless of any intervening stretch of ocean?

Scares And The Nitrogen Of Publicity

2011-04-11T05:05:00.000-07:00

Rightly buried in the Telegraph's In Brief column today, one of those absurdities titled "Cut meat to ease pollution", reporting in 6 lines how 200 so-called experts - no doubt including a fair share of whingeing vegetarians to whom the principle of live and let live is anathema, and the thought that man is a carnivorous being is heresy - claim that people should halve the amount of meat they eat to reduce "damage by nitrogen to the environment". Just enough text to enable the average reader to think that these interfering busybodies should just keep their scaremongering drivel to themselves, before moving on to the world news pages.

But that's not enough for the BBC, of course. No, it has to be a Top 3 announcement for the 7.00 radio news bulletin, and a spoken opinion slot for one of the fanatics. And a front page web story that I will not dignify with a link.

Why give these clowns the oxygen - or should that be the nitrogen - of publicity? It's overreaction and exaggeration like this that leads to the snowballing of scares, and more strident calls for higher taxation and more needless restrictions on people can do by way of pleasure without fear of big government cracking down on them.....aha, so that's something the BBC is in favour of, yes of course, now I see.....

Elliot Morley (aka Ellison Moron) Brought To Book

2011-04-08T00:26:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should proclaim this one as the Curse of Cazzy? From my Wessex Mercia scambait, 14 May 2009 (see tab above for full story): -

“It would not be the same without another tale of corporate woe from Wessex Mercia, and in this case it’s the former manager of the company allotments, Ellison Moron, who stands accused of skimming off thousands of pounds for supposedly refurbishing his garden shed long after the building in question had ceased to be his responsibility. What am I going to find out next – could it be that the works pigsty is all set to feature on Location, Location, Location after a lavish refit? The way that some of those porkers wallow, I do begin to wonder!”

So perhaps it’s time for a revisit: -

“A former middle manager at the stricken company Wessex Mercia was facing jail and personal ruin yesterday after pleading guilty to fraud and embezzlement. The exposure of Ellison Moron’s false claims over a 21 month period for the refurbishment of a garden shed that was no longer his financial responsibility had initially led to an extraordinary assertion on his part, along with his similarly disgraced ex-colleagues Dago Cheater, Edgar Wellsley and Dim Undivine, that he was above the law and could only be judged by a select committee in the executive boardroom at the troubled business, with temporary deprivation of privileges being the worst sanction he should suffer. The reaction of former colleagues still at WM to his guilty plea was difficult to judge yesterday as many had set off for a long weekend, although ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ was uttered once or twice by WM executives under cover of strict anonymity.”

The trough’s empty, porker. Now it’s time for the slaughterhouse.

Pakistan: Why Feed The Mouth That Bites You?

2011-04-06T05:23:00.001-07:00

As Peter Oborne put it today, the British gave Pakistan (and indeed the rest of the world) parliamentary democracy, superb irrigation systems, excellent roads, the rule of law, the English language, and the game of cricket. As he could also arguably have put it but tactfully refrained, Pakistan has given Britain (and indeed the rest of the world) suicide bombers, radicalised expat malcontents via the indoctrination centres euphemistically described as Islamic schools, emigrants who frequently choose not to learn English or integrate into their host community, and cheats at cricket. There is also a danger that it may accidentally give the world nuclear weapon secrets. The American investment expert Jim Rogers, speaking from his personal experience as a traveller through would be emerging markets, once hinted at Pakistan being a virtual failed state. So is is entirely uncharitable to wonder whether David Cameron, in apologising for Britain's supposed role in historical world problems and in particular Kashmir, and in pledging £650 million worth of aid for Pakistan over the next four years hypothecated for education (pause for hollow laughter), has taken leave of his senses?

Libya and Serendipity

2011-04-04T05:41:00.000-07:00

We may well ask whether this is really our war, regardless of the assumption (probably accurate) that Libya and its wider horizons would be a better place without Gaddafi in charge. We may wonder out loud whether we would be participating in a bombing exercise in Saudi Arabia if dissent was being crushed in the same way ("a country with a fantastic culture, and an awful lot of oil..." - NTNON), and why we have never sought to deal with Zimbabwe in similar fashion ("a far off country about which we know little, without much oil - just forget about those elderly white Rhodesians with deep rooted British connections..."). But if the anti-Gaddafi uprising and the apparent defection of Mustapha Bolthole aka Moussa Koussa were to expose our two most recent former PMs to well founded allegations of duplicity and cover-ups, would tears be shed?

Effects of Socialism: Ratchet, Scorched Earth, Minefield

2011-03-31T10:13:00.000-07:00

The ratchet effect of socialism – the phenomenon of left wing governments steadily increasing the tax burden and the erosion of freedom, while their successor right wing governments never quite get round to addressing the issue, let around dismantling and reversing the ratchet – is a well known principle and ought to be borne in mind more often by the Coalition (fat chance?).

The scorched earth effect, well illustrated by Liam Byrne’s infamous “no money left” note to his successor at the Treasury, is no less familiar. At least it is very easy to see and ought to be a salutary lesson to anyone ever thinking of voting for socialists in the future. Perhaps not quite as stark as Saddam’s troops torching the Kuwaiti oil wells as they retreated, but just as damaging.

Now we have the minefield effect – not immediately visible, but one of these days someone will tread on one and get blown up. And that someone might be the nation as a whole. Think of the Climate Change Act and the ludicrous decarbonisation targets that may see the lights go out and our last remnants of manufacturing closed down. Think of the Equality Act and its medium to long term effect on small and not so small business once its shiny new causes of action give rise to a whole new flood of claims from malcontents and whingers from Labour’s favoured useful idiot minorities. And most recently, think of the sordid deal that Alastair Darling is said to have signed off shortly after the election that leaves the UK liable to contribute to the Portuguese bail out despite our remaining outside the Euro.

But the last of these is disturbing in another sense. As the questions of Hannan, Carswell and Cash illustrate, this bailout may be illegal anyway and may have been nodded through by the Treasury behind closed doors quite unnecessarily. If those who vanquished the retreating enemy know where they planted the mines, why on earth do they not clear them up rather than meekly accept the actual and collateral damage they cause when they go off?

More EU Eco-Lunacy

2011-03-28T23:59:00.000-07:00

In the early 80s the late Keith Waterhouse, clearly demonstrating that he had been born into the wrong party, once came up with a masterfully understated dismissal of trendy Tory thinking a la Heseltine on the subject of inner cities. He carefully explained by reference to long established history that they were not places to live in, but places to trade in.

The opposite view is evidently held these days by the latest EU clown looking to make a name for himself, one Siim Kallas (maybe his parents couldn't spell Slim). Under his crackpot scheme, cars would be banished from city centres altogether by 2050. Well, some might cynically say that his Estonian homeland conjures up images of city centres only being occupied by horses and carts, Soviet tanks and Zil lane cruisers, the latter no doubt being automatically exempt from any such ban.

Fair play to Norman Baker MP for rejecting this feature of the sinister sounding "Single European Transport Area", but beware of any politician wittering about "decarbonising" transport. Would the Chinese ever think of such an onslaught on their national prosperity? No - but they'd certainly be looking forward to world economic supremacy if these Brussels eco-loons had their way.

Golliwogs and Friendly Fire

2011-03-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

So who initiated the action against Bill and Star Etheridge , who posed with golliwogs for Facebook photos in order to stick two fingers up to political correctness, that led to their resignation from the Conservatives and their joining UKIP? Was it the EHRC? The Standards Board? Some self righteous do-gooder from the polytechnic lecturer wing of the Labour Party? Or a local press campaigner, perhaps? No. If the Mail article is to be believed, it was an anonymous colleague, making a complaint that led to an internal disciplinary process and a suspension. With friends like that, who needs enemies? And how much satisfaction will the sneak and the local party apparatchiks derive from the fact that public opinion seems to be with the Etheridges and against political correctness?

Effective Foreign Aid

2011-03-21T16:33:00.000-07:00

Option 1. Book holiday in Third World destination, ideally an independent hotel resort. Eat local food in resort or neighbourhood restaurants. Go on a number of excursions involving local transport – taxi, boat, elephant – and maybe even use the foreign airline. Your holiday cash will end up in the pockets of the service providers on the ground, whose turnover and profits will fund local employment and prosperity with minimal wastage save for the foreign equivalent of income tax and VAT which will hopefully be used to a reasonable extent to improve the people’s lives. Think of this process being repeated a hundredfold or more, with the consequential delight of the residents in your chosen destination.

Option 2. Give money to a Third World charity, or see it taken off you back home via your income tax or via government borrowing or printing, and then handed on to an intermediary prior to its anticipated spending upon – sorry, investment in – a prestige project (or vanity project, if you wish) with the proclaimed aim of improving people’s lives. Do your best to close your mind to the numerous cuts for “admin” and the underlying risk that it might only end up in some dictator’s Swiss bank account, or in the hands of the local BMW dealer or whisky and armaments trader supplying the regime. And reflect sadly upon the hypocrisy of your own government in wasting taxpayers’ money while penalising the aspiring Third World traveller via Air Passenger Duty and mouthing pious platitudes about carbon footprints, at the same time as it plans another freebie (sorry, conference) in the artificial Third World 5 star luxury to which only the political class can aspire.

You choose.

Looking East

2011-03-03T01:16:00.000-08:00

Off for a holiday - back in two weeks. Destination, a country where the elderly monarch is much revered and where the politicians are much despised.....hang on, isn't that an accidental description of the country I'm about to flee? At least Thailand should be free of rampant petty bureaucracy, and it's not subject to the overbearing directives and regulation of the Asian Union and its reckless unaccountable squandering.

Nuts, Sledgehammers and Fly Tipping

2011-03-01T05:24:00.000-08:00

It looks as if the spirit of Cyril Jobsworth was alive and kicking when Wayne Kerr - sorry, Freudian slip, Wayne Turner - of Milton Keynes Council signed off a fly tipping enforcement notice relating to an item of recyclable plastic that was left next to the overflowing eco-bins, with the clear intention that it should be picked up and taken away with the rest of the environmentally friendly rubbish.* And the real irony here is that he didn't bag any mere soft target - he potted a lifelong eco-warrior. Can't wait to see what Richard Littlejohn makes of this one.

*Please don't say "what, you mean as ballast for the container ships going back to China before it gets burned?" That would be cruel.

Exclusive: Libya To Join EU

2011-02-28T05:37:00.000-08:00

What, you mean like Qatar, following its successful World Cup bid (that was a joke)? No, but it's a mistake easily made when reading the headline Libya: enter the EU above a Telegraph letter from the chairman of Business for New Europe, overlooking the fact that the EU is only supposed to be an alliance of trading nations, not an aspiring nation state in its own right (ha ha). With wild and woolly talk about a new Marshall Plan for North Africa - what with? We're skint - it would hardly be surprising to see this clown go the whole hog and propose that Libya is fast tracked to full membership. If only the UK could trade its place with Libya.

After the Pear Man of Worcestershire

2011-02-27T15:25:00.000-08:00

Residents of Worcestershire will no doubt be breathing a sigh of relief that their proposed answer to the Angel of the North and the Willow Man of Somerset - namely the Pear Man - would be funded by private and corporate donations, not paid for out of council tax. Well, it would be insult to injury if those inclined to look upon this as a hideous monstrosity rather than a ground breaking work of art had to pay for the damned thing too.

But it does generate an interesting idea for any other local authority or private benefactor thinking of how to attract attention from a motorway and break up that supposedly dull scenery. Why not go for a Wicker Man? Just think of all those public sector fat cats - glorified town clerks pontificating in the title of chief executive, quango heads, BBC bosses, to name but a few - who could be hoisted up to the top for a fiery fate. The inevitable motorway closure at annual sacrifice time in honour of the deity of deficit reduction would be wholly worthwhile. All in jest, of course.....