tonybeingcreative

HowourEconomyReallyWorks

2009-07-02T08:02:00.002+01:00

I have seen no finer explanation regarding how our economy is working at present. So with thanks to those inventive thinkers who created this example...

A Rudd Stimulus Story

It is the month of April, on the shores of the Black Sea . It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town.

He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one.

The hotel proprietor takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher.

The Butcher takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the pig grower.

The pig grower takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel.

The supplier of feed and fuel takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the town's prostitute that in these hard times, gave her "services"
on credit.

The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the 100 Euro note to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.

The hotel proprietor then lays the 100 Euro note back on the counter. At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his 100 Euro note, after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town.

No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the Government is doing business today.

TheSpeaker

2009-06-28T17:44:00.001+01:00

In the UK we have many ancient traditions. One of these is that in our Parliament, the mother of parliaments, we have a Speaker of the House. His duty is to supervise the behavior of our elected representatives, the Members of Parliament.

The Speaker, once elected, becomes neutral to the political prejudices and party controls. He must be above reproach, have total integrity and possess the gravitas considered necessary to command respect from everyone in Parliament.

Normally the election of the Speaker is pretty much a certainty for the man or woman who has been considered a safe pair of hands by most Members. However these times are not normal.

The outgoing Speaker, Michael Martin, had to go because he had lost respect and control. He also had the misfortune to be in office when the whole political process unraveled; when many members of parliament have been found to be involved with varying degrees of dubious expense claims, malfeasance, fraud and inappropriate claims mostly born out of arrogance, greed and corruption of an epic scale.

Last week John Bercow was elected to the post of Speaker. I don’t know the man. I witnessed him make his successful pitch to be elected. I saw that he was most widely supported by his natural political foes in the Labour party, whereas his own party, the Conservatives, presently in opposition, appear to despise him. Ever since Bercow was elected there has been an outpouring of scorn and hatred aimed in his direction. One of the headlines in today’s Sunday Times is “Little Mr Turncoat in an awfully big chair” another is “The titchy Tory married to a leggy Labourite.” Another called him, "The Squeeker".

Make no mistake the man is hated with unreasoning hatred and vitriol. I have watched him in his new job and he hasn’t been outstanding but he has not been terrible either. Compared to his immediate predecessor he has been terrific.

So why have so many media pundits and highborn Conservatives evidenced such contempt, hate and scorn on John Bercow? I believe the answer is another ancient tradition in the UK. It is called anti-Semitism. Almost every negative article or opinion piece, and there has been many, stated that Bercow is pushy, duplicitous, greasy, short, over ambitious, oily and yes, you guessed it, Jewish.

To attack anyone in this manner is unacceptable and would be considered dangerous if this man were a Muslim or a black man but its OK to ascribe supposedly “Jewish” negative traits to the new Speaker. Judge Bercow for what he does now that he has fairly won his democratic election, not for what he is.

The closet anti-Semites who have run their despicable and demeaning whispering campaign against the man and the democratic process should crawl back under the slimy rock they usually inhabit.

DeadManWalking

2009-06-08T17:21:00.000+01:00

During the last year or so I wake up every day wondering what disaster has happened overnight in our once stable and fair land. There is a common misconception in far off foreign lands that the UK is quaint and quiet and never changing. Oh how I wish that were so. Nowadays it seems as if this once peaceful land is on some kind of universal speedy drug. Too much happens too fast and for all the wrong reasons. I long for the social and relative political continuity and stability of the USA, Canada or most of mainland Europe.

The UK has endured the global economic collapse, two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that are tying down many thousands of servicemen and women, and huge amounts of resources. We are also disproportionately in the front line of the global financial meltdown because we are such huge players in that sector. If that was not enough we have now experienced the ignominious and distasteful spectacle of our Members of Parliament abusing our trust with grossly excessive expenses claims.

Late last night the results of the European election started to come through. It quickly became evident that it was another disaster for Britain’s Labour Party. Their share of the votes cast is a derisory 15%.

This is the party’s worst performance in living memory and translates to about 6% of the electorate bothering to vote for the Government of the day.

More rude evidence of the British political malaise is the fact that the British National Party (the BNP) gained two seats in the European Parliament, in which Britain has 75 MEP’s.

Labour limped into third place almost tied with the Liberal Democrats but behind both the currently dominant Conservatives and the anti European UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party).

We are left in awe as Prime Minister Gordon Brown staggers around Downing Street like Frankenstein’s monster after one electrical shock too many. How does he remain standing, why does he remain at all?

But, and this is perhaps the biggest but of all, perhaps we should pause and consider the implication of all the political madness swirling around our collective head.

Who does it serve for us to demand the head of Gordon Brown right now?

Do we really need another election and yet more uncertainty at this tipping point moment?

We need some stability as we work towards economic recovery. As much as we want to get rid of Brown expeditiously Great Britain Limited might do better to wait.

TwilightoftheGods

2009-06-03T15:47:00.000+01:00

You know how it is. You realize that the drug is no good for you, that it can damage your health and well being, but you can’t resist it. That’s me and writing blogs and articles. I tried to stay away, to go cold turkey but I could no longer resist.

I stopped writing my commentary on the world at the end of April and here we are, about a month later and the world has got in an even bigger mess. They needed me.

The real reason for my absence, which you shall hear me mention many times in the near
future, was my readying my book, Twilight of the Gods, for publication on John Blake Publishing this week. Available to order now on Amazon.co.uk, it is, I hope a fun book that you will enjoy greatly!

But I digress. I was talking about how the world has gone even crazier during my absence. I figure there are three really important places on the planet, the UK, USA and Israel.

Everywhere else, all those other places might be fun, even interesting occasionally, but for things that hinge on the fulcrum, you have to look to these three countries. I could write a book just on the subject of why this is so, but its true that these are the three places that grab the worlds attention and never ending fascination. Today I shall keep our attention on the UK, and over the coming days it will be the other two legs of this strangely configured tripod we shall examine.

I, like many of my readers, have good reason to be particularly intrigued by these places because I was born in the UK, my ancestral roots are in Israel and one of my daughters and her two wonderful kids live permanently in the USA.

I am not saying that these countries are the centers of the universe or anything stupid like that, but I do contend that what happens to them, through them or because of them is of hugely disproportionate impact on the world at large. That is why what’s happening now is so crucial as I truly believe we might well be at a fateful crossroads in the fate of mankind.

The story of the seemingly endemic corruption amongst the elected Members of the British Parliament has been growing for the last several weeks. It is shameful and disappointing to see this degree of venality and ineptitude from both our elected representatives and the bureaucrats paid to provide checks and balances. It makes us angry and diminishes us all. Above all it robs us of the vestiges of faith we had in the probity and once proud tradition of our “clean” parliament. Of course the right thing to do would be for the tainted Prime Minister to call an immediate election allowing us the opportunity to clean house. That won’t happen unless it’s forced because our incumbent leader knows that the result will be his losing. The man is clinging on to power by his fingernails despite having no mandate to do so.

The history of the UK is littered with wars, collapses and civil strife as a result of disasters such as the long-term conflicts and insufferable economic problems we are currently suffering. There is a simmering and growing anger boiling just under the surface of this great country that is truly dangerous.
A survey released this week stated that 85% of the population wants a judicial review and oversight group to oversee the future control of the elected House of Commons. This must not be allowed to happen. If it was put in place we will have moved one step closer to a totalitarian regime that we must avoid at all costs. No one in this country can be allowed to have power over our elected representatives. They must be the paramount level of our government. It really isn’t difficult to put in place sensible and simple rules and regulations to govern expenses and allowances. We must not throw away the concepts and centuries of traditional democratic evolution because of the petty misdemeanors and crimes of a few corrupt and contemptible thieves posing as politicians.

However there should be a transparent and speedy examination, and where necessary, after due process, prosecution and trial of all the miscreants. The punishment for those found guilty should be precisely the same as that given to any other criminal guilty of stealing from the public purse. Certainly no less or more just because of who they are.

I remember, not too many years back when the MP’s in the UK were either rich white men who were Conservatives or working class white men who were sponsored by the Trades Unions who were Labour. Because the wages became a little higher and the allowances were (too) loosely administered we found ourselves with a new and different political elite who actually was much closer in identity to the people they were representing. We must not lose sight of the advantages this break from the past of privilege and class warfare gave the UK. We mustn’t return to that inglorious and unworthy past.
It’s good to be back!

Obama100Days

2009-04-26T07:33:00.001+01:00

I want to be amongst the first to write briefly about the first 100 days of President Obama. To achieve this I shall cunningly write this article before he hits the magic number on April 29 in the meantime I have to travel the north of the UK on academic business.

During the Democrat primaries it became obvious that candidate Obama was a great orator, an excellent communicator and a leader who can and does inspire. Furthermore, and a little less evident was the fact that he is a terrific political strategist, but not so wonderful as a tactician.

We then saw these attributes become clearer in the race for the White House. Obama would wait while others raced to take a political position and Obama would assume the Noel Coward stance of masterly inactivity. Then Barak claimed the middle ground making everyone else look hasty and far out on the loony edges of political suicide.

Now we are just a few days from the American government declaring its findings on the financial robustness of the country’s banks. This is going to show progress but not totally assured solvency for all these former colossal and sound institutions.

The President now needs to act with his economic team to clear up the toxic debts. He is still to do so, and he has been slow, some say too slow, but now he must sort this out. Until he does so there can be no lasting solutions to the American and world economic crisis. This is perhaps the biggest test facing the President.

President Obama ritual grade for his first 100 days in office will be compared to FDR and his first 100 days, perhaps to a lesser extent JFK's. But it is not a fair comparison. FDR faced the worst economic crisis in American history. JFK faced the Russians over Cuba but relatively few domestic problems. President Obama falls between the two.

Perversely Obama is looking much more like President George W Bush, his immediate predecessor. There are strange but clear similarities in the way both men handled their first 100 days.

The Bush legacy is considered truly dreadful, but it didn’t look that way when he began his tenure. Like all recent American Presidents he got the same first 100 days pass from voters that Obama received. In April 2001 Bush’s popularity poll numbers topped sixty percent, which matches those for Obama in April. A Washington Post/ABC Poll of the time even gave Bush high marks on his handling of the economy.

Bush, like most new presidents during the first heady hundred days used the customary early public goodwill to make politically favorable appointments, sign executive orders and shove through Congress programs that later would never get through, whilst making certain he had almost total executive power. Even at the start he was concerned to cement his historic legacy. Obama has followed more or less an identical approach.

Bush introduced his $1.6 trillion tax-cutting program to Congress, whist launching the "Faith-Based" Initiative to help local charitable groups, and his "New Freedom" Initiative to help disabled Americans. In his first address to Congress, he, copying Prime Minister Tony Blair in the UK, cast himself as the education president, talked about health care reform. He even made vague promises to tackle paying off the national debt. Obama has followed pretty much the same script.

Bush and Obama worked hard in their first 100 days to look good overseas and this usually becomes the refuge of the Presidential last 100 days.

Bush took stabs at bipartisanship but later reneged on all of them. But that hasn’t stopped Obama make these same type of initiatives his priorities also.

Bush's most controversial early cabinet appointment was the Bible quoting, fundamentalist John Ashcroft as Attorney General. Obama picked Eric Holder as Attorney General, which stirred similar controversy over his partisanship and ideology.

Bush totally supported the construction of a national missile defense system in Europe. So to has Obama, albeit to a lesser extent. He called a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland the most cost-effective and proven defense system. He tied his decision to go ahead with it directly to Iran's nuclear threat and international security concerns. Critics hotly disputed the need for the system when Bush backed it. They will continue to dispute its need.

America and Bush had a love affair that didn’t last very long. The same was true for FDR, JFK and every other president. But I think President Obama will do better after his first 100 days than many predecessors because he has been faced with such a terrible starting point for America that anything he does will feel good compared to Bush.

BritishBudgetBlues

2009-04-22T17:48:00.001+01:00

British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, the highest financial minister in the UK, today delivered his second Budget report to Parliament amid a dismal economic outlook, fast increasing unemployment and a deflated housing market. Public sector net borrowing is set at 175 billion pounds, 12% of Gross Domestic Product, the highest figure and percentage of this country’s wealth ever. These are truly shocking figures.

The Government borrowing levels are the highest since the Second World War, this at the same time as the economy shrinks, which means that the books will not balance for another decade!

Addressing the Parliament’s packed and rowdy House of Commons, the Chancellor started his report with a prediction that the economy will start growing again before the end of 2009. He claimed the Budget would help get people back into work and support business and homeowners amid the most serious turmoil for over 60 years.

The measures the Labour Government are going to take rekindle memories of old style left wing socialism, red in tooth and claw. They are heavy in yet more borrowing, now at stratospheric levels; approaching three quarters of a trillion pounds, or more than one trillion dollars.

Most depressing in the announced measures was the second major increase of tax to 50% on the highest 1% of earners. This doesn’t actually achieve much additional revenue since these people have good accountants and the ability to vote with their feet. What such petty and ill-considered moves will achieve is the very opposite of their aim. Such high earners are the rainmakers of any economy, people that create jobs and opportunities for everyone by their endeavor. Make UK Limited an unattractive and expensive place to live and they will re-locate.

Before the world woke up to the major failings of laissez faire capitalism it already knew that old style central command style socialism was a busted flush. It now appears as if we might be moving to a new system that encompasses many of the worst elements of both those systems and virtually none of the good bits.

The enormous amount of British debt underpins this governments attempt to spend its way out of the current economic disaster. It is continuing to ramp up public expenditure until it is beginning to become obvious that it is an insupportably large percentage of Britain’s Gross Domestic Product.

The reason that the immediate and necessary tax increases and general move toward a reduction in debt levels is not taking place in the UK is almost totally political. The government has to call an election within the next 14 months and is aware that their popularity is at an all time low. Of course there is the possibility that the all time stupidity of these buffoons is such that they don’t understand this. Put another way, they were almost certain to lose the next election before this budget, now they are totally certain to lose the next general election by a landslide.

"This Budget will speed the recovery," he said. "We have good grounds for confidence."

MAIN PERSONAL FINANCE HIGHLIGHTS
* New £2,000 car scrappage scheme
* Stamp Duty holiday extended by three months
* Statutory redundancy pay will increase from £350 to £380
* Fuel duty to increase by 2p
* New 50% rate of tax for people earning over £150,000.
* Personal allowances scrapped for people earning over £100,000
* Tax relief on pension contributions scrapped for people earning £150,000

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
Economy:
* Expectation that the economy will start growing again before the end of 2009.
"There can be no quick fix or overnight solution," said Darling.

* Darling forecast that the economy would shrink by 3.5% during 2009 - in line with predictions. 2010 will see 1.25% growth, he added, with 3.5% growth from 2011. In the pre-Budget report, Darling forecast a 0.75% to 1.25% slowdown in economic growth in 2009, with 1% growth in 2010.

The cost of the measures being enacted will haunt our grand children. Remember this is the political party that promised it was never going to put up the top rate of tax and it was the government, which had promised an end to economic boom and bust. Just two more broken pledges from a broken government.

TheOldestLies

2009-04-21T14:48:00.001+01:00

At yesterday’s UN racism conference IRANIAN president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the Holocaust as a "pretext" for aggression against Palestinians, prompting European diplomats to walk out of a speech disrupted by pro Israel protesters tossing red clown noses at the hard-line leader.

The myth being perpetrated by the Israel baiting Iranian is that Israel is a racist state partly because it has Judaism as its state religion and partly because it has a law of return that entitle Jews to become Israeli citizens.

The truth is that every other country in the area, including the Palestine Authority, has Islam as its state religion. Israel does not discriminate against the interests of any of its citizens, whatever they are. Contrast this with the country’s Muslim neighbours who routinely discriminate against all non-Muslims, particularly Jews. In addition to which several of these states have their own laws of return for their own people, and again this includes the Palestine Authority. Jordan goes so far to have a law, which explicitly prohibits Jews from citizenship, but only Israel is condemned for its law of return. Why?

Several hundred thousand Arabs either ran or were pushed from Israel when it was fighting the Arab armies seeking to destroy it on its UN sanctioned formation in 1948. There is compelling evidence that most Arab refugees left on their own accord.

What is less well known is that simultaneously three quarters of a million Jews were forced to leave the Arab countries they had inhabited for millennia and run to Israel in fear for their lives.

The difference between these two sagas is that Israel took in the Jewish refugees and made them into productive Israeli citizens whereas the rich Arab states kept their co-religionists in festering refugee camps for three stateless generations to make political capital from their awful plight.

It is no surprise to find the Iranian leader expressing such racist and revisionist views, after all he had previously denied the Holocaust and threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the world map. The man is so intensely anti Semitic he would have received honorary membership in Hitler’s Nazi Party, but for the fact that he is a bit too brown skinned to have passed for an Aryan super being.

Mr Ahmadinejad was the first government official to take the floor at the conference, opening on the eve of Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day. Two protesters in clown costumes tossed red noses at Mr Ahmadinejad as he recited Muslim prayer to begin his speech.

A Jewish student group from France later took credit for causing the disturbance, saying that members threw clown noses to "symbolise the masquerade that this conference represents".

Mr Ahmadinejad restarted his talk and delivered a speech that lasted more than half an hour, saying the United States and Europe had helped to establish Israel after the Second World War and victimise Palestinians "under the pretext of Jewish suffering".

That prompted a walkout by some 40 diplomats from Britain, France and other European countries that had threatened to leave the conference if it descended into anti-Semitism or other rhetoric harshly critical of Israel.

All the sneering Iranian leader needs to complete his visible hatred of all things Jewish, Israeli and Zionist is for him to hold aloft his copy of Hitler’s “Mien Kampf”.

The walkout was temporary, with most diplomats returning after Mr Ahmadinejad finished speaking, but the Czech delegation, which currently holds the European Union presidency, said it would not return to the conference.

The US was already boycotting the event, along with Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland. This was due to the advance knowledge of all participants that like its predecessor conference at Durban 2, this conference was been built on a false pretext. Supposedly devised to combat racism it is, in reality, hijacked by those wishing to demonize and delegitmise Israel and anybody who dares support the Jewish state’s right to exist.

Mr Ahmadinejad went on to accuse Israel of being the "most cruel and racist regime".

Protesters against the Iranian leader held placards reading, "This is a circus. A racist cannot fight racism", and repeatedly interrupted the speech with shouts of "Shame! Shame!" and "Racist! Racist!"

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon met Mr Ahmadinejad prior to his speech to specifically advise the Iranian leader to avoid dividing the conference. Clearly this advice was ignored in much the same way as President Obama’s peace overtures have been.

Mr Ban, who was plainly both disgusted and angry, added that he was disappointed Mr Ahmadinejad had misused his speech "to accuse, divide and even incite", directly opposing the aim of the meeting.

Mr Ahmadinejad, as head of state, had the right to speak and did not need a UN invitation to the event, aimed at stamping out intolerance worldwide.

Speaking after Mr Ahmadinejad's speech, Norway's foreign minister said the comments "run counter to the very spirit of dignity of the conference".
Mr Ahmadinejad "has made Iran the odd man out", Jonas Gahr Store said.

Sadly Mr Ahmadinejad has been praised in the Muslim world for calling for Israel's destruction and making other anti-Israeli comments. What chance a peace deal in the Middle East with such myopic and evil lunatics in charge of important nation states?

We must remember our history, or we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. No other people but the Jews have endured such persecution, annihilation, pogroms, expulsions and destruction, yet survives and flourishes. No other nation has been hated for so long by so many, yet, is still here, while most of the nations who tried so hard to wipe the Jewish people from the face of the earth, have themselves been wiped off. Think hard about the lessons you might learn from that Mr Ahmadinejad before you cost your people dear.

BanksandSunnyDays

2009-04-20T17:15:00.000+01:00

For those of you who follow my articles you are already aware that on Mondays in particular I can get angry about our governments and their stupidity or our suicidal economic leaders.

Particularly in the UK, one day before our major budget, when we are all aware that the news will not be good, the taxes will have to be higher, the costs and expenditure cut back and the public works put back.

This is all exacerbated when one’s own bank write an e-mail letter to state that yes, you’re meeting, in fact exceeding your agreement with us, which proves you could do even more, so let’s talk about increasing your payments!

Have these people no morality, no sense of fair play, or is it just these idiots that have to be bailed out?

Think about their lunacy when a bank attacks a customer who is exceeding his obligations. This is, by the way, the same bank that is now virtually nationalized since it was so much in debt that it was going under.

Step forward into the spotlight and take a bow NatWest Bank, a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is now just a collection of low level bankers run by a bunch of incompetent twits from the Civil Service who are, in turn managed, by third rate, soon to be out of office politicians.

Thank the Lord I am not in the hands of these lunatics as I am not reliant on them, but many millions of others are, and the bankers plainly have no clue what to do.

My blood pressure was probably going up when I saw the offending e-mail this morning, but then I looked out of the window and saw the wonderful first signs of Spring, the sun shining, the grass with that special English green sheen, and the clouds skipping by in the clear blue sky and good sense returned to me. Soon it will be summer, and it won’t be long before there will be another turn in the affairs of man and no doubt things economic will turn, until the next time.

In the meantime I shall take a slow stroll in the soft spring air, and feel the embrace of balmier air as people’s faces relax with smiles of better times ahead.

And, as far as the bank’s communication is concerned; Where’s that shredder?

GreedandSocialism

2009-04-16T15:13:00.003+01:00

During these dark economic days following the almost total collapse of our financial system we all dared hope that there might be some chink of light, some moral compass injected by common sense and self preservation.

But the decision by the hierarchy of the greedy bastards, formerly known as Goldman Sachs, to pay huge bonuses at this precise moment proves these pigs at our common trough have learned precisely nothing.

Remember this bank was, like others, very recently bailed out by the public purse to the tune of about $10 billion.

What is wrong with these people, don’t they possess any sensitivity or decency?

This story prompted me to select two general responses on these themes from a bulging electronic postbag to share with you.

The first is about socialism and the second is about greed and the“lucky sperm club!"

Our first contributor is Steve.

“An economics professor at a well-known university said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok,
We will have an experiment in this class on socialism.

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little... The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to there great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism
would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that…

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” – Margaret Thatcher

From Richard I received the following heartfelt “rant” which I have edited for space.

…”For those of us who have, by the grace of g-d, had the good fortune to have received a blessed life and all the trappings and trimmings; we are the envy of all mankind.

Yet we have been hoodwinked to accept the crime and corruption of a few well heeled elite to define the world in their terms: The lifestyles of the rich and famous visuals, the supreme materialism that throughout the decades that has been broadcast as the "DREAM" (here in the USA as the "American Dream”) to aspire to.... the challenge to throw all your chips into the cauldron and accept the pits and falls in hope that you land on your feet and later head to the bank with sacks of gold and silver. and Credit...yes let's not forget the credit.

So with all the rules intact which limited the rewards to what Donald Trump called the "lucky sperm club"!! The remainder of humanity was lead to believe that they, the unfortunate, must turn to their g-d and accept their plight and the kingdom they seek is in the hereafter.... In the past the various immigrant populations accepted their low wages and poor surroundings as long as the rewards might eventually be bestowed on their offspring through either educational advancement or other street smarts.... This was acceptable and will most likely prevail for a long time...student loans are still being offered for such advancement...So why do I write that something is amiss....

Well, we now have to come to the realization that the gulf between the super wealthy and the masses once thought to be surmountable has taken a turn where we must now agree that instead of an economy where the playing field is even or at least appears to be...it is now insurmountable...we now live in a Ponzi scheme! (And may have lived in one for a very long time). We have been hoodwinked that the brass ring, which in the past was always in reach, is now a bygone thought...

The select hedge fund financed dynasty has relegated our productive economy to a service economy where we merely serve them and continue to hold them in high regard, they have replaced the divine rule of monarchies and control every facit of our economic lives...the politicians are in their pockets and the rules are skewed to keep them in power.

After learning here that the recession has been in place since late 2007 and the situation has monstrously been getting worse in the months that have followed has not in the slightest been dealt with...Here a $300.00- $400.00 payroll reduction per worker prorated over the year has been put in place while the future tax debt indemnity to the government loans and bailouts has reached $130.000.000 per American man, woman, or child...The Financial Oligarchs along with the Media Oligarchs and the Governmental Oligarchs have control of all our methods of expression: through words ( verbal pleasure or displeasure ), through the use of our monetary power and through our right to vote...each method by which we express our support or opposition has been co-opted by the power elite....We have become an impotent democratic constitutional republic here and in Britain an impotent constitutional monarchy...and by whom? Well by the unregulated and untaxed offshore financial oligarchs.... who no longer need the permission of neither the voters nor the elected officials...a coup d'etat has truly taken place.

We might remain in the left / right paradigm...cast blame hither and yon...but we miss the mark...the financial problem causers have become the financial problem solvers.... they are circling the wagons and calling those of us who voice opposition as that hideous term "terrorist”,

We the unwashed masses are to be feared whether there is a reason or not the use of tasers--a substitute method of deadly force has become widely used here. Death and severe injury has been the result...Here the 1st Amendment right to free speech is the ideal held high by almost every other nation on earth as the epitome of the true meaning of what it means to be an American is under fire here. The alternative media is fighting the good fight. But we witness that the MSM has co-opted their message. This time coming out for the Tea Parties when in the recent past they opposed the leaders (i.e.: Congressman. Dr. Ron Paul, etc.) during the election campaign...

The call to end the Federal Reserve Bank is getting louder here while the call to end the Bank of England is mute. Both organizations have promoted the use of fractional reserve banking (taken to the extremes by the former investment banks @ 30:1 and the surviving hedge funds which occasionally reached 100:1). So why bring this up? Well none of the financial structure that is/was the underlying problem has in the slightest been replaced!!! And nor have most of the handlers and CEO's!!!! Transparency has not occurred!!! We now face further bailouts (here the GM and Chrysler funding enabled Cerberus to continue---the productive arm of GM and Chrysler may eventually go bankrupt...) The AIG insurance company is a shell for the arm that is a hedge fund and issued the trillions in CDS instruments now the recipient of billions later to be handed out to various international "counterparties" and Goldman Sachs as well....

We await the new Private Public Partnership to further de-leverage the massive derivative MBSs and CDOs that flood the books and off books of so many financial institutions and here the foreclosure numbers have once more advanced by 24% last month...clearly we are reaching a point of critical mass...with hyper/stagflation further down the road.... Max Keiser calls these folks Financial Terrorists (it reminds me when in days gone by we actually had a term State Terrorism) does that ring a bell?”

Thanks to both Richard and Steve and all the rest of you who have taken the trouble to write to me. I shall, in future, be including as many of these messages as possible and shall continue to respond to your terrific input.

Hooyah

2009-04-13T16:36:00.002+01:00

Off the coast of Somalia during the last week pirates had taken hostage Captain Richard Phillips from his ship, the Maesrsk Alabama. He had tried to fight off the pirates but had, when the effort proved futile, given himself in exchange for his crew.

Since then Phillips had been in a small covered life raft with his four captors, as ransom demands were discussed between them and the negotiators from the FBI. The Americans stood firm in the face of these financial demands, refusing to pay any money.

There are times when the good guys win, and the bad boys get what they deserve. Over the Easter weekend there was such an outcome as U.S. Navy Seals aboard the warship Bainbridge shot dead three of the pirates and captured the fourth.

Previously there had been an agreement in place to swap the Captain with a pirate that his crew had captured during the initial battle, but they reneged on their promise as soon as their man was returned to them.

The shootings took place when the Navy Seals witnessed the pirates pointing their guns at Captain Phillips and considered his life to be in imminent danger. Their rules of engagement, specifically at the orders of President Obama, were that the US Navy Commander on site, Frank Castallano, had the right to issue the shoot to kill order in those circumstances, which he exercised.

The crew of the Maersk Alabama celebrated wildly at news of the successful release of their heroic Captain whose family was also overjoyed to hear of the happy outcome.

President Obama said, “I share the country’s admiration for the bravery of Captain Phillips and his selfless concern for his crew.

His courage is a model for all Americans. His safety has been our primary concern.” He went on to add that he was proud of the way the military had handled the crisis.

This must be the first step in a concerted, long term and coordinated international assault to achieve total elimination of the pirates, their bases and infrastructure.

In the words of the Navy Seals, “The only easy day was yesterday.”

SpinnersandFakers

2009-04-12T10:21:00.001+01:00

Those that live by the spin will also die by the spin. Everything stinks about the latest scandal in which one of the most senior aides to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Special Adviser Damien McBride, resigned Saturday after he circulated untrue and scurrilous rumors about leaders of Britain’s Conservative Party, including David Cameron.

There are two things very wrong about this story. First, the accusations made against the Conservative leaders are outright lies and should not have been fabricated or disseminated, particularly on government time from within the seat of government.

10 Downing Street is not the place for Labour party spin, especially, and this is the second major strand of guilt, when McBride was a Civil Servant, paid for by the public purse, he is not a Labour party employee.

McBride had to resign after a newspaper published a summary of emails he sent to prominent political blogger Derek Draper, a supporter of the ruling Labour party. No doubt it was the Prime Minister who required McBride’s sacrificial removal.

McBride is to Brown what Alastair Campbell was to previous Prime Minister Tony Blair, another spin-doctor. Like we need another bloody spin-doctor. McBride is the very closest of Brown’s political allies, an attack dog who is at the epicenter of Britain’s ruling Labour party elite. He is also a long term intimate friend of the Prime Minister and might well survive in some mutated form in the Labour party’s murky political backwaters.

Is it only me that remembers how Gordon Brown made speeches that under his leadership the days of political spin would be over? Another lie.

Draper said the emails, sent in January, were intended to provide fodder for a gossip website called "The Red Rag" which would attack members of the opposition Conservative party. But in a post to his blog, Labour List, he noted that the website never got off the ground and that the personal attacks were never published.

"In truth these (rumors) were a bit juvenile and inappropriate, and some were in bad taste, though I have to admit some were also brilliant and rather funny," Draper wrote. "As anyone involved in politics knows, though, people come up with lots of daft plans that don't make it off the drawing board."

He did not go into detail about what the stories were and in an interview perversely still tried to defend and justified McBride’s actions with an attack on the media that is publishing them. Draper’s contention being that the perpetrator, McBride, wasn’t really going to pursue these false and childish stories, forgetting that his friend, McBride, had totally fabricated them in the first place. Such warped logic tells you everything about the paranoia and craziness now surrounding the British Prime Minister. 10 Downing Street is beginning to look like the Nixon White House after Watergate.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper said the emails made "innuendo-laden suggestions" about the private lives of Conservative party leaders - but also did not go into any detail.

Brown said in a statement released by his office that there was "no place in politics for the dissemination or publication of material of this kind," without discussing what it said or recognizing that Brown, being the boss behind McBride, shares a great deal of responsibility for the actions of those he hires.

Today the media published the emails – some of them complete with the lurid allegations in them. Like Watergate this small scandal reinforces my view that the people charged with the government of our great democracies are themselves seized by pettiness and stupidity lent to them by their total isolation from reality, otherwise how could they be this stupid.

FakeStudentsAReaction

2009-04-11T12:50:00.000+01:00

Yesterday’s column was about the Fake Students coming into the UK (and the same things are happening elsewhere!) and the threat this is to our security. I wrote from personal experience working in British universities and my knowledge of how our systems are allowing in people who not only want to economically immigrate, but also the hateful minority who hate our society, and want us all subjugated to their will, failing which they want us dead.

Your responses were passionate and well informed, and I have decided to print one of them, since John makes some important points.

“Great stuff Tony.

The access for Foreign Students to UK Universities and I daresay all Western
Universities including the USA without the appropriate diligence &
background checks can only be described as gross negligence and totally Irresponsible on the part of overworked & underpaid University Staff
members.

The absence of stringent due diligence represents a huge potential threat to National Security to all Western countries.

It must be understood that the age group making applications to western
Universities outside their own country are the most vulnerable age group to be influenced by educational & religious establishments, which are fertile hunting grounds for extremist groups actively harvesting recruits for
deployment in the West. Either as long term "Sleepers" to be activated
In the medium or long term future or as provocateurs with an immediate
missions to subvert the youth of long established law abiding and productive immigrant communities residing in the West.

Unfortunately, again it's all about the bottom line.

Universities under immense pressure to fulfill their quota of paying students
for their own economic survival represent and ill informed focus on the
numbers.

The huge and additional expense required by Western National Security
Agencies in vetting EACH & EVERY application by Foreign Students wishing to enter Western Educational Institutions represent a quantum increase of the resources required. And I don't suggest just cursory checks.!!!

I would not be surprised that 99% of all foreign students making
applications to Western Educational Institutions will pass the stringent
security Litmus Test with flying colors and prove and to be 100% legitimate and ideologically benign.

It is assumed that 100% of all foreign students who have graduated at
Western Educational Institutions will do their damndest to remain in the
West and not return to their country of origin. Most will find good jobs
pay their taxes and make a valuable contribution to the economy, science and society in general.

As always it is the virulent and committed extremist fringe that are of
major concern.

As the good chairman Mao once said, " it does not take much explosives
material to derail a freight train coming down the railroad track. A tiny
charge strategically placed will have the desired effect and cause chaos.

John”

FakeStudents

2009-04-10T07:23:00.001+01:00

Happy Easter to some of you and Happy Passover to others, and if I am missing any other festival observance forgive me.

Our subject today is the security strike by the forces of law and order that in the last couple of days swooped on a suspected terrorist cell of about a dozen people of whom 11 are in the UK on student visas.

The Pakistani government accused the UK today of not doing enough to check the 10,000 holders of such visas prior to their being able to travel.

I have some direct knowledge of the nature and scope of this dangerous and long-term immigration fiddle. Some years back I was Director of a department of a London University. There is tremendous pressure on all universities to meet student recruitment and retention target numbers. Their entire budgets are based on hitting these numbers and they will do whatever they can to meet them.

It was annual student recruitment time for the university and as usual the computer science department was a rich source of overseas students. As part of my job I was checking some of the documentation of the applicants as they went through the clearing process before entry to the university. I noticed that a very large number of these students had apparently already graduated a university in Delhi with identical degrees. This smelt fishy to me and I telephoned India to check a few sets of documents at random. It transpired that the university they had supposedly attended simply did not exist.

I told my university of this finding and they dealt with the offending applicants. I thought that my institution would automatically check all such applications. I was wrong.

It transpired that several hundred more overseas Asian students did gain entrance to our computer science department. About 400 of these student visa holders arrived on the first day of the course for signing up and induction. The next day about 225 of them vanished without trace and have never been seen since. No one knows where these people are, or what they’re doing in this country.

I was telephoned by a journalist for the Guardian newspaper who asked whether I thought it was possible that any students, such as these or others who did attend our university could be terrorists in waiting. I replied that I would be astonished if they were not. I still believe this to be the case.

Certain sections of the university admissions service remain ridiculously lax in its vigilance regarding overseas student applications and the reasons include the misguided and inappropriate application of the human rights ethos. Regulations and liberal attitudes of our educational institutions in favor of people who should not be here in the first place and who regard such rights as a validation of their view of our Western democracy; that it is both decadent and stupid. We need to wake up before it is too late.

CryRape

2009-04-06T17:14:00.000+01:00

There is a rape crisis in the UK. Today it was revealed that a woman lied when claiming her husband had raped her. The British rape laws allow the victim anonymity whereas the alleged perpetrator can be named.

The accused man, who has now been cleared of all charges, is ruined both socially and emotionally. No one can understand the terrible damage done to an innocent man, even when acquitted. The reason the man is irreparably damaged is that there will always be those that whisper, “There’s no smoke without fire.”

I have seen the damage such an accusation can make. A colleague, a middle-aged man with a loving family, worked with a female workmate late one evening. He needed some documents to be prepared before he took a dawn flight to Australia, and she volunteered. At the end of their work it was late and the young woman asked him for a ride home.

My work friend dropped the young woman at her home but declined her invite for a drink partly because he thought she was coming onto him. She became angry when he rejected her advances but he told her he had to get home. He thought she might have been a bit drunk but took no action about it thinking he might do so when he returned from his overseas business trip.

When he returned home the police knocked on the door and his wife answered. They stormed in to the house and arrested him in front of his family. His wife was so shocked that she had a stroke very shortly thereafter. She is semi paralyzed and wheelchair bound ever since. My friend was traumatized by the experience and initially didn’t know how to deal with the accusation.
It took my colleague a while to regain his equilibrium and when he did he hired a private detective. After a thorough investigation he discovered that the woman making the accusation had done the same thing twice before, falsely accusing two other men of raping her before finally being proven to be a malicious perjurer.

When confronted with this history the woman withdrew her rape accusation. But my colleague’s wife will remain in her wheelchair for the rest of her life.

It is often noted that the vast majority of rape prosecutions do not end in conviction. But the truth is that this crime is extremely difficult to prove and often boils down to the relative believability of the protagonists. With the law being updated to keep up with changing social mores it is now accepted that the current rape laws should mean that a woman saying no, at any stage, means no.

There are further moves to interpret the law to mean that if a woman is too drunk to say no, then any sexual intercourse she later deems to have been perpetrated against her conscious will should also be deemed rape.

What strikes me, as truly menacing and stupid were the words uttered after the case of the woman who falsely accused her ex husband of rape. PC Elizabeth Graham of Durham Police domestic abuse investigation team said after the hearing that the force was very victim-focused and the allegation of rape had been taken seriously and fully investigated.

She went on to correctly say that she hoped the case would not deter genuine victims of rape and sexual assault from reporting crimes to the police.

Of course all of us would agree that genuine rape accusations must be made wherever necessary and then be properly investigated by the police and prosecutions made as appropriate.

But the forces of law and order should think again about being “victim-focused,” their only true aim, be “ justice focused.”

AnarchyRulesOK

2009-04-05T13:42:00.000+01:00

During the last week there were a series of huge set piece meetings held in various European cities. These were the London G20 economic summit followed by the NATO gathering of our political leaders held on the border of Germany and France.

Also present at both were protesters who are entitled, some would say obliged, to peacefully protest in our profoundly democratic countries. Their attendance and voicing of their profound disquiet about the management of the world economy and conflicts is not only fitting but essential.

What else can you do when you agree with the sentiments expressed in an article by Douglas Rushkoff called Let It Die in which he stated, "... We do not live in an economy, we live in a Ponzi scheme."

Trying to wreck these gatherings were the usual motley gang of fundamentally anti capitalist, anti democratic and anti free choice groups. These include revolutionary Trotskyites, Maoists, but more of interest to me right now, Anarchists.

Anarchy is defined in my dictionary as; Absence of government, disorder, lawlessness; The principles of anarchy are a theory of government based on the free agreement of individuals rather than a submission to law and authority and an anarchist is One opposed to all forms of government.

These days the anarchists wear a uniform for their protests. They dress all in black with hoods up and scarves around their faces to disguise their identities. It seems odd to me that people against all conformity dress identically to intimidate. But they are full of contradictions these anarchists, willing to wear a uniform, any uniform, as long as it is not a uniform in which to serve any country.

The English anarchists promised the end of capitalism would begin with their “Four Horseman” protests in London on April First, but it hasn’t worked out that way. In fact, although the systematic failures of capitalism are all around us we still haven’t devised a better system for our trade and lives to prosper.

It might seem unnecessarily jaded to state that if anarchists could ever organize anything, which is, in itself somewhat of an oxymoronic thought process, there should be an anarchists league table. I am usually proud of British accomplishments but in this instance I think the British would come woefully down the pecking order. We are, as a nation, a bit too much into organizational structures to be any good at spontaneous anarchy. You would, in my view, favor the more laid back Latin nations or perhaps the newly de-communized East Europeans to furnish the best kind of anarchists.

The police in England handled the anarchists very well and in fact the protestors finished by looking silly, their threats to “eat the bankers” ringing hollow. It wasn’t quite the same jolly affair on the borders of France and Germany where the anarchists and their fellow travelers managed to torch a few shops and other buildings, sling some Molotov cocktails and attack the police.

There is almost universal agreement that the world’s economic and terrorist problems are huge and ongoing. However the general population remains remarkably, prosperous and peaceful when compared to any other period of history. This prosperity and peace was brought about by the application of the capitalist system and organizations such as NATO. The near total collapse of the financial system and the over emphasized threat of fundamentalist Islamic terror was engendered and inspired by a toxic mixture of fear, greed and ego, topped out by a lack of transparency and unwarranted over complication. No one really understood the entirety of how sophisticated shadow trading and hedge funds worked. Concurrently we fought the terrorists in an asymmetric conflict with no strategy but armed only with knee jerk tactical reactions.

Both will now change since President Obama does have a strategic vision and the rest of the democracies are beginning to listen to and respect renewed and enhanced American leadership.

It isn’t enough to be a black clad anarchist shouting at and burning hated symbols of capitalism when you have nothing to replace it with.

ANewNATO

2009-04-03T13:38:00.001+01:00

Yesterday many leaders from around the world attended the G20 summit meeting in London.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown was roundly praised for his energetic and well-conceived groundwork plus excellent negotiating skills.

President Obama was even more warmly applauded for being President Obama. But there were reservations expressed. Most of these came from the non Anglo Saxon economies that have taken it in turn to fire broadsides of criticism at the USA and UK for their previous financial indiscipline that they state caused the entire global economic problem.

Today President Sarkozy of France is hosting President Obama and the other leaders of NATO in Paris. It will be interesting to see if the French and Germans in particular, can take criticism as well as hand it out.

France recently re-joined NATO as a full member but like the other “allies” in this organization they do more talking than fighting in Afghanistan. While the UK and USA do the hard fighting the majority of the Europeans in the alliance mainly just supply technical and moral support but when it comes to their forces using force, they demonstrate everything that is hypocritical about their countries. They simply don’t and won’t fight.

This is not meant to imply that the servicemen and women from those non-fighting European allies are cowards or are in any way deficient. Their governments have forbidden them to engage the enemy under almost all circumstances.

Despite all of the NATO allies agreeing that they would fight for democracy against the theocracy of the Taliban most of the allies avoid actual fighting.

This is a disgrace and makes you wonder if allies like these are worth having. If push came to shove and we really needed our NATO allies to save our own countries could we rely on them to help?

I think this proves that we could not rely on them for anything other than kind words, if we were lucky.

Even more disgraceful the government of Afghanistan is enacting Taliban inspired laws against the rights of their own women. President Hamid Karzai was roundly condemned by internal and external groups for signing into law legislation that effectively legalizes the rape of a wife by her husband and prevents women from leaving the house without a man's permission.

This law clearly undermines hard-won rights for women enacted after the fall of the Taliban's fanatical Islamist regime. Ask yourself why our soldiers for democracy should potentially risk their lives to enforce laws such as these.

The controversial law _ which many claim was not debated in parliament _ is intended to regulate family life inside Afghanistan's Shiite community, which makes up about 20 percent of this country of 30 million people. The law does not yet affect Afghan Sunnis.

The law stipulates that the wife "is bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires."

"As long as the husband is not traveling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night," Article 132 of the law says. "Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband."

One provision of the law does seem to protect the woman's right to sex inside marriage, saying that the "man should not avoid having sexual relations with his wife longer than once every four months."

Critics claim that President Karzai signed the legislation for purely political gain several months before the country's presidential election.

The United Nations Development Fund for Women said the law "legalizes the rape of a wife by her husband."

"The law violates women's rights and human rights in numerous ways," a UNIFEM statement said.

The issue of women's rights is an ongoing fight between the country's conservative establishment and the relatively more liberal members of society. The Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 banned women from appearing in public without a body-covering burqa and a male escort from her family.

There are two big questions that have to be answered.

One is whether we should continue to support a government that seems to be morphing into a pale imitation of the Taliban maniacs it is there to replace.

The second question is what kind of alliance is NATO, and why are there two levels of membership?

These are hard questions that all the members of the organization must answer.

G20TheResult

2009-04-02T21:35:00.002+01:00

Yesterday’s G20 summit resulted in an additional $1 trillion (£679bn) being made available to boost the world economy.

President Barack Obama claimed that the summit will signal a "turning point" in the pursuit of economic recovery and made progress in reforming a "failed regulatory system".

"By any measure the London summit was historic. It was historic because of the size and the scope of the challenges that we face and because of the timeliness and the magnitude of our response," he said.

There were some other headline initial results when World stock markets skyrocketed and a man caught up in the protests surrounding the event died.

The long anticipated violence broke out but was closely controlled by an overwhelming and well-drilled police operation that swamped the area. There are the usual repercussions that always seem to happen after huge police operations like this in Britain, with accusations flying about. But the general consensus from the watching world media was that the policing was fair, well conceived and executed.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown was a very relieved and happy man when he said the new extra funding would shorten the recession and save jobs. It follows what he described as the "new consensus" reached by heads of state on taking united action to deal with economic crisis.

"This is the day that the world came together, to fight back against the global recession. Not with words but a plan for global recovery and for reform and with a clear timetable," Mr Brown stated at the conference centre in London's Docklands close to the new financial centre at Canary Wharf.

Speaking at a press conference to mark the end of the summit, Mr Brown said G20 leaders had concluded "that global problems require global solutions" and that they will "do what is necessary" but that there are "no quick fixes".

President Obama is known to have played a key role in brokering the agreement, resolving differences between France and China on tax havens.

Another G20 summit will be held later this year to check on progress.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that the conclusions of this G20 summit were "more than we could have hoped for".

The $1 trillion injection includes $250 billion (£170.2bn) in International Monetary Fund special drawing rights - available to all IMF members. This is a $150 billion increase on what had previously been suggested in order to help get trade moving again.

The "unprecedented fiscal expansion" already under way will mean a $5 trillion (£3.4tn) injection by the middle of 2010, he said, helping to save or create millions of jobs.

Six pledges were made by leaders - to restore confidence, growth, and jobs; repair the financial system to restore lending; strengthen financial regulation to rebuild trust; fund and reform international financial institutions; promote global trade and investment and reject protectionism and finally to build a sustainable recovery.

A new "financial stability board" will "ensure co-operation across frontiers and to stop risk to the economy" and provide an early-warning mechanism, he said. And for the first time, there will be a "common global approach to how we deal with impaired, or toxic, assets".

Central banks had agreed to "maintain expansionary policies as long as they are needed using the full range of options available to them".

Mr Brown affirmed there were no splits at the talks, saying: "The issues that people thought divided us did not divide us at all. There was substantial agreement on the need for us to do whatever is necessary to return to growth."

Countries had also restated their commitment to the millennium development goals and to helping tackle poverty, he said, adding the summit had agreed measures totaling $50 billion (£34bn) to assist the poorest countries.

Brown added: "This time of financial crisis is no time to walk away from our commitment to the world's poorest. We will not pass by on the other side."

Mr Brown said, “After the Wall Street Crash in 1929 it took 15 years for the world to come together and address the problems.” That delay was unforgivable and disastrous.

The Prime Minister continued: "Our priority right through this summit has been the jobs, the homes, the businesses of hard-working families in this country and, indeed, every country.”

He added that world leaders have agreed to meet again later this year.

The UK and US emphasized the need for public spending to ease the crisis while France and Germany were obviously keener for tougher financial regulation.

Mr Sarkozy had threatened to walk out of the meeting if it did not yield concrete results but this had been largely discounted as gesture politics aimed squarely at his own electorate. Like everyone else he wanted to put his own country’s spin on this event.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel also praised the outcome.

She said the new measures would give the world a "clearer financial market architecture" and the agreement was "a very, very good, almost historic compromise" and it is clear that it did not oblige any country to launch any further economic stimulus packages.

The truth is that no one knows how well this package of measures might work, but we do know that the time to judge it will come in the months and years to come, not here or now.

We can all agree that this package is promising and perhaps, just perhaps we have seen the end of the beginning of our current crisis.

PremiereAvril

2009-04-01T12:27:00.002+01:00

The G20 summit takes place tomorrow in London. Already the great and the good are arriving here with their retinues. Some times it is hard to remember that the Roman Empire is history, especially when one sees the size and majesty surrounding these political leaders.

President Obama has 500 people traveling with him, of whom 200 are security personnel. However I don’t know how necessary his French dessert taster, Monsieur Premiere Avril, is in the democracies of today.

Does he really need Guiy de Maupassant Rabinowitz as his fan bearer, or is he compelled to listen to his personal Chicago back up singers even if they double up as his ostrich feather fan bearers?

The 3 people surrounding Prime Minister Brown is modest in comparison, but as is well known he does have a great deal to be modest about. His retinue contains an information guy who tells him why the public in the UK want to string him up and another two guys who tell him to ignore the first chap.

President Sarkozy of France has announced that he will refuse to sign any agreement with which he doesn’t agree. I feel this is a trend that could take hold since I can announce that as from today I shall also refuse to sign any agreements that I don’t agree with.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany smiled in the direction of the small but perfectly formed French President, and said something along the lines of, I’ll have whatever he’s having and send it to my room. I am confident that rumors stating that she was seen buying underwear from Victoria’s Secret in London are false. It can also be discounted that she entered the Chinese embassy by a side entrance and left some hours later looking disheveled but happy.

The Chinese Prime Minister later stated that his country remains ready, willing and able to inject the necessary liquidity wherever necessary. Roughly translated his statement read, “We’ve been getting it for a very long time, it’s payback time.”

The Japanese smiled and said nothing at all, except they were seen to snigger when asked their view on bailing out the Western economies.

President Obama and Prime Minister Brown went to Saville Row for fittings of their Superman suits but this writer is not entirely sure they are going to fit.

TakingABreak

2009-03-27T17:45:00.001Z

I am taking a break from writing these articles for a few days, it’s a kind of a blog writers “gone fishing”. Except I can think of nothing I would like to do less. Actually I can. What would be worse is to attend the G20 conference in London next week to listen to the man who was created in a lab when Tony Blair took all the worst aspects of Socialism and conjoined these with the most scabrous parts of Capitalism to create a Frankenstein monster called Gordon Brown.

What did the UK do so wrong to deserve this man?

Brown’s week was enlivened when he delivered his speech to one of the most boring and creepy centers of world government, the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

In response to the Brown presence a British backbench Conservative Member of the European Parliament for South East England, Daniel Hannan delivered an eviscerating condemnation directly to Brown who can be seen trying to smile his way through the attack. In doing this the young Tory has touched a nerve around the world, with approximately a million hits on You Tube in just a couple of days.

Brown looked on helplessly while gritting his teeth, smiling mirthlessly, he shook his head as the Tory caricatured him as a 'Brezhnev era apparatchik' who is ' pathologically incapable' of accepting any of the responsibility for his role in the financial crisis.

The video of MEP Daniel Hannan delivering this no holds barred but measured verbal assassination of the Prime Minister and his gross mis-handling of the economic crisis instantly flowered into a surprise hit on the Internet.

The 37-year-old MEP, who was the youngest British member elected to the European Parliament in 1999, yesterday received plaudits for his tongue-lashing.

Major Broadcasters - including the BBC – totally and abysmally failed to report Mr Hannan's onslaught despite giving full coverage to Mr Brown's most pro-European speech to date and having been forewarned that Hannan was going to respond.

But the world of the old-fashioned broadcaster having the ultimate control over what we are allowed to see is now gone with the advent of almost universal access to the Internet, twitter and mobile communications.

So the speech by the young Conservative firebrand was quickly posted on You Tube and news outlets from Australia to America seized on his comments.

The clip lingers on Prime Minister Brown looking on with a frozen smile, while Hannan warned how Britain was entering the recession in a 'dilapidated condition' with an 'almost unbelievable' deficit.”

It’s time more responsible people took up this battle and said what needs saying. The Emperor, Gordon Brown, has no clothes, he is being transported around the earth in borrowed transportation, shouting to anyone who will listen, “look at my wonderful clothing!” but he is as naked and feeble as the day he was born and it is our duty to tell him until he is forced to listen.

In the meantime I shall be doing something completely different as the G20 convenes in London to the inevitable riots of protesters finding any excuse to misbehave like anarchists in the name of democracy. Whilst inside the hallowed halls of diplomacy a bunch of small well padded boys and girls pretend to be serious politicians and economists who know the economic answers and do their best to avoid another Great Depression.

Let’s just hope we get lucky because nothing, so far, makes me believe our leaders have a clue what to do.

TheJuryIsOut

2009-03-25T17:36:00.001Z

President Obama retains a great deal of his victorious feel good factor. Almost everyone, even his political foes need and want him to succeed if for nothing more than enlightened self-interest. He, unlike Gordon Brown retains a feel good aura; a ready smile and the appropriate words that make us believe he might have the right answers.

But does anyone really have the required knowledge to navigate these uncharted and dangerous economic storms?

Gordon Brown became Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer as part of then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s first government, a dozen years ago. His first action was to divorce the Bank of England from his own direct control. The reason he gave for doing this was so that the Bank of England would set interest rates in order to control inflation independent of any political considerations.

Now Gordon Brown is Prime Minister I would bet big money that he wishes the Bank of England were still in his own direct control. Last night the Governor of the Bank shook the government to the tips of its toes when he said that finance deficits were already too high and therefore there is no room for the Prime Minister to engineer either big tax cuts or any further spending increases to spark life into the economy.

The timing of the Bank Governors intervention couldn’t have been more embarrassing or unfortunately timed for Brown. It comes a few weeks before the next big budget, on April 22 and more or less simultaneous to the Prime Minister making an impassioned pro financial stimulus package to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. He has been touring the world promoting his ideas of a global stimulus package prior to the next G20 summit of the world’s economic superpowers, which he is hosting in London next week.

Mervyn King, the Governor of England’s central Bank, doesn’t believe the country can afford any further stimuli. Gordon Brown believes we have to find a way to afford to stimulate the economy.

An auction in government debt in the UK failed to achieve the target sum for the first time in 7 years. A major warning sign we would do well to heed.

Brown believes that we must be prepared to do what is necessary to resume the growth in the economy achieved by the fiscal stimulus strategy promoted by President Obama and Brown, This includes quantitative easing and extraordinarily low interest rates and effectively means spending our way out of the recession.

The current European President, the Czech leader, believes that the road to hell is paved with the President Obama fiscal stimulus plan.

This is possibly the most important economic argument ever to be fought in the world since the Great Depression and the implications for our future well-being are enormous.

Although it is pleasing and somewhat cathartic to castigate and condemn the wrongdoers and criminals in the financial sector who cost us all so much with their stupidity and greed it is not the most important of the tasks that must be conquered.

Neither should we focus too much attention on more regulations when all we ever needed to do was enforce the regulations that already existed. In fact there is a very good argument to reduce regulations, and make the markets simpler.

Of equal or possibly even more far reaching consequence, we have to consider the future of markets that have operated more like bookmakers. We should eliminate shadow markets and return to a world where financial instruments must be real and paid for.

Right now the battle for the hearts and minds of the G20 leaders is under way and during the next week they will decide whether we spend our way forward, hopefully out of the recession or, as I think is equally likely, we move into a Japanese style decade of stagflation. The jury is out.

Recovery

2009-03-24T17:53:00.001Z

The announcement of the plans released by the US Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner seems to have excited the market in Wall Street. The main indexes rose by 6% whilst the banks roared ahead by 15%.

The fundamental underpinning of the plan is that America is committing $1 trillion to buy huge amounts of toxic debt. The idea behind this is that this will unplug the capital markets and credit will again be available in a more normal manner. Like it used to be. But the sad fact is that it isn’t going to ever be quite like it was before.

As the American housing market seems to be picking up a bit, and a chink of sunlight is soothing the incipient panic in the US banking sector the German GDP is expected to fall between 6 to 7% during this year. China is taking progressively more defensive measures and the eastern European countries, formerly part of the Soviet bloc are on the edge of the financial precipice.

No one knows how our collective vulnerability will show itself next. Will the bigger economies have to bail out more of the second and third world countries, and do they have the firepower to do so?

The new emperors of the universe come from Asia and Arabia but it is a very flawed power.

The Chinese continue to live with a paradox. A relatively capitalist economy that is centrally managed by an underlying Soviet type politburo be it political or military. Their controlling fingers are in every pie. But now the global economy is in chaos at precisely the moment China is about to assert itself as a superpower. Is it tenable for China to keep the lid on personal and political freedom whilst energizing and possibly liberalizing their economy and that of the world around them?

There must be a huge temptation for the fairly geriatric Chinese leadership to totally withdraw from the international disaster. However there must be an even more compelling temptation to use the country’s huge reserves for maximum strategic leverage. Will China tear itself apart because of the contradictions of its system or survive and go on to become the pre-eminent global superpower?

The oil rich Arab countries wealth is almost entirely due to their oil revenues and reserves. This is not a sound basis for long-term stability. At present these countries desperately need to create structure and broaden their resources.

As I have written before, you write America off at your peril. But the first shoots of recovery are still a very long way in the distance.

But it has become obvious that the old order is dead and will never come back.

LossOfTrust

2009-03-23T18:07:00.002Z

Our society operates on the base of faith and trust. Lose this and we experience misery and possible anarchy.

The basis of what makes things tick is economic. If the oil of money is not in the engine it will seize up and that is precisely what’s happening. Once the money vanishes we are left with a future of damage control.

Everything else starts to fall apart without money. Taxation must rise, but the government take decreases as businesses and individuals make less profit, if they profit at all. There will be less cash available for public works and consumers have less money to spend. Even if they have money they lack the confidence to spend when there is growing doubt that they will keep their jobs. The people are suffering from an enormous confidence deficit and an almost total lack of faith in our system.

There was never a time in modern history when our banks held enough cash to meet a potential run on the bank. These institutions, even at their most prudent and solid, never held a dollar or a pound for each pound or dollar deposited with them. It was more like 10% to 15%. It all worked pretty well when no one questioned the solidity and credit worthiness of our banking giants.

Similarly governments work because of the acquiescence of a compliant and law abiding population. The deal being that we shall abide by your laws as long as we feel they’re reasonable and not too far from our notion of fairness. When laws are seen to be unfair there are many examples of the furious reaction of the people. Revolutions and civil wars have started huge bloodbaths because of perceived injustice.

Fundamental questions like this must be asked when the rulebook is being torn up and thrown away. A contemporary large-scale survey amongst young people in Germany found that this group, although largely apathetic about political parties in general, reserved their largest support for the far right. In Austria more than 30% of the general electorate now vote for the Fascist parties. The same trends are becoming evident for a growing swathe of Europe.

Over the last few days I have been conducting a straw pole. I asked an entirely unscientific group of people, here and in the USA a question. They have no link other than me as their common denominator.

The question is this: -

“If you were now to see a person come on your television and say that he is a banker, taking deposits, to be guaranteed by the government 100%, and this guarantee is backed up by a government spokesman. The banker offers a return of 7.5% per year, starting immediately. Will you invest your money with him?”

Well, what do you think?

The banker received a 100% rejection.

Not one person I questioned was prepared to invest their money with my fictitious banker.

This proves that our faith in banks and bankers has totally vanished, and it will be a very long time before it can be recaptured. There is no more important task for our leaders than to reverse this.

WhichWayForward

2009-03-22T17:35:00.000Z

There are not many aspects of the present government in the UK or the last one in the US that I agree with. In fact the list is so small and inconsequential it’s hardly worth mentioning. On the other hand I don’t disagree with everything they did nor do I think they were or are entirely evil.

The single biggest mistakes they both made was to try and make facts conform to their political theories and if not, to force a fit. As an example I am convinced that one day in Britain we will discover that virtually unrestricted immigration was a social political experiment.

Don’t get me wrong, I am virulently opposed to both the hard left and hard right, and in fact every ”ism” appalls and scares me. But I just don’t believe it could have been possible for literally millions of foreign nationals to enter this country illegally without at least the tacit connivance of those responsible for our borders.

Either these officials are criminally inept or they wanted this to happen. The results are the same and in the present economic circumstances could prove catastrophic. I say this in the knowledge that less than one hundred years ago my grandparents and their siblings arrived in this country and America, penniless refugees.

The numbers of immigrants then allowed in was in direct proportion to the needs of their new host countries. Put another way, the bargain suited both sides of the equation. It made some sense.

Now there are a huge number of new immigrants in our countries and our economies are in free fall. If the economic migrants were to simply go home there wouldn’t be a problem here, but there would be a huge problem in their countries. The new reality is that there are new camps being built in France for all the new migrants fighting to get into the UK, and the net numbers in the UK are growing so fast that the UK is forecast to overtake Germany’s population having once been far smaller.

What will happen when the indigenous population can’t get or keep jobs but the new migrants stay and prosper? This will potentially lead to problems that could lead to substantial civil strife.

America has different but related problems. Of them all I believe that the most immediate and affordable will be remaking the economic model of the USA to re-emphasize its ability to manufacture its way out of most problems when taken together with its huge capacity to export raw materials. This must be achieved and the education system re-engineered to produce what America needs so that it can compete.

The UK has to re-imagine itself and recreate its ability to deliver great products that are brilliantly designed and engineered. That was what worked in the Anglo American economic model and we simply walked away because we became besotted in making money out of thin air and betting on futures. The so called “knowledge economy” only works if you have something worth saying.

The key problems are, as ever, related to our wallets and sense of well-being. As this becomes progressively more problematic there would be a cycle of action and reaction in proportion to the desperation of the population. We could see either Fascism or Communism become a power again and with it a major, equal and opposite, probably violent reaction.

We must address educational necessities, fixing the economy and immigration as matters of equal priority. No one of these fixes is going to be sufficient, we need them all.

AnAcademicResponse

2009-03-21T17:12:00.000Z

Below I reproduce a letter received from Brad, an educator in the States. It is in response to my article yesterday in this column about the way forward for our education systems.

By way of explanation I was trying to make the point that we needed the hard subjects to be taught with rigor, I was arguing against pointless creative degrees that don’t help either the students or society. I wholeheartedly support and participate in higher education for meaningful creative degrees that result in fulfillment and jobs.

There is a very real advantage in higher education for its own sake, and we should all treasure and protect it. However, to survive and prosper as successful countries in every sense, we must re-learn some very basic lessons. One of these is that we have to manufacture for ourselves, grow more and sell more. To achieve this we must educate our young to these ends; perhaps not instead of entirely, but as well as.

Now over to Brad: -

“As you can well imagine, I am on board with your column on education.

One caveat: you can't build a math/science culture by freaking out about foreign competition. There has to be a "pure" interest in science in the culture at large--as there was in physics and logic at the beginning of
this century, the space race later on, etc.

The most revolutionary ideas emerge from pure research and this is what is disappearing e.g.—the supercollider, kyboshed in Texas some years ago. Very few people could explain what that is all about; therefore, the money dries up. This was less of a problem with the moon shot. That's why the humanities are not trivial--science cannot situate itself as a narrative, metaphor or cultural vector--you need writers, thinkers, and moviemakers--but literate ones.

I'm struck in reading math bios how many got into the field because of George Gamow's "1,2,3...infinity." That little book sent a lot of
people on their way--as did science fiction, the very lucid philosophical,
Pop sci books of Einstein (Einstein and Infeld's Evolution of Physics),
Asimov, Raymond Smullyan...there's just no hook right now. The kids don't
care about outer space, which is fine and understandable, they care about inner space.

O.k., but innovations in computing require a background in
Math and mathematical logic--so the hook as to be elsewhere than
gadgets--e.g. --What exactly is a non-classical logic? Are we made of?
logic--or something else--is that "something else" writable in logic, or
does it show up as a barrier (we get knowledge of it negatively)? Why
does group theory explain so much at the level of particle physics--did
God make the world from group theory, or again, is there a "something
else" we will never get our hands on, but that keeps reinventing itself as
new paradigms? I would say there is even a mystical-religious hook
there for some--which is not a bad place for religion-- The "answers" to
these questions, open-ended as they are, are in the actual math and
science--that should be the hook.

Just putting a kid on a computer is not solving anything--though that is
much of the budget in education nowadays--building enormous computer labs.

I would slash way back on that and hire math science people at top dollar who actually know how to teach--a rare combination. Those people need a chalkboard and textbooks--that's about it really, at least in math/logic, which is the pedestal on which it all rests. Mostly they need money to make it worth their while--which will never happen as long as teacher's unions are in charge.”

AcademicMisconceptions

2009-03-20T17:32:00.001Z

Today is one of those wonderful days when England is the greatest place in the world. The sun is shining and the world has a smile on its face. Dare I say that the winter is being replaced by the first warmer breath of a more gentle spring?

Yesterday was also fabulous but I spent the entire day in a series of meetings as Process Panel Member for two pre-validation meetings preparing new BA degrees. I mustn’t mention any details here but I do want to touch on what this means.

The English validation and external examiner systems are, if used correctly, excellent safeguards for the academic credibility of our country. Despite what you hear about our system being terrible you shouldn’t be too dismayed. Yes, there are faults, but the system is not all bad.

One of the best proofs of this is that so many other countries still envy our system of higher education. This is evidenced when they seek the services of our academics at every level and for all purposes.

Despite being constantly under funded our best universities still compare favorably with the best in the world. Our average institutions continue to be on a par with those of a similar type elsewhere and are better than most.

The poor universities in England are pretty bad if you measure them purely as academic or research institutions. But the truth is that the way we measure these places is not appropriate to their original design. They are more suited to their original vocational type qualifications created when they were still Polytechnics.

What must be understood and rectified is the most important element of the real problem. We are simply not creating enough graduates of excellence in the subject areas that will support our society in future.

We need an ever-growing cadre of engineers, mathematicians, scientists, doctors and computer designers but we lack them in sufficient numbers. This is because we have encouraged a generation of people such as unemployable ill-defined creative folks to accompany too many social scientists and psychologists. I make this statement despite the fact that I work in the creative area. As a country we will not be able to sustain so many people working in the non-productive Public sector, we can no longer afford such conceit.

Not only are we undershooting the number of people required for the essential disciplines but we are also failing to ensure that they are of top international top quality. The future graduate has to be to be able to battle with a chance of winning in the future very competitive fields they will inhabit.

The root cause of this lack of our people excelling in the right areas started in a perverse and seemingly unconnected manner. In the middle 1980’s it became acceptable for our doctrinaire educators to mislead our young children that winning and losing was finished. Competition was actively discouraged. Such positions as first or last were effectively abolished.

The results are self-evident and totally counter productive. How do you tell a student that his exam results matters when it has been drummed into him that competition is somehow evil and negative?

Similar muddled thinking and attempts at social engineering took place in the USA and the consequences in the Community College system has been progressively more dumb students.

This simply has to stop or we will be buried by more motivated and qualified graduates from the emerging powerhouse economies in such countries as India and China. All we will be qualified to do is consume the products of these countries and entertain our new masters in exchange for crumbs from their table.

TheFutureArrives

2009-03-18T18:52:00.000Z

On Friday, October 17, 2008 I wrote an article entitled, “Predicting the Future” in which I stated;

“There are certain things a shrewd columnist should never do; chief amongst them is any attempt to predict the future. This article proves that I am not very shrewd as I am going to attempt some forecasting.

We start with a relative no brainer; Obama is going to be the next President of the USA. I’m not suggesting who my preference is here, as its not relevant, me not being American and therefore unable to cast a vote.

Once Obama is elected and in office I truly hope that the security services does everything to enhance his personal safety as he is sure to be a target for every nut case on the planet, particularly American lunatics who view him as if he were the anti-Christ.

The next people likely to test Obama once he’s in the White House will be the Russians, as its almost impossible to see President Putin not seeing how far he can push the new man. The likely spot for the test will be the Crimean Peninsula of the Ukraine, in which the majority of the population is ethnically Russian but the government is Ukrainian. The situation is made more volatile by the Ukrainian government wishing to move west politically whilst the Russian fleet has its base in Sebastopol within the Ukraine. This is the Georgian scenario writ large, and is a boil waiting to burst.”

Yesterday the future arrived without many people even noticing. During a speech to his military leaders President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday announced a "large-scale" rearmament and renewal of Russia's nuclear arsenal, accusing NATO of pushing ahead with expansion near Russian borders.

He was addressing a meeting of Russia’s defense chiefs in Moscow, Medvedev said, "From 2011, a large-scale rearmament of the army and navy will begin,”

He went on to call for a renewal of Russia's nuclear weapons arsenal whilst claiming that NATO is continuing its push to expand the alliance's physical presence surrounding Russia's borders.

"Analysis of the military-political situation in the world shows that a serious conflict potential remains in some regions," Medvedev said.

He focused on local crises and international terrorism as security threats and added: "Attempts to expand the military infrastructure of NATO near the borders of our country are continuing. The primary task is to increase the combat readiness of our forces, first of all our strategic nuclear forces. They must be able to fulfill all tasks necessary to ensure Russia's security,"

Medvedev went on to praise Russia's military thrust into Georgia last year in defense of the rebel region of South Ossetia, he also said the conflict had shown up the military's failings.

The comments came despite an apparent thawing of US-Russian relations since the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January. But this is the first test by the big beasts of the new President’s resolve.

NannyState

2009-03-17T16:23:00.001Z

We return to one of my pet peeves, the Nanny State. In Britain almost every aspect of our lives is now considered fair game for our political masters.

Not satisfied with taxes, both visible and invisible, too numerous to mention, they now feel quite entitled to tell us what we should eat, how much, when to exercise, what our kids should eat at school, how much alcohol we should consume, how to sift our garbage, what type of cars to drive. In fact the list is endless.

If you go to the cinema in time for the advertising most of it features the things you should or shouldn’t do. Today I went to the movies and there were slots to tell you to conduct safe sex, another to remind you to drive slowly, and yet another to watch out for motorcyclists. This was in addition to the material extolling the virtue of continuing education and surely it can’t be long before they tell us to love our mothers!

Our government is now in the habit of floating some of their more outlandish ideas in advance to the media and then, dependant on the public reaction will decide whether to move forward with the plan.

Over the last weekend the Health gurus floated the idea of creating a minimum price for each unit of alcohol, thus eliminating cheap drink presently available from the supermarkets. The argument for doing this is to reduce the amount of ill health suffered and bad behavior perpetrated by those ignorant enough to over consume the demon booze.

Personally I consume virtually no alcohol so this doesn’t directly affect me, but it isn’t right for the government to use a tax to force anyone to drink less. It is not the government’s business to tell me how to live my life unless what I am doing directly and negatively affects someone else. Politicians should not, must not presume that they know what’s best for the individuals of our country.

Perhaps if the politicians were super efficient and morally and physically superior they could lead by example. But the sad truth is that they are now seen to be useless managers, inept at finance, are mean spirited, pompous and many of them are greedy and corrupt. Secretly many of them smoke, and the majority certainly doesn’t bear close physical examination.

It’s time our politicians concentrated on their jobs and left our lives to us.

NotSoSuperPower

2009-03-16T18:53:00.000Z

I’m sorry, see Gordon Brown, it isn’t so hard to say those words. I am sorry not to have posted an article for a couple of days, thus breaking my own first article of electronic faith, to always be current and relevant. This is achieved by responding quickly to events.

This response is precisely what our political leaders were trying to achieve in the G20 summit rehearsal when the finance ministers got together in the UK over the last few days.

The problem for both the British and American Finance Ministers are that their voices, usually so loud and well received, are now being argued with or straight out ignored. The financial masters of the governmental universe are suddenly mere mortals. The ultimate Superpower, the USA, doesn’t know how to react to being just another country in trouble.

Larry Summers, the head of the White House’s National Economic Council informed the rest of the countries that America expected them all to agree to the stimulus package worth about 2% of their national income. He patronizingly informed them that he looked forward to their compliance during the G20 meetings in Sussex.

Summers is a man well known for his abrasiveness and he is unpopular in the other capitals which he has visits. The first to publicly voice his criticism of Summers position is the head of the Eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker. He said that the US idea is, “not to our liking, Europe is not prepared to pile deficit on deficit.”

Perhaps more shocking is the fact that Germany and France, not so friendly lately, put aside their own scraps to combine in their rejection of American ideas.

Even Britain, normally a knee jerk ally of American plans, has become more cautious in its approach as its levels of public debt are already almost beyond measure.

More worrying still for America is that China is getting angry and impatient with America. Almost openly adopting the tone of an angry creditor the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao stated, “We have made a huge amount of loans to the UK. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I’m a little bit worried.” And this is the bit that should really be of concern to the once all powerful American government who he told, “to honor its words, stay a creditable nation and ensure the safety of Chinese assets.”

Remember China already has about $1 trillion, or half, of its entire foreign currency reserves held in US government debt. Shortly China will also have almost no option but to swallow whole the vast majority of the next $1.7 trillion of American bonds that it will be selling to finance America’s spending plans.

Effectively China is now America’s paymaster every bit as much as the IMF props up some of the broken economies of the busted countries in Africa. New US Treasury Secretary Geithner didn’t understand this. During his confirmation hearings the Secretary accused the Chinese of currency manipulation as if America could do something about this. Clearly he was factually correct as the Chinese were bringing down the value of their currency to suit their own economic needs. But new realities dictate a healthy respect for America’s enlightened self-interest.
Suddenly Geithner has “got it” as he talks up the burgeoning friendship between China and America. But in real terms, China is the big butch guy and America is the coy girl about to be deflowered. All we can hope for is that both sides will enjoy their get together when it gets horizontal.

Similarly America and Europe are both renouncing their monopoly of appointment power at the IMF. All of this is a huge reality check for the new world order in which the weaknesses of American and European economies is resulting in a readjustment Eastwards of the levers of political power. Some of America’s leaders haven’t understood this message but other will, including President Obama.

No one can know the results of this tectonic shift of powers, which will become self-evident over the coming year. All we can know is that it will be a very different world.

Protectionism

2009-03-12T14:07:00.000Z

It’s time for a pause for breath while we look around to see what’s really happening in the world economy. There are few reasons to be cheerful. It now seems probable that unless we all get very lucky there will be entire countries whose insolvency might result in their needing large scale, long -term economic assistance.

Principal amongst these countries are the Baltic States who are in grave danger of becoming basket cases. The drop of manufacturing in the rest of the world is hurting Russia’s reliance on its export of raw materials hugely. Even the Chinese manufacturing powerhouse is beginning to falter as demand is decimated. This slack cannot be taken up by infrastructure projects, however ambitious.

Most of Africa was, as ever, already in dire economic condition and as a peculiar quirk of the financial tragedy will probably notice the worsening situation less than the rest of the world. How does a diet of war, civil strife, corruption and starvation get worse?

The Anglo Saxon countries, previously the leaders of the laissez faire market model are very severely damaged. America and the UK are both starting to feel the first major problems of the current recession with unemployment rising fast, businesses going broke, industrial output collapsing and the bottom falling out of the property market.

It is becoming a real possibility that the UK might become a bankrupt nation if the present economic trajectory continues. Hopefully the measures being taken by the government will gather traction and succeed because there are few, if any meaningful further courses of action available to it. This year we will discover whether Prime Minister Gordon Brown is a super hero only in his own mind and it’s the IMF who has to come flying to the rescue.

One of the most worrying signs in the UK is the fact that the Quantitative Easing, effectively the last ditch printing of money to purchase gilts, which started yesterday, shows no sign of freeing up money in the banking system it was designed to achieve. The huge sums of money pledged to follow this type of route in both continents will now be filtered into the system over a period of years. There is an argument for quicker and even more drastic action. But the principal concern is whether any of the actions being taken can or will be successful. Already tried has been the central bankers first line of defense, which was to decrease the interest rates. Now these are almost sitting at or near 0% and it has yet to make any difference to the lack of lending from the banks to businesses and individuals. The banks need to be compelled by government to do this for the good of all.

If we are to fully rediscover our former prosperity we have to address fundamental problems and these are the even more intractable and relate to how our societies are structured. As a correspondent wrote to me;

“N.Y. time headline today: "Job losses hint at vast remaking of U.S. Economy" (Experts see permanent restructuring)

This is what my travelogues through the rust belt were getting at long ago when we first started corresponding. This is why I couldn't fathom the Iraq war. This country (America) is in no position to do anything but figure out how to educate itself--history would be a start for some, but science is more pressing at this point. Now that the former union people in the east will be competing in earnest with people in India, Korea and Mexico, you have to ask yourself why anyone would hire a fat, narrow-minded diabetic over someone with a real education. ..The Palin/Bush/Limbaugh stuff is symptomatic of a country that does not quite get what the labor force of the future is likely to resemble. Community colleges are suddenly swamped and there is push to re-train--o.k. but the Indians and Chinese actually have training in math, logic, poetics, English grammar--this is not something you fix with a community college. Where are the new starts that will actually create the new economy?

So...unemployment at 8.1 percent, but if you factor in those who have given up looking, it is 10 and if you factor in part timers who would like to be full-time it's 14 percent. Stay tuned.” - Brad

I am in total agreement with this view. We have lost sight of the ball and the West’s leading economies have, for a long time, foolishly misdirected our attention in an attempt at easy money, soft education and even physical sloth. Countries like India and Chine have been working harder, and are being better educated. Our leaders have been playing with winning elections whilst theirs look strategically to the future.

In the immediate future we must address our educational shortcomings more realistically and think seriously about the direction we want our societies to travel.

It’s time to consider how we make our money in the longer term as more of a priority than how much we can gain from short term fixes.

In the future will we be able to sustain prosperity by outsourcing production to the cheapest suppliers, whoever and wherever they are?

The present crisis proves that we have to plan strategically for all eventualities, even those that might seem improbable when the sun is shining. We are yet to learn any of the vital economic lessons, and are whistling in the dark as the bogeyman is stalking the shadows, still carrying his mighty axe.

The biggest threat to the entire world economic order is the distinct danger that countries and groups of countries will retire behind growing barriers of trade protection. It is this natural inclination for protectionism, which could yet send us into a full-blown Second Great Depression. It must be avoided at all costs.

OldFashionedValues

2009-03-11T16:56:00.001Z

A few days ago a cousin telephoned to tell me that her cousin, on her dad’s side, was in town from Georgia, USA. Would I like to join them for dinner?

It was the first time I had seen John, his wife Betty and his sister Janet in nearly fifty years. Their mother was a British GI bride who had returned with her soldier husband to a farm just after the war.

Yesterday was the appointed day and we duly reconnected. They still live in a small rural town about 150 miles out of Atlanta where John teaches agricultural and forestry business and Betty teaches the Arts at the same High School,and Janet has retired..

As some of you know I have experience as a Lecturer in both Further and Higher Education in the UK and you might share my view that there are vast swathes of this part of the English academic structure that simply make no sense. One of the great curses here being that the systems are forced to change top down led by theorists rather than allowed to evolve and improve due to logic and experience. Sadly America seems to follow the same mistaken path although there the motivation might be more commercial and less ideologically driven.

But back to my extended family. I had forgotten how sweet and charming people from the backwoods of America can be. They didn’t complain about anything, they totally lacked cynicism and their attitude is totally positive and loving. They are deeply patriotic, love their country and even when they don’t support a leader as they don’t support President Obama, they sensibly wished him the strength and wisdom to complete his ambitious plans. Perhaps we could learn something from these “old fashioned” values.

Watching these country cousins sit open mouthed as they listened to the British branch of our loud, opinionated and feisty family complain about everything in Britain was a treat. They just couldn’t believe how we criticize almost everything in the UK, a country that they still enjoy and respect greatly.

One of the things that will stay with me from our brief time together was the ready smile on the faces of these genuinely good and wholesome people. We all hugged one another when it came to say our farewells and expressed the hope that we won’t be 100 years old when we next meet. After a great meal and the wonderful company of our kissing cousins I came away with a smile on my face.

It’s easy to forget that it was people like John, Janet and Betty who built America with their appreciation of family, education, tradition, law and justice. The sophisticates in the big cities, including me, should all learn something from this brief return to all our yesterdays.

BloodyIreland

2009-03-10T11:41:00.002Z

Just when you began to think there was one intractable problem in the world that could be solved by diplomacy along comes another murdering bunch of bastards to prove you wrong.

Over the last few months there have been authorative voices raising concerns over security in Northern Ireland. Principal amongst these was the Police Chief, Sir Hugh Orde, who repeatedly stated that there were serious terrorist plans to kill and maim at an advanced stage of preparation. Even more recently elements of the British military infiltration and observation teams who work closely with the SAS were put into Northern Ireland.

But it was too little too late. A couple of days ago two soldiers, unarmed, about to eat a pizza before going to serve with the army in Afghanistan were gunned down in cold blood. Yesterday, in case we didn’t get the point a long serving police officer was summoned by a call from a woman in distress only to be ambushed and shot dead. The murderous bastards are back. After a decade of relative quiet purchased at the price of common sense and peace at any price.

The leaders of Sinn Fein, who, we mustn’t forget were and are the leaders of the Provisional IRA, weep crocodile tears over these losses. The fact is that the recent killers are from the Real IRA and are a dissident Republican group who don’t accept the peace process.

It would be an error to over react to the bloody outrages, but on the other hand our government must act decisively against the growing threat. The way to do this is to pressurize the leaders of Sinn Fein to provide their intelligence information about the perpetrators. Without doubt the Republican community knows exactly who committed these crimes and where they are. If Sinn Fein wants to cloak itself in false respectability and suck at the teat of the munificent British public purse this is the price and it must be levied now.

This is not yet a return to the “Troubles” of the past, but it is very easy to imagine the situation quickly spiraling downwards and out of control unless firm and sensible counter actions are taken.

If these crimes are allowed to stand larger scale attacks would be an inevitable consequence. That would be enough to suck a new generation of hard men from all sides back on the streets.

These sickening crimes have to be dealt with quickly and visibly. The culprits must be brought to justice and all measures to achieve this end must be employed, NOW!

GoodbyeGreg

2009-03-09T17:01:00.001Z

I have just returned from a very moving Tribute to the life of Greg Smith a film and theatrical Producer of some note who passed away last week. I had an intermittent but nevertheless intimate relationship with Greg.

Greg had a tough time growing up having lost much of his family before he was a teenager. He always kept this part of his life private and clearly found it a bit of a difficult subject. On leaving drama school in London at the age of 15, Greg joined the Argyle Theatre Touring Company and then took a job as a runner to impresario, Bernard, later Lord Delfont, where he learned the craft of being an agent.

I met Greg when he produced the documentaries,” Brendan Behan's Dublin" and “The London Nobody Knows”, which were both directed by his client and friend Norman Cohen with my late father’s film company where I was working during my school holidays as a very junior editor. Greg had also set up a small talent agency that represented a respectable client list of producers, directors and writers, amongst whom I was later to be a minor and very difficult client.

I wrote the outline for a novel and when I was about 18 Greg negotiated an offer for me to write the book for a publisher for a very healthy advance. Being a stupid and obstinate teenager I turned down the offer. Now I realize what a miracle worker Greg must have been and how disappointed he must have been at my reaction.

Greg and Norman made the film of the BBC TV series "Dad's Army" for Columbia Pictures and filmed Spike Milligan’s novel “Adolf Hitler - My Part in His Downfall” for United Artists, which quickly followed.

A short time later my father asked me to read a book whilst I was on a train journey to the North of England. Later dad asked me what I thought, I said it was very funny and asked him what his interest was in the book. He said he was going to make it into a film and asked me to work on it as the line producer with our old friend Greg Smith. Once again being a very silly young man I turned down the invitation saying I wouldn’t touch such raunchy material with a barge pole. Hence was born the "Confessions …." Series being produced by Greg and executive produced by my father.

The first of these was released in 1974, and it was the amazingly successful "Confessions of a Window Cleaner" which grossed a higher sum per dollar spent than any other Columbia film in the non-US markets and gained entry into the Guinness Film Book of Records. This proves conclusively that no one knows nothing, especially yours truly. Well perhaps Greg and Michael Klinger knew a great deal more than me!

Greg then produced "The Thirty Nine Steps" (starring Robert Powell, John Mills and David Warner) from Buchan's original book rather than as a remake of the famous Hitchcock version.

In 1979 Greg moved into television with the series "Tropic of Ruislip", followed by the TV movie "The Shillingbury Blowers" starring Trevor Howard and leading to the popular series "Shillingbury Tales" in 1981/82; then another Leslie Thomas creation "Dangerous Davies - The Last Detective".

In the early '80s Greg also produced the movies "Funny Money" and "The Boys in Blue" and the TV series "Cuffy” plus a 12 x 1 hour series for Euston Films "Prospects" (1984/85), and two series of the sitcom
"Rude Health".

"Great Expectations" followed in 1988/89, a mini-series (starring Anthony Hopkins, Jean Simmons, Ray McAnally and John Rhys Davies) that received two ACE awards and four EMMY nominations.

Perhaps the single most successful venture of Greg’s productive life came when he co-produced "Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story" , with Laurie Mansfield and Paul Elliott. The stage production proved a major hit World Wide. “Buddy” has been nominated for many international awards including two English Laurence Olivier Awards, one US Tony Award and six Canadian Dora Mavor Moore Awards.

During 1987 to '89, Greg chaired the British Cannes Action Committee and the British Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1989-90, Greg produced Trevor Nunn's highly acclaimed "Othello" (starring Sir Ian McKellan and Willard White), which received two BAFTA nominations and in 1992 Trevor and Greg joined forces again to make the world television production of Gershwin's operatic masterpiece "Porgy and Bess".

Following the production of "The Old Curiosity Shop" as a mini-series starring Sir Peter Ustinov, Tom Courtney, Greg and Trevor Nunn formed Circus Films Limited, which, in 1995/96 produced, "Twelfth Night".

Laurie Mansfield, Paul Elliott and Greg then brought "Jolson" to London with Brian Conley playing the title role. The show was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award of "Best Musical 1996". In the spring of 1996, Greg produced Neil Simon's "London Suite".

In 1998-99 Greg, as Producer filmed George Orwell's "Animal Farm" in Ireland - and within weeks of the completion of this shoot - "David Copperfield", shot in Dublin, with Greg as Co-Producer.

During this period, he and Laurie Mansfield also Co-Produced "Agnes Brown" with Jim Sheridan and Morgan O'Sullivan. In the London theatre, Greg and Laurie Mansfield, with Chris Davis, Chris Marino and Effective Productions, brought "Animal Crackers", the Marx Brothers' comedy classic to the West End for a limited tour. In July 1999, Greg, Laurie Mansfield, Jim Davidson and Robin Clark launched "Great Balls of Fire", the Jerry Lee Lewis story,

A couple of years ago Greg and I spent some time discussing the idea of his studying American history at university as I had, by then, spent quite a lot of time in academia. I loved his enthusiasm as the ideas streamed off him but time and circumstances didn’t allow this opportunity to flower.

The last time we talked we were exploring the idea of putting on our moon boots to make a film together that my late father had developed many years previously. But ill health handled with the utmost discretion by Greg was one hurdle he was unable to overcome, it was not to be.

When I had need of some friendship, advice and a guiding hand I asked and Greg was there for me and there was no embarrassment. I hope that I have been as good with others when it has been my turn to pass along some of my good fortune. Greg felt he had a “fabulous” life doing all the things he wanted and not many of us can say that.

At the service celebrating the life of Greg there were sincere, funny and touching contributions from John Clive, Robin Askwith, Seamus Smith and the writer Leslie Thomas. Greg would have thought the whole thing was “Nonsense!” but we know better.

Sue Hayworth, Greg’s charming and accomplished assistant for many years finished the ceremony with this very appropriate poetry reading;

You can shed tears that he is gone,
Or you can smile because he lived,
You can close your eyes and pray that he will come back,
Or you can open your eyes and see all that he has left.

Your heart can be empty because you can’t see him
Or you can be full of the love that you shared,
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.

You can remember him and only that he is gone
Or you can cherish his memory and let it live on,
You can cry and close your mind be empty and turn your back,
Or you can do what he would want: smile, open your eyes,
love and go on.

Sue then smiled and added “he was a good boss” to which I would like to add, “he was a good man.”

To the family of Greg, his widow Gloria Thomas Smith and Officer-Cadet Jamie Thomas, his step-son I wanted to convey our fondest wishes and condolences as we say goodbye to Greg, from all your friends.

2009-03-07T21:31:00.002Z

Thank you so much for the comments you send me. Please feel free to post your comments directly onto the appropriate part of the site but in the meantime I thought you might enjoy some of the more recent thoughts, observations and exchanges.

Tony:
Headline in U.S.A. Today: Mortgage Collapse Started in Few Areas. They
have a map that says it all--and there are other stories out now on radio
and TV. picking up the thread. When you really crunch it, it was the
housing developments I pointed out in Southern California, central valley,
and in particular, Pahrump/Las Vegas that triggered the collapse. This
Paper was used to leverage on Wall St. Saw this years ago and told my dad to sell his Palm Springs crib--everyone saw this coming. ...The larger
consequences for the economy were sounded clearly by Paul Krugman and others.

On the national scene, half of the foreclosures are in only 35
Counties--the majority in California, Nevada.

Increasingly, it seems possible to pin this whole thing on hookers in
Pahrump who became real estate agents.
Brad.

Brad
I don't know if you're right but I love the idea of the hookers f…ing the
World rather than the other way around.

Tony

The following was addressed to me about my articles regarding the fast disappearing economy;

Another good one and so true. Slowly emerge step by step out of the madness and the chaos. I love your blogs....
Stevie

My article about “Family” provoked the following observations. I was especially moved by the wonderful and warm loving reactions of many members of my own family. I took the decision not to print their remarks since some stuff should remain personal. Suffice it to say I am proud of them and proud to share their love, which is entirely mutual.

I loved this blog.
I am going to send it to work colleagues and family!
Roz

That was really heartfelt and lovely, Tony
Marjorie

Bravo!!! Many more!
Neville

Observations

2009-03-07T21:31:00.000Z

PLANESTUPID

2009-03-06T21:40:00.005Z

In the UK today we were cursed with a series of acts that were plane stupid.

Outside a London "low carbon" conference at breakfast time a protestor threw a container of green custard in the face of British Government Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson.

She was later discovered to be Leila Dean and she was protesting about the proposed third airport runway at London's Heathrow airport. That additional runway is long overdue and despite the Government's support is still many years and endless hearings, protests and legal hurdles away from completion.

"While I'm prepared to take my fair share of the green revolution on my shoulders, I'm less keen on it in my face," he said after the scare.

"When democracy is failing you have to resort to any means necessary as long as it is peaceful and does not harm other human beings," she said.

"Peter Mandelson is the same person who effectively bullied Ed Miliband and other members of the Cabinet to accept a third runway that nobody wants, a third runway that no one was consulted on and no one is able to say no to.

"It's not right that someone like Peter Mandelson can stand up and talk about being green."

Speaking later where the incident took place Lord Mandelson said: "I don't think anyone should overreact. Ifs there's a security issue it's for the police and others.

"In a democracy people can have their say but I'd rather people said it to my face rather than throw it at my face."

The young woman who threw the custard is a serial protest veteran who comes from a campaign group called PLANE STUPID, which tells you everything you need to know for they do indeed live up to their name.

At the conference the Prime Minister made jokes about the attack as if the whole thing were just a bit of whimsy. I think he was attempting to whistle in the dark, to demonstrate the British bulldog spirit; but all he succeeded in demonstrating was complacency and stupidity.

British politicians have a naive belief that democracy allows them to be complacent and cavalier about their personal security when all the evidence indicates that they should be aware of the potential of threats from many quarters. Imagine if the woman had acid in her container or had decided to kidnap a Minister. Our security apparatus must heed this stark warnings before someone is killed. If we don't protect ourselves and our leaders we are all just PLANE STUPID.

BeingQuantitativelyEased

2009-03-05T15:43:00.000Z

Being Quantitatively Eased sounds like something someone might do with a plunger for a very high colonic. Perhaps that is precisely what is happening to us in the British body economic?

Today the Bank of England announced that they are undertaking their first steps into the world of quantitative easing. OK, let’s put it another way that we can all understand, they have decided to print and put through the system an initial additional £75,000,000,000 and if that goes as they would like they will follow this with another £75,000,000,000 put that total into dollars and you are talking about printing $210,000,000 Well, like the nurse would say, “that should clear madam’s system nicely!”

I have taken to using the zeros so that we can truly grasp the size of these amounts of money being pumped into our economic systems. The reason for this money “printing” exercise is to allow the government to buy such things as corporate bonds from blue chip companies and possibly some toxic bank debts. As Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesman said, “Quantitative easing is a dangerous game as it can quickly cause inflation. However, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.”

The sad and frightening truth is that none of us knows how this will work out. If the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee had done nothing today as we drift ever closer to another huge economic depression led by deflation they would stand forever accused of not acting decisively when they should have known better. Today we see the result, since at the same time as announcing this very substantial measure they also reduced the rate of interest down to the historic low of 0.5%. It has never been at this level in our economic history and remember it was only six months ago that the rate of interest was hovering along, seemingly set at 5% for the longer term.

I’ve heard descriptions of the months following the declaration of war by Britain against Germany in 1939. At first nothing much seemed to happen, and then all hell broke loose. Something similar is happening now; we all know that the flood waters of this huge recession is coming ever closer to the sandbags we have tried to build around our homes and businesses but we know that anything we do might not be enough. We see governments and central bankers who clearly don’t know more than us about how to rescue this situation and naturally we are terrified.

I am also an occasional academic and I use this analogy when dealing with students facing a potentially very difficult examination. Don’t see what’s coming at you as a tidal wave from which the only salvation is to grab hold of something in the hope that the water will wash over you and there’s a chance you’ll have survived the flood. It is much better to see the challenge ahead as a mountain trail you have to climb. Make sure you prepare as well as you can and then start taking short strides, one at a time, and you will not only survive but you can reach the summit.

The people that will get through this economic disaster will either be lucky enough to already have a steady job, which they can hold onto or they will be the kind of people who are ready to plan, adapt and plan again.

The one thing that is for sure now is that nothing will be for sure again for the foreseeable future. Be prepared to wake up to shocking news and still move forward. There has never been a situation like this one and there are no means to measure what will happen next. The best-case scenario is that the measures being adopted by our leaders will work quickly and effectively and the banks will unglue the lending pipes and this will happen without releasing us into a gigantic inflationary cycle. That would be a case of the medicine being worse than the potential of the deflationary disease.

The only country where anything similar did happen was Japan in the early to middle 1990’s and that country still hasn’t moved forward from its “stagflation” problems, despite having record exports and huge balance of payments surpluses. Our situation is immeasurably worse, but we, as individuals have to hope that our leaders are a whole lot brighter now than they were when they allowed this situation to develop.

It would be unwise and hopelessly optimistic to forget that Obama and Brown said nothing negative during the last decade about the banks and the regulators when everything seemed perfect and prosperous in our seemingly robust economies. Pointing their collective finger at others now does not distract me from reminding them of their own silence then.

As for you and I, let’s get our warm clothes and hiking boots on, we have a long way to climb out of this mess!

TheAfPakThreat

2009-03-04T16:45:00.001Z

With all of the awful issues confronting our leaders it is not the huge economic mess that we’re in that is their biggest problem. In the same week that President Obama met Prime Minister Brown we saw the awful news pictures of the Sri Lankan cricket team being attacked by terrorists in Lahore, Pakistan on their way to play sport.

Masked men opened fire, killing six policemen escorting the Sri Lankans and a driver. In addition seven players and an assistant coach were wounded.

The team later flew back to Sri Lanka. There is no word on the identities or motives of the gunmen, who melted into the city and escaped.

Pakistani officials stated that the incident bore close similarities to deadly attacks in Mumbai in India last November.

This is another of those all too familiar attacks that we see, sigh then shake our heads. We have become totally anaesthetized about the sheer horror of such events. A bombing in a restaurant in Tel Aviv, a bus in London, a shooting in Mumbai, jets being flown into skyscrapers in New York, carnage in Malaysia, a Jewish community centre in Argentina being bombed, trains and hundreds of Spanish commuters in Madrid blown apart or thousands of other cowardly assaults on innocent civilians anywhere in the world.

What do all of these terrible attacks have in common? Militant Islamic terrorists conduct them all. Whatever name they use, the Taliban, Al Quada, Hamas, Hezbollah or a thousand other little known similar organizations, they are all the same and their aim is our destruction.
Whether you’re Nick Berg in Iraq or Daniel Pearl in Pakistan it doesn’t much matter what label your Islamic terrorist has when he is hacking your head from your body.

The current and recent attacks on the Indian sub-continent are especially worrying for a series of reasons that are both inescapable and very scary. It is clear that the insidious and evil reach of the Taliban has infected more than the lawless borderlands running between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In fact the Pakistani government recently allowed its own Swat valley to become Taliban territory although it is nominally still part of their country.
The Swat valley is an administrative district in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan located about 100 miles from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. This once princely state with its high mountains, green meadows, and clear lakes, was once popular with tourists as "the Switzerland of Pakistan". In December last year most of the area was captured by the Taliban insurgency and Islamist militant leader Maulana Fazlullah and his group Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi that have banned education for girls and bombed or burnt more hundreds of schools for girls and many other government-owned buildings.

The result is that there will be no education for the girls of that benighted place. The Taliban in Afghanistan continue to attack girls who still dare to go to school and recently threw acid in the faces of many of the girls who dared to want to be educated.

I have never understood the loony left wing liberals who espouse furiously against anyone they dislike but who think its cool and fun to wear T-shirts that say, “We are all Hamas now!” Now the Taliban are killing and maiming the women of their own nation where are the left wing protests against these acts of barbarism?

Instead we are urged to understand the plight of the various Islamist populations and their motivation for hating and killing us or anyone else that they take a dislike to. Personally I don’t think the world is helped by this attitude. The vast majority of Muslims in the world hate these terrorists as much as anyone else. But they must make this known not only by their words but also by their actions.

The current and festering danger is that the entire region of Afghanistan and Pakistan is being terminally destabilized and this will continue and escalate unless and until there is a clear strategy to combat and contain this menace emanating principally from the USA and supported by the EU, China and Russia. The reason for this being so vital is obvious, Pakistan is a nuclear state and there can be no more terrifying image than a Pakistan run by the Taliban having at their disposal weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the world is severely threatened as this situation degenerates.

There are many sweetheart deals being done by various nation states to placate or mollify the growing terrorist menace I describe. There is no question that the aim is to “buy” a quiet life in the forlorn hope that their turn to be beheaded will never arrive.

This is not far fetched and cannot be allowed. There must not be any more bending of the knee to the world wide terrorist threat. You do not achieve peace by appeasement you achieve defeat.

We are fighting with one hand tied behind our back in Afghanistan whilst most of our allies with the noble exception of the Americans do little or no real fighting at all. This cannot continue. It is time we burned the poppy fields and attacked the Taliban where they live and where they hide, on the borders of Pakistan. If we have to pursue terrorists across borders we have to do so. There can be no safe havens for our deadly enemies.

Such Islamic holy warriors publicly state that their idea of compromise is the world’s surrender to an Islamic caliphate; failing which they want us dead. We must not allow such lunatics the levers of ultimate power and weapons of mass destruction. We must widen the fight against the terrorists now, while we are much stronger than they are, or we will live to regret our hesitation.

GordonBrownDeadManWalking

2009-03-03T15:34:00.000Z

Psst, heard the one about THE TEST?

A man is drowning in a torrent of floodwater.

He fights for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris.

You move closer... the man looks familiar...

Suddenly you realize who it is... It's Prime Minister Gordon Brown!

You notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever.

You have two options:

Either save the life of Gordon Brown
Or shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, documenting the death of the country's most powerful man!

THE QUESTION

Here's the question, and please reply honestly...

Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?

The tipping point of a political leader comes not with their first hesitation or self-doubt; rather it arrives with the first titter of disdain. With the first joke about a leader comes the warning of their political demise being not too far distant.

Before Gordon Brown forcibly succeeded Tony Blair there was talk of his clunking great fist of authority. I addressed him as the man who thought he was the reincarnation of the Lord Protector, the leader of Britain’s brief Republicanism, Oliver Cromwell. Now I think of Brown as a bad joke. Sadly he’s about the only man who doesn’t get the humor.

We can imagine the day when Blair decided he had enough of Brown demanding his turn at the helm of the ship of state. It was precisely the moment when Blair calculated Brown was doomed not only to fail; but also to fail with ignominious and disastrous consequences. Brown reminds me of the character that knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Blair’s reaction to this must be a good deal of schadenfreude as he watches his old political foe struggle with the political and financial storms swirling around his suddenly old, tired, gnarled and ravaged head.

The Prime Minister arrived in Washington today ready to create sound bites with President Obama who is a man with very sensitive political antennae. You can bet big money there will be limited photo opportunities and scant time afforded to Brown. He still seriously believes that he is the man who saved the world from the present financial crisis.

I have some bad news for Gordon; he hasn’t saved the UK from this crisis, let alone the world. No one knows how this is all going to be resolved but one thing is for sure, Mister Brown will be long gone from his Prime Ministerial role at that time.

Heard the one that sums it all up?
If the 'Midas touch' is defined as someone of good fortune, for whom everything they touch "turns to gold".

Gordon Brown must have the 'Toilet tissue touch.'

FearForTheFuture

2009-03-02T16:31:00.002Z

Sometimes you see something so scary that you can’t quite believe it. Yesterday was just such a moment. On Britain’s Andrew Marr show, broadcast Sunday morning on the BBC the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman was a principal guest.

Marr was questioning the senior parliamentarian about the huge pension of Sir Fred Goodwin, which we wrote about in this column a few days ago.
In that column I wrote:

“This is epic hypocrisy by the most inept and injudicious British government ever.

Of course Goodwin should never have received one penny, in fact he should never have been in a job he was clearly not capable of doing. But he was in that job and he did negotiate a deal with those ministers and they all signed it willingly. There is no justification for a country to break a contract of its own devising. This would be both illegal and amoral. Of course a government could change the law retroactively to stop the knight getting his pension but that would be an act of petty venality that even this bankrupt leadership couldn’t justify. If that kind of thing is to be allowed we have entered a very dark tunnel indeed”.

When I made that statement I was more than half joking. I never thought that a senior minister would seriously suggest that the government were prepared to enact a retroactive law to negate a contract it had supported, allowed and in fact rubber stamped just a few weeks ago. Andrew Marr gave Harman several opportunities to slide away from her assertion that her government, led by the Prime Minister, simply would not allow Goodwin to retain these payments. When Marr reiterated that they would be breaking the law to break this contract whatever they thought of the morality of the situation she persisted that this man would better understand that he should not plan his future taking this pension into account, as he would not be receiving it!

I repeat, for the record, that I don’t like Goodwin, and never did. But I didn’t work with him or negotiate his contract or his departure, the government and the almost totally state owned bank did that. But whatever I think of him or them, and for me it’s a curse on both of their houses, you can’t simply dishonor a contract or force anyone else to do so in a law abiding country which is run with our common acquiescence to the laws, rules and regulations that we all accept. This is especially the case when you represent the law as our elected representatives do.

I will fight for the right for that bastard Goodwin to get his pound of flesh, because that is his legal right and no one should be able to take away the selfish man’s money.

If this government does succeed in their Robert Mugabe like interpretation of laws and justice and stops Goodwin from getting his ill gotten pension then people like me, who treasure freedom and democracy will have to fight or leave the country; the time for silence is gone.

InvertedSnobbery

2009-03-01T13:49:00.000Z

There is an inverted mental and sexist snobbery at work in the UK. We have a television quiz show called University Challenge. There are four representatives from each college and they answer, if they can, the tough questions asked. It’s first to the buzzer stuff and remember these are ultra tough questions.

Recently there has been a female contestant called Gail Trimble who led her team from Corpus Christie College to overall series victory. Gail has the misfortune to have scored more points than any other contestant in the shows very long history. The reasons for her being singled out for special criticism have varied to people pointing out they don’t like her teeth, eyes, clothes, hair and smile etc.

I don’t remember similar critiques being handed out to male contestants however poorly they looked or spoke or smiled whether they were clever or not. This is sexist behavior of the most obvious and odious kind. The woman in question is seriously clever and although I don’t know her I find a quick brain in a woman particularly attractive.

The only other excuse for criticism such as this is jealousy about her sheer mental capacity. Indirectly, and to a much lesser extent I can empathize with this. As a boy I was happily bungling along at school, drifting somewhere in the middle of the middle stream. Along came the United Nations and their international school IQ tests. I have since found out that their idea was to discover evidence of whether IQ scores around the globe were affected by nationality, race, and gender, social and economic background.

Not understanding this at age 11 I sat down in the school’s big assembly hall along with the rest of the boys of my age to sit the IQ test. On the front cover of this we were asked what our parents occupation was. Being a cheeky bugger I wrote (and may the Lord forgive me!) that my mother was a prostitute and my father a refuse collector. Needless to say this was not the case, as my mother was a respectable housewife and my father was, by then, in the film industry. I have no idea if this had any effect on my eventual score, which was to cause me never ending grief.

Some time later I was called in to chat with the school Principal a man I had been doing my best to avoid at all costs. He was all smiles as he indicated that as my score was in the top 2% of the country he expected me to do considerably better in all my future examinations.

That year I came 22nd in the B stream and questions were asked. Following this I did a little better but now everyone was pointing out that with my intellect I should clearly be top of the class. “Could do better” became the standard observation for whatever I did.

When I was 13 I was fed up with being told I could do better and I actually did a lot better. I came joint top of the year with a boy called Ruffhead who had total recall. I was very pleased with myself until I was told that I could still do better. This was despite my coming top!

From that point on I followed my own drumbeat as I came to realize that such crude measures, as IQ can be as much a burden as a plus. Although my brain and memory have stood me in good stead in certain circumstances such as winning at Trivial Pursuit, they don’t measure up to common sense, intuition or emotional intelligence as vital attributes with which I am not so blessed.

If a woman has all of these attributes they are blessed and if you’re the man who is fortunate enough to share them you are doubly blessed. Cute and sexy may be a plus but to really be sexy you need more than a nice smile.

FreddieShredded

2009-02-27T16:49:00.002Z

There’s a saying that goes around media newsrooms, “you just couldn’t make this up!” and nothing sums this up better than the morality play of Sir Fred Goodwin, until very recently the CEO of The Royal Bank of Scotland.

Like many of his banking colleagues in the USA and UK he has earned a fortune during the fat years and we only really came to evaluate the morality of this system of reward when the house of cards came crashing down around our ears.

This man is the perfect example of the banking Gordon Gecko whose creed was “Greed is Good”.

Goodwin was known as Fred the Shred, because of his ruthless and supposedly successful style of management. He was rewarded with huge payments and dividends but unfortunately, and at the cost of us all, he wasn’t succeeding, in fact he was failing on a scale never before seen in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter.

This was not just failure, but epic disaster, the Perfect Storm of a financial cataclysm. It has resulted, lest we forget, in his bank posting the biggest single one-year corporate loss in the UK’s history. For the record ponder the numbers, he lost us £24 billion in the last twelve months.

There is, apparently, another £350 billion of questionable debt on the same bank’s books. We, the people, have underwritten all of it under the new loan guarantee scheme.

All of these facts were known to the government when the panic button was hit a couple of months back, when, to save our entire banking system, the government had to step in with just hours to spare.

When this quasi-forced nationalization was being consummated the men and women who run the nation’s Treasury had to quickly do some hiring and firing. They realized that the country could not countenance the survival of the senior management who had been, at best, inept, or at worst criminally liable for the disaster that had befallen us.

It transpires that the government ministers responsible for these transactions had sight of the relevant contracts and allowed certain pay offs to take place. Amongst these was the lifetime pension pot for Sir Fred Goodwin in which he was to receive nearly £650,000 (nearly $1 million) per year for the rest of his life with, commencing now, at the age of 50.

The Minister who allowed this is Lord Myners, who is now calling on Sir Fred to not take the money. Goodwin refuses to do this or pay any money back. The Prime Minister and many others in government have also insisted that Sir Fred must not get this money in these circumstances. Remember these are the same people who rubber-stamped his deal in the first place.

It seems as though the crime Goodwin is guilty of is not getting his hands on the money it is getting caught receiving the money while the cameras are aimed in his direction.

This is epic hypocrisy by the most inept and injudicious British government ever.

Of course Goodwin should never have received one penny, in fact he should never have been in a job he was clearly not capable of doing. But he was in that job and he did negotiate a deal with those ministers and they all signed it willingly. There is no justification for a country to break a contract of its own devising. This would be both illegal and amoral. Of course a government could change the law retroactively to stop the knight getting his pension but that would be an act of petty venality that even this bankrupt leadership couldn’t justify. If that kind of thing is to be allowed we have entered a very dark tunnel indeed.

On his own behalf Goodwin wrote to the City Minister Paul Myners arguing that in forgoing his 12-months notice pay when he resigned last October, he had made a sufficient “gesture.” Myners replied in a letter that his position was “unfortunate and unacceptable” and that the executive should think again.

“Such an act would be an appropriate recognition of the failings of RBS under your tenure and subsequent support the government has provided,” Myners wrote.

The Treasury has finally acknowledged that Myners did know all about the pension arrangement when Goodwin resigned last October although there had been some argument previously about the details. His understanding, according to the Treasury, was that the payout was Goodwin’s legal entitlement and unchangeable. Prime Minister Brown said it was only this week that he learned the RBS board had some discretion in awarding the pay.

The government has not yet made it clear what route it will take on this issue. Ministers have, so far, just applied maximum moral pressure on Goodwin to voluntarily give up his pension.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said, “Sir Fred could resolve this problem very quickly.” Brown said the payout wasn’t acceptable but offered no remedy.

“The anger the public has is the anger I have as well,” Brown told broadcasters. “This is unjustifiable and unacceptable, and I am going to clean up the banks so it doesn’t happen again.”

Or the government might apply pressure on Goodwin by threatening to have him stripped of his knighthood, but that makes the government look ever more like a petty Ruritania than it already does.

Surely of more importance, we must learn the lessons this debacle should teach us. We need people who understand business taking business decisions that have a commercial consequence. Government ministers are demonstrably incapable of this.

Our focus must be on the big issues; we cannot allow ourselves to get bogged down on these small but diverting side issues. Maintaining a relentless public focus on our huge problems will stop our leaders avoiding the big elephants in the room.

In the meantime Sir Fred, I hope you suffer the consequences of your actions and you don't get any pleasure from all our money.

HowNottoGetBeatenUpByYourCreditCard

2009-02-26T08:11:00.003Z

The good news is that the bad news was predicted to have been even worse. RBS bank in the UK has racked up losses of £24,000,000,000. (Twenty four billion pounds – approximately $35 billion). Losses like this has mean that the government will have to guarantee more toxic loans and fund the failing banks with even more of our money.

Another result of such huge holes in the accounts is that the credit card companies will act even more stringently to plug every gap in their financial dyke.

This is one of my occasional “GUEST” blogs that I hand over to another contributor. My good friend Neville Spiers, otherwise known as the Negotiator, has written this article. We first met when we were eight years old, and, as the saying goes, we’ve all passed a lot of water since then.

“How not to get beaten up by your credit card by Neville Spiers"

I heard a programme on BBC’s Radio 4 last week – not a new subject – the perennial issue of people who have offended Visa, Maestro and all the mighty Gods of credit. They have fallen behind with their payments and the slavering hounds of collection have been unleashed.

Some of the stories were extremely harrowing; elderly people suffering from terminal illnesses or recently bereaved; it made no difference. Many of them had had the good sense to phone up, explain the situation and make a revised payment plan; it made no difference.

The calls started coming four times a day, from different callers in the same debt-collection company – sometimes more than one company chasing the same debt! Each time, the caller would first put them through a process of “security questions”. Then they would ask when the debt wasgoing to be repaid. If the answer was anything but “right now”, the question would be repeated over and over again.

I listened to this and I thought, “Why are these people allowing themselves to be beaten up four times a day”. The truth is that there are very simple techniques, which can be used to prevent it.

1) Don’t answer the security questions. Tell them “I’m sorry but I don’t give out confidential information to anyone I don’t know and I don’t know you”. They may tell you that they cannot continue the conversation unless you do. Answer “O.K. thank you for calling. Have a nice day”. CLICK!

2) Insist on dealing with one caller only. When a different person calls, tell them to speak to the first one, in order to save them time. If a second company calls, tell them to battle it out with the first company, then come back and tell you who is handling the account.

3) If the same person calls you a second time on the same day, say, “I spoke to you two hours ago. Please refer to your notes. Now forgive me but I’m in a meeting.” Then ring off.

At all times remain polite but firm. Keep in your mind at all times that you don’t have to take it. If you have the confidence to take control,you won't have to.”

TooEarlyToCAll

2009-02-25T16:53:00.000Z

The Obama presidency is still so new that no one can judge how it will turn out. Those of you who follow my articles will know I have long harbored doubts about the man. Yes, I admire his spunk, his undoubted ability as an orator, his undoubted charisma and his physical appeal he carries like a Hollywood leading man. The man is a star, but I also remember the early days of Tony Blair’s Premiership in the UK carrying all the same signals.

I am one of the few British people you will meet who still like Blair; most of his once mighty army of followers long ago having folded their tents and gone to pastures new.

One thing that Blair had in spades for the first few years of his leadership was unbelievably good luck. Everything he touched turned to gold and that’s a gigantic political advantage he exploited to the full. We are about to discover if Obama also has that special alchemy.

But there was something too much of the Cheshire Cat about that Blair grin and there’s a faint whiff of the same odor of contrivance about President Obama.

Because Obama is so vital to us all I sincerely hope I am wrong in this early judgment. We need a brilliant and strong President Obama but I am beginning to see through the mist to a man who is beginning to find it all a lot harder than he ever imagined it would be.

I am not talking about the economy, or even the war on several fronts that America’s forces continue to fight. No, I refer to the war just starting to be waged by the President with the Congress and Senate and the Defense top brass. This will be the battle that really decides our fate. If Obama is right in his policies he has to win without getting too bogged down in micro managing detail, which might be his Achilles heel.

One can discern that Obama and his staff spent a great deal of time preparing a strategy that looks great in theory but as we all know the devil is in the detail. Now it’s as much to do with luck and timing as it is with the execution of potentially ill conceived tactics.

Just because his predecessor followed one path does not mean that this President should necessarily do the opposite but that seems to be the track being presently traveled.

It is apparent that the other major powers in the world plus the enemies of democracy are waiting to see what the rhetoric of Obama means on the ground.

I believe that Obama intends to handle overseas diplomacy more diplomatically, and that seems a good idea in most circumstances. However it only works with willing partners or at least other parties who are willing to have a genuine dialogue. How true is that of countries like Iran?

One result of this new, more statesmanlike resolve from America is likely to be that everything moves very slowly. Don’t expect instant results or even fairly quick fixes. More likely we are going to get the kind of results that gave the UK its diplomatic reputation of Perfidious Albion. The US appears to be much more cautious and time will tell what results this will generate. One perceptible result there has been from this approach is that America is no longer the instant cartoon hate figure for the street protestors of the world. The world likes the look of Obama and the kind of future America he embodies. Of course this could be the result of his color or the perception of many that America will be easier to handle and deal with now.

The economic necessities are forcing Obama to act in a way that the Republicans clearly loathe. But what other routes are immediately to hand? It is not socialism to prop up the banks and key industries, but it is prudent when the alternatives are cataclysmic for jobs and the economy in general.

The President has already rolled the dice and we all hold our breath as they spin in the air, where they land will decide our world’s future for the next couple of decades. Let’s hope the new President is lucky!

HelloCharlie

2009-02-24T17:32:00.000Z

Today I am not writing a full article as our family has grown by one shiny new member.

Welcome Charlotte May, a first-born daughter for my son, Dan and his lovely and deservedly proud wife, Doctor Sarah Klinger. Mother and daughter are doing fine.

I shall resume my articles very shortly but you will understand a slight pause while we welcome Charlie to our world!

AreYouEverWrongMrBrown

2009-02-23T17:53:00.001Z

There are many things wrong in the world today, and one of the most annoying is the failure of people to admit that they’re wrong. Arise chief culprit, Prime Minister Gordon Brown. This is the same man who, when things were going well when he was in charge of the economy claimed all the credit for the country’s success. Now that it is going very wrong it has nothing to do with him.

It goes further than this. This weekend he announced that he was looking at new legislation to stop financial institutions from issuing 100% mortgages or allowing them to people unable to prove sufficient earning multiples. This is called locking the door after the horse has bolted.

It is laughable that the Prime Minister should seriously announce that he was going to stop such mortgages when no such mortgages are available.

His time would be better spent making sure his pronouncements regarding the banks easing credit for small to medium businesses and individuals actually happened at ground level since at present this is not the case. His entire government continually tells us that they have made funds available for this specific purpose, but there is a massive blockage in the pipeline. The money is simply not getting to its intended recipients.

I have spoken with many small businessmen recently and they all report pressure from the bank at best and withdrawal of facilities is a common occurrence. The little men and women are fighting for their financial survival and they are not being helped, despite the bank having received huge sums of our money via the government for this purpose. Our leaders had better get out of their luxurious offices and stop listening to their fat cat civil servants or the troubles we’re now facing will get much more intense. People are rightly getting very angry.

I am grateful to the correspondent who sent me the winning entry in an annual contest at Texas A&M University calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term:

This year's term was Political Correctness.

The winner R. J. Wiedemann Lt. Col. United States Marine Corps (Retired) wrote:

"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”

Remind you of anyone Mister Brown?

DangersAhead

2009-02-21T19:46:00.000Z

This week it was revealed that the UK had a debt mountain of £2 trillion, that’s approximately $3 trillion. This is such a huge debt that it is almost unimaginable and unmanageable especially in a country that has a population of a little over 60 million.

Those of us interested in such things also discovered that there have been laws, rules and regulations passed quietly, and without a fuss that enable our central banks to bail out our financial institutions when they deem it necessary, and to keep such an action secret.

There is also further legislation in place allowing yet more breaches of our civil liberties and this has grown with every passing year of our battle against terrorism. Except the laws enacted are not really about that legitimate battle at all, but are much more about controlling us, the British population.

The British, those most relaxed and civilized of people, are just beginning to show a growing antipathy to the countries huge immigrant population as they lose their jobs, homes and prosperity. This catalogue of failures is fanning the flames of hate and envy and that is dangerous since it allows credibility to both the loony left and the far right of our political spectrum.

Observing this sad catalogue in the United States you might well tut and believe this has little or nothing to do with you, other than for your country’s historical links to this, your ultimate mother country. The truth is that it has everything to do with you, because if the battle for liberty is lost here it will inevitably follow all over Europe and the Western World, yes, even in the West’s bastion of democracy, America.

The reasons for this are many but mainly centre on the fact that America faces many of the same economic traumas internally and political battles externally. If these warped experiments in big brother control works in Britain you can bet they will be tried there.

That’s the difference between this Great Depression and the last one in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. First of all, no one in power wanted to admit that we are in recession and the fact is that it is going deeper and further than that. The other huge problem this time around is that this economic collapse is truly global; there is nowhere that is going to prosper in isolation. The best you can hope for is that you will not suffer too badly.

The way to achieve this measure of damage limitation surely starts with our all realizing that this situation must not become the excuse to introduce any forms of isolationism, or protectionism. This would certainly lead to even deeper problems, as countries would seek equally destructive defensive measures.

Perhaps even more vital than this will be winning the fight to protect our liberty and laws so that we don’t sink further into the hands of the very people manning our governments and bureaucracies who put us into this mess in the first place.

LivingINTheShadowsAResponse

2009-02-19T16:42:00.003Z

Some of you that follow my articles regularly already know that it is my occasional habit to give space to my exchanges with those who respond to me. In particular I want to show my appreciation to the genuine and widespread depth of feeling my articles on Alzheimer’s and Cancer have engendered this week.

These are illnesses that affect us all, either directly or indirectly at one stage of our lives. It is how we respond to these enemies of us all that demonstrates and defines us as human beings, with all our magnificence and weakness, knowledge and foolishness. We all hope that we are never to be touched by the grim reaper in this tortuous guise, and that if we are, we will somehow manage, at least, for our dignity to survive.

Here are some of the responses I received this week, and I make no apologies for applauding these quiet heroes, for I find their calmness, love and dignity under fire inspirational. Sharon, Neville I know you must have sometimes screamed inside how unfair fate can be, but your examples demonstrate that anything can be overcome, well done and thank you for your inspiring examples.

“Very powerful. I thought it was going the other way, and then you surprised me.” – Dick

Tony

“Your article has struck a resounding chord with me. My late wife didn't have Alzheimer's but she displayed the symptoms of it. Over a period of 10 years, I watched her disappearing in stages.

In 1994 she started to become disorganized - this was a woman who previously raised organization to an art form.

In 1995 she forgot how to drive; which gear to be in, what the pedals were for....
In 1998 she forgot how to use a knife and fork in tandem.
The same year she forgot how to swim.

While all of this was going on she was steadily losing her short-term memory and her ability to join up the logical dots. As the world started to make less and less sense to her, she gradually gave up trying to decipher it and abdicated responsibility.

Between 2001 and 2004, she lived in a nursing home, where everything was done for her. By this time, she had become a 5-year-old, with no short-term and very little long-term memory. She knew her immediate family but she would peer at the nurses who attended her every day as if to say "I know you from somewhere but I'm not sure where."

By the end, she could only remember songs. That's right! Songs. If an advert on TV featured an old song from 30 years ago, however obscure, I would hear her singing along, without animation, as if in a trance, yet she knew all of the words.

I felt like an artist looking at a block of stone or wood and
envisaging the sculpture that he is going to carve out of it. I could
see her in there, but I couldn't reach what I could see. One day, when I am ready, I am going to write the story of her life and death; I may never show it to anyone but I will need to do it.

Thank you for writing this article; I found it strangely comforting; I
couldn't tell you why.” - Neville

Following that response here is a very thoughtful and detailed letter from Sharon;

“It has taken me a day to be able to reply to your article. As you might imagine, I found it difficult to read and it was very poignant. I hope your article finds the right targets.

Unfortunately, for my mum, she lives in Barnet. If she lived in Harrow I could approach the very wonderful Admiral Nurses. The social workers are bound by budgets and I was told by mum's social worker that when people in the borough are asked what they what money to be spent on, dementia is rarely mentioned and then probably only by those who have a loved one who is suffering from this cruelest of diseases. Interestingly, I have NEVER been asked how I think money should be disbursed and I wonder whom it is that the borough approach when sending out these forms. I know of no one who has been asked. Although I have to fight Barnet every inch of the way, and believe me, they don't give an inch, I do have the support of the Maurice Lawson Dementia Support group for carers. However, it is an ongoing fight, which ultimately will be lost because my mum simply can't improve but can only get worse.

What I find unbelievable is that Barnet will not fund full time care at
Home, which for a Malaysian or Phillipino carer costs in the region of £350 per week but that they will fund residential care which costs £500-£800 per week which even after deducting pension income is still costing more. There doesn't seem to be any common sense used just bureaucratic red tape and forms - oh lots of forms. I receive some funding via direct payments and as well as coping with all the emotional stuff I also have to deal with the inland revenue and do the wages and national insurance on a weekly basis as well as end of year tax stuff.

Caring for a relative with dementia of Alzheimer’s is isolating and depressing and certainly, in my experience, there is insufficient care and support available from the local authority unless there is a crisis. They are so busy putting out fires that they don't think about preventing the fire from starting.

Thank you for taking the time to write your article and try and get the message across.” -Sharon

If my writing these articles helps anyone in any way, then I’m glad to have done so. For those of you suffering from these afflictions in any way I can only pass on the wish that you have the strength, wisdom and tenacity to deal with this heavy load.

ALingeringFarewell

2009-02-18T14:53:00.000Z

Today we are going to mull over a moral dilemma. Is it right or acceptable behavior to share your own death with the paying public - Isn’t this the ultimate reality television?

Prime Minister Gordon Brown expressed his sympathies for British reality TV star Jade Goody, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

He is quoted as saying that people should "applaud her determination to help her family", by her sale of the media rights to her wedding this weekend. OK! magazine has bought exclusive rights to this Sunday's ceremony for £700,000 and Living TV paid a further £100,000 to broadcast it.

The former Big Brother contestant's plight was "very sad and tragic"; Brown told his regular monthly press conference. Mr Brown went on to say: "It's very sad and tragic that such a young woman has this cancer. It's very sad indeed that the treatment has not been successful."

He added: "Her determination to help her family is something that we have got to applaud and I wish her family well."

In January 2007, Ms Goody received a huge barrage of criticism for her alleged racist bullying of her fellow Celebrity Big Brother contestant, Indian film actress Shilpa Shetty. Goody was consequently slung out of the Big Brother house.

Last year, in an ironic twist, Ms Goody appeared on the Indian version of Big Brother. She had to leave prematurely when informed she had cervical cancer.

Months of treatment followed and now it has just been revealed that the cancer had spread to her bowel, liver and groin, leaving her only months to live.

This young woman decided that she wants to share this experience to the end. She claims two reasons for doing so, the first is that she wants to provide as well as she’s able for her young sons. The second is that Jade believes that other women can benefit from the terrible lesson she is learning about regular health check ups and screenings. Apparently if Jade had followed up as she could and should have done she would have enjoyed a 90%+ chance of survival whereas she now has a 0% chance.

I know the benefits of regular medical checks myself as twice they have spotted pre-cancerous cells in me, which were quickly and easily dealt with, and following which I am fortunate enough to have suffered no consequences.

Ms. Goody is not so fortunate, and is hated and loved by many who have watched her short career as a TV celebrity, famous for being famous. She might not be the brightest intellect in the world, but surely no one deserves an end like this.

My wife was shopping a few weeks ago and found Jade distraught and crying in her car in the parking lot. She offered the young woman whatever comfort she could, but she was distraught at the obvious distress she was in. Imagine having to put on a brave face in public all the time whilst your world is literally falling apart.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Jade’s decision to share her harrowing experience with the world; no one else has the moral right to condemn her motives, whatever they might be. I think she is very brave and deserves our total support in this, her toughest fight. In a way, if she has this support she will triumph even in her own death, and that is what she deserves.

If Jade needs the money to cushion the blow of her imminent demise for her children surely she deserves that right.

If Jade, by her terrible example, can warn just one other woman to protect herself adequately health wise then that would be wonderful. There are, in fact, reports of a 20-30% increase in young women seeking the appropriate cervical smear tests since Jade made herself a public campaign.

For those sanctimonious and patronizing members of the chattering classes who take a morally higher tone I respond with the words of Mark Twain, “Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.”

LivingInTheShadows

2009-02-17T09:32:00.002Z

Horrible Alzheimer’s disease, could there be anything more cruel or arbitrary than this illness that robs us of our loved ones and leaves us with their shadows? This is an intensely personal article and a plea from the heart on behalf of us all.

I am not a medical expert so I won’t write an article with any pretense to knowledge I don’t possess, but I have seen the results of Alzheimer’s on two occasions. The first time I witnessed this especially insidious illness the victim was my lovely Nana Bertha. This big, jolly lady who dispensed her love via her sweet smile and her big balls of East European food, in the form of knadels or meat or lockshen was slowly diminished to a husk as her brain became a useless empty shell.

Now her daughter, my special Aunty Renee, is suffering from the same fate. I’ve watched from a concerned distance as my Aunty has been taken from us inch by terrible inch. I don’t see her as much as I should because I am unsure of how to deal with her; I am also diminished by her illness. I still love her dearly, but my Aunty Renee is not “in” any more. Now when I look into her eyes and she returns the stare, still with love, but unsure who I am, and usually wrong when she ventures a guess. For my more recent visits she thinks I am my nephew, Daryl. I don’t try and argue with or question her; my instinct is just to go along with our small deceit if it makes her happy. I wonder who she thinks Daryl is when he sees her, but there’s no point in correcting her as she now has a memory like a goldfish trapped in a bowl. Our family just wants her to be happy as her world steadily contracts.

Compared to the fate of my aunt and grandmother the sudden death of my father from a heart attack was a blessed relief. Of course at the time we are all hugely shocked and grief stricken when a loved one is yanked from us by their sudden demise. The lingering nature of Alzheimer’s is intensely draining and lengthy. It makes the people in the families who care for the victims of Alzheimer’s wonder if they can continue to be strong and determined enough for the entire length of this terrible and unrewarding journey to death of their loved ones.

I watched my mother and her family try to cope with my grandmother’s illness and despite their unrelenting determination and love it was unrelenting and crushingly hard for them. Now I see the same thing happening to my cousin Sharon as she fights every inch of the way to deal with her mother’s slow drift to the end. This is made more poignant by the fact that my cousin is a health professional that understands exactly what’s happening and is savvy about the system and deals with it expertly. It’s still hard for her almost beyond bearing; so how much worse is it for those less eloquent or able? Another route for some is to spend the money necessary to provide the necessary care but there are very few people with the financial muscle to furnish the essential 24-hour a day caring resources.

My reason for choosing to write this article was the revelation by the British TV news anchor, John Suchet, that his wife, Bonnie, was another victim of Alzheimer’s. She has been a victim for more than three years and as he bravely faced the questions on TV this morning he made the point that in the entire UK there are only 60 nurses trained to help deal specifically with this awful disease. That equates to 60 trained people battling an illness that 700,000 people in this country are presently suffering from!

I was appalled when I heard these statistics, which by any measure is a national disgrace that shames us all. There is an urgent and pressing need for help to be given to the families of all those suffering from this dreaded and silent killer and robber of personalities. All of you who form our government, you must listen because one day this will affect someone in your family, or a friend or a loved one, and none of can ignore this desperate need. This is not just a job for families or charity; this is a function of a caring society. We are going through parlous economic times but nevertheless we can find these resources if we eliminate banking bonuses and government overspending on expenses and wasteful, failed social engineering experiments to pay for it.

Nearly25Things

2009-02-16T16:46:00.000Z

First I wish to include a note via my good friend Chip in America who sent me the following;

Muzzammil Hassan, of Orchard Park NY (SE of Buffalo), is the "founder and chief executive officer of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004 amid hopes that it would help portray Muslims in a more positive light. Its slogan was 'connecting people through understanding'."

He was arrested on Thursday and charged with beheading his wife.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29189095/

Keep working on the image building Muzzammil.

I am almost totally caving in on two fronts today. Firstly I have cravenly submitted to the seemingly inescapable “Twitter” craze and signed up after being “Twitted” many times over the last weeks by those wishing me to join the trend. I really don’t see the point of being in a text based messaging system to send or receive chains of random thoughts to and from people I either don’t know well or at all. Perhaps I am missing something profound.

Last week it was the thoughts of actor, comedian and all round genius Stephen Fry when he was trapped in a lift (elevator) with a bunch of strangers. As ever he communicated his plight in tight little sentences; this time is he a Twittee for the transmittal of his plight or am I the Twittee for reading of it?

I don’t see why we should wish to communicate in this truncated form in either direction, particularly since instead of personalizing our relationships this will, by definition, other than by accident, do precisely the opposite. However, this is no doubt one of those giant crazes that sweep the world in minutes so one has to participate to witness its evolution and be annoyed by it.

I have also decided to join another craze, the one in which you list 25 things about yourself, although I have randomly decided that I shall construct a list that is slightly shorter or longer on the arbitrary basis that I must not totally conform. I’m not sure of the precise reason for this listing of one’s peculiarities and peccadilloes being a necessity but on the other hand, it does, momentarily, release your mind from thinking about the economy or Gordon Brown or the multi trillion deficits our countries are all running. I wouldn’t be so angry if at the same time our leaders didn’t keep telling us what we are doing wrong, when clearly they don’t have a clue how to do anything themselves!

So here we go, purely in the interests of not being too serious. Some things you didn’t know about Tony Klinger and perhaps don’t care to know.

1. His favorite color is red, which is the color of the strip for his favorite football team, Manchester United and, of course McDonalds.
2. He must never drive a red sports car since a psychic told his late mother he would be killed if he drove one, Avis and Hertz please note.
3. In the UK Tony drives an American car, a Cadillac, but in the States he usually drives a Japanese car, go figure.
4. The first thing Tony read was the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
5. His first school was St. Francis, in Acton, London, where he was the first non-Catholic to attend. Interesting but ridiculous.
6. The best book of stories he ever read was the Old Testament.
7. Klinger’s favorite book is Catch 22 by Joseph Heller but it’s run close by Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged that possibly signifies that he has a somewhat split personality.
8. Tony’s favorite film is Citizen Caine and he thinks it is also the best film ever made.
9. Klinger’s dad was also a filmmaker, producing films such as Get Carter with Michael Caine and executive producing, amongst others some wonderful stuff like Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac with the director Roman Polanski and the ultra successful Confessions series.
10. Before that Tony’s dad had many occupations, but he was most proud of having been a structural engineer, having designed, during the Second World War the first machine that tested bombs and other munitions on the production line.
11. TK has worked in every capacity on film and media production except for make up and hair.
12. TK once scored 6 goals in a single soccer match in Los Angeles and when a teen he won all his boxing matches bar one and once won all the races at a swim meet and the Twist dance competition at Hastings Happy Holiday Camp, beat that!
13. Klinger has filmed in 37 countries, and made over 600 productions for cinema, TV shows, music videos, documentaries, commercials and corporate films and in doing so he has won more than 50 awards.
14. Tony’s most proud professional achievement was to be part of the team winning The Queens Anniversary Award for Education when he was a Lecturer, Course Director at the Bournemouth Film School.
15. Tony, like the British BBC news guru, Jeremy Paxman is very disappointed by the fall in standard and quality of Marks and Spencer’s once great men’s underpants, and is still in search of a suitable replacement. Time is running short.
16. Klinger has been called a Socialist, a Liberal and a fiscal Conservative since he started writing articles on politics but is, like Charles De Gaulle, “above such things”.
17. Tony’s first book, Twilight of the Gods will be published this summer.

MyFunnyValentine

2009-02-14T08:46:00.000Z

Today we feature my exchange with, Brad, about the potential future of our economies. In featuring this we have edited for space and use of expletives, mostly on my part. I apologize for our not being more loving on Valentine’s Day!

“Tony:
Well...I am not sure who predicted what...but I know that every time you beat the war drums I came back with four paragraphs on the economy and got nowhere--you called it "pragmatism" and "cynicism"...defeatism, etc. America's top spook came out today with something interesting: the top threat is no longer terrorism but the economy. …--That’s been true for six years. Things have been bleak in America for at least six years--this is what I kept trying to tell you--but only if you were in a city--I mean really in a city, teaching in urban schools or hanging around industrial America. Anyone with a credit card and credit line was basically skating by--but the scale of the homelessness and misery was staggering. The cost of these wars is also largely hidden--you have to go to towns around here that have actually sent a significant number of troops--where just about everyone is in the national guard because there is nothing else to do --it's been hardcore for years.

I would say that things were also bleak in the Reagan era if you lived in Hollywood and saw the mental patients that Ronnie let out of the asylums after canning federal money for mental health--the immigrants, the uninsured, all of those shut out of the emerging "bubble" economies that are now bursting around our ears. The "economic downturn" is not just a matter of a change in the weather...it's a touch bigger than that. Things aren't the same in this country, and haven't been for some years now.

Those were the Ronnie Reagan eighties--for me at least. Having said that, I think your recent stuff on the economy is interesting, and I am glad to learn. I've been reading heavy criticism of Obama along the lines that he should essentially be nationalizing the banks and every month that he dithers on this is a month closer to Japanese-style decline. Does that make sense to you?

Hello Brad,

On the economy, banks and Obama, and I would add the UK and Brown. Yes, we're heading, if we're lucky, to stagflation a la Japan just a little while ago. I was there for a few weeks in that period and it was hard to understand……..there seemed no way out even though they had a huge balance of payments surplus and were manufacturing like crazy, and on the surface it should have worked out fine.

The problem there, as it is here and in your neck of the woods, is that the structure of our economies is false, and can't work longer term. That's because the whole thing was based on smoke and mirrors and now that they've been removed we can all see the little green man, and we know he knows nothing and is incapable. Like the bankers in the UK this week who turned out not to have a single banking qualification or experience between the lot of them.

What I'm saying, somewhat clumsily, is that the whole trick could only work with the good faith and blind gullibility of the masses and that is now gone, possibly forever. Once that cat is out of the bag there isn't much that can work properly in a market capitalist society. The problems have not yet really begun, and I'm afraid, unless we get very lucky it is going to be truly awful for all of us.

I have already predicted that the banks will have to be largely nationalized both here and in the US, and I'm sticking with that view. One of the banks here, Lloyds TSB, was 45% nationalized a month or two back when it was encouraged by our Prime Minister, to take over HBOS to now have about 30% of all British retail banking. Lloyds TSB, announced that the taken over bank had a bad year, it lost £10 billion, in one year; in fact its about £1 billion worse than that according to my brief computation of their figures!

This doesn't spell immediate disaster for Lloyds or the government, because the bank is presently pretty well capitalized, but if things go wrong at all, then the only way back would be for this bank giant to be totally nationalized, which would mean more than half of our giant retail bankers were now publicly owned, in less than 3 months.

It is a huge and bloody disaster but next will come the printing of money, (probably in both the USA and UK) and who knows how that will work, but what else can they do now that the interest rates are effectively zero, what tools are left to our governments to energize our economies? Then we might be choosing between stagflation and hyperinflation and both are poisonous.

Hold on to your hat it’s going to be a very bumpy ride!

All the best,

Tony

WhenYouAreWrong

2009-02-12T17:00:00.001Z

It is human nature to let others know when you predicted something and it turned out as you forecast. I managed this feat with quite a few things that modesty forbids me mentioning here if I was modest. OK, you forced me; I did predict the recession and the busted flush in the property market etc. But I am not here to boast; too much.

It also does us good to admit when we have made a mistake. Having taken some credit above I shall point out a very recent error on my part. On the day prior to the Israeli elections my prediction was for a narrow Benjamin Netanyahu right wing Likud victory over Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima party. In fact she won the battle between these two parties by one seat. It being Israel, and therefore very politically complex, his potential right wing partnerships are potentially just a little more likely to work than any combination of the centre and left, and therefore it will probably be Bibi (Netanyahu) who is called upon by President Shimon Peres to form a government coalition, if he can.

This is made even more difficult by the fact that the leader of the third largest party, Y’Israel Beytenu, Avigdor Lieberman, detests the religious parties who would normally form a natural part of any Nehatanyahu coalition.

So, it being a very Israeli business, I was wrong but I might yet turn out to be right, although I admit that my head hurts thinking about the possible permutations.
For the sake of peace a broad based coalition of national unity would be the best solution but we’re probably several weeks from the answers.

What is clear from the voting in Israel is that security and how to deal with the Palestinians is the paramount question, even in these parlous economic times; financial issues barely warranted a mention during the elections.

I also stated that during Israel’s brief and stormy history it is their strong, right wing leaders, not the well-intentioned liberals, who do the best peace deals with their Arab neighbors. This is a paradox I ascribed to the national characteristics and histories of those at the negotiating tables. I remain convinced that this is the case but I didn’t mean to include Avigdor Lieberman in the category of strong leaders. He, and his supporters are potentially nearly as big a danger to the future of peace as the extreme Arab and Muslim leaders he seems happy to confront.

So there you have it, a fulsome admission that I was in error, and I don’t feel blemished or diminished by my act of public contrition.

In the last few days we also witnessed a series of bankers and other financial titans admitting that they made mistakes. President Obama also owned up to a minor gaffe. The head of the Bank of England also admitted that the bank’s reading of the financial tealeaves had been severely at fault.

It seems the time when it is fashionable, as well as desirable to hold up one’s hands and utter the words, “I screwed up, and I got it wrong, I am sorry!”

So why does Prime Minister Gordon Brown find it so difficult?

He hired Sir James Crosby as deputy chairman of the financial watchdog, the Financial Service Authority, which is created to oversee the running and well being of our financial institutions. During his tenure of this office, Crosby, while also Chief Executive of HBOS apparently personally fired the bank’s most senior risk expert for predicting that Crosby’s risk taking stewardship of HBOS could lead to huge future problems for that company.

When this was exposed Sir James Crosby almost immediately resigned his post as deputy chairman. Did he fall or was he pushed? The answer is that he was pushed, very quickly and very ignominiously and almost certainly from the direction of Number 10 Downing Street.

This situation is rendered surreal when it became clear that the FSA had also issued warnings about the risks HBOS was taking. It is more than strange that the man effectively running both was Sir James Crosby.

Today there was a parliamentary inquiry into all these dealings that personally questioned the Prime Minister. As ever our dour leader failed to show any contrition. As ever none of this is his fault in any way. He didn’t apologize for any of it.

For those with short memories you will recall that Mister Brown accepted all the praise for everything that seemed to be going right in the British economy for the last dozen years or so. Now that our recently mighty financial ship has hit stormy weather he must accept culpability and blame or he will be consigned to the dustbin of history along with all the other fakes and phonies.

StatingTheObvious

2009-02-11T15:29:00.001Z

It’s pretty obvious what went wrong with our economies in general, but needs stating anyhow. Too many people were too greedy. Too few people are making stuff and too many are selling and buying financial products that no one understands.

Abraham Lincoln said part of this better than anyone else, “I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich…(But) we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.”

There is nothing wrong or objectionable about creating wealth but there is certainly something wrong if that becomes the sole motivation for our society. In the last years the deal became king, short-term gains were paramount, above any other consideration. We simply cannot and will not sustain our way of life on this basis.
You cannot build society on consumerism and rising property prices alone.

It only takes a few people obtaining a disproportionate share of the pie to upset the balance for the rest of society. That’s exactly what has been happening with rapacious bankers and deal making entrepreneurs at the very summit of our economies over the last decades. This was exacerbated by insufficiently stringent financial regulation, and where the law was sufficient it was not applied with any rigor.

There was also an entirely cavalier and inappropriate duty of care employed in the hiring of the men to run our leading banks. During yesterday’s inquiry in the UK’s House of Commons it became clear that none of the leaders of the banks that have just been bailed out had any banking qualifications.

All of these financial gluttons should learn something from Millard Fuller who passed away on February 3rd. This was the man who more or less invented the term, “sweat equity” and the “theology of enough.” He developed a philosophy that typified generosity of spirit, which should inform all our thinking for the future well being of our society. He co-founded Habitat for Humanity with his wife, Linda.

He didn’t start off as an altruist, making his first million before he was 30. Linda refused to stick with him if he was going to obsessively collect money as his reason for living. To get her to return he changed himself and his ambitions. He not only got Linda back he also went on to fulfill his dream of building homes with no interest mortgages for the poor. With the help of uncountable volunteers and many future occupants their organizations have built nearly 1.5 million homes with no interest mortgages around the world.

As Fuller said, “There are sufficient resources in the world for everybody but not enough for the greed of even a significant minority.”

BankingTrust

2009-02-10T17:03:00.001Z

Today in the UK there was a governmental commission of inquiry into the banking debacle that led our economies to the brink of a total financial apocalypse.

For the first time, in public, our leading bankers were summoned to explain their actions and inactions to our elected representatives in the full unforgiving stare of the public. For the first time these so called Masters of the Universe volunteered that they were unreservedly sorry for their mistakes and injudicious decisions. It’s about time.

The Chief Executives also admitted that the bonus culture, which they led and profited from, is a flawed system. Everyone now seems to share the view that bonuses should be linked to results over the longer term, measured in years, rather than linked to single deals. I am relieved that the greedy bastards have admitted this, and now, feeling contrite, one supposes that these pigs at the public trough will return their own grossly inflated bonuses of the past?

What was not investigated in today’s question and answer session is the cause of the underlying problems, in order to prevent any recurrence. I believe I know what is at the root of the catastrophe and it is a more profound, albeit simpler thing to correct than the obvious greed culture.

When you look at the relative knowledge and experience of these former banking Chief Executives one factor stands out, and it is so clearly the key factor in the disaster that I am surprised I am the only journalist to write about it. These men were brought in from outside banking, and they had no idea what they were doing! This is so obvious that I’d better repeat my research finding, these men largely had NO experience in banking prior to running our biggest banks.

Would any of us hire someone with no experience to run a chain of supermarkets, would any of us hire someone to run a car manufacturer with no experience, would any of us hire someone to run anything without any experience?

Of course the answer is no. It clearly didn’t occur to the Boards of Directors, the personnel officers, the shareholders or the headhunters that the bloody banks needed someone who knew something about banking before they hired these incompetent apologists.

The reasons for hiring these Chief Executives was a history of perceived success elsewhere, usually garnered from their deal making entrepreneurship. These Chief Executives didn’t even have sufficient knowledge to be a bank cashier let alone run a bank.

The banks clearly deserved what happened to them, but we, the public, did not.

IsraeliElections

2009-02-09T17:26:00.001Z

There is about to be an election in Israel. Leading in the opinion polls is Benyamin Nehatanyahu, who heads up the right wing Likud party and who was Prime Minister a few years ago. He swears that if elected his party will not give one inch of Israel or the West Bank to the Palestinians and then dilutes this somewhat by stating that there could be pullbacks but only if there were a comprehensive peace settlement.

Trailing him is Kadima, the current government, who are being led in the campaign by Tzipi Livni, the present Foreign Minister. This is the party formed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, prior to his stroke. If Kadima lose this election as it seems they will it is possible that the party might just implode. Their campaign has simply failed to ignite the people of Israel behind their pledge to continue negotiations for a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestine Authority led by its President, Mahmoud Abbas.

Not far behind Kadima in the polls is the Yisrael Beiteineu party led by Avigdor Lieberman. This party has a largely Russian born support base and boasts a platform in which all citizens of Israel, including the Palestinians will have to pledge allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state. The fact they are showing so well in the polls is a sure indication of the general shift to the right in the country’s politics.

Trailing in last of the big parties is Ehud Barak and the Labour Party. For many years after the independence of the country they were the natural government. Presently Barak is the Minister of Defense and is recognized as doing the job well following the perceived military success of the recent Gaza operations. His foreign affairs policy and that of Kadima are pretty much indistinguishable. But he is hampered by his previous experience as Prime Minister when he negotiated with Clinton and Arafat to give up approximately 97% of the West Bank to the Palestinians, which they famously declined.

The likely outcome is for Likud to win a fairly narrow victory which will need the support of other minority parties to form yet another shaky and fairly narrow coalition. The probable partners in this will be religious parties and potentially the even more right wing Yisrael Beiteneinu. This fills many observers with dread, as they perceive Netanyahu to be a right wing fanatical bogeyman. They hear his American accented English picked up during some of the years he spent growing up in the USA and they translate this into hearing him as if he were an American neo- conservative. It would be a mistake to do so. This man is steeped in Israeli history, myths and legends and this, for good or ill, informs his every thought and action.

It is entirely possible that a future Prime Minister Netanyahu could be the perfect person to make a lasting peace with Syria and the Palestinians. Historically it is strong men from the right who are more able to make peace deals with the Arabs, not the well-intentioned liberals from the left. This might be due to the psychology of both the Israelis and the Arabs who respect strength in their paternalistic leader figures. In both societies nurturing and conciliation are sometimes perceived as female traits, often confused with weakness.

Also necessary will be even handed support for any reasonable settlement by the USA that provides guaranteed security behind recognized borders. Within this mix there must be economic benefits for following the agreed path and the reverse for those that don’t. Hamas must not be allowed to sit at the table unless and until they recognize that the State of Israel is legitimate as a Jewish state. This includes a renouncing by them of all acts of violence and an acceptance and adherence to previously agreed treaties.

The irony is this; Hamas is stronger politically because it was badly defeated militarily. If there are moderate forces within the movement they must now show their heads above the parapets or whoever will soon lead Israel will simply have no one to speak with.

EnglishVacations

2009-02-08T23:15:00.000Z

Just when you think there isn’t much more you could write about the erosion of personal freedom in the UK along comes another brick in the wall.

Our freedoms are being removed, adjusted, lessened and blunted a little more with every passing day. Our present government is sleepwalking us to a totalitarian state in which it will become an offense to even question the lessening of your freedoms.

Our government has decided to monitor every trip into and out of our country. It has already started to do its utmost to achieve this by recently logging 70 million of our recent journeys, and they aim to raise this number to over 100 million in the next few months. After this has been achieved they aim to know where you went, who with, when and for what purpose. This is part of their obsessive wish to know everything about you and then will come the control.

Imagine a time when the civil servants will ration the number of trips you can take in order to reduce your carbon footprint?

Think about a future in which an anonymous official decides you mustn’t take your child on holiday during term time and will have the information to make it impossible for you to do so?

How far are we from being monitored for tax purposes using this new information?

The published reason for this governmental need for such information is that it will help them deal with externally linked terrorism threats. This is, of course, the same reason given for huge swathes of new legislation and quite frankly it is not believable or tenable when confronted with forensic examination.

The government is setting up a new centre to monitor and evaluate all this additional information in a part of Manchester, North West England. It will no doubt employ several hundred trained operatives. Their purpose will be much broader than the one admitted.

As with the money transfer tracing it has another purpose than just anti terrorism. This is a function of governmental control and tax gathering. The more information that Big Brother has on us the more it can dictate our lives.

The real danger for our future is that all of these small breaches of our freedom will be abused, misused or simply botched in a future in which we might find ourselves governed by some form of dictatorial government who will only need to use the levers of control now being foolishly put in place. We must do all we can to roll back this tide before it is too late.

BankingHonor

2009-02-06T14:44:00.002Z

Honor is an old fashioned and out of date concept. It seems that as we slide into economically troubled times it is every person for themselves, let the devil take the hindmost.

The trouble with this philosophy is that we are rapidly descending into financial anarchy. We have all witnessed many recent instances of the banks’ rules being unilaterally changed on the hoof whilst they operate outside normal rules of self-restraint and decency.

This has allowed the heads of banks to take huge bonuses whilst being bailed out with taxpayers’ money as if this is OK. It is not.

Furthermore banks are still not lending properly to their customers and are charging more for their questionable services, not less. What choice does a bank customer have when the bank squeezes them? There are many that cannot arrange a loan at even inflated rates, and who are, as a consequence facing bankruptcy. Why should this be happening when the government has bailed out the banks with our money?

The answer is bank greed compounded by fear. The banks are terrified of how near they are to the financial abyss and will do almost anything to increase their liquid capital reserves to ensure their long-term futures. In this equation, we the customers are very much at the bottom of the list of those who need to be serviced and looked after.

There are decent exceptions to this rule; old-fashioned bankers who remember that their organizations only exist because of long term, and hitherto hugely profitable relationships with their customers, but faceless people who are plugged into management by computer program have largely replaced these once noble, honorable men and women.

There is irony to be found in this situation. If the banks were to take a more sanguine and far-sighted view, and surely some amongst them must; those banks will surely prosper. Generosity of spirit will equate with their enlightened self-interest.

There was a time, not so long ago, when you shook hands with your banker, lawyer, accountant, in fact any professional and most business people, and you could rely on them to do what they had promised. What a sad reflection on our world today that this is no longer the case.

WakeUpBritain

2009-02-05T17:22:00.001Z

When did we Brits become such wimps?

It has snowed this week; it is still snowing in some parts of the country. That used to be called winter, now it is a “major snow event!”

This has resulted in our traffic infrastructure unraveling several times and huge delays in almost everything.

I didn’t receive any mail between last Saturday and yesterday when I went to the Post Office to collect it. This major trek passed without incident, but apparently was impossible for my post delivery worker. He was clearly concerned about his safety on the treacherous ground. I wanted to say, “Listen Nanook, it wasn’t minus 50, but hovering just under zero. There were no major drifts of snow, just some ice that could easily be walked around, if you wanted to bad enough.” When I spoke with the lady at the Post Office she informed me that the post office workers concerned had to be consulted, “and if they are happy with the conditions then they will deliver.” Clearly they hadn’t been happy for a few days!

Schools in some parts of the UK have been closed down for the week because of the potential danger to our tiny tots. Now sounding like an old fart I compare this to when we were kids; in weather worse than this we walked to the bus or if the buses couldn’t make the journey we walked the whole way, and we loved the adventure. If we didn’t turn up we were in trouble, and it was unthinkable for the teachers not to appear.

Another thing that seems to have disappeared is simple self help. When it used to snow we all got out our shovels and dug a path between the pavement (sidewalk) and our homes. During the recent snow I was only one of two houses in my turning that did this, all the other neighbors simply left the snow and ice where it was. If only to prevent themselves or others from slipping over you would think that they should have more sense than this, but apparently common sense is another thing that goes missing when the temperature hits zero.

When I collected my post I noticed that outside the building it was like an ice rink. I pointed this out to the counter clerk, she looked outside and solemnly nodded her head, “Yes,” she said, “We noticed that and called the council.” It wasn’t worth my while elevating my already considerable blood pressure by suggesting that she grabs a shovel and takes care of the Post Offices own exterior.

I completed my own office work and decided that the safest bet to get my outgoing mail delivered was for me to take it to the nearest sub Post Office in town. Again I walked the few minutes and found that this central post box was full to overflowing. I called the Main Post Office who thanked me for pointing out that the box was full. “The reason is,” they stated in a monotone that you couldn’t fabricate, “that we didn’t collect from there this morning due to the weather, but we will be collecting from there tonight.” I tried to suggest that the weather hadn’t actually changed between the morning and evening but apparently the post office workers concerned had to be consulted, “and if they are happy with the conditions then they will collect.”

As a country we used to have the so called Bulldog spirit, the bloody mindedness that has won us countless battles against seemingly insuperable odds, but now we can’t deal with a little bit of slush, snow and ice. Come on Britain, wake up, this is pathetic!

Lies

2009-02-04T18:08:00.000Z

There are two different and disturbing stories in the press today. One gets little coverage and the other hardly any. They share a common theme that is not, at first, obvious.

During the Gaza battles it was globally and hysterically reported that Israel had intentionally shelled a United Nations school in which civilians were sheltering. This was vociferously condemned both by the Secretary General of the United Nations and the local head of that organization. It did not happen.

In Europe Pope Benedict XV1 caused controversy by reinstating the excommunicated bishop, Richard Williamson. This is a man of the cloth who does little to hide his anti Semitism. This is most clearly evidenced by his Holocaust denial. Williamson states that the Nazis did not kill 6 million Jewish people, he puts the number at 300,000.

The Vatican, by inviting Williamson back into the fold appears to condone the bishop making a blood libel that we, the Jewish people have taken part in the biggest con trick in the history of mankind.

Just for the record my own family, bishop, lost some 63 of its number to the Nazis. My paternal grandmother’s entire family was wiped out. I am not imagining this, they didn’t all go on holiday and not return, they were shot, gassed, starved and tortured to untimely deaths because they were guilty of being Jewish. There are exhaustive records for millions more who were similarly massacred and these are available to everyone.

In war, the saying goes, "the first victim is the truth." Now there has been an in-depth investigative report about the Gaza UN School shelling conducted by the Canadian Globe and Mail's Middle East correspondent, Patrick Martin and he has proved that the incident at the United Nations school did not take place.

Like the supposed “Jenin Massacre” of a few years back, the last time Israel felt compelled to foray into Gaza to stop terrorist missiles from landing on their civilians, it has proven to be a publicity relations fabrication by Hamas and their fellow travelers.

Martin’s front-page investigation of the Israeli shelling of Hamas terrorists near a UN school that led to the tragic deaths of 43 civilians. His conclusion is that the facts don't support the accepted story that the school was shelled.

According to Martin who witnessed the physical evidence and conducted interviews with several eyewitnesses, including a teacher who was present when the shelling took place: While a few people were injured from shrapnel landing inside the white-and-blue-walled UNRWA compound, not a single person in the compound was killed. The 43 people who died in the incident were all outside, on the street, where three mortar shells did land. No shells landed inside the schoolyard.

Martin corroborates the Israeli accounts that the IDF accurately returned fire to the location from which it was being shelled by Hamas terrorists. The killing of 43 civilians on the street as a result may be a good reason for investigation, but this clearly is not the same as an intentional shooting into a schoolyard crowded with refuge-seekers. Any such investigation must also ask why the Hamas mortar team were embedded with the civilians.

Martin states that the incorrect public pronouncements by the UN helped allow "the misconception to linger" that Israel had committed a war crime.

Palestinian civilians were milling around the area where Hamas was firing rockets at Israel. This cannot be Israel's fault, but points out that Hamas fired from an area frequented by civilians, engaging in what former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls a double war crime: "Attacking [Israeli] civilians and hiding behind [Palestinian] civilians."

However, during the conflict, John Ging, UNRWA's operations director in Gaza, condemned the Israeli attack, as "horrific" and stated Israel knew it was targeting a UN facility.

"We have provided the GPS co-ordinates of every single one of our locations," he told the BBC. "They are clearly marked with UN insignia, flags flying, lights shining on the flags at night. It's very clear that these are United Nations installations."

During the Globe and Mail investigation, Ging totally reversed his previous announcements and acknowledged that all three Israeli mortar shells landed outside the school and that "no one was killed in the school. "I told the Israelis that none of the shells landed in the school," he said.

A European Member of Parliament, Paul van Buitenen submitted a parliamentary question based on the Globe & Mail's investigation. The MEP points out that UNRWA's John Ging admits in the article that Israel didn't attack the school but then blamed the confusion on the Israelis. Van Buitenen says that that the EU, which is UNRWA's single largest donor, wrongly condemned Israel for attacking the UN school.

Will the EU now apologize to Israel for wrongly condemning it without checking the facts?

Will the EU investigate Mr. Ging’s dissemination of misleading information concerning the supposed attack on this UNRWA school and whether this was politically motivated?

We return to the issue of the Pope welcoming bishop Richard Williamson into the Roman Catholic fold. This reeks of the lowest form of self-serving expediency as the church has stated that their action does not mean that the Holy See shares the bishop’s views. Put another way, the Pope doesn’t agree with the anti Semitic stuff but the unity of the church is apparently more important than upsetting a few Jews.

Germany’s Central Council of Jews broke off their ties with the Catholic church to protest the Vatican’s ill considered move to reinstate the bishop and three more of his ultra traditionalist fellow bishops who are all part of the ultra conservative Pius X sect of the infamous French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

The German nation, led by their Chancellor Angela Merkel, has taken the moral high ground by demanding that the Vatican make a public very clear rejection of Holocaust denial. “The Pope and the Vatican should clarify unambiguously that there can be no denial and there must be positive relations with the Jewish community overall. This should not be allowed to pass without consequences, “ she added, “This is not just a matter, in my opinion, for the Christian, Catholic and Jewish communities in Germany.”

Other German bishops have expressed dismay and “a loss of faith in the Pope.” Whilst Cardinal Walter Kesper, who is in charge of Roman Catholic relations with the Jews admitted that the episode had been mishandled by Rome.

Bishop Williamson is on record as stating that Jews are seeking world domination and further has claimed that the Americans planned the 9/11 attacks on their own people and finally that the Freemasons have corrupted the Vatican. He seems like he might make a perfect future candidate for Pope himself, or perhaps the nearest lunatic asylum for some obviously needed treatment.

It appears to be open season for people seemingly in moral authority, such as bishops, cardinals and the Secretary General of the United Nations to either lie about Jewish people, or just as bad, to allow others to lie on their behalf protected by their mantle of power, in some of the most rampant and obvious anti Semitism witnessed since the Nazis.

None of us should allow such lies, distortions or injustices to go unchallenged or we will be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

HealthandSafety

2009-02-03T15:48:00.000Z

Snow clearing is not something we are wonderful at in the UK. We don't seem built to withstand more than an inch of the white stuff, but that's probably because we don't get much snow, so we don't get to practice.

This week we had between half a foot and one foot of snow in great areas of the country, and for one day our infrastructure was brought to pretty much of a standstill. Personally it doesn't unhinge me that this happens once every twenty years or so, but the way the commentators and pundits are having a hissy fit you would think we had just experienced the Apocalypse!

Ease up everyone, it snowed, we will clear it up in a day or so and we will survive, I promise.

Taking up this theme it seems as though anything that happens which is remotely negative is someone else's fault. We have truly become imbecilic if we expect someone else to take care of our every need. I know how insidious this is by comparison. I went to Spain a year or so back and was walking down a pavement (sidewalk) and noticing it was uneven turned to my companions and said, "pavements like these wouldn't be allowed in England!" I had caught the dreaded disease of "health and safety!"

This ailment is brought about by groups of little civil servants who exist to eliminate all risk from our lives. It resulted yesterday, when it snowed, with their not allowing any buses to run in London. They did this and stopped most of the trains and underground on the basis that it could be dangerous, not that anything bad had happened, but that it could, therefore it must be stopped from happening.

Of course if we were truly to eliminate risk we would never do anything and then nothing bad could happen, but the unfortunate truth is that nothing good could happen either.

If Health and Safety had been in charge of the financial sector of our economy there is no chance that we could have fallen into the abyss in which we presently find ourselves. However it is equally true that we would never have enjoyed any prosperity prior to the problems.

It is not the natural habitat of mankind to live risk free and never can be. There are bad things and bad people out there who mean us harm, and we'd better be a little toughened up or we won't survive the harsh realities that are sure to find us. Otherwise we will be like the Native American tribes who led a life free of our germs and diseases until we arrived and shared ours with them. The result was the decimation and subjugation of entire civilizations.

We need to be responsible members of our society, for our own benefit and that of each other. Government cannot and must not try to legislate or micro manage every aspect of our lives when the way we behave and treat one another is our own responsibility.

WhateverNext

2009-02-02T14:33:00.000Z

In England it snowed overnight. In fact it was the heaviest snow we’ve had for nearly two decades, and the weather forecasters are predicting this is just the start of “the biggest snow event in over a decade.” Put another way, it is snowing heavily. These things are relative; here we panic when the depth of the snow reaches 10 inches, whereas in Canada they moan at 10 feet.

It’s interesting to note that even as the ice caps actually increase and whilst the temperature decreases and our snowfall levels are healthily high the global warming doomsayers persist in their politically correct predictions. According to them we are about to all be flooded by the melting polar ice caps. I challenge them to provide proof. I simply don’t believe them. They are either well –intentioned but stupid, or evil extremists who use any lie to make their insupportable arguments appear correct.

I remember the predictions that these same thought police came up with previously, and all of which proved entirely false. This ignoble tradition began in the 18th century when the first such dire predictions of the earth’s demise were widely circulated. It was announced then that the world’s resources would not be able to feed the population, which was then a fraction of what it is today. It has been proven to be a wildly inaccurate prediction as we’ve been eating well for the intervening 200 years.

Of course there are parts of the world where people do not get enough to eat, but that is due to unfair economic systems, corrupt governments and bad, iniquitous distribution. It has never been due to our inability to meet our production needs.

In the mid 1960’s a book entitled “The Population Bomb” by Paul Erlich predicted that hundreds of millions of people would be starving to death in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and that about 65 million of these people dying of starvation would be in the USA. He went on to state that by the year 2000 England would cease to exist. Plainly Paul is a prat. I don’t want to rub it in too much, but what the hell Paul, you were totally wrong in general and in detail, in fact you were talking out of your politically correct anal orifice. The thing that should concern us all is that Mr Erlich is a member of the Optimum Population Trust despite his not having a clue, and being totally incorrect.

Such bodies as the Optimum Population Trust demand the power to curb the amount of children we can have. Remember that they don’t want you to retain the right to reproduce as you want, but demand that they should decide how many children we should all have. They are the true guardians of Nazi and hard line Communist ideology regarding how much we should reproduce. Welcome to the real Green policy leading to a brave new world.

There are doctors who follow such political beliefs who proudly declare that they will refuse to offer fertility treatment to any women who want to have more than 4 children because they believe this will cause an insupportable strain on the earth’s resources.

Our government’s Green adviser, Joanthon Porritt declared last week that it was “irresponsible” for the people of this great land to have more than 2 children per family because it was creating an unbearable burden on the environment. I suppose this follows that other great example of “Green” democracy and tolerance, The Peoples Republic of China, because they have long enjoyed a 1 child per family policy. Nazi Germany had an even more selective reproduction policy.

The UK is doing its best to be a bastion, a shining light of political correctness. After all this is the country that allowed its local government to ban refuse collections more than once every two weeks for environmental reasons. Perhaps they don’t realize that refuse allowed to stand and rot for a couple of weeks might be a bigger health hazard?

Today, due to the heavy snow, the parks in London were closed for “health and safety” reasons. Yes, we are banned from play in our parks with our kids today, in case we might slip over.

Our milk now has a label on the outside of the carton, because it contains milk, and therefore, if you’re allergic to milk, you shouldn’t drink, er, milk!

On our television and cinema screens we see a multitude of advertisements from our big brother government telling us it is unsafe to have unprotected sex, it is bad to drink and drive, it is bad to take drugs and drive, it is dangerous to cross the road without looking first, it is good to study math, it is very good to study science. I’m astonished they haven’t made a commercial instructing me in the correct manner of how to wipe my bum.

Also, in this proud tradition of freedom and tolerance, we allowed the installation of more than 4,000,000 CCTV cameras that gives us the opportunity to be photographed, one way or another, about 2-400 times per day, every day. These cameras are being enhanced all the time and are now linked in an enormously powerful combination. Some of these cameras come complete with such devices as vehicle license recognition, and soon many with behavior recognition, face recognition and listening and broadcast facilities.

Undaunted we have made it possible, through anti terrorism legislation, for our local councils to install tiny cameras into our refuse bins to make certain that we sort our rubbish in the prescribed manner, or we will be fined.

Local government is using the same legislation to check whether people claiming benefits are actually cohabiting with each other. This is achieved by dispatching council employees to spy on the potentially false claimants. When did it become local governments role to pervert the use of supposedly legitimate anti terrorism legislation to see if man A is having consensual sex with woman B?

Our government informs us that we need to eat less and exercise more. In fact it has been paying for huge advertising campaigns to promote a healthy lifestyle on TV and elsewhere. Don’t they understand that it’s our own choice how we live, diet and exercise? It is not the job of the nanny state to instruct or legislate on such matters.

In fact it is no one’s business, as long as we don’t break existing laws, how we choose to live, where and with whom. Even if I want to drink myself to oblivion, or exercise until I drop or jumping up and down naked and yodeling my head off it's my right and no one is going to take that away. It is my business and no one has the right to tell me otherwise.

This is a battle for freedom and we are allowing it to drift away in a fog of baloney loosely called political correctness and it is probably the most insidious and dangerous assault on our liberties and common sense since the English Civil War.

I have a guaranteed method for controlling the population and relieving stress. All of these politically correct fools who tell everyone else how to live, reproduce etc. should commit collective suicide, then we would all have what we want.

Isms

2009-01-31T10:58:00.000Z

Just when we thought we were safe along comes the recession. Not many saw it coming, and the few of us who did could do nothing about it except warn anyone who would listen. That does not deter me from warning about the next big hazard that is now ready to stalk our streets.

This outcome of economic disaster is much more dangerous and pernicious than the problems that cause it. I am describing xenophobia and race hate, which originates from fear and ignorance.

Yesterday we saw evidence of this in the UK when wildcat strikes broke out in protest at foreign workers being used to fulfill a contract in an oil refinery. The imported workers are from the European Union and can therefore work legally, without restraint in this country. Furthermore the contract was given after a formal tendering process to an American company, and it was they who sub contracted the labor in from mainland Europe.

I have the sinking feeling that the people who follow “ ‘ism’s” instead of employing their own brains are behind this “spontaneous” wave of protests. I mean followers of Communism, Socialism, and Fascism etc. These people wait any length of time to find an opportunity to fulfill their exclusive utopia. Like any fanatics they believe that they are the followers of the only true religion and there can be no other. That’s the trouble with ‘ism’s, they are mean spirited and vicious. They will only be happy when they have control, and the control must be total, no one else can be allowed to exist. The Taliban in Afghanistan are just another form of this type of extremism, as are Al Queada, Hamas and many others. But we must be very wary of letting anyone open the door even an inch to the creeping extremism.

The pickets in support of the British workers who didn’t get the work are technically illegal. But the big point is that they are emotionally right, it doesn’t feel acceptable for British workers to be out of work whilst their European counterparts are bussed in to fill the vacancies.

It would be even easier for us to make that point if there were not British people working in every other country in the world. We can’t use this economic equation only when it suits us.

PoliceNotPoliticsPlease

2009-01-28T13:24:00.000Z

Tomorrow is my birthday, I shall be approaching the status of an ancient but I still feel like a boy. How did this happen, where did the years go?

Aren’t I that little wide eyed boy pressing every button to ride the elevators up and down the tower blocks at the end of my street with my friends, hoping not to get caught, but confident that I could outrun anyone if we were. Where did the innocence of that first drink, cigarette, kiss or “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” all go?

Perhaps it’s that part of us that form the bedrock of our personalities, the thing that makes us behave a certain way in our later lives. Because along with all the mischief we perpetrated on our neighbors we also learned the rudiments of how to properly behave, what the rules were, and what would happen to you if you disobeyed them.

My first major lesson in this regard came when my friend, Francis Monk, who I shall always blame for leading me astray, and I decided to find out what girls in bathing suits looked like. We were neighbors in West Acton, a quiet suburb of London, in small homes with no pretensions. We were about six years old and the back end of my garden had a heavily wooded area that overlooked the big swimming pool belonging to Haberdasher’s School for Girls. It was the Girls bit that grabbed our boyish attention. The older girls would walk shivering to the poolside, wrapped in large towels, and then, just before they jumped in, they removed their towels. We could see that they had bumps where we had no bumps, and no bumps where we did have bumps. Both of us had done our best to investigate this phenomenon by trying to accidentally enter our bathrooms when our sisters went about their ablutions, but no luck!

We had to take drastic action if we were to find out the secrets of the female form. We didn’t know why, but we knew this was an important part of our quest for knowledge. We consulted with each other and came up with a plan. We would throw a bunch of rocks from the garden into the pool and when the girls jumped in they would hurt their feet and in their astonishment would be forced to jump out of the pool and this would cause them to expose their bumpy bits to our more leisurely inspection.

The night before the appointed day Frances and I climbed the garden shed, quite a feat in itself, something akin to the ascent of the North face of Everest, and, without breaking cover, managed to lob a large arsenal of rocks into the pool. Satisfied with our efforts we went to sleep excited. The next morning arrived, nice and shiny, the warm sun coating our backs as we lay on top of the shed and waited for the girls. Right on schedule they arrived, and clearly these were the big girls, and this was beyond our wildest expectations. They went through their normal ritual of giggling and standing by the pool and dipping their toes in to test the temperature and then finally, there was the brief flash of blue swimming costume as the young ladies jumped into the water.

Within moments there was a great deal of thrashing around, shouting and complaining as their feet found our pointy objects. As planned they all started to jump out of the pool in a mild outbreak of mass hysteria. We forgot all about our covert reconnaissance as we burst into a fit of giggle. As in one of those Vampire movies there was a terrible moment as all the girls and their teacher turned in our direction. The game was up; they clearly knew that we were the guilty parties. We ran without looking back, jumping from our elevated perch, not wanting to hear the accusing voices.

We thought we were safe as there was a major fence between the school and ourselves and were too naïve to understand that it was perhaps foolish to undertake a crime from my own back garden. But nothing happened that day, and being young boys we compared notes about the bumpy bits and decided we needed to do a bit more thorough research.

The next day dawned and there was a ring on our doorbell. I answered it and standing there was the biggest police officer I had ever seen. He was wearing Sergeant’s stripes and was not happy. “Is your mother in? “ He asked, I knew the game was up, and I could feel a dreadful knot in my stomach as I estimated how many years they would lock me up for. I trudged up to my mother, and told her that there was a policeman downstairs for her. “What have you been up to? “ she asked me, on her way downstairs. I intuitively knew it was best not to volunteer an admission of guilt, after all the police man might only be there to arrest someone else she knew so didn’t answer. I would admit nothing under any circumstances; let them provide evidence of my throwing the stones. How could they? I thought hopefully.

I heard a muffled conversation from the front door and my mother, who until then I had loved without reservation came back up the stairs. She looked at me and shook her head, “Get downstairs and talk to the Sergeant.” She instructed. I went, my head bowed, to meet my executioner. When I got to the door he seemed to have grown a bit, he was so big that he was now blocking out the light and all I could see was a giant blue silhouette.

Very calmly the policeman questioned me about what had happened at the swimming pool. I broke down in terror after about ten seconds, and admitted everything. “Your mother has asked me to deal with your punishment,” he intoned, and with that he gave me a belt around my ear. I can still feel the sting, imaging the reddest ear in England, and that was my ear, it was also ringing so badly that I think I can still hear it reverberate if I try hard enough. The policeman continued, “And if I have to come and talk to you about this again I shall lock you up and it will be for a very long time, understood?” I swore I understood perfectly and I did. I have never thrown anything in anyone’s swimming pool ever since, in fact I have had that small boy’s healthy fear and respect of the law ever since.

It’s what I would call common sense policing and perhaps London’s new Metropolitan Commissioner of Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, appointed today, could learn something from such common sense. It is long past time that the men doing this job thought a little less about politics and a bit more about being a police officer.

ShameOnUsAll

2009-01-26T19:47:00.000Z

When I was growing up in the austerity of post war England we had some certainties in our confined universe. Our country could always beat the Germans in a fight, our music and fashion were the best, our police were the best and our bureaucrats and politicians were boring, straight and efficient. Oh how sadly things have changed.

The Insight column in Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper yesterday exposed four members of the House of Lords who it is alleged, accepted bribes to amend legislation. Today one of the Lords implicated stood up in our second House of Parliament and admitted he had accepted the offer of money in this manner but didn’t feel he had done anything wrong. He went on to add that he apologized if he had done something they considered wrong.

What world do these people inhabit? It is entirely wrong and deplorable behavior for any member of our political elite to accept money from anyone, ever, to do the job they were put in place and are well paid to do. It is even more worrying that their Lordships don’t appear to understand that they have done something wrong.

There is now some evidence that this is just one example of this legislation fixing. When you listen to the tapes already in the public domain recorded by the Insight team it soon becomes clear that there has been long-term endemic corruption of this kind in the House of Lords

The second house of the British Parliament is, it is now clear, used for this form of corruption because the elected House of Commons is too tightly regulated for anyone to get away with it. Ironically even if the House of Lords find their peers guilty the only punishment that can be imposed is for the colleagues to refuse to listen to them speak in a debate. There is little wonder that these greedy, grubby little men would risk such opprobrium for the large sums of cash seemingly on offer.

I am hugely disappointed that our previously revered system of government has allowed this awful pattern of action to become a part of the covert political reality of our country. We have to examine both ourselves and our country in light of this awful expose. How could such reprehensible actions exist in our society? Why do seemingly upstanding businesses feel it is appropriate or permissible to offer bribes to our legislators?

It is vital that the laws are changed so that the next time someone behaves like this in the House of Lords they will get thrown into jail for a very long time. Otherwise the citizens of our country will have no trust in their leaders or moral compass from those of whom we rightfully expect more.

EndMultiCulturalism

2009-01-24T17:18:00.002Z

It has recently become acceptable to demonize an entire religion for the actions of some maniacs in their midst. I am writing about Islam. I am not an expert on this religion and as far as I am concerned, if they left everyone else alone I wouldn’t bother with them any more than I would Catholics or Hindus or any other religion.

In the last few months I have received an ever-growing number of hateful messages aimed at the Islamic world. If they were aimed at any other group there would be a huge outcry. I wonder if people who read my articles believe that because I am a Zionist and a supporter of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state that I would automatically hate Islam. For the record my support of Israel has no bearing on my respect for Islam as a religion.

However my contempt for Islamic extremists runs deep. They are selfish bullies who follow an obscenely tunnel visioned and warped version of their religion that has no place in a democracy. They demand that everyone live in a Caliphate in which we all have to be devout Muslims or die. These are the same kind of people as those that run the terrorist group in Gaza, Hamas, who publicly state it is now legitimate to kill all Jews wherever they are, even the Jewish children. The same people as the Taliban in Afghanistan, who have stoned people to death for adultery and poured acid into the faces of young girls who dared to attend school. The same people who killed over 3,000 innocent civilians working in a couple of buildings in New York on 9/11.

Don’t ever confuse the legitimate reactions of self-defense and self -preservation with the awful acts of carnage that provoke us. The spin -doctors of extreme Islam has so confused our Western population that they now confuse the victims with the culprits. It is no longer questioned that it is legitimate to attack our values and us but improbably we constrain ourselves and limit our reactions. We must continue to do so or we will sink to the level of the gutter with our enemies who confuse our courtesy, civility and hospitality with weakness and foolishness.

Make no mistake the Islamic extremists remain dangerous and are working hard to destabilize and destroy any society which doesn’t conform to their dreams of a Caliphate and they will do anything to reach that goal.

We must not be idiotic in the way we combat such lunacy nor can we ignore the threat however unpalatable that may be to their well intentioned fellow traveling nincompoops of the liberal left who want to pretend no such threat exists. It would be easy to adopt the tactics of the Nazis to beat down this threat but that would, perversely, only encourage the militant Islamic extremists further.

Instead of our reducing ourselves to circulating hateful propaganda to match the venomous poison of this mad fringe of the Muslim world we should be doing all we can to eradicate their falsehoods. We can only do this with intelligence, wisdom and wit.

Our leaders must launch a coordinated campaign of public relations aimed to penetrate the ghettoized world the Muslim minority inhabits.

We must immediately abandon the failed experiment of multi culturalism that has contaminated our Western societies during persistent waves of immigration.

We must facilitate integration and abandon any thoughts of a separate society living within a larger society. For a start that means that students in our education system have to learn the language of their host country and there should be no attempt to cater to their mother tongues.

We must support other democracies with all we have so that we can defend ourselves in this continuing war for the survival of our civilization. Make no mistake this is a war in all but name. At the moment it is mainly a war of ideas, philosophy and words, but in many places in the world the war is already punctuated by the sound of bullets. We must wake up to this real threat and confront it without losing what we are and what we must value.

TheManComesAround

2009-01-20T11:17:00.002Z

Today I welcome President Barack Obama to his new post. Ironically, as I started to write this article the play list I was listening to automatically selected Johnny Cash singing “The Man Comes Around”. There could not be a more appropriate theme tune for the next few years. “ Behold a white horse,” sings Cash, and the question is stark, is our society ready to die an ignominious death or is there some glory yet to be won by us in ways yet unimagined if we follow the black man riding our white horse?

There are, without doubt, wholly unrealistic expectations for Obama that he couldn’t fulfill even if he were the Messiah, which for the sake of those of you too dewy eyed to realize, he isn’t and doesn’t claim to be.

We understand the sheer excitement and exuberance of the day brought about because the man is seen as the natural inheritor of greatness bestowed on the first African American to achieve the dream passed to him directly from the founding fathers, through Abraham Lincoln via Martin Luther King.

The rest of the world, almost without exception, shares America’s excitement about today’s events. The reason for this is that the world actually likes and admires America. We share many common dreams and aspirations, and the world wants America to do well but it no longer enjoys America acting as the lone gunfighter taking on the guy in the black hat alone. Now the time has come for a series of genuine partnerships built around political consensus. Both the problems and solutions are global. Obama clearly understands this and we can only hope that this is the path he intends to pursue, even when the going gets tough.

Obama passed the first test, which wasn’t easy, in winning the Primaries against some super tough opposition in the person of Hillary Clinton who he later had the good sense to appoint as his Secretary of State; he then vanquished a creditable and honest competitor in John McCain. But that is now just history, and today the clock starts on the new President and what he can actually achieve in office.

There will inevitably be a honeymoon period when everything the newly elected President does is viewed in a rosy hue that lends brilliance and luster to his every action. Because of the unique circumstances surrounding his inauguration, turning it into more of a coronation, it’s likely this period might last more than a year. Lest you forget Prime Minister Blair and President Bush both had remarkably successful honeymoon periods in office but left under clouds of suspicion and loathing.

We can only use today to pause and speculate on the enormity and complexity of the problems facing Obama. No incoming President has had as much to deal with on day one in office. Not just a total financial and economic collapse, but two wars and problems in the Near and Middle East, Latin America and we could go on, but it would just serve to depress what should be a day of celebration and joy that this man’s perceived ability alone has catapulted him to the highest elected office in the world. Can we dare hope that this man is the lever around which we find the tipping point where America and the West reassert its moral purpose and compass? It would be wonderful if this were the case.

America needs a great leader and the darkest hour is just before the dawn. Whatever our personal views on Margaret Thatcher she took the UK from an ungovernable economic basket case and totally turned it around, so one motivated and determined person of enormous vision can lead us and save the situation. One person can make a difference, is Obama that man?

The world joins America in praying for the new President to be as good as he looks and sounds, we could all do with some calm, astute and well intentioned leadership shaped by humanity, intelligence and heart. The world welcomes President Barack Obama.

GoodbyeGeorgeW

2009-01-19T14:25:00.000Z

I am taking this opportunity to say goodbye to President George W. Bush. Sure, like you I have seen him lampooned a million times in every conceivable way. It wasn’t always like this, it’s strange how short our memories are, like the incoming President Barack Obama, George W. had a popularity rating of over 80%.

The perception of the outgoing President is that he was a total idiot who couldn’t walk and talk. Interesting that those who know him paint a totally different and contradictory picture. I don’t have personal knowledge of the man, a great many of whose policies I don’t like or simply abhor. But I don’t think he is a fool and I don’t believe he had been foolish, any more than most of his predecessors.

Moreover I am prepared to take bets that long-term history is going to be a great deal kinder to his stint in office than predecessors like Clinton, Carter or many others.

Obviously speaking in public was painful to George W. and any of us listening to his tortured syntax and garbled grammar, but that didn’t mean he was stupid any more than Barack being a brilliant orator will make him a great President.

I instinctively hate big business being in any way involved in government at any level, whatever the rationale, and I especially find some of the big American corporations genuinely terrifying harbingers of some dreadful corporate world and these people appeared to have their hooks into George, but I don’t think these same corporations are strangers to anyone who has previously inhabited the White House. I would love to see Barack create some distance between himself and those insider interests.

Bush didn’t seem to handle emergencies well but then again, do you remember Clinton or Nixon facing emergencies, they tried to lie their way out of their problems. Carter, probably the President with the highest IQ of the lot didn’t have a clue how to handle the Iranian hostage situation and is still making lame excuses for his lamentable choices. Perhaps no one forgives Bush for the War on Terror, which I believe was and still is necessary, even if it has been disastrously handled in many ways.

The truth is that President Clinton is fondly remembered for his time in office because people felt prosperous whereas they despise President Clinton because the economy is collapsing around their ears, the people are terrified for their future, and they’re looking for someone to blame and Wall St is just too alien and anonymous to understand let alone attack. We’re left with the outgoing President to despise and blame and although we’re all culpable to a lesser or greater extent the real culprits live in the City of London and New York’s Wall St.

Like the comedians who found Bush ideal lampoon material I will miss this misunderstood President for his apparent humanity and despite his frailties. I hope President Obama will be nothing like him as times have certainly moved on, and we need a very different type of man for the uncertain future we all face.

In the meantime I thank the outgoing President for trying his best, which at times was good enough, and for his very obvious attempts to do the right thing. I hope he has a long and healthy retirement and gains satisfaction from his successor’s achievements. I hope and believe he will.

ScaryTimes

2009-01-19T13:53:00.000Z

Today there will be two blog articles, this one about domestic matters, and the other to say goodbye to President George W. Bush.

We are all very concerned about the government and its latest bail out of the banks in the UK. Today’s figures are just so astronomical they could choke our economy for a couple of generations to come if this doesn’t work. We are now entering the realm of fantasy fiscal policy, which has been trodden before, in Weimar Germany and more recently in Zimbabwe.

The solution being sought involves in our government in theory creating a bank for toxic debt. This central clearing house will deal with all the bad or suspect debts floating in the banking system, and now to be guaranteed by us, the taxpayers. This is a black hole that could bury us; it is extremely treacherous territory from which there might be no escape. Our government doesn’t actually know how big this risk is, no one seems able to do so.

Add to this the tactic of simply printing more money to meet potentially unending obligations and we could yet face the day when wheelbarrow manufacture might be the boom business of the new decade, simply because we would need some means of wheeled transport to carry our worthless money in if the pound continues to implode.

You can already feel the affect of this decrease in comparative value when you travel to the USA or Europe and realize that your pound has dropped about 25% in value in a relatively short period of time. We need to see the economy stabilize and the government’s latest measure take effect or we are in huge trouble. Even if they do become instantly effective, and I doubt that, there is still no light at the end of this particular tunnel.

I’m sorry if I am confirming the pundits naming of this date as the most pessimistic and downbeat date on the annual calendar but we have to face the future with pragmatism and that tells us that our Prime Minister did what he had to a few weeks ago as he probably had no alternative other than to watch our banks topple like a row of dominoes and – it simply wasn’t effective and it hasn’t worked in broader terms. Our banks are still not liquid enough and are still not lending to the small and medium sized businesses or solid citizens, as they must if we are to financially survive.

Although today's bail out is larger in both size and ambition I don’t trust the banks to take a view bigger than their own boardrooms and next shareholder event. They are going to have to be dragged screaming to do what’s right by the government or they will simply not comply.

The scariest thing I have recently witnessed was President George W. Bush as he calmly made arrangements with the American legislature for the next $350 billion of public money to be downloaded to the boys from Wall St. When he was asked how we were going with the previous £350 billion, provided less than a month ago, he smiled and said, “That’s already been spent.”

This money isn’t endless and we need to see some positive signs from our banking system or we are falling into the biggest financial hole in history. We need to start handing out the shovels and digging!

Hiding

2009-01-16T16:42:00.000Z

Have you recently sent a text to someone via your mobile phone because it saved you from confrontation?

Or perhaps you've sent a quick e mail rather than confront a potentially
difficult chat?

When those options were not available did you speak on the phone rather than meet in person?

Our modern use of technology has resulted in hiding behind our communication devices. There are layers of cowardice involved in these new patterns of behavior and almost all of us are implicated.

It is also not obvious to us how much we use these electronic devices as an invisible shield behind which we can hide, or simply run our lives, until they suddenly become unavailable.

Today, for the fourth time in a week the power went out in my home. This outage has apparently affected 1,700 homes in my district and is further evidence, if any were necessary, that our first world country is doing its best to become third world as fast as it can. Suddenly nothing works and a plan B is essential.

My TV went out and I couldn’t do my exercise tape, the server went down so I couldn’t post the article that was going to feature today and the heating went off so the temperature dropped like a stone. I couldn’t microwave my porridge or turn on any lights. As I was due to meet a production client to discuss some techno questions it seemed a good idea to choose another venue or we’d be talking in the dark, literally.

But back to the key question, is this avoidance of direct, personal interaction a good development or is it a disaster?

I cannot imagine a more damaging descent into a woeful world in which you see most young mums talking on their mobiles whilst they ignore the efforts of their young children to grab their attention.

Now you see people walking along together but talking to other people on their mobiles as if the partner they are with wasn’t even present.

Yesterday it was reported that a young girl in the States used her text facility on average once every two minutes for her every waking minute. When questioned why she used this service so much she replied that she liked to talk. Ironically the one thing she was not doing was talking to anyone. In fact she was ignoring the people around her in order to communicate to those who were not. To me this is rudeness writ large and it demeans the people being ignored.

Worse still we have people being fired from their jobs by text as if they were robots with no emotions or rights to humanity or caring.

Sometimes using a communications device places increases the distance between us. If we were all to remember our humanity and opt for personal contact we would improve our connectivity and our quality of life would be enhanced as a result.

LurchingToTheLeft

2009-01-14T09:08:00.001Z

For reasons that don’t make much sense we are lurching to the political left, when perhaps we need to be holding hard to the centre. This goes for both the UK and the US, but it infects most of the industrialized world.

It is the knee jerk reaction of the population to look for answers to our political leaders, and I think they don’t actually have any answers other than to posture, smile and wave as if they do.

The questions to which they don’t have coherent responses are just too complex and intractable for them to provide easy solutions. Of course they would like to leap with a single bound to our rescue to earn our undying adoration, but it isn’t going to happen unless one or more of them is a whole lot greater than they initially seem.

That’s the reason they look to the old wisdoms for solutions and most of these are to be found in the wisdom handed down by the liberal, so called intelligentsia. Sadly this is a group whose ideas have been previously totally discredited, in fact they got everything wrong first time around so why should we trust them with anything now?

The economical collapse in slow motion is only being delayed by all the global bailouts that have served to provide a breathing space, so far nothing more has been achieved. Don’t get me wrong our leaders didn’t have much of a choice in order to avoid what would have been a totally catastrophic meltdown and an immediate Depression but now we need wit and far sightedness and instead we are getting the impression our leaders don’t have anything but the wrong history books.

Add to this the unresolved War on Terror and the ongoing hot actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and you have a recipe for disaster that would tax the greatest brains in history, let alone the pygmies of power who presently represent us.

There is the potential of President Elect Obama, but if ever someone had to hit the ground running it is Barack Obama. He will have no time to think when he shortly assumes office and we all pray and hope that he is as good as he and his legions of supporters believe him to be.

However he does suffer from the strictures of conventional left leaning liberals in that they now are more doctrinaire and inflexible than any other major political group in the world. Even the Communists running the People’s Republic of China appear more open to new economic solutions.

In the UK we have had an economically right wing New Labour government for more than a decade but in this crisis their left wing credentials are appearing with depressing regularity and speed as the country marches into the world of Big Brother as the government tries to micro manage everything in our lives from cradle to grave.

This will also be the fate of the USA unless the idea that our governments know what’s best for us is fought and halted. This crisis has proved that governments, just before bankers, should not be allowed free rein to manage us.

MyArrest

2009-01-13T10:22:00.001Z

Apparently my arrest is imminent. I appear to have broken the law, but honestly I thought I was doing the right thing. It all started as a dispute with a neighbor some years ago. In fact it was the father of my present neighbor and my late father who had the original argument. That started when our neighbor threw a Molotov cocktail through our window on the night I was born and tried to kill us all. The argument has never ended; my neighbors still want to kill us.

Dad was a tough old guy; he’d fought for the British in the Second World War against the Nazis. Our neighbor was on the other side, but that’s ancient history now, so I shan’t go into those details. Suffice it to say dad and the family got through that bad period and we stayed on in our house. In fact, despite all our neighbors, and their friends trying to attack us every so often we became quite successful at farming, something my family hadn’t been allowed to do wherever they lived for too long to remember, and to everyone’s surprise, not too bad at fighting either.

The years passed by and we developed some more industries in our neighborhood, and we learned how to look after ourselves. Now our family had grown and didn’t need or get much help from anyone else. We even took in our relatives from overseas who had to run away when our neighbor’s friends threw them out just because they were members of our family.

Each time our neighbors tried to take our land they made everyone crazy. It seemed strange to us that the police in New York told us we were in breach of the law when all we did was to fight back every time we were attacked, but we understand that there has to be laws so we do our best to obey them all, even the ones we don’t much like.

What our family finds really difficult to understand was the incidents that happened a couple of years back when our neighbors crept into our home one night and took two of our boys’ hostage. We never found out what happened to one of them, but the other one was returned to us dead. The neighbors didn’t even apologize for our loss but everyone in the entire neighborhood went mad when we tried to rescue our boys.

Over the last few years our neighbors kept telling us over a loudspeaker that they wanted to kill our entire family and they backed this up by firing a gun into our backyard every day.

Some days the neighbors fired the gun 80 to 100 times but when we called the police in New York they told us not to worry because the gun was homemade and not too deadly unless you took a direct hit, although they thought the neighbors might have some proper guns coming in from out of town, and these might be very dangerous.

The proof that our neighbor wasn’t really trying to kill our children when they shot at them in our yard was the fact that they didn’t really aim the gun when they fired it and therefore the number of injuries our family took was just a series of playful accidents.

We went looking for our neighbors to discuss this several times and each time we did the police threatened to arrest us and the local newspaper printed stories calling us monsters and killers and aggressors.

It was very upsetting but we eventually found that the neighbors were actually hiding in tunnels that they’d dug under our property. We went into some of the tunnels and found guns and ammunition and plans to attack us when we were sleeping. We showed all this to the police and they told us not to worry because these were defensive tunnels and the neighbors were only using them to bring in medicines and food from their neighbors on the other side of their property.

We asked the police if that were the case why did they also have guns and ammunition in the tunnel on this side and why did they fire these guns at us and tell everyone they wanted us dead and gone?

The police told us not to worry as this was no real threat but we should understand that our neighbors were simply trying to convince their neighbors that they wanted us out, but in reality the whole thing was a sham, for now, although they do want us dead when they are ready. Just before that occurred the police told us that they would discuss the matter with the neighbor and that they’re sure they can convince them not to kill too many of us.

After waiting for the police to have that conversation with the neighbors for the last 8 years and nothing happening we decided we had better sort this our for ourselves. We picked up some of our own guns and we went looking for our neighbors to stop them shooting at us.

We knew that everyone else in the district would get upset when we did this, because that’s what always happens when we try to stop our neighbors shooting at us. In fact this time we were told that as our guns were built in our garage we clearly had an unfair advantage and when we used our guns this would be disproportionate.

So, to be fair we sent a note to our neighbors telling them what we were going to do, and when and where, and then we telephoned them to make sure that they’d get the message. We wanted to discuss these matters with the men in the family who liked to fire guns at our kids but they pretended not to read our notes, or hear our messages.

In fact their tough boys decided that the best way to fight us was to use their kids as a shield. This isn’t the way we do things, as we try to look after our kids, and in fact, despite our arguments with our neighbor, we want to look after their kids.

Our grandmother, whose name was Golda Meir once said it better than I can, “We can forgive the neighbors for killing our children. We can’t forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the neighbors when they love their children more than they hate us.”

As I said to the police officer who came to arrest me, “maybe, one day.”

Passion

2009-01-12T16:33:00.001Z

Passion is a word that we in the UK don’t employ very easily or readily. We have become easier with passion in recent years, so it’s said, since the huge public emotional outpouring which followed the tragically premature demise of Princess Diana.

What does passion mean to us? For me it’s a different thing for each set of circumstances.

The passion between a man and a woman changes over time, it starts as a lush burning fire, too hot to touch, it ignites and flames, and draws us to itself, until, with time, it begins to warm rather than burn, and then it must be appreciated in a new, perhaps less exciting way.

Such passion doesn’t have less value because the fire doesn’t burn so brightly, perhaps because that’s the right life cycle of passion. It simply doesn’t serve us well to always be red hot. For a fire to burn for the longer term it must be fed, banked, preserved and nurtured. It shouldn’t always be savage and brilliant, but does its job best if it warms and is seen in sepia hues. There’s nothing wrong with mature passion even if it is considered less immediately gratifying and exciting.

Passion can be what a person feels for their football team, and it can seem ridiculous and unfathomable to someone who doesn’t share the same passion. I am passionate about the greatest football team on the planet, and that is the wonderful Manchester United, who are literally champions of the world having won that tournament last month in Japan after qualifying by winning both the English and European Championships.

Strangely that passion never seems to lessen in intensity, but then again we’re distant lovers, Manchester United and me. In fact I don’t know if this love and passion is reciprocated but sadly I suspect it isn’t. I wonder if the club knew me better that they wouldn’t tire of me. Perhaps the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt is true.

I used to be a passionate follower of the left wing in politics, and then, as I got older and wiser, and a little more prosperous I became a follower of more middle of the road politics. Again my passion had dissipated with the passing of time.

I am still a passionate Zionist and I think that passion will stay with me for my entire life. The only difference now in my passion for the cause of a Jewish homeland is that I realize that some of the back-story and events surrounding these issues are not precisely as I understood them to be when I was a child. Nothing is all white and black although it can come pretty close. But as a younger man I had an optimistic belief that everything could be rationalized and that common sense and logic would always win in the end. Sadly this is not always the case, and at some times in certain places it is never the case.

I reserve a great deal of passion for my writing, because it gives me so much and the love I give it is unconditional and passionate in its intensity.

My undying love is reserved for my family and friends, because they are wonderful and I guess, in part because they are also passionate about me.

For those of you who lose their passion, and become uncertain and say they’ve changed I have news, you didn’t change, we’re basically unable to change, but your circumstances might have changed and you convince yourselves that a search for some new thrill can replace the flames of an older passion that still burns bright enough to warm yourself by, even if on this lower light it no longer excites to the same extent.

Maybe I have become able to accept second best and no longer search myself for a passion that is so pure and desirable. Perhaps settling for less passion is a failing on my part or is it a sign of logic and maturity. Can we have both, or are we doomed to live with a reality in which it must be one or the other?

TheWordsWeDareNotUse

2009-01-09T14:29:00.001Z

It is interesting to note how many people I have spoken with since
arriving back in the UK a couple of days ago who are sickened by the anti Israel reporting on the supposedly fair and equal handed BBC and other news organizations in this country as compared to the US where many non Jewish public figures have come out in support of Israel's position. I won't revisit all the obvious arguments already aired elsewhere including my own articles, suffice it to say that Israel is being demonized and de legitimized by a vicious propaganda campaign that takes no account of the facts.

If any other country had been attacked by thousands of rockets
over a period of years it would have retaliated to stop the
attacks and no one would even have questioned it. This is not the case with Israel, it alone is supposed to accept being repeatedly attacked and provoked without the right of self-defense that is inscribed in the charter of the United Nations.

Israel is defending her citizens from incessant and continuing attacks and the fact that Hamas is discussing a cease-fire is in recognition that they are being seriously hurt by the combat despite their blood curdling threats.

Through the logic of Alice Through The Looking Glass all of the actions for which Hamas and its friends are guilty get reflected in this crazy distorting mirror to become Israel’s crimes and misdemeanors.

Israel hits the targets in which terrorists are hiding, even if they are behind or within civilian centers, they have no alternative. Remember the reason for this is the terrorists belief that hiding amongst civilians is their safest option and, in addition, any concomitant increase in casualties suffered as a direct result of their cynical actions wins them support from the international media organizations.

We have become soft in the head if we allow such anti Jewish and anti Israel slurs to remain unanswered. Israel not only has the duty to defend its citizens but it also has the moral duty to fight the terrorists and to seek their destruction.

Whilst we discuss how people behave during war how many Jews do you know, presently or in history that intentionally killed or maimed children or people at prayer?

Can you name a time or place in which Jews sought to force unwilling people to convert to Judaism or threatened with death anyone who was Jewish who wanted to follow some other faith or no faith at all. In case you don’t understand current events might I remind you that extreme followers of Islam still swear death onto any Muslim who wants to leave that faith.

How many Jews do you know who have bombed places of worship to murder indiscriminately?

How many times have Jews desecrated the graveyards of other religions?

How many Jews strap bombs on themselves to intentionally murder
civilians?

Many are not aware that even during the present battles in Gaza Hamas is murdering any suspected Palestinian collaborators and counting them amongst those considered to be casualties of Israel’s combat units?

How many times in modern history has an air force leafleted a targeted site to warn the inhabitants that it is about to be attacked? That is precisely what the Israeli air force has been doing.

Israel has to fight the fanatics around its border in order to survive. It is only through its strength that it can move forward with anything approaching a normal life for its citizens. If Hamas and the other extremists stopped attacking Israel there would be peace and all the outstanding issues could be addressed.

But Hamas and their fellow travelers claim their strength is that they love death, and the weakness of those they fight for Western democratic values is that we love life.

They are right about what we love, but wrong about one aspect of their despicable calculation, loving life is our strength, not our weakness.

Many false and unedifying accusations listed above have been aimed at Israel and are not true. Israel has had to target their enemy wherever they hide but Hamas and their friends have, as a matter of continuing policy, targeted innocent civilians for many years, but apparently only a few of us noticed!

It is laughable but sinister for the media to draw any moral equivalence between the actions of their beloved terrorist murderers and the reactions of Israel or the West in general. The Western powers make many mistakes but intentional genocide is not one of them in recent times.

The only common denominator that media organizations, the politically hard left, the fascists and the Islamic militants have in common is their knee jerk unreasoning hatred of Israel and the Jewish people's right to a Jewish homeland in its ancestral home? Because in the end that is what this argument is really all about.

Many learned commentators and pundits, Jewish and otherwise have been faced with the question of why Israel is clearly judged by a different set of criteria to any other country and the truth is obvious but mostly remains unsaid in polite society, it is the oldest question sparked by the oldest hatred, the words we dare not use, anti Semitism. It seems as if this is the only permitted racism in the world of today and it sickens me. The difference between now and the last two millennia is that now there is a country called Israel and the lives of these Jews don’t come cheap. If the Jews had to rely on the goodwill of the rest of the world there might soon be no Jews.

AmericaThenandNow

2009-01-06T20:52:00.000Z

As I leave for the airport in a few moments we can pause for reflection on what’s the same, and what is changed about America.

We have previously noted that the country is holding its collective breath and hoping for the best from President Barack Obama. With just a few weeks to the inauguration this remains the same, but the sense of urgency is increasing in direct proportion to the ballooning size of the problems facing the country.

As President Clinton used to remark the keys to the problem remain the economy. Without getting that right nothing else can be fixed.

Some things remain the same about this country; the people are amongst the most polite in the world. Even if this common courtesy is plastered on a bit thick at times it is still preferable to the icy indifference of many European citizens and the plain rudeness of many in the UK.

There will be tests of the country in general, and the President in particular, from Russia and Iran, and the leaders of those countries should remember that it is the liberal democratic Presidents who act the most tough when pushed too far. It was J.F.K. who nearly went to nuclear war with the Soviet Union over the Cuba missile crisis not Nixon nor Reagan.

The portions of food served in American restaurants remains gargantuan and I recommend you all travel with a companion so that you can share meals, or buy yourself some jumbo sized clothes!

I recall a time, many years back, when the traffic in LA was easy to navigate, and the surface streets were hardly ever blocked. You can no longer make such a statement; now the supermarket car parks can even be full, which is truly shocking.

The movie theatres are still outstanding but not cheap when they provide stadium style seating. But the managers of the cinema complexes in Europe should be trained in the States so that they could learn how to do the job proficiently.

In fact the quality of service is still better in general than anywhere else. Mind you when you are expected in California to provide a gratuity of 20% I think you’re entitled to great service with a smile.

Another outstanding aspect of American life is the sheer diversity and choice available to you. The other day we woke up in Los Angeles and decided that the grand kids should experience the joys of snow. We jumped into the car and drove for less than two hours to Lake Arrowhead and had a great meal by the beautiful lake and then took the kids onto the wonderful toboggan run. Their laughter was uncontained particularly when I fell like a collapsing tree onto the rock hard ice. Apart from this discomfort our day could not have been better.

Similarly we have been into the desert and out to the coast several times and had a wonderful day on each occasion. There’s probably nowhere else where a family is spoilt with so much choice and I haven’t even mentioned Disneyland, the museums, parks and zoos, all enhanced with some of the best weather in the world.

So, as I speak to friends and family members who tell me that I am going to experience minus10 degrees when I get back to the UK I can only hope that the heating is working OK in my home and that the pipes haven’t frozen and that the politicians are not screwing up too badly. But at least I will have those wonderful friends and relatives to share a laugh, a tear a hug and a memory with. In the end nothing is more important.

IsraelMarchesIntoGaza

2009-01-04T03:21:00.000Z

The Israeli Defense Forces launched a ground offensive into Gaza today. This follows Israel’s weeklong air bombardment with the announced aim of stopping the relentless rocket and missile attacks by Hamas onto Israel. These rocket attacks have been more or less continuous for a number of years, and total more than 10,000.

There was a nominal cease-fire for the last six months that Hamas ended unilaterally after announcing there will never be peace with Israel or any extension of the ceasefire. The Hamas organization then launched over 100 more rocket and missile attacks against Israel, which provoked Israel into action. Clearly Hamas wants to fight Israel, particularly on the Public Relations front. They believe they cannot lose as they are perceived as the little guy fighting the big bully so they want to suffer civilian casualties and position their fighters behind and amongst the civilian population intentionally whilst they aim their rockets at Israeli schools and civilian centers.

Hamas combatants will seek to ambush and trap Israel’s soldiers rather than confront their superior firepower and conventional advantages. It’s hard to fight superior forces and it is also difficult to fight an asymmetrical battle. If Israel really wanted to win this battle tactically it would have to reach the strategic decision to demolish Hamas and re-occupy Gaza. Israel doesn’t want to do this and therefore has set much more limited objectives to diminish the missile and rocket launching capability of their deadly foe.

Earlier on Saturday, some 13 people were killed in one Israeli air raid when a missile struck a crowded mosque in Beit Lahiya, Palestinian medics claimed. Israel accused Hamas of using such mosques to hide weapons, ammunition and arms manufacturing.

Despite the inevitable consequences, or perhaps precisely because they were seeking such an Israeli military reaction the Hamas terrorists in Gaza continued to fire rockets into southern Israel on Saturday, one of which hit the port of Ashdod, injuring two people.

Demonstrations were held against Israel's military operations around the world but no one other than Jewish supporters of Israel appeared to notice that Hamas instigated this entire conflagration.

Meanwhile in Israel thousands of reserve soldiers have been mobilized as the offensive in Gaza widens with the launching of a ground invasion that Defense Minister Ehud Barak says "won't be short" or easy.

It is wise to assume that some of these actions by Israel are a warning to Palestinian militants in the West Bank and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon who fought a month long war with Israel in the summer of 2006.

Israeli ground troops began pouring into Gaza earlier Saturday. The incursion expanded an 8-day-old operation that had been conducted almost exclusively from the air.

At least 30 Hamas gunmen were reported killed as IDF troops swept into the northern Gaza Strip where they met fierce initial resistance from Hamas forces entrenched in well-prepared fortifications just over the border.

IDF sources said that the real goal is to conquer territory in northern Gaza, including rocket launch sites, from where most rockets are fired. They are using about four brigades' worth of troops inside the Gaza Strip.

Another main aim of the operation is to deliver a heavy, long-term blow to the Hamas military wing, which the IDF estimates, had not been seriously damaged by the air campaign.

It has been argued that Israel’s response to the rocket and terrorist attacks of Hamas is disproportionate. I don’t understand why this is so. How would the UK or USA or Russia or France, in fact any other country, be expected to react when it had been attacked 10,000 times?

Remember, Israel had pulled out of this territory years ago, and Hamas broke the cease-fire repeatedly and refused to renew it and no one seems to remember that Israel had released convicted terrorists as a gesture of goodwill in the last few weeks. None of this appears to matter or count.

I don’t believe that Israel has any other alternative left open to it and we can only hope that this operation will be as brief, victorious and final as possible. The alternatives are simply not tenable or acceptable.

HappyNewYear

2009-01-01T01:02:00.001Z

First, to everyone who reads this column, happy New Year!
As we journey together into 2009 we all wonder what surprises will unfold during this year, and just how many will be pleasant or otherwise.

We cannot ignore the realities of the global financial tsunami currently rolling over us while we hold on to every bit of firm high ground we can find.

It is equally implausible, in fact unwise to overlook the Wars on Terror and those in Afghanistan and Iraq; and how could we avoid mention of the current Middle East battle raging in Gaza and the dangers posed by a resurgent Russia and the Iranian / Islamic nuclear threat.

Some of my readers have written to me expressing their dismay that I have been too pessimistic featuring such concerns in my recent normally upbeat column. I am, by nature an optimist, but I am also a realist and pragmatist. We have had little news of good cheer to make us feel upbeat recently. However I can report that all is not gloom and doom in this corner of the electronic universe.

We have reasons to be generally optimistic that are not based on logic or improving economic trends or even positive signs in our common horoscope. These hopes are based on what we are, and what our system of life has achieved in the past. Our Anglo American democracies have stood the test of time and triumphed over great adversities and powerful adversaries in the past and I believe we shall do so again.

Of course the journey is sometimes very hard, and can, on occasion, leave many casualties, and awful suffering. But in the end we will overcome these problems because ours are the greatest countries in the world, and that’s why the world envies us, and has every reason to do so.

It is no accident that so many people still desperately seek any possible method to live in our midst, its because however bad things seem for this moment, most people recognize that ours are the countries they want to live in. And, if it isn’t the UK or the USA the economic migrant wants a piece of, its New Zealand, Australia or Canada that magnetizes people. There is no coincidence here; our Anglo Saxon systems of democracy, our long-term stability and our innate sense of common decency are desirable to most people in the world.

In our wish to survive the current problems we must do nothing to damage the very core of our national being in its defense, as long as we cherish and protect these values with all our strength we shall overcome all adversities and every adversary.

HopesForTheFuture

2008-12-29T01:33:00.001Z

Following on from my recent article I have enjoyed further meetings with American friends over the last two days that reinforce my views about what’s happening in this amazing country, and around the world, and what’s likely to happen next.

It strikes most people that it is grossly unfair that banking and finance arrangements freely entered into in good times, have been unilaterally changed by the lenders to the detriment of the borrowers during the current bad financial times.

Yes, there is probably the legal right for the lenders to make these changes; but just because you can do this doesn’t mean you should.

These alterations in terms are without exception, to the benefit of the lender, and damage the borrower. The implicit danger to the lenders is that they will, in the longer term, kill the goose that has laid their many golden eggs.

The result of these short sighted, unfair changes in financial terms by the financial institutions has been the collapse of many small to medium size businesses and an explosion of personal bankruptcies and property repossessions. It is logical to anticipate that this situation will become far worse if allowed to continue on the same trajectory.

Business debt collection agencies are already finding it next to impossible to obtain very large percentages of the money due to the lenders.

Another outcome of the present financial crisis has been the explosive growth in the supply of bail out money to the banks and now other industries from our governments. Such printing of money on a massive but quiet scale is fueling the future fall in value of that money. This will lead to a money bubble to follow the property and financial and stock market bubbles, and this could well lead to another major crash in the value of money itself. There is nothing more damaging to a country during peacetime than this outcome, witness the Great Depression, the Weimar Republic or the current crisis in the wrecked country, Zimbabwe.

Are our leaders able, with the inspiration of President Elect Obama, to do anything whatsoever to keep us safe when we have arrived at this precipice?

With all my heart I want to believe that they can save some prosperity for us, but my head says otherwise. Reality dictates that we might not enjoy the prosperity of the past decades again, and certainly should not plan for such an outcome for the foreseeable future.

Such financial instability will lead to problems in supply and demand for raw materials, and possible battles for that supply at prices our countries can afford to pay. Will we, in such circumstances, be willing to forego our individual transportation on demand, or heating or refrigeration when necessary?

These are fundamental issues we are going to have to wrestle with at the same time as our capacity to fight such battles economically, politically and militarily become progressively more seriously impaired. Do we wait until we are even more seriously weakened or pick our fights cynically at a time and place that suits us?

Even more fundamental, if such a thing is possible, will be the control of food and water production and its distribution around the world. Do we behave in a fair and equitable manner or simply pursue a behavior model to suit our more narrow national interests?

My hope is that we see further than the end of our own nose. Our vital need is to work together for eventual global salvation or fail singly. There are no victories to be gained by individuals or even countries acting alone, now, more than ever, we must find new ways to work together.

WaitingforObama

2008-12-27T16:24:00.000Z

As the festive season rolls on in America there is a sense of waiting, and dare I say, hoping. The country, if not the entire world, is waiting impatiently for the inauguration of Barack Obama as President. Some here seem convinced he is the Messiah, and those of us of a more cynical bent are still hopeful that he might be more John F. Kennedy than Jimmy Carter with speech making abilities.

Whichever he is the world desperately needs hope and leadership as it is awash with problems. The perspective in the States is slightly different than it is in Europe but the underlying themes are identical. The economy stands out as the principal issue and last night I was dining out with a bunch of politically active Southern Californians in the city of Glendale. The consensus amongst all of them, Republicans, Democrats and the non-aligned was the same. The country has to get back in the business of making things that people want and need to buy. Two examples given were low emission and high mileage little cars and fuel-efficient power generation.

On the ground level there was clear evidence that local businesses are in deep trouble just as they are at home. It was agreed that the principal culprits are the banks that are still misusing funds, now provided by us all, and are not recycling that money back into the system. The results of this short termism are rapidly becoming catastrophic as businesses simply cannot arrange credit and are incapable of continuing with finance.

In property I encountered a lady who manages many “for rent” apartments and houses. As people have already invested their funds to purchase the properties she manages she is unable to vary the terms of those properties except for the virtually cosmetic provision of initial inducements. As people simply cannot qualify for regular mortgages to purchase homes here you could assume that they will be rushing to rent. But this is not the case, the business is virtually not moving as the unfortunate folk who can’t afford to stay in their homes as purchasers are moving back in with their families. This is a recession like no other in living memory.

You get some additional signs of this when you look around you on the streets of Los Angeles and Las Vegas and notice the hugely increasing numbers of people begging on the streets in near freezing temperatures. This dramatic increase in numbers is a new phenomenon; these people are dressed more like middle class professionals than they are tramps. They could be you and me.

I spoke with a retailer who has dropped his prices on clothing by 50% for this usually busy period for his store, and he had 3 customers in an entire day. He doesn’t know how long he can continue to stay in business if it continues like this.

The happiest person at the party was the lady who recently retired with a teacher’s pension. Many others were congratulating her for her remarkable good fortune and hoping that they can reach the same stage without further problems.

I have never met a group of Americans who are so pessimistic, and it is really quite worrying and depressing to do so, and this was without anyone raising little matters like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuing problems in the Middle East and the unresolved War on Terror. Let us all hope that next month, when Obama takes his Presidential oath in Washington that it is the first step in his starting to lead this country and the world to a better future, we certainly need it.

Spooky

2008-12-21T03:11:00.002Z

This morning I woke up early and decided to use the time productively. With the wonders of modern science you can check out the whereabouts and well being of friends, old and new, on the Internet with the greatest of ease.

I eased my shiny and lovely MacBook Air onto my lap and hit the Google button. Next I entered the name of a friend I hadn’t seen in many years, a man who once served with me on the Board of Directors of our company in America, and when I was starting out in the film business and he was the big boss of Cinerama Distribution gave my first little movie, The Festival Game, its release. His name is Joe Sugar and I thought I could ring him once I found out where he was to say hi, wish him well for the festive season but sadly I was too late, he had died in the last weeks.

I was saddened and disconcerted, I wish I had spoken with my old friend and we'd shared some chuckles about the wonderful Friars Club lunches we had enjoyed together in Beverly Hills; swapping jokes and anecdotes, but it was not to be.

Now I was even more motivated to look up another old friend who I had heard was sick with that cruel illness, Alzheimer’s, his name is Sandy Howard. This guy was one of the funniest and most charming of men, handsome and talented, a born raconteur and a producer of sometimes-manic energy if sometimes less wisdom. He made films, good and not so great, but always with a smile and a smashing story. I once met him with another friend at a local Chinese restaurant, and they were relieved to see my father and I arrive as they clearly couldn’t afford the meal they’d eaten, they agreed that they “had momentum, but unfortunately it was downward momentum!” Sadly the downward momentum has continued because Sandy had also just died.

Life is the poorer for the passing of such men, hugely entertaining and knowledgeable, old school entertainment people that define the word, Hollywood, for the rest of the world.

Now I was getting very worried because I had checked out two friends and they had both gone to meet their maker, so I thought I would check out someone I didn’t like so much. I clicked on the name of John Daly, someone who I had good reason to dislike after once being friends and having done deals together. Up came his name, guess what, he had also recently died. However much I didn’t care for John I don’t wish anyone dead, but now I felt like I’d killed him.

I was beginning to think that I had better put the computer away for the day and not open it again. But time passes and logic took hold hence I’m writing this blog, but don’t worry, I won’t be checking any friends out on Google for a while.

TheAmericanMedicalSystem

2008-12-19T02:38:00.000Z

I promised to write about all elements I found here during my stay, including the less positive aspects of America during my trip, so here goes. The U.S. medical system is expensive, but very effective, but only if you can afford it.

This morning we were, as a family, all sick with lingering various coughs and sneezes type symptoms. We needed medical attention to sort it out. More a precautionary measure than an emergency, but if 4 out of 5 of you are laid low you want to know recovery is certain and not too far off.

If you have money and / or insurance this is not a problem. Fortunately I am an assiduous gatherer of travel protection so our journey to recovery was to prove more interesting than painful.

In fact there was very little pain involved at all. I had carefully filed my travel insurance ready for this trip but had forgotten to pack the policy document. My lame excuse is that this oversight was due to my already having flu and a temperature. Despite the lack of my policy document I did have my policy number and more than my share of Klinger chutzpah.

Sarah, my daughter, seeing our ailments and fed up with being an unpaid nurse, took decisive action and called her own medical practitioners for an emergency appointment first thing this morning, which she obtained within 15 minutes.

Getting to the shiny, clean and well-appointed medical building within the allotted time was no problem. Seeing the medical assistant and the doctor was almost immediate and without any fuss.

There was the anticipated problem with the insurance numbers from the UK not being recognizable for an American medical practice but remarkably we were being checked over, comprehensively, politely and with no fuss exactly how you would wish. The doctor, the medical assistant and the receptionist were charming, helpful and terrific at their jobs.

I was reeling from the shock, it isn’t exactly like this in England, where going to the doctor is something like meeting Osama Bin Laden and his cronies on a day they’re feeling nasty.

The only down side here, on which we in the UK have the definite advantage, is that our General Medical Practices are totally free of charge, and accessible to all, whereas here in the States you need the cash or the insurance or these medical pleasures are unavailable.

It was at the point of payment that the system did unravel somewhat. The receptionist almost blew a gasket trying to work with the insurers, and it proved to be simply impossible, so I paid for the service and we went to the pharmacy to fill the prescriptions. Again this was probably worse in the States as a service than in the UK and undoubtedly far more expensive. Instead of just a few pounds the prescriptions cost over $120.

I was reminded of a trip we once took to Vancouver in Canada, when my son Dan was sick. We found that Canada had all the medical efficiency of America at its finest, combined with the caring for all mentality of Britain’s National Health Service at its best. Surely both are possible and desirable and are a measure of a country’s civilization. In this respect Canada is the model we should all aspire to.

StillHopeForAmerica

2008-12-16T23:55:00.000Z

There are certain aspects of life in the USA that are particularly good, and others that are the opposite. During this trip I shall touch on both, but my overwhelming reaction on this trip is one of hope. America isn’t done yet, and that’s very important to all of us. We need a strong, resilient America, and this country might be bloodied but it remains unbowed.

Perhaps the reason that there’s still hope is enshrined in the slender shape of President Elect Obama. The people here, by and large, are convinced that they have amongst them a man who can and will lead this country back to the summit of world affairs whilst regaining the traction to rediscover and invigorate its moral leadership of the free world.

It remains to be seen whether or not this optimism is well founded although all right thinking people must hope so. There are deep shadows that threaten the horizon and they come in the form of the scandal-plagued Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich who was arrested last week on charges of conspiracy to swap political favors for cash, including an attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama following his presidential election victory.

No one is suggesting that the President Elect has any connection to the Governor’s alleged misbehavior, other than that of geographical proximity. However there is the underlying linkage of the Chicago political machine of the current Mayor Daly that underpins all Democratic shenanigans in the windy city. Barack Obama cut his political teeth against this background, which means his saintly aura might be more than a little tarnished. Personally a little humanity makes the new president much more convincing for me.

Now that interest rates are approaching zero per cent and the great governments of the old industrial powerhouses are totally committed to the financial and industrial salvage operation we have few weapons left to deploy except common sense and our will to win. It has seen us through even bigger crisis than this huge economic downturn, and it will do so again.

TheProposition8Disaster

2008-12-15T03:52:00.001Z

Many of you won’t know what a Proposition in California means. It usually equates to the ultimate in American statewide democracy. If enough of the electorate agrees on a political proposal it can be forced on the ballot and then be voted on by everyone.

Usually this means that some grass roots, populist ideas can be enacted and generally has been a force for political freedom in the best traditions of the country. But, at the same time Barack Obama was being elected President there was a new Proposition 8 being voted upon which changed the state Constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman and eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry. The proposition does not affect domestic partnerships in California.

The opposing campaigns raised $35.8 million and $37.6 million, respectively, becoming the highest-funded campaign on any state ballot that day and outspending every other campaign in the country in except for the presidential contest. The proponents insist the law should recognize exclusively heterosexual marriage and claimed that failure to reverse the May 2008 Supreme Court ruling that recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry would damage society, require changes to a school curriculum to discuss same-sex marriage, and threaten the free exercise of religion. The opponents argued that eliminating the rights of any Californian and mandating that one group of people be treated differently from everyone else was unfair and wrong.

As far as this writer can ascertain there was no such school curriculum to change as marriage, of any kind, was not and is not taught in California’s schools.

Just as the electorate of the American West were congratulating themselves on the success of their liberal tendency for electing President Obama the State of California was simultaneously taking an amazingly retrograde step. It is a great shame on the backers of Proposition 8 that they consider only heterosexual partnerships should have legitimacy and on any logical basis this argument has no merit. The sexual gender of your bed partner has no bearing on how you run your public life.

I am not gay, and have never been a public campaigner on this or related issues. But it must be obvious to everyone that every adult should have the right to choose his or her partner, and for that partnership to be recognized in law. How you can argue against this is a question that boggles my mind, but let’s voice what this is really about. People who consider themselves devout followers of various religions have interpreted their scriptures to mean that the Lord above does not permit such partnerships, but as they can’t enforce this, they’ll make do by stopping such partnerships being legal.

This is made worse because there are many people in California who waited many years to be able to enter into legal partnerships in their home state, and then did so, only to now find that these partnerships have been unraveled.

Surely we have reached a stage in our civilization where we understand that it cannot be considered a sin for two adults to fall in love with people of the same sex and then commit to a legally binding partnership between them. Such retrograde laws as Proposition 8 will inevitably be overturned but a great many people will suffer more and for no good reason.

GreetingsFromAmerica

2008-12-12T04:48:00.002Z

Greetings from America and forgive me if the jet lag hampers my fluency and my ability to edit myself. It is warmer and sunnier than back home in freezing England. Leaving home it was cold, dark and icy, arriving here I was greeted by a smiling uniformed man who greeted me with the words, “Welcome to Los Angeles, we hope you enjoy your stay!”

I know its corny, or as we now say in England, cheesy, but it is much more pleasant than the people at terminal 3 of Heathrow who informed me that I was at the wrong terminal as if I should know this by telepathy. Apparently I am not alone in my ignorance, as according to the United Airline ground staff, this error is being repeated all the time. But no one cares, in fact it seems as if the mistake amuses him or her.

The whole trip is made even more pleasant by the fact that I have finally been able to accumulate enough miles to obtain free tickets to America and been able to do so before the benefits expired!

Arriving early the flight was informed that we would be bussed to another building because “Immigration” was not able to deal with us. It was as if our planeload of passengers were a total surprise to “immigration”, which does seem strange as the flight in question are daily and have been running for many years. But you know what jokers these airline people are. The huge line facing the passengers trying to get through the customs hall proved this. It was as if we were in a huge Disney line with the only difference being that there was not going to be any great rides a the end of the line.

Better organized this ordeal could have been half as long and much more efficient. Official America lets itself down by the way it treats its visitors with such disdain, but it’s still a great place.

Everything was made wonderful when our daughter, Sarah, along with her children picked us up without attracting a parking ticket from the traffic cop hovering over anyone daring to pause curbside for more than a second or two. Now I’m sitting in her living room, trying to adjust to the time difference without passing out but fully aware that I will be awake about 3 in the morning, so it would be good if it could be fun.

Perhaps I should indulge in the Night Cold remedy, which could fix my cough and cold and allow me the chance to simply fall asleep. Forgive me if I sound sleepy, normal service will shortly

ObamaWhatWorriesMeNow

2008-12-03T17:40:00.002Z

Yesterday amongst the subjects I covered was my concern that President Elect Obama is acting as if he is already the President. One of my readers wrote me this;

“ I don’t think you can blame the lack of activity and leadership on the one who takes it because he had to pull the baby out of the bathwater.

These months are precious to restore confidence and avoid sliding into a depression- and it may already be too late – so not to try at this stage, knowing he has to deal with it formally, as of January, would be stupid and reckless.”

My response is that it's Obama's hypocrisy and flagrant disregard for the law and constitution I dislike.

Obama does really not convince me but we all really need to hope.

It's not a good start for him to say one thing and do the other. If he said I really need to bend the rules because we have a huge problem and did exactly what he's doing I'd be fine with it.

It's a blatant disregard for the truth or for our ability to spot the lie that's of great concern. It's also really dangerous for us all if we allow breaches of the constitution when it suits us because we won't be able to do anything about future breaches when it doesn't.

WorryingTimes

2008-12-02T16:13:00.001Z

Two seemingly disassociated events taking place this week in the US and UK might be inextricably linked. In fact they are potentially of immense political significance.

In the USA President Elect Barack Obama is acting, in all but name, as if he were already the President, whereas, in fact, as he has previously correctly stated, there is only one President at a time, and still, at this time, his name is President George W Bush. We have never had such a lame duck last months of a Presidency as we are currently suffering from, and this is caused by two factors. One, we all have to admit, is that George W Bush has not continued to assert himself prior to his leaving and as a consequence there is a leadership deficit. The other unavoidable conclusion is that the President Elect is so determined to hit the ground running that he has inserted himself into the vacuum.

In the UK the police arrested and questioned a Member of Parliament, Damien Green about his alleged gathering and dissemination of Home Office leaks about immigration. The police not only raided Green’s two homes they also entered his House of Commons office. The police virtually never take such actions, in fact the last time someone attempted to arrest Members of Parliament and enter the territory of the Commons was when Charles I did so with his officers in 1642, and he and his men were ejected and their actions led directly to the English Civil War.

Both of these situations represent well-intentioned leadership that assumes they are always right and certainly never wrong. In the case of the British Prime Minister we have a perfect example of the poacher turned gamekeeper. Gordon Brown is the same man who, when in opposition, built a reputation by obtaining and distributing a constant stream of leaks against the then Conservative government.

Unbelievably the senior politicians to whom the police report in the UK deny all prior knowledge of the police action. I am amongst many others who simply don’t believe this assertion, to the extent that I am calling Minister Jacqui Smith a liar.

Now there will be an investigation by another, supposedly independent police officer to discover the truth. I hope they are able to conduct this investigation quickly and thoroughly, and then whoever authorized and controlled this foolhardy and unacceptable breach of our system should be unceremoniously kicked out of office.

There is, in both countries, an erosion of liberty. In the UK the rate of this shrinking freedom is very alarming, so much so that it is a common discussion amongst the population.

In the USA the jury is still out, as none of us knows the actuality of the Obama Presidency. We can only guess at its shape and style by the tone of its preparation. We all understand his desire to hit the ground running but that does not excuse his pre-emption of Presidential authority and power.

Neither of our countries can afford to allow any further slippage of our constitution or tradition and freedom, too many people have shed too much blood to build them for us.

MumbaiAftermath

2008-11-28T16:15:00.002Z

Over the last two days there have been a series of linked, murderous terrorist outrages in the Indian city of Mumbai. Over 100 people were murdered and more than 300 have been injured. So far we don’t know the precise nature of the group that perpetrated the attack other than the fact that they appear to be from the Indian sub continent and are followers of Islam, as they claim.

The other inescapable fact is that they were targeting, in particular, citizens of the USA and UK in addition to having invaded a specifically Jewish building.

Already the politically correct apologists in our midst have expressed their view that we “must understand the causes of this reaction on their part.” This is code for polite society to turn off their normal morality button unless and except if it were a member of their own family who is lying dead in a bloodied heap because of this group of murdering thugs.

The PC argument continues with, look at how we have made their (Muslim) people suffer in (substitute whichever suits you) Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Bosnia, Sudan etc. etc. and you will have a better understanding of their anger.

Enough of this nonsense, how about our anger, our rights and our people?

Because these people happen to be Muslim terrorists does not make all Muslims terrorists; but there are clearly enough Muslims who are terrorists to cause the sane part of their society major problems. In addition, there have other Muslims who are sympathetic to their "cause" and identify with their anger who provide back up, finance and emotional support.

It is past time for the common Muslim person who is outraged by such acts of terrorism to take every opportunity to express their outrage and to work with the authorities to help stamp such groups out.

Muslim terrorists have been attacking anyone they could attack without any real reason or acceptable justification for a very long time, and its time it was stopped. We plainly will not stop them by talking to them when their intent is to overthrow your civilization and kill or suppress all non-believers.

Before anyone reading this reaches for his or her electronic pen to assail me with any response supporting or understanding the rights of these killers let me, as calmly as possible, respectfully point out that terrorism such as the Mumbai massacre has it roots way before there was any possible justification.

Before there was a modern state of Israel in 1948 there were massacres of vulnerable parts of the Jewish population more than 20 years earlier, before there was any war in Iraq or Afghanistan there was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, 10 years previously.

We could go on with such facts but the truth is that the Politically Correct idiots don’t want to hear facts when they are inconvenient.

There have even been calls for covert talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban despite their bombings of civilians, random massacres and their recent acid attacks on the faces of their country’s girls and young women who dare to get an education.

Let me make my position clear, these are evil people who are at war with us, and they must be eradicated before they are able to do even greater damage. You don’t make peace at any cost with such people; instead you must consign them to the litter-bin of history.

I understand that such terrorist groups seek a political over-reaction on our part, so that we become the agents of oppression they so much would love us to be. But the truth is that in every major conflict the result of the battle is that we have to grow callouses over our souls for the duration, until we've won the fight, and this will be no different.

It is fashionable to condemn anything that President George W Bush or former Premier Tony Blair did when they were in office, but their successors, Gordon Brown and Barack Obama agree with them that the terrorist threat such attacks represent are still top of their target list.

Such terrorists are our deadly enemy and must be beaten, and if we don’t deal with them, root and branch, they will, one day soon, attack you again; the only difference being it will be a bigger, better organized attack and the target will be nearer to your home.

TimeToChange

2008-11-26T23:38:00.003Z

I see what you see and hear what you hear. The British and American governments are, like their many colleague governments, doing their best to lead the recovery of our economies.

The holes that our banks have helped to dig are so deep and the damage so immense that just this problem will take a long time and a great deal of luck to fix. But the problems are bigger than this; we’re facing a raft of financial and economic woes that have deeper roots than the immediate recession.

The most important of these is not the lack of consumer spending; much more serious are the balance of trade deficit, the lack of manufacturing in our key strategic industries, the growing foreign control of our power and energy sources, in fact overseas ownership of our countries.

We need immediate encouragement for our people to save for the future, to curb their long term spending on consumer rubbish and focus on our real needs, such as building pension values and investments. Governments and individuals should be encouraged to live within their means.

We must find ways to keep people in their homes and to generate movement in the property market. In the UK this could easily be helped by reducing the taxes and increasing the incentives, even on a temporary basis this would help.

Perhaps one of the most pressing issues that must be unraveled is the sheer size of the public spending in the UK as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product. This has been growing in this country and elsewhere at an alarming rate and will continue to do so for the immediate future as this is one of the areas of the economy that governments feel might be successfully pump primed as a means of resuscitating the flat lining economy.

The fact is that the government is mortgaging our future as a rescue package for our present and this will linger like a bad smell, possibly for generations. Perhaps we need to swallow hard and take the awful medicine now rather than have to swallow poison later. We should seek solutions that might be less immediately palatable but provide long term and effective solutions. The voters will swing behind whichever politicians generate genuine answers rather than silly quick fixes that we will have to pay for in the long term.

Piracy

2008-11-24T17:13:00.001Z

Certain things seem so obvious to me that I feel there should be no need to write them in a blog or article. But then something comes along that shakes the foundations of your beliefs.

I am, as some of you already know, a writer and a filmmaker, I am also an occasional media academic. Clearly that gives me a vested interest in the well-being of those sectors. You would think the same would apply to others similarly laboring in these creative areas. Apparently we would all be wrong.

Whilst discussing some recent movies over lunch last week one of my colleagues calmly announced that he burned downloads on the net onto his blank DVD’s. He made it plain, in case I’d not understood him that these were unlicensed copies that he had not paid for. I asked him to think about this for a moment and he laughed, “What, you care for the fat cats that run those hugely rich foreign corporations, why should we care about any of them?”

I was staggered by his attitude, and I imagine it showed on my face. He smiled again, less cocky this time as I responded, “What about the several hundred thousand British people who earn their living in the production of media?” I asked him, “What do you want to say to them when they lose their jobs because people like you are stealing their livelihood by your piracy.” He now colored in embarrassment, and he said, “I’d never thought about that really.”

If there were no British creative industries the actual amount lost to our Treasury would be something in the region of 10% of this country’s Gross Domestic Product and it employs more than 600,000 people. This is not an argument about semantics, this industry is far more important than car production, steel, coal and several other industrial sectors added together.

Think about it, this lecturer is a man who teaches young impressionable people about media and he didn’t realize there was anything morally or economically wrong with pirating other people’s work.

Surely this is a perfect example of what teaching without context can bring.

During the same discussion it also became apparent that most of the media teachers around the table are also not paying their TV license fee. They dressed this up as a form of Robin Hood like act of defiance against authority, when the truth is that they are simply trying to defend the indefensible.

You cannot opt out of laws you don’t like. The option we all have is seek to change such laws, or vote for people with similar views to your own. It is totally unacceptable for our teachers to preach general anarchy like this because it is both immature and dangerous.

We are left to shake our heads and ask how our students will learn to understand the difference between right and wrong with teachers like these?

BNPBusted

2008-11-20T20:46:00.002Z

This week someone published the BNP membership list on the net. The BNP is the British National Party, and for those of you that still don’t understand, they are a bunch of fellow traveling National Socialists, still don’t get it? The BNP are Nazis in all but name.

Apparently, and somewhat hilariously, the BNP Party Leader, Nick Griffin, is disgusted that a supposedly disgruntled ex-employee should stoop so low that he or she had seen fit to expose his previous fellow travelers.

Personally I am delighted that these swamp people are now exposed to the rest of us. They are racists dressed up as nationalists and they follow the same general principles as Hitler and his stooges of the Third Reich. Anything that can be done within the law to damage this group of evil and stupid people is not only permissible but should be compulsory.

I admit to a prejudice against Nazis born out of the fact that I’m Jewish and anti racist and many members of my own family were murdered for being Jewish by bastards such as these. So if these deluded BNP pinheads lose their jobs or friends or previous high regard now that their secret is revealed I really don’t care, I delight in the fact.

By the way their claims for racial purity and superiority are also misguided and inaccurate. Once, not so long ago when I was a Director of a department of an East London University we checked out the backgrounds of 100 local people who regarded themselves as pure English. It turned out that only 7 people qualified and all the rest were a dolly mixture of different origins.

BabyPATragedy

2008-11-19T07:08:00.000Z

I am going to write about the death of a British baby, known, for legal reasons, only as Baby P. This poor, doomed child had the terrible misfortune to be born to two mad and bad parents, who were cruel, malicious, vicious and more like Nazi monsters than modern parents. This awful fate for Baby P was compounded by the fact that he was born in the district of Haringey, a part of London.

In the UK we have long been proud of our social services, which, it was thought, had long safeguarded those unable to care or look after themselves.

Sadly, dreadfully, we now know that this is no longer the case. It transpires that there were obvious grave suspicions about the well being of Baby P because the social services had made or participated in 60 (sixty) visits or interactions with this baby and its family. Included amongst these were doctor examinations of the child and these missed the many terrible injuries he suffered. Amongst these were broken bones, including a broken back. What kind of doctor examines an at risk baby and misses a broken back? I shall answer that question, it’s a doctor who doesn’t give a damn.

How did all the health and social workers simply file their forms, check the boxes and visit that dreadful family but not do anything about it? All of them, without any explanation or excuse being acceptable, plainly did not give a damn.

It was revealed today that six months ago a letter was sent to then Minister of Health, Patricia Hewitt, by a social worker about his concerns regarding the lack of care being provided by Haringey Council. Nothing was done. Why, because she was a Minister who didn’t really give a damn.

It is alleged that the lady social worker that warned of this danger to Baby P was victimized for acting in a way that her seniors working for Haringey Council deemed inappropriate. How could this be possible? It’s because they cared more about their jobs than they did about the welfare of this baby.

The leader of this section of Haringey Council did not even apologize until he was forced to by pressure coming down on his shoulders from the entire media and politically from the Prime Minister, and every other leading public figure. This is some of that apology;

“I want as Leader of the Council to make this formal apology on behalf of Haringey Council at this first meeting of the Cabinet. I will do so again to the meeting of the full Council next week. These are the right places for Haringey to formally acknowledge our deep sorrow for these tragic events.

Let me begin by making clear that we are very sorry for the events which led up to the death of Baby P; sorry for the suffering he endured; sorry for the failure of all the child protection agencies involved to protect him, to save his life.

Haringey Council’s apology is heartfelt and unreserved.

It is made to all those who knew and cared for the well being of Baby P; it is made to all those residents of Haringey who feel let down by the actions of the child protection agencies in our area and concerned for the future of every other child at risk; and it is made to the wider public who will have listened with horror at the dreadful damage done during the tragically short life of Baby P.

We are truly sorry.”

Again, like the recent financial catastrophe, we have more evidence here of systematic failure. It is not enough to have forms to fill and procedures to follow. If common sense and your own eyes tell you that a disaster is unfolding you must stop covering your own ass and start looking after everyone’s ass. We have, as a society, abandoned responsibility for our own actions and, instead, hidden behind procedures.

There should be better protection for those in our society who cannot look after them, and punishment for those charged with this care that fail in its delivery.

It is past time for the individual to stand up and be counted. If you see something is wrong don’t keep quiet, make your concern known, tell people, put it in writing and make sure you follow it up. It could really make a difference. Who knows, you might just save a life.

AnAmericanPublicServiceAnnouncement

2008-11-13T19:18:00.003Z

This is a public service announcement which I felt I should pass on to our American readers. I received it from a friend - I cannot attest to the accuracy of this information but it appears accurate and worth doing;

American Cell phone numbers go public tomorrow.

REMINDER....

All cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies tomorrow and you will start to receive sale calls

YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR SUCH CALLS

To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone: 888-382-1222

It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time. It blocks your number for five (5) years. You must call from the cell phone number
you want to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number.

It takes about 20 seconds.

HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.

TouchingNervesonW

2008-11-11T17:26:00.002Z

There will be a few blank blog days over the next couple of weeks as I rush around the country doing my best to spread the good word and, perhaps, if I am lucky, to make a living!

Today’s blog is brief due to the pressure of other writing commitments. It seems as if I have touched some nerves with my comments regarding the rationale of Oliver Stone and his pals in the making of his film W, about America’s outgoing President George W Bush.

Make of it what you will; here is a selection of reactions received today.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve
To: tdklinger@aol.com
Sent: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:02 pm

Amen Tony. I could not agree more. You also might note that the mainstream media now operates with the exact same mindset. I find it laughable that so many on the "left" despise the Fox News network. That is because they are the ONLY network that actually is Fair and Balanced. The bottom line is if you do not march lockstep with the liberal left you are a pariah. Keep up the work. Thanks, Steve

Thanks Steve, You should see the attacks I got from my more vitriolic left leaning friends. They truly believe that any other viewpoint is some kind of heresy. This is America's truly frightening first glimpse of the kind of British political correctness we've had to suffer these last twelve years. Now the buggers tell us how to eat, exercise and soon, no doubt, make whoopee.

Tony
It was a bit of a crank screed on Oliver Stone and the meds...and I hope it goes increasingly in that direction for entertainment's sake. Making a distorting and stupid film about Bush is redundant. You say that Bush getting into an Ivy league was not about his father--OF COURSE IT WAS. It's well known that he barely scraped a C average together at Yale and the stories are fairly legendary at this point. His application was tagged "Alumni" with the annual dollar donation--that's how Ivy leagues work, especially for terrible students like Bush. As you probably got from Stone, he was very interested in getting jumped into skull and bones which gives you a better idea of what these places are all about--networking. People like him are everywhere at Cornell--surreally uncurious, incompetent, and unfit for higher learning--but private schools are status symbols designed to jump the progeny of stupid wealthy fuckers into the system. The baseball team, the oil --the guy is a classic East coast prep school washout who reinvented himself as a Texan, which probably is closer to his sensibilities. It doesn't change the fact that he ought to be wearing rumpled khaki and hanging around on a yacht--he's been handed everything but the presidency. On that score, it's not necessary to rehash how he got in...except to say that his "folksy" shtick was recently copped by Palin, and the door was opened to this sort of low-watt intellectual stuff by Reagan whose most staunch conservative backers (Buckley, George Will etc.) openly conceded that Reagan was uninterested by anything resembling a detail. Their point was that eggheads don't do well historically in the presidency--bring in the dumb shit who is "tuned" into the party line and people, and who embodies the volk and the fatherland with an American exceptionalist poetics. It worked for Hitler...

You could argue, and many have, that a dull-witted ideologue who knows how to delegate, keep it simple, surround him/herself with good people might actually be more effective that an intellectual. That is the Reagan/Bush/Palin gambit. I would disagree with that however, and it seems the country (at least for now) has overcome its anti-intellectual streak to hire an egghead again.

I think it's important to watch how the word "stupid" is thrown around. Carter was far from stupid, but he got a bad start by overestimating his clout with congress--his filibuster proof majority included southern dixie-crats who turned on him and he never recovered. This identical mistake was Clinton's--although Clinton readjusted. Clinton of course was a Rhodes scholar and Obama is not with him there, although close in some respects for his rhetoric and as a delegator. You could say that academic excellence does not necessarily translate into political skills in Washington, although even there you would be in trouble...Johnson was an effective legislator and very brilliant.

I think the concern for Republicans with their heads screwed on is how not to be the party of white dumb shits. The demographics from this latest election show democratic gains everywhere in the country across all categories--except in the Deep South. There are a lot of smart conservatives out there, but they tend to be more secular--and that's a problem.

Brad.

My response:

I do concur that it was as President that Carter was a dimwit, as he actually had about the highest IQ score of all the Presidents. I do think that the job of President is to deal with the bigger picture and that those that get too engrossed in detail are bound to fail, as there are simply too many details for any human to deal with.

I don't think that President George W Bush is as dumb as he is portrayed by the movie, and I don't think that President Elect Obama is the Messiah that the left is painting him. I think he'd agree with that, and would like it if the expectation levels were lessened right now, as it will lead to unrealistic expectations, which he will fail to meet. I don't believe you need an egghead in the White House, any more than a General needs to be a great brain, for those jobs you need the right instincts, some great strategy and a whole lot of luck.

In the end it is the perception that makes the legacy, and I think it is the left who are the most mean spirited, and the right that is the dumbest. Hopefully Obama can rise gracefully above all this a bit like a superpower Cicero with the balls of a Thatcher, and despite her being a woman she really did have big balls!

I am not sure that America voted for what makes Obama interesting, his intellect being part of that, but they certainly did vote against a continuation of what Bush was, but, and this should be remembered, only by about 6%.

Tony

From: Marjorie
Subject: Re: http://bcreativelimited.com/ LiarsandLoweringStandards

IN response to your disgust for your fellow men who are lacking in fastidiousness, may I suggest you offer free disinfectant packets to them on the way out?
Maybe you can invest in a few and always have them on hand?
(LOL)
I actually thought W was very sympathetic to George W. In fact he made him a more 'likeable' person, instead of the 'lizard-like/cold blooded war monger impression I had before.

Hi M,

I haven't reviewed the film yet, just the lies surrounding the film. I don't share your position about it being sympathetic to George W as he is neither a lizard nor an idiot.

Tony

From: Stephen
Sent: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 5:20 pm
Subject: W Blog

F… ing brilliant. Here here you are right on but don’t you know TK almost every artist is narcissist and thinks he is the creator of a unique ideology of the world. It is pathetic...We must allow our critics their say and opinions. Some of the right and left are like religious zealots only they get key to the kingdom. Only they are right. They tolerate no disagreement or criticism and to me that in un-American and awful.

Love Stevie

Thanks Stevie,

I am already taking flack from the left leaners who cannot see that I might be one of them, but the fact is that I respect the truth!

Tony

I have now reviewed the film W at
http://www.tonyklinger.co.uk/

LiarsandLoweringStandards

2008-11-10T16:50:00.001Z

I saw the film “W” and will be reviewing it in my other blog at http://www.tonyklinger.co.uk/ tomorrow. The reason for my mention of it here is that I will later comment on the honesty, or lack of it, of the film’s makers, particularly Oliver Stone, its director. Am I alone in thinking standards have gone down, and continue to do so?

I have a regular prescription with several items on it, and the doctors, who pass it on to the dispensing pharmacists, renew this every month. They make it up and I collect it. Every month, unless I chivvy them up there is some kind of screw up. It seems impossible to me that this could be so, but every month, without fail there is another, new mistake.

On Friday last I went to take my medication and one of the boxes was empty, so I looked for the replacement box within the other medications. It wasn’t there, and now it’s the weekend, and there is nothing I can do about it as the particular pharmacy from which I must collect my medications is closed all weekend. I am fortunate not to have a desperate need and therefore a couple of days was going to be OK health wise.

Today I went to the pharmacy to ask for my missing medications and the dispensing pharmacist said he had forgotten to place them in my packet along with the other medications. No apology, no thought that he could have rung me last week to tell me of his mistake, and absolutely no apology for the inconvenience for my having to go back to his shop in the pouring rain.

I am by nature a grumbler, but there is no point in my grumbling to the pharmacist, as I intend to do him the favour of telling his boss at head office. That way some other sucker, who might be in dire need of careful attention will be looked after properly.

Over the recent past I have also noticed that when I visit a public toilet there are a large and growing number of men and boys who do not wash their hands after using the convenience. This is not only disgusting for their own state of cleanliness but will, inevitably have a direct and negative bearing on the health of us all.

It sounds like I am becoming a terrible, angry old man, but the truth is obvious and shouldn’t be ignored, whatever its origination.

Back to my opening, about Oliver Stone, who is a talented man with a long track record of left leaning polemics disguised as filmed entertainment, and he’s at it again here, lying prettily dressed up as high art. Please understand I am no fan of President George W. Bush but that doesn’t mean he should be lied about just because I disagree with him or his policies.

Apparently such lies have become not only acceptable but are applauded. There are innumerable instances of inaccuracies about the President in the film, there are many false innuendos, and many insidious libels dressed up as fact. We could spend hours debating the catalogue of fabrications dreamed up by Stone portrayed here as fact. All I ask is that you check out the facts for yourselves.

I remember the same ideologues of the left saying much the same things about President Ronald Reagan. They claimed he was an incompetent idiot who basically didn’t have a brain. I happen to know some people that knew that President, and without exception they stated that he was very bright and sharp.

I suspect that if President George W. Bush is as stupid as this film portrays him he wouldn’t have gained entrance into either Yale or Harvard Business School and wouldn’t have ended up as a very successful businessman, and wouldn’t have owned a baseball franchise and wouldn’t have been elected Governor of Texas; All of which the film W passes of as simply the rewards for being the son of the first President Bush. No one could really believe that all of those accomplishments came the way of George W because he has a powerful father.

Does anyone dare say anything is lacking in President Elect Obama because he has accomplished so much less?

Where are the similar films about the well-documented peccadilloes of the Democratic President Clinton or the stupid and inept Democratic President Jimmy Carter?

Stone is the same director who made the film JFK and who felt no compunction about inventing historical events for that movie that simply didn’t happen. The same kind of filmmaking was employed in the film Nixon, and instead of it being attacked it is praised by the like-minded left leaning “media intelligentsia” who sneer at anything or anyone with an opinion to the right of his or her own.

I don’t crown these fools and liars with the word liberal, because they are not liberal, they are dogmatic fools who do not have the good grace to grant any rightness to the cause of those they regard as their political enemies. They would do well to remember that the root of democracy is not to the right or left of the spectrum, but above it, where right is not a direction but a byword for probity, civility and honesty, and maintaining the highest standards.

WelcomeTheNegotiator

2008-11-09T08:00:00.000Z

Today this column hosts a very good friend, The Negotiator. This is a man who will find you solutions when it doesn’t seem possible.

In these troubled times there is every reason for me to host the Negotiator.

If you have any questions or comments for him please e-mail them to tony@bcreativelimited.com and I shall pass them on to the Negotiator.

The lady on SKY News said ‘….many people are facing negative equity.’

Why did the newsreader present this as such a catastrophe? Bad news sells better than good news.

The first question is ‘what is negative equity?’ It’s what happens when you have a mortgage equal to most or all of the value of your house, the market drops, and suddenly your house is worth less than your mortgage.

We have established what it is, who’s likely to catch it and what should they do?

Anybody with a least one property against which they were borrowing over 75% of its value in 2007, is likely to catch it. If you are one of the people who go down with a bout of negative equity there are four likely scenarios.

1. You are able to meet your commitments; you have no need or intention of selling any of your assets in the next two years. This is the mildest form of the bug, and shouldn’t cost you a minute of sleep. If it happens to be a business arrangement – commercial property, buy-to-lets – a jittery lender might ask you to put up additional collateral. To such an impertinent request the appropriate answer is:” Get stuffed. No one put a gun to your head when you drew up the papers. No one coerced you into lending me more than prudence might suggest. You were motivated by the need to hit your sales target; your employer was motivated by pure greed. As long as I am meeting my payments I will entertain no further discussion of fresh protection for you.”

2. You were planning to sell soon. If this were not a forced position you would be well advised to re-consider your plans. Unless you are trading up, wait until the financial world turns the right way up again.

3. Your short-term fixed rate mortgage is coming to an end. You’ve borrowed more than your house is worth at 3.9% and they’ve lent you five and a half times your stated income without even verifying it. Once again, your lenders acted on the impulse of greed and the fear of losing out to the competition. So what do you do? The one do you can’t do is NOTHING. The option of putting your head under the bedclothes is not open to you. You must go out and meet the problem; don’t wait for it to come to you. Three to four months before your current arrangement finishes speak to a good mortgage broker. There are plenty of mediocre or downright bad mortgage brokers, and a few good ones. You want an Independent Financial Advisor – one who has access to the whole of the market, and not an advisor who is tied to just one company and its range of products. You need a person who can think laterally and will persevere until you have the best deal available. We have Howard; everyone should have a Howard. Over the next few months the banks and building societies will suddenly remember that they make their living by lending money. New products will become available.

But what if he can’t find you a suitable mortgage? Far be it from me to incite a mass movement for civil unrest but a short time on the Internet will reveal a very large number of people who have caught this strain of negative equity. More and more of them seem to have started fighting back. When lenders try to intimidate them they are saying in growing numbers ‘No! I can’t repay the mortgage and I won’t be forced into selling my home. You gave me this deal to entice me away from my previous lender because you wanted my business. You gambled on the property market continuing to rise… and you lost. I will not pay your gambling debts. I will continue to make my monthly payments. If you refuse to accept them I will pay them into my solicitor’s account, and when appropriate he will pay them into court.’’ This ploy seems to be enjoying some success at the moment and may result in forcing a complete change of attitude.

4. You can’t keep up the payments. There is no disgrace to this. The possible reasons are numerous.

• You lost your job
• You fear of losing your job
• You have kept your job but lost the large bonuses you used to receive
• Your business has slowed down
• Your mortgage rate has increased

Whatever the reason, you can’t afford it. Once again doing nothing is not an option.

Meet the problem before it meets you. Speak to your broker, or speak to a professional. Lenders really do not want to repossess properties that they would have to sell for less than the debt. Chances are that they will be amenable to a deal, an arrangement to receive some money until things improve.

I failed to foresee the last recession but I was one of the first to realise that financial weakness is a strong place from which to negotiate. I eliminated large chunks of debt by taking advantage of the difference between the borrowing and the ‘forced sale’ value of the properties in question.

Having negotiated large savings for myself I went on to sell that knowledge to other people in the same position. Just remember negative equity is a reality but it doesn’t have to be a bogeyman. Handled corrected it can be controlled and possibly made to work to your advantage.

KeynesALesson

2008-11-08T15:22:00.001Z

In looking for potential solutions for our economic woes we could do worse than look back at possibly the greatest modern economist of them all; John Maynard Keynes, the British genius who can show us, from beyond the grave, the route to the Promised Land.

Like all great men, Keynes was capable of mistakes and errors of judgment in many small ways, but was also to make some very wise forecasts that, had he been listened to, could have changed the future of the world. He correctly insisted that the Versailles Treaty at the end of the First World War was too punitive on the defeated nation and would lead to a dreadful reaction by Germany. He was right, the Treaty gave Hitler and his Nazis the argument against this national humiliation as an excuse, which led directly to the Second World War.

According to Keynesian economics the state can, and in my opinion should, stimulate economic growth and improve stability in the private sector - through, for example, interest rates, taxation and public projects. This, in general terms appears to be the course being followed by Gordon Brown in the UK, and now, might well be what the USA does.

In 1936 Keynes published these theories that formed the basis of Keynesian economics in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. In this theory, micro-level actions by individuals and firms can lead to aggregate macroeconomic outcomes in which the economy operates below its potential output and growth.

The majority of Keynes contemporary classical economists had believed in Say's Law, which stated that supply creates its own demand, so that a "general glut" would be impossible.

Keynes argued convincingly that aggregate demand for goods would prove to be insufficient during major economic downturns, and this would lead to unwarranted high unemployment and consequential losses of potential output. He was convinced that government policies should be used as an instrument to increase aggregate demand, thus increasing economic activity and reducing high unemployment and deflation.

Although Keynes's macroeconomic theories were mostly a direct response to mass unemployment in 1920s Britain and in 1930s America they are no less appropriate in today’s situation.

Keynes stated that the solution to economic depression was the stimulation of the economy through a variable use of two approaches; the first of these being a reduction in interest rates and the second, Government investment in infrastructure.

The injection of income results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation sparks a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity results in a multiple of the original investment.

A central conclusion of Keynesian economics is that in some situations, no strong automatic mechanism moves output and employment towards full employment levels. This conflicts with other economic theories, which assume a tendency towards equilibrium. The 'neoclassical synthesis', combines Keynesian macro concepts with a micro foundation, the conditions of General equilibrium allow for price adjustment to achieve this goal.

In the corridors of power of Whitehall were many bureaucrats who either didn’t understand or appreciate the financial genius of Keynes.

Perversely Keynes never saw his ideas fully utilized in his own country. Instead it was President Franklin Roosevelt who partially bit this bullet in his effort to get America out of the Great Depression.

More strangely it was the UK that came out of that depression first, in about 1935, and it was not due to any of the Keynesian ideas, but more the result of the UK being de-coupled from the gold standard, that up to then had meant that there was literally gold held centrally in exchange for every pound or dollar.

America’s economic salvation was a mixture of FDR led intervention by big government in addition to the country meeting the huge production demands of the Second World War.

Keynes himself, worn out by his efforts on behalf of the world economy at Breton Woods, and more particularly that of his own country, was to die within one year of the end of the war after successfully raising a huge loan from America to rebuild England from its near bankruptcy. Keynes was a liberal, not socialists, and perhaps this was humorously proven by his last words; when asked whether there was anything he regretted, he answered, “I should have drunk more champagne.”

Whichever way we find our way through this period of economic turmoil it will all be OK as long as we remember to revert to less government intervention the very minute we can, so we can all drink a little champagne again.