The Last Ditch

Again, Wat posts the graph that matters

Burning our money: Pathetic Autistic Castrates.

As everyone and his dog prattles on about the politics of the Conservatives and the EU, Wat Tyler (link above) keeps his head and posts this graph (click for the full misery);

He observes, drily;

UK withdrawal would hurt them a lot more than it would hurt us

Given the graph he posted the other day, by what logic is Britain such a huge net contributor? Why is Poland, doing better in the crisis than most other EU countries, taking so much from the Germans, Brits and Dutch? I lived there 11 years and love the place dearly, but do they think we have some moral obligation to compensate for their years of suffering under Communism? Though they like to blame it on the Russians now, let's not forget the KGB was founded by a Pole. As for the Greeks, really guys! A few millennia is long enough for anyone to rest on their laurels, however magnificent. It might be time to roll up your sleeves and do a bit again.

Britain's glory has long since faded and it's time to face the truth. We are a poor country with a lower standard of life than the other net contributors to the EU budget. Don't blather, please, about our relative GDP. It's what our money can buy us that matters for this purpose. My friends and colleagues in Stuttgart, Paris or Berlin earning less than half what my partners in London earn can live far better on it. Their direct taxes are roughly the same; they have fewer stealth taxes; their public services are actually usable and for what it will cost me to buy my daughters a studio flat in London, I could buy them five in Berlin.

Whatever the (massively undemocratic) politics of the EU may be and regardless of its murky accounting to conceal its shameful corruption, it is an enormous rip-off for the British. The crowing EU-philes* enjoying David Cameron's (well-deserved) embarrassment should instead be doing something about that. Whoever is the next Prime Minister, I suggest Margaret Thatcher sends him her biggest, heaviest handbag and he takes it to Brussels with a house brick in it.

If you want us to love this bastard child of yours, at least get its hands out of our pockets!

* I really object to them stealing the word "europhile." I am a europhile. I holiday in France in my Italian car while wearing my Swiss (or sometimes my German) watch. I drink only French wine and would prefer only ever to eat French food. I speak French and Polish and understand German and Russian. I am no Little Englander, yet I completely detest the EU. I see it as a threat to all European freedoms, not just those of Britain.

The brittleness of cast iron

David Cameron to shed 'cast iron' pledge on Lisbon treaty | Politics | The Guardian.

David Cameron was elected to lead the Conservative Party for his political and presentational skills, not his convictions. It remains to be seen if he has any convictions, but now we must also question his skills.

He has a tendency to give hostages to political fortune. He tried to seize the moral high ground on becoming party leader by pledging to avoid "Punch and Judy politics". He has been persistently prodded with political pitchforks by Mandelson and the lesser demons ever since, but if he responds in kind, they jeer "Punch and Judy" at him. I fear the phrase "cast-iron guarantee" is going to haunt him in a similar fashion.

People don't trust politicians and it's not entirely their fault. It is a defect in democracy itself that if you don't tell people some approximation of what they want to hear, you can't get elected. We all like to believe in the wisdom of crowds, but the truth is that the majority of modern Britons want to hear that the state will solve life's problems, without effort or cost to them. Politicians are torn between over-promising to stay in power and the fear of their lies becoming so obvious as to discredit them. Their corruption is a mirror held up to decadent, economically-ignorant, essentially amoral voters.

Politicians' careers are an assault course, during which they sustain repeated political injuries. For a while they run on bravely, but eventually the damage is too much and they fall. The most typical injuries are failures to deliver on those promises they would have preferred not to give. Gradually, inevitably, they become too discredited to continue.

Margaret Thatcher was the exception. She was principled. She promised nothing she could not deliver and she was utterly relentless in making sure she did. In pursuit of her objectives she fired one minister after another, making enemies within her party faster than outside it. In the end, the pygmies with wounded pride were numerous enough to bring down a political giant. I was at a dinner in the City with Francis Pym, prominent among the pygmies, on the night she fell. As all my hopes for the arrest of Britain's decline died - I bitterly watched him drink in gleeful celebration. There must have been dozens of others doing the same that night.

But Cameron's injuries were never going to be of Thatcher's kind. He is one of the pygmies, lacking her political courage and her moral vision. His was always going to be the routine political failure of one too many broken promises. That's why his "cast-iron" pledge of a referendum over Lisbon was so foolish. He will now suffer more injury from every future broken promise because of one broken before he even took office. A promise he need not have made.

A referendum only made sense if it would prevent the adoption of the EU's constitution-in-all-but-name. Once it had been adopted, any referendum (as the Euro-sceptics baying for it well know) would be on our continued membership. The issue of the EU dangerously divides the Conservative Party. Any Conservative leader must manage the issue constantly and cleverly. Cameron's mistake was not to break the promise. It was to make it in the first place, and to make it - again - in such memorable terms.

Margaret Thatcher will go down in history as the Iron Lady. This farce means that Cameron will be remembered, if at all, as "Cast Iron Dave".

Ned Ludd rides again

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | MP warned over electronic readout.

Had the Deputy Speaker been in his post at a different point in history, presumably he would have objected to an MP reading out a letter not written on parchment?

Giving an unattractive nation a makeover

Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser - Telegraph.
This story proves the Labour Party knows no ethical boundaries to state power. A government should serve the people, not seek to manipulate them. Social re-engineering of the people in the interests of the governing party is no part of a government's remit. Labour cannot even deny this particular exercise was against the peoples' will. Why else did it manipulate the data? If it had thought there was popular support for re-engineering the nation to make it "more attractive and cosmopolitan", it would have campaigned for election on that basis.

Let's face it however; what nation would elect a government that despised it as unattractive and parochial? In deliberately flooding our islands with millions of unnecessary immigrants, Labour concealed its "driving political purpose" and "concentrated instead on the economic benefits". Those benefits have proved illusory, but they were never what mattered to Labour.

I feel sorry for the immigrants concerned. They have been used as political weapons to attack the people they came to live among and can hardly expect to be loved for it. Yet this was not their fault. They sought, as sane humans do, to improve the lives of their families. They disrupted their lives; removed themselves from their communities; made huge efforts in many cases to come to a place they hoped would offer more life chances. Many with strong religious and cultural beliefs came because they were encouraged to believe they need not adapt in order to live in Britain. Now we know why. They were being deliberately imported in order to modify Britain; to adapt it to them. They have been cruelly used in a campaign not of their making. It is impossible to imagine any party but Labour being so cynical and arrogant.

This was about importing Labour voters, dramatically changing the country Labour has long despised and taking a mischievous chance to "rub the Right's nose in diversity." It was, in short, a betrayal of the nation. Labour has today been exposed as not merely unfit to govern, but unfit to live among the people it so hates. All involved in this exercise should emigrate to a country sufficiently "diverse" to be "attractive" to them. Perhaps Cuba?

Democracy gone sour?

The furore over Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time showed me just how much Britain has changed since I left it in 1992.  As I followed the interminable and intemperate "debate", I felt more and more disconnected. The mob at the BBC Television Centre calling for Griffin and his followers to be burned to death merely added to the feeling. Are those people really my fellow-citizens? They are far scarier than the BNP's pale and baggy losers, yet they belong to a group supported by David Cameron.

"No Platform for Fascists and Racists" was a concept invented in 1970's student politics. I was there, laughing at the Communist dweebs promoting it, but I was wrong. It became National Union of Students policy in the 1990's and, if the outcry against the BBC for giving Griffin a platform is anything to go by, seems perilously close to becoming the norm for "grown up" politics.

The mainstream parties are to blame for the rise of the BNP. They know how many voters feel about current levels of immigration, but they ignore it. They have created a political climate in which merely to seek to discuss it is to be denounced as "racist" and ostracised. Perhaps the fears of the "aborigines", as Griffin charmingly called us, are misplaced. Perhaps our culture will not be lost. Perhaps the social infrastructure of Britain can cope with seventy million souls on our archipelago. But aren't these fears at least legitimate? Are they not worthy of discussion?

The three members of Britain's political cartel frame all national debate within the tight parameters of left-liberal thought. They ignore the declining memberships of their parties that were once genuine mass movements. They turn their back, in some sense, on the very concept of democracy. If some of their snubbed voters and ex-members have turned to the BNP in protest, it's regrettable but hardly surprising. Nor is the way in which they routinely speak of BNP voters likely to win them back.

In 2000, voters tried to break the cosy cartel of Austrian politics by voting for the late Jörg Haider. They put his party into a coalition government and the European Left into a frenzy. A civilised, educated and kindly Austrian friend explained to me at the time "it was the only way to make them listen". The LibLabCon cartel risks the same outcome, unless it engages in real debate and listens to its people. If it had a leader with half Haider's glamour, the BNP would be doing better even now.

Today, the BNP is a statist, authoritarian joke, but so were those student politicians of my youth. Mad ideas can prevail when democracy goes sour.

MPs' expenses: still not getting it

MPs' expenses: pay rise for MPs to stop rebellion - Telegraph.

Unlike angrier members of the blogosphere, I would be happy for a reasonable number of MP's to be paid a handsome salary. We have too many for the size of country and the scope of the role, given that 60-70% of legislation comes from Brussels. As electors make strange choices, I know this will mean a lot of overpaid oafs. It is certainly galling to contemplate the likes of Dennis Skinner, Michael Martin and Jacqui Smith on, say,  £175,000 a year, when they have barely the talent to command a minimum wage between them in "real life." On the other hand, it would be sensible to make a career as a legislator an attractive option for non-oafs, and the salary enough to remove all temptations for corruption.

The expenses scandal has blown away the last shreds of the pretence that politicians are disinterested, noble souls. Many - perhaps even half of them - are clearly amoral chancers. The truth is, it's a job like any other and employers need to be alert to bent employees with their hands in the till. The electors, as employers, should really consider the qualifications of the candidate, not just to what political conspiracy s/he belongs. Perhaps the realisation that s/he would command a serious salary might make voters think before electing the more obvious media-friendly buffoons, with no talent for reviewing and amending complex legislation. Full CVs of all candidates should be available on-line in a standardised form, so that voters can compare and contrast what they would be getting for their money. I suggest all candidates should take psychometric and IQ tests and those results be published too.

MPs exist to serve their employers and should live in their constituencies so as to be accessible. Expenses for that should be their own. Everyone has to live somewhere, and people move when they get a new job. They should get a modest, public, equal allowance for a London apartment (which they can supplement if they want something grander) and travel vouchers for travelling between constituency and office. London MPs should not get even that. The allowance should pay rent, not finance a purchase. Office and secretarial services should be provided by the Civil Service and all other expenditure on parliamentary business should be published, as incurred, on a public website, so that electors can monitor their employee's conduct in relation to "jollies" etc.

The idea that they could monitor themselves as "honourable members" was a crock. So is the idea that they can create an "independent" body to monitor them. No-one can monitor them but their electorate and this should be made as easy as possible.

Damage is being done to democracy now. Not because the public is angry; we are entitled to be. It's because the MPs and the party leaders in particular are responding to this as a political, not a moral issue. Many more MPs should be expelled from their parties for the crooks they are. Party leaders should be informing the police of the conduct of the more egregious offenders. Their whingeing and moaning is destroying democracy. It's time for them to bite the bullet.

No pay rises, ladies and gentlemen please, until the stables have been cleaned.

Trafigura releases report

Minton report: Carter-Ruck give up bid to keep Trafigura study secret | World news | The Guardian.

So Trafigura has given up its counter-productive attempts to suppress the Minton report. We can all read it if we wish. It's a dry technical account of what happened, setting out the possible health consequences to those who came in contact with the waste.

These were clearly matters of public interest and the Guardian was right to report them. In the wake of the cyber-furore, I am sure that companies and their lawyers will reflect on what happened and take different decisions in future. Lawyers are well aware of the non-legal consequences of legal actions and do take them into account when giving advice, though that advice is not always taken.

The practical consequences of an injunction are different now that opinion in favour of free speech can be rapidly mobilised by Twitter and blogs. It was interesting and gratifying that the editor of the Guardian credited the blogosphere in the linked article. Bloggers need to be aware however, even in their moment of triumph, that injunctions need to be taken seriously. Campaigning to have them lifted is fine, but breaching them can have serious consequences. The blogosphere is so entertaining partly because many bloggers are "not worth suing" and so don't worry about laws like defamation. Even that is unwise. Breaching an injunction is even more unwise. You could end up in jail for contempt of court.

Yesterday, I expressed my disappointment that so many bloggers misdirected their ire at working lawyers doing (as far as we all know) an honest job of work. In that context, please note that Trafigura's chief financial officer, told the Telegraph:

We decided that our best course of action at the time was to get the injunction, because we didn't want more inaccurate reporting on things which are very clearly wrong effectively. It is a heavy-handed approach, absolutely. With hindsight, could it have been done differently? Possibly.

The relevant words here are "We decided". Though this gentleman's protestation that the injunction "...was never intended to gag parliament or attack free speech..." is positively Mandelsonian, he has the decency to take responsibility on behalf of the company for its decision. QED.

The worst "reform" of modern times?

I was brought to blogging by a shocking piece of Labour legislation, but I am coming around to the view that the worst legal "reform" of my life was carried out under a Conservative government. In 1986, the Crown Prosecution Service opened for business. Before then, the police officers who investigated cases prosecuted them (or employed lawyers to do it for them). This was thought somehow to be a conflict of interest, but in an adversarial system, conflict is part of the process. It made a lot of sense for the accuser to face the accused, with an independent judge deciding between them. However, in the 1980's this was thought insufficiently "modern" and the CPS was formed

At the time, reflecting on what kind of fellow-lawyers might opt for a career with the CPS, I simply thought it was a shame that the best legal talent would no longer be available to the police. I was not wrong. When my wife served on a jury, she noticed that - though the cheap local defence barrister was hopeless - the Crown Prosecutor was worse. Like many others at the time, however, I entirely missed the truly important point. I would like to think the government of the day did too.

Under the current administration, there have been numerous incidents that should have led to prosecutions, but didn't. Does anyone doubt that Yates of the Yard would have prosecuted Lord Levy and Tony Blair in the affair of cash for peerages, for example? Would there have been prosecutions for the undoubted frauds perpetrated by numerous Members of Parliament in relation to their parliamentary expense claims? It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the CPS takes orders from its political masters; the Director of Public Prosecutions (currently Kier Starmer QC) reporting to the Attorney General (currently the Baroness Scotland).

Nor did the CPS acquit itself with honour in the case of Jean Charles de Menezes. Had you or I killed him on that tube train in the mistaken belief that he might otherwise detonate a "suicide bomb", we would have faced a jury. If the jury believed our explanation, we would have been acquitted. There is no question, however, that the police or the CPS would just say "fair enough" to our story themselves. Particularly if the CCTV records of the incident had mysteriously disappeared, apparently because you or I had removed and "lost" them. Particularly if we had lied about the incident and defamed the dead man in the days following. However, that wasn't how it worked for the officers of the Metropolitan Police who killed Jean Charles or their bosses who ordered them to do it. In consequence, the bereaved family feels cheated and the thinking fraction of the population feels suspicious that something was covered up.

It is hard to avoid the suspicion that senior police officers, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister did not want the legality of the "Kratos" shoot-to-kill orders issued in the wake of 7/7 tested in court. I believe the then Prime Minister, Home Secretary and Metropolitan Police Commissioner have cases to answer for Jean Charles' death because they gave illegal orders to kill. With the CPS under political direction, those cases will never come to trial, unless the family brings (as I believe it should) a private prosecution. Of course, the previous system would have been only a little better. With the Met's own officers involved, an inspector from another police force would have investigated the matter and it would have been his decision whether or not to prosecute. Whether he would have acted with integrity or covered up for his colleagues would at least have been out of political control.

I think the CPS was created out of a sincere desire to professionalise the administration of justice. In yet another example of the law of unintended consequences, however, it has made justice - whenever the men of power are involved - far less likely. As we must fear the men of power more, it has made us less free.

Being elected while black

Obama's Nobel Farce - The Daily Beast.

The right-wing blogosphere is understandably angry about the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. Surely that prize, its credibility already much stained, can now never be taken seriously again? How could he possibly have earned it, given that he was nominated when he had only been President for two weeks?

I have linked to the Daily Beast's article on the subject because it is written by a supporter. It cannot reasonably be dismissed as right wing foaming at the mouth. Frankly, I think this paragraph says it all;

I like Barack Obama as much as the next liberal, but this is a farce. He’s done nothing to deserve the prize. Sure, he’s given some lovely speeches and launched some initiatives—on Iran, Israeli-Palestinian peace, climate change and nuclear disarmament—that might, if he’s really lucky and really good, make the world a more safe, more just, more peaceful world. But there’s absolutely no way to know if he’ll succeed, and by giving him the Nobel Prize as a kind of “atta boy,” the Nobel Committee is actually just highlighting the gap that conservatives have long highlighted: between Obamamania as global hype and Obama’s actual accomplishments.

Much though I hate the word "racist" (and all those who regularly use it to debate-dampening effect) I can't help but observe that it applies here. President Obama has, in effect, won the Nobel Peace Prize for "being elected while black." There is no other explanation. 1964's laureate - who famously dreamed of men being judged by the content of their character not the colour of their skin - must be spinning in his grave. He wanted to eliminate discrimination, not reverse it.

The Yorkshire Ranter's brilliant idea

The Yorkshire Ranter.

He suggests setting up a website, tentatively named Whosekidareyou.com to monitor "...nepotism and backscratching influence peddling..." It would provide an invaluable service to all of us trying to understand the networks of influence that underpin the British Establishment. How wonderful if hovertext over an author's or politician's name could identify his/her connections!

h/t Tim Worstall