Politicians' Tax Affairs

As I blogged a few days ago, Ken is a lying hypocrite. He has carried out sensible tax planning whilst blasting anyone else doing exactly the same as a tax avoiding “rich bastard”. He has then compounded this by smearing Boris as a tax avoider, when in fact Boris has either generously or stupidly not carried out any sensible tax planning and actually paid more tax than he is required to under current tax law.

All the London Mayoral candidates have now released some tax information. Ken’s is incomplete, incorrect and designed to obfuscate his real situation.

But after the media upped the ante on this whole issue, Boy George has now said he is up for the debate on whether frontline politicians should publish their tax returns, as in the USA.

This is a bad thing.

A really, really bad thing.

Of course we want our politicians to pay UK tax. So it goes without saying that all UK politicians should be UK tax resident. So far so good. And we want our politicians to not be lying hypocrites - hear that Ken? (Let’s not get started on all those Lefties who rail against private education and quietly send their children to private schools. That’s another level of hypocrisy for another post). But there are some serious arguments against extending these two perfectly proper requirements to requiring all politicians to publish their tax returns.

1. We will never get the media and the Left to be able to understand the difference between tax evasion, aggressive tax avoidance and sensible tax planning. The first is illegal, the second is unpleasant and successive Chancellors endlessly chase this problem through new legislation but the third is to be commended. We want people to work hard and they should be allowed to keep their hard earned income. It is a basic human right as far as I am concerned. So everyone should tax plan to perfectly legally and properly retain as much of their hard earned income as they can. Meanwhile, all governments have a terrible and endless track record of wasting taxpayers’ money and we should give them just enough to do what we need them to do and no more.

2. Direct comparisons of people’s tax affairs are very difficult. Much depends on many variables including your age, your employment circumstances, your attitude to saving/pensions/investments etc and of course each tax year is different with changing tax rates and changing individual circumstances. We would get terrible, wildly wrong and very politically partial analysis of politicians’ differing situations.

3. People just won’t understand the information. There was much coverage some time ago about Romney’s tax affairs in the States. What almost all commentators simply could not understand was that Romney was actually paying proportionally more tax than his competitors. They all wrote the story the other way around as they simply did not understand the complex information they were dealing with.

4. It is interesting that all those who always wank on about human rights are the first in the queue to want to take them away from people they don’t like. I actually think politicians should be allowed privacy, whether for their financial affairs or their family or whatever. If not, we will end up stopping normal people from wanting to become politicians, ending up with dull, squeaky clean automatons with zero personality, history or ideas. We want politicians who are representative of our society not homogenised dullards.

5. We would also effectively stop anyone who is successful (ie rich) from running for office. We need these guys exactly because they are successful. But why would many of them want The Daily Hate screaming about their personal finances? They would not put themselves forward.

6. Now for the most important reason. Yet more personality politics. This harks back to the issue of ‘intellectual elites’. How many of us can explain Boris or Ken’s exact policy on transport, the police, the City, air pollution, planning, the GLA tax precept etc. Yet we all know about their personal lives, their tax status, their families, their extra martial affairs blah, blah. We need to know much more about what our politicians plan to do and much less about what they are like. This issue is a growing cancer in our political system. We are becoming more and more like America on this and that is not good.

The Powers That Bcc

What a hoo-ha about bugger all. ‘Surveillance Dave’ going back on his pre-election verbiage about civil liberties, according to that horrible combination of the opportunistic Left and the mad Right. As ever, the facts…

You will recall that Mr Cragsbury is a civil libertarian, so I am prepared for the odd crim to go free rather than impose serious curtailment to the rights of all. Some of my history on this issue is here, here, here, here and here. The state should never be given carte blanche or too much power. Hence, I was very against NuLab’s mad previous proposals for the Government to bug our email traffic at will and hold the data themselves. The current proposals are in fact very different.

For many many years, the Government has been allowed to listen to our telephone calls. They do this by requiring the telcom industry to hold data on when, where and from/to whom all our calls are made for a period of time, so that if they believe we are baddies doing bad things, they can check this info and then using that go (secretly) to court to get a legal order empowering them to then bug our calls. Very, very few of these legal orders are granted. Very, very few of us are ever bugged. This process is for suspected serious crims, terrorists, foreign intelligence agents etc. You and I need worry not.

Anyhoo, the volume of calls over the internet is exploding. And right now, the security services have very limited ways to investigate this, for example Islamic extremists in the UK on Skype chatting to their masters in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan etc.

Thus, all the Government wants to do is extend their existing powers on telephone calls to internet activity and most especially internet calls. Not an issue than we good people need worry about much but of course a wonderful hobby horse for the Dark Lord Dacre and all his malign minions to rant about in The Daily Hate, and perfect fodder for all good bandwagon hunting Lefties who want scare mongering and negative coverage of the Coalition.

Desperation Politics

Brain donor of the week - Diane Hill who sustained 40% burns when attempting to decant petrol from one container to another in her own kitchen with the gas cooker alight.

Opportunist of the week - The man who wants to be our Chancellor of the Exchequer giving an interview and actually trying to blame Francis Maude for the injuries sustained by the woman.

Pathetic news organisation of the week - The channels which actually half ran with that story for a few hours. (Are you independent news organisations or the PR department of the Labour Party? Make you mind up).

Knobs of the week - John Mann MP, Karl Harris MP and Lord Toby Harris (all Labour) who called for Francis Maude to resign on the strength of this news story.

This Turbulent Priest

The Mad Dog of Lambeth has resigned. And frankly, who cares? His Grace has opined wisely as ever.

The immediate coverage of whom the runners and riders might be is terribly amusing. I view this debate as something akin to forming a committee on the bridge of the Titanic to decide who should man the wheel as all the while the good ship sails full steam ahead at the iceberg. Church attendance is a straight line graph down and has been for decades.

Williams was a well-documented very Left wing academic with rather silly hair. He kept confusing his religious role with the idea that he might have something useful or meaningful to say on politics. Clerics should concentrate on helping the poor and needy, not lecturing democratically elected prime ministers on what government should be doing.

His watch has been dogged by the two issues of women and gays. The C of E needs to sort its act out here badly. Can women be priests or not? If they can, then they should be able to be priests at every rank of the priesthood, even Archbishop of Canterbury. Likewise, is being gay evil or not? It is not defensible to say you can be gay as long as ‘you don’t inhale’. These two issues show the church’s utterly unprincipled attempt to try and ride a horse in two directions at once.

I think we all want absolute clarity from our religious leaders. Just be firm in your view, then we can decide whether we agree or not. (On gays, Mr Cragsbury is firmly of the good Conservative view that everyone should be free to make their own choices. Be gay or straight or bisexual if you want to. I just don’t care. Your life, your choice. And on women priests, it’s all in or all out. Anything in the middle is just a muddle).

And for Williams' tenure to be completely dominated by these two issues and not the really important moral issues of the day, just shows how lost they all are. Get a grip.

So, advice for the new High Priest:

Sort out your doctrine as your believers are deserting you. You are becoming irrelevant to the majority of the population.

Tell the African and Asian clergy and all the other sexists to poke off. People, be what you want. If that means having gay and bisexual priests, then so be it.

And stop wandering into politics and concentrate on doing good for the poor and needy. It will help us all take you seriously and help you rebuild your brand and membership.

Ouch!

Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs Executive Director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, resigned today. Here is his explosive resignation letter:

“Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

“To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be side lined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

“It might sound surprising to a sceptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

“But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our gruelling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

“I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

“When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fibre represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

“Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

“How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an axe murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

“What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

“Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero per cent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

“It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behaviour, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

“It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

“These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

“When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

“My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

“I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.

Who Will Build These Homes?

Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition of 2010 which produced ‘Open Source Planning’ - a relatively anti-property development policy prescription - has turned into a very pro-development Government. It’s all about growth. Put simply, there are only a few things Government can actually do to help the private sector lead our growth out of the recession, and creating the right policy environment for lots of property development is one of them.

If you want growth, you need investment. And if you want investment, you need development to generate those interesting returns that make investors invest. And the real benefit of all this for a Government is jobs.

So far, so good. But to get voted back into office, you need to be delivering increased wealth for normal people not just the business and investment community, particularly after you have had to squeeze them so hard for the last few years to pay down that deficit. And this, children, is through home ownership as demonstrated by Mrs Thatch in the 1980s.

For all the silly Government schemes of the Blair/Brown years which hosed lots of taxpayers’ cash around for little significant return, Mrs Thatch actually delivered social mobility through Right to Buy. Millions moved from defining themselves as ‘working class’ to ‘middle class’ during Mrs Thatch’s era simply due to home ownership and the wealth it generated for them. (Which is why I’ve always been so perplexed why Lefties (a) hated Right to Buy and (b) saw no redeeming features in Thatcherism).

So, increased home ownership is good. And of course more residential development also delivers more affordable housing which gets people off local authorities’ waiting lists which is better for the individuals and cheaper for the taxpayer. The Government has embraced this and has brought forward several eye-catching policies:

Right to Buy - A massive expansion of the scheme which Blair/Brown had tried to water down as much as they could for frankly ideological reasons.

Build Now, Pay Later - By letting developers plan, build and sell residential projects on excess public land marked for disposal and not demanding payment upfront but only when the developer has actually sold his newly developed houses seriously excites a development industry which is struggling to get banks to fund its development schemes. And it will seriously kick start the delivery of new homes and affordable housing.

NewBuy - Announced today, this scheme essentially provides 95% mortgages for first time buyers who are buying a newly built home. The developer puts an additional 3.5% of the purchase price (essentially roughly what they currently spend on incentives - mortgage fees, new carpets, new curtains etc) into a fund managed by the mortgage company with Government underwriting another 5.5%. This gives a serious cushion for any mortgage company should any future crash happen, thus enticing them to lend.

So with all this going on, everyone is getting into residential development. I have lost touch of just how many of my clients which previously have not been residential developers but which are now getting in on the act. And we’ve had a rash of private equity investors and developers buying up residential development companies - Macqarie, Carlyle, Development Securities. We even have a new entrant in the form of Skanska, which has residential experience in Scandinavia but never before in the UK.

And what have we seen from the media? Wild, misinformed, almost hysterical opposition, take this from Fraser Nelson at The Speccie as a typical example. Read the comments after the post. Some people put Nelson bang to rights on his nonsense.

But here’s the real problem: our residential development industry is now 50% of the size it was in 2007. So who is going to actually build all these houses? These smaller, leaner resi developers absolutely do not want an unsustainable boom. They are in fact not crazily expanding their businesses like they did previously. They are instead all paying large dividends to their shareholders who have stuck with them in recent difficult times. Persimmon, which was selling around 24,000 new homes a year at the peak, is now selling around 15,000 a year and is happy at this level. The new entrant, Skanska, is only aiming for 1000 a year; small beer.

The Government might be going to be rather frustrated sometime soon.

The Right to Die

Today’s decision by the High Court to let Tony Nicklinson take his case to a full hearing is wonderful news. I salute him.

I have blogged about the right to die before, here and here, so shall not go over every detail again. In simple terms, I do not see why Parliament, the Government, the medical profession or various religions should take away my right to decide my own death as and when I see fit.

It is apparently humane and compassionate to put animals out of their misery but we humans must live a horrible half-life in medical purgatory because a group of well-intentioned busy bodies have decided that their opinions trump my rights.

The sooner euthanasia is legalised the better.

Religious Nuts Hate Gays

I know. ‘Shock! Horror!’ headline, no?

Some guy who wears a dress in Scotland (Cardinal Keith O'Brien) hates gays and doesn’t want them to marry. Somewhat like a lot of guys in the Middle East who also wear dresses and don’t like gays either. But the Government doesn’t mind gays and would like them to be able to marry.

I mean, really? Are we still discussing this? Have we not all grown up and moved on? Next they’ll want us to all behave like Americans and start debating abortion again. The caravan has moved on and nobody apart from those that support the religious nuts who wear dresses, of whichever persuasion, really cares.

But I am loving the ludicrous arguments used by the dress wearers though:

‘Marriage is a pact only between a man and a woman’. Says whom?

‘Government can’t just change the meaning of this word'. Really? Since when did any religion own the legal rights to a word? And, hellooo, civil marriages have been around in the UK since 1940. Didn’t hear you wanking on about that at all, now did we?

‘Marriage is only for a man and a woman to raise children'. So, if you don’t have children is your marriage still valid? What about older people who marry? Are they, aged 70+, meant to be shagging like bunnies so that their children will validate their marriage.

I love the ridiculous word games and warped logic that bigots use to justify their bollocks whilst straining to remain PC. Reminds me of Nick Griffen’s pathetic well rehearsed answer when anyone asks him if he is a racist.

Lost

There is no other way to say this: the union movement is now pointless.

I have said before that when there was workplace injustice, unions had a point, a rationale, a ‘raison d’etre. But we now have one of the most regulated and ‘padded’ employment regimes in the world. So with virtually nothing of any relevance to say or do they simply resort to extorting money from the taxpayer through the threat of strikes and closed shop collective bargaining, so brilliantly laid out here by The Devil.

And as a Lefty campaigning organisation, they are also spent, now completely overtaken by the likes of UK Uncut, Occupy, Right to Work etc.

They have totally lost touch with normal people’s view of life. Len McCluskey’s silliness this week makes my point for me. When the nation is going to be engaged in the biggest national party in living memory during the Olympics, the unions and the Left trying to sour the party is just self-defeating nonsense. And when the eyes of the world are upon us, what worse advert could there be to international companies, investors and tourists that the UK is closed for business than petty politicking, unionised disruption.

Len McCluskey. Knob.

The Nuclear 'New Great Game'

Today, Iran goes to the polls. Let’s be clear: neither winner is truly helpful to us. The reformists are all locked up or neutered and so are not even fielding any candidates. The election battle is between the pragmatic Islamic hardliners of Supreme Leader Khamenei or the more irrational Islamic hardliners of President 'I’m-A-Dinner-Jacket'. But the result could have a bearing on Iranian attitudes to the ‘New Great Game’.

The geo-political strategic battle that occurred from the early 1800s almost until WW2 for control and influence in central Asia has been well documented. Iran has always been at the centre of this battle which is partly why it is in the DNA of all Iranians to hate America and Britain and see conspiracy behind every lamppost. We are reaping what our great-grandfathers sowed. And the West and Iran have been playing this new version of ‘The Great Game’ for some time now, not least in various proxy wars - Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine (Hamas) and Lebanon (Hezbollah). So, three questions: how, why and what’s next?

How?

The West seemingly has had a two stranded carrot and stick approach: one diplomatic and the other military.

On the diplomatic front, the stick to provide leverage has been (a) ruling all military options - ie military attack - as still on the table and (b) increasingly strict sanctions. The first one of these has not been working too well as the Iranians don’t believe it and, in any case, the threat just makes them work faster on their nuclear programme to get to the end game more quickly, but more on this later. The second is apparently beginning to bite hard.

The carrot has been endless attempts to engage in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear policy. It has failed. The Iranians look like a cunning street fighter pitched against the Marquis of Queensbury with all his rules. Unsurprisingly, the street fighter has easily run rings around its Western opponent. The second front has been the IAEA trying to use an inspection regime to enforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Another Marquis, another failure. And thirdly, it is well documented that all manner of diplomatic back channels - code for Russian ‘behind the scenes’ diplomacy - have also been employed. All to no avail.

On the military front, covert cyber warfare has been deployed - the Stutnext worm and probably others, unreported and unknown. The Israelis have used their well-worn assassination strategy to kill off key Iranian nuclear scientists as and when they can. The Americans and Israelis have continually been mooted as discussing possible military strikes. Under Obama, an American strike will simply never happen and is still extremely unlikely under either of the two probable Republican Presidential nominees - my man Romney and the nut job Santorum. The Israelis, however, are another matter. The closer the Iranians get to the key nuclear development stage, the more likely an Israeli attack becomes. All bets are on an Israeli strike this year if it is going to happen. Read this chilling article if you dare.

Why?

So, why does Iran want all this nuclear kerfuffle anyway? Two reasons, simply: the first was beautifully explained a couple of years ago by Mathew Paris on BBC’s Question Time. If your greatest enemies (nuclear armed America and Britain) have in recent years (a) invaded the county on your western border (Iraq), (b )invaded the country on your eastern border (Afghanistan), (c) had a massive military excursion in a country on your southern border (Kuwait) and (d) surrounded you with significant military bases and alliances - Turkey, Saudi, Bahrain, Oman etc - why the fuck wouldn’t you? Particularly, if your ‘Great Game’ ancestry has made you a pathological anti-American conspiracy theorist.

But secondly, taking note of the kid glove treatment these two nuclear armed military ‘aggressors’ give to other nuclear states - Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea - this further enforces the logic that you must be in the nuclear club at all costs as soon as possible.

What’s next?

Short term - The immediate threat is an Israeli attack. If it happens, most money being on April-September apparently, withdraw you money from your bank and fill up those spare petrol cans in the garage sometime soon because Middle East tensions will go into hyper drive. In any case, as is often reported, for an attack to be successful is actually quite tricky and it would only set the Iranian nuclear programme back by a few years.

Mid term - Sanctions are beginning to work - albeit that this is, as ever, terrible for the innocent population - as Iran has once again offered to engage in negotiations, however false their tactics may be. Horrible thought though it may be, it seems that we can starve them to the table. But for us to be able to take this one step further and be a game changer, we need a very big, credible carrot. And no one seems to have one.

Long term - How big a problem is it for the Iranian regime to have nuclear weapons? Unknown. Whilst they have always been reasonably rational geo-political players, who knows who could end up with their fingers on the trigger. And the wider problem is that this will set off a simply inevitable Middle East nuclear arms race, the Saudis already declaring that they would have to arm themselves and Turkey next in line, quite apart from what happens in the end to the mess that is nuclear-aspirational Syria.

However, I firmly believe that the days of this hard line theocracy are numbered. Iran will for sure have its ‘non-arab spring’ moment. The demographics are against the theocrats. With Saddam Hussein taking out a million Iranian men in the eight year Iran-Iraq War, Iran’s population pyramid is lopsided towards a dwindling number of older people and a huge percentage that are young and more outspoken and who want their iPads and freedom. Mullah time is ticking away, assuming Israeli actions don’t kill us all before we get there.

In the meantime, let's hope the Supreme Leader's supporters win the election. At least they're semi-rational.

What Are the Argies Up To?

Sabre rattling abounds on a weekly basis from the delectable El Presidente in Buenos Aires. But why now and should we worry?

The preposterous Argentinian claims are frankly risible. Britain, France and Spain all landed on the islands at varying times in the 17-19th centuries. The only people to ever inhabit them have been Brits, and from long before modern Argentina was even founded. No Argentinian seemed to give a toss about the Falklands until the second half of the 20th century. The population of around 2500 are almost exclusively British. If you believe in the principle of self-determination - it’s all there in Chapter 1 Article 1 of the UN Charter - then the Argies have no viable claim, despite their 'tortuous logic’.

The 1982 Falkland’s War is widely believed to have been an attempt by the then Argentinian military junta to divert popular national attention away from the dire situation the country was in at that time. When they lost, it did for them.

Now in 2012, the situation is very different but very similar at the same time. The Argentinian economy is in an even worse state. The country is in the toilet. So far, so similar. However, the
Argentinian army is emasculated, the navy almost non-existent and the air force reduced to a shadow of its former self. The military is technologically still living in the 1980s. Frankly, the flight of RAF Typhoons at Mount Pleasant, the Type 45 destroyer, HMS Dauntless, now stationed off the islands and the odd submarine would be able to sort them out in an afternoon.

But.

Since 2007, oil exploration has been taking place in The Falklands. Funny coincidence. That same year, the Argies started making noises. And in 2010, exploratory drilling began. Then more finds in 2011. Another funny coincidence. The Argentinian Government upped their campaign that same year.

It’s so transparent; a political diversion and a desire for some of the spoils.

Afternote: And this today, which amounts to a naked attempt to try and establish an air link under the direct control of Argentina for later leverage. So childishly obvious. Playground politics.

Huhne's Loss

So Mr and Mrs Huhne are off to court today. Odds are, he’s going down sometime soon. Yet another politician whose hubris has led him to Ford Open. Let’s not worry about him too much. He’ll land on his feet. They always do.

More interesting are the consequences for (a) the Lib Dems, (b) Cleggy and (c) the Coalition.

Lib Dems – One of their magic bullets was always that with no likelihood of power, no one was at all interested in their sleaze. It always existed – humans are humans after all – it was just that no one in media land gave a toss about them. This nicely linked in with their ‘holier than thou’ sanctimony that has always been soooo annoying – Paddy Pantsdown, Good Time Charlie, Ming the Merciless, Cleggy and the worst of all, Gay Boy Simon (am I allowed to say that?). Perhaps one of the most annoying was of course Inmate No 21831. Oh I’m sorry, Chris Huhne. How things have changed.

You see, this story is going to run and run: first there’s the prelims starting today, then there’s the actual trial, the affair evidence, the divorce evidence, the witnesses – Cleggy?, the Spanish Infanta? (would you, would you? Come on you probably would) and so it will go on. All horrible stuff if you are already languishing in single figures in the polls and part of your USP is that you don’t do sleaze like those other horrible parties. Not good.

Cleggy – Looks a bit lonely now, doesn’t he? His Lib Dem big guns – I know, but everything’s relative – have one by one been upended: Laws the Fiddler, the Busted Sage of Twickenham, Hubris Huhne, all dead in the swing voters eyes. And all around him remain intellectual Lilliputians, except Sarah Tether who is a real Lilliputian and holds a marginal seat where she will die in May 2015 anyway. Not good, again.

The Coalition – Drip, drip, drip go the sands in the political hourglass. This is the problem with Government – “Events, dear boy, events”. But for the Tories is does mean that come May 2015, in lots of seats all over the country, the ‘whiter than white’ Lib Dems have been sullied. Much easier to take them on.

Result: Cameron 1, Cleggy -2

Lauded in Death

In much of the media, Whitney Houston has been idolised in the last 48 hours. Which irritates the shit out of me.

Why?

She was a very, very lucky woman. She was given a truly incredible talent - we all liked her music. And from that talent she made fuck loads of money which meant that she lived an incredibly privileged life that less than 0.001% will ever experience.

And, due to her own lack of self-control, her own pathetically weak character and her own choice to indulge herself in drink and drugs, she threw all of this advantage away, no doubt leaving a trail of destruction behind her.

And please don’t tell me she was a helpless victim of her own inner demons or illnesses. People in her situation victimise themselves and then use their newly manufactured victim status to explain away their own terrible weak choices.

This is not someone to be lauded. Just because you die younger than average and are well known, does not mean you are a hero. Real heroes are exceptional people as I’ve written before.

May she finally rest in peace.

Are We a Christian Country?

So an atheist ex-town councillor - I know, who cares? - complained that Bideford Town Council holds prayers before each Council meeting and, with assistance from the National Secular Society - I know, who cares? - off the case went to the High Court. Bideford Town Council lost today, leaving the door open for other councils of all persuasion, and even Parliament, to have to think about whether they should have prayers before their meetings - I know, who cares?

Anyhoo, putting aside that you and I paid for this legal nonsense, this case once again calls into question whether we are really a Christian country anymore.

There is theoretically a strong link between Christianity, in the form of the Church of England, and the state. Wikipedia has interesting knowledge:

“The concept of separation has been adopted in a number of countries, to varying degrees depending on the applicable legal structures and prevalent views toward the proper role of religion in society. A similar but typically stricter principle of laïcité has been applied in France and Turkey, while some socially secularised countries such as Norway, Denmark and the UK have maintained constitutional recognition of an official state religion. The concept parallels various other international social and political ideas, including secularism, disestablishment, religious liberty, and religious pluralism.”

Theoretically, Her Maj sits atop this relationship as both Head of State and Head of the C of E, but does anyone really care about that? In most European countries over recent centuries, the state has taken over the social roles of the church in any case, leading to a generally secularised society. We “swear by Almighty God” in court, although you can choose what you want to swear by depending on your religion or not. You can be born, marry and die without reference to any religion. Religious studies in schools cover all religions not just Christianity. And of course, since the war, Christian church attendance is a straight line graph downwards - presumably downwards to hell - whilst our immigrant population growth has seen the reverse in almost every other religious community in the UK.

The drip, drip effect is unwinding the relationship between church and state inch by inch. And does it matter?

I think His Grace needs to make his case.

When to Intervene?

The situation in Syria is dire, but what to do?

In the last 30 years, since 1982, we’ve deployed British forces to The Falklands, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq again, Afghanistan and Libya to name just the big ones. There have also been innumerable small scale operational deployments and of course our special forces are always helping some country somewhere rather quietly. There are places we could have ended up but didn’t. And there are places where there is a problem where we could never go: Iran, almost any of the Arab Spring countries and now Syria.

The question is, when these situations blow up, what should we do?

Now all you Lefty intellectuals out there will probably assume that as an ex-military type I am all for a fight, a ‘guns blazing’ approach to international diplomacy or military action. If in doubt, let’s shoot Johnny foreigner, no?

You’d be very wrong.

You see, us ex-military types actually understand the consequences of war, the reality, the limits, the timeframe, the terrible human cost. We’ve all had close scrapes and lost good friends on operational deployments and then had to look their widows and children in their eyes on our return. War is always bad. It’s just that very occasionally it’s the least worst alternative. Almost always, when the Chiefs of Staff brief the Prime Minister on his options, they advise ‘you don’t want to do this, and here’s why’. Politicians, from Thatch, the Grey One, Tony - forget Gordy - and Dave, all like war. They love standing on principles, their egos love ‘speaking for the nation’, they probably get off on controlling awesome military power with all its ultimate responsibilities. We know they love it, or they simply wouldn’t do it.

But what should we good Christian men do when a country is massacring its own people before our very eyes - Syria? Or lying and cheating in order to gather the ability to be able to threaten war at a later date - Iran?

Gone is the ease of the ‘gunboat diplomacy’ era, unless you’re dealing with Argentina. But should we be the world’s policeman?

And when we try and use diplomacy and sanctions etc, we get no help from the spineless ‘League of Nations’ which can only ever move at the speed of the awkward ships in the convoy – ie Russia and China.

Today, the Defence Select Committee has produced a report essentially saying that Libya was a one off, only possible because the cuts in the recent utterly tragic Defence Review have not yet taken effect. We’re cutting the defence budget by 8% over 4 years, remember. We are now a Third World defence spending nation.

The cold, hard, economic, political and military reality is this: from 2012, we need to have much less grandiose views about what the UK could and should do internationally.

The Magic of Monarchy

Today, 60 years ago, Her Maj had greatness thrust upon her. And to universal acclaim, she has acquitted herself very well indeed and been a brilliant ambassador for UK plc.

All this is evidence of why the arguments for removing the Queen as Head of State and becoming a republic are so utterly foolish. Those mean spirited Lefties who hold such views do not air them much because, as ever, they suit their ideology but bear no relation to the facts.

We have magic. And this magic is not just a wonderful link to our history and heritage. This magic is envied and copied the world over and no one gets even close to it. It is a brilliant business advantage for us, as the tourism profits - both internal and external – annually, but especially this year from the Diamond Jubilee, bear out.

Who would want some clapped out politician elected as our Head of State? For sure, they would be more expensive - politicians always are. But if I have a fear, it is for the future.

Charlie-boy is an ass. And worst, he is a vain, stupid ass who surrounds himself with sycophantic ass-lickers. There are two fundamental problems with him:

First, he is unpopular. And to survive in the meritocratic, democratic 21st century, a complete anachronism needs to be popular to survive.

Second, he fundamentally does not understand what has made the Monarchy popular. Her Maj gets it. In spades. Keep silent on all matters, be nice to the proles, cut the ribbon and look regal. Charlie-boy can’t help himself from sounding off and - not surprisingly - his views, constructed as they are from within his gilded existence and hewn from his B and a C in History and French A level, are almost always arrant nonsense, as I have blogged before.

If you were the chairman of Monarchy plc, you would quietly tell the aspiring CEO that he is not going to be the company’s choice and the very popular young upstart called William is going to be a much better choice for the longevity of 'the firm'.

Let’s hope Her Maj can keep rolling on until William can overtake his dad, whom I am sure would be a dismal and unpopular sovereign.

Just a Coincidence...

...that the latest batch of Parliamentary expenses were released at 0600 hrs this morning, the morning after the Pre-Budget Report. No plan there at all. Just a coincidence.

Where Weak Governments Seek Shelter

Three wonderful examples from today's media of desperate news management by 'right on' weak politicians:

1. Child Migrant Apology - A totally manufactured 'crisis' over apologising for sins past. Always a good one, this. The pathetic media, always desperate for a contrition story as it serves the current societal appetite for being outraged over nothing. Why apologise to all these ex-British Australians now? Why not in 1997? Or 1998? Or 1999? (I could go on). You have had a number of years to so this, Gordy. Such a desperate attempt to regain control over the news agenda and play Gordy as a brilliant compassionate leader, it's pathetically transparent. Pah!

And while we are on the subject of style over substance political apologies, where do we draw the line? Where is the apology from the Norwegians for raping and pillaging? And for that matter the French for invading Britain in 1066? And what about the Italians for letting Julius Caesar come over here and start the first road building programme? Trendy lefty governments love this sort of crap. Pointless political bullshit, which the media should ignore but suck up like lap dogs.

2. Pointless Summit - A summit that achieves nothing substantial but a photo op (funny how Obama is always there) and a 'really strongly worded communique', viz the APEC summit. I have opined about summits before (here, here and here). Can we all grow up? We Proles can see through the bullshit, you know.

3. Scapegoat-itis - Always blame someone else for your mistakes. Blameshift is a well recorded political tactic. Thus politicians, who have I recall been raping the taxpayer on pay, expenses and benefits in kind for decades, are still desperate to blame the evil bankers and their fat cat bonuses for our financial woes. Again, you fuckwits, it was a failure of Government regulation not a banking failure or greed on the part of any bankers.

I might as well piss into the wind.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

...or to translate the words of Juvenal, the famous Roman poet and satirist: who will guard the guards?

We have an absolutely fundamental problem in our democracy. The mission creep of the executive, started by Thatcher, accelerated massively by Blair and topped off with supreme disdainful arrogance by Brown, is now the rotten core of our governance system. Examples from just the last 24 hrs alone:

Yesterday's PMQs - A set piece, weekly moment in holding the executive to account has been transformed into the PM refusing to answer any direct question and lying on the record about the executive's own policies.

The Chancellor's Mansion House speech - Despite the banking regulation system created by the executive being demonstrably inadequate, with the Governor of the Bank calling for it to be changed, with the US Government strengthening their system, because it would seem to be admitting incompetence, the executive toughs it out and refuse to change things.

The fake Iraq war inquiry - A chorus of disapproval, now joined by Lords Butler and Hutton - both past chairmen of war-related public inquiries - reigns down on the executive and its cover up operation of what has been without doubt the most outrageous and expensive (in terms of human life) botch up during NuLab's period in power. The executive just arrogantly ignore the criticism.

MPs expenses - Today the feeding frenzy begins all over again. Standby for days of more coverage. There will be more scalps; NuLab minister Shahid Malik is clinging on by his finger nails and will surely go soon but there will be more. The whole legislature, including the executive, are sullied. And the response of the executive has been pitiful, more interested in covering up the detail and using distraction techniques (even today, funny that Fred the Shred's pension deal should be leaked today, huh?) than shedding light and promoting openness.

All these demonstrate the fundamental problem of our democracy: we have an executive that is so powerful that it now listens to no one, has no shame, and does exactly what it wants.

To answer Juvenal's question, no one is guarding the guards. They are out of control.

Iranian Prediction

Yup, I'm at it again. It's prediction time. Emboldened by my last prediction - that Gordy was going nowhere - which proved correct in the face of much media hype and blogosphere 'irrational exuberance' to the contrary (still waiting to hear from you, Mr Dale), I am up for my next one.

Mrs C, as you will recall, is a dodgy foreigner: Middle Eastern type, all long eyelashes, designer shoes and overly excitable behaviour. Thus, we follow the ups and down of Middle Eastern politics closely. What's going on in Iran right now has major ramifications for the global community, because:

1. If Mahmoud 'I'm-a-Dinner-Jacket' stays in power, bang goes any chance of stemming the flow of arms and cash to Hammas, which in turn keeps Hammas in power, which in turn means that Fatah will not get back into power, which in turn means that no deal between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, thus fucking over any chance of St Obama solving the Middle East crisis. Not good.

2. If Dinner-Jacket is propped up by the Supreme Leader and the Council of Guardians, then things are likely to get worse, which could push the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to topple the clerics and seize control. Not good either.

3. So the best outcome for world peace and all that, is for the Supreme Leader to dump Dinner-Jacket by saying the election result was miscounted, appoint Mir Hossein Mousavi as President and away we go.

Now, contrary to the usual portrayal in all the Western media about mad mullahs burning US flags etc, Iranian politics is always very tactical and cute. They have always been a very rational geopolitical player. Thus, boldly, I am going for option 3 above.

BTW, brilliant article on all this here.