More Balls From Balls

Rather than listen to the spin, why not read Moody’s statement in full here.

The killer central argument is this:

“The primary driver underlying Moody's decision to change the outlook on the UK's Aaa rating to negative is the weaker macroeconomic environment, which will challenge the government's efforts to place its debt burden on a downward trajectory over the coming years. These challenges, reflecting the combined effect of a commodity price driven hit to real incomes, the confidence shock from the euro area and a reassessment of the lasting effects of the financial crisis on potential output, were already evident in the government's Autumn Statement…. The second and interrelated driver of Moody's decision to change the UK's rating outlook to negative is the fact that the weaker environment is also, in part, a by-product of the ongoing crisis in the euro area. Although the UK is outside the euro area, the crisis is affecting the UK through three channels: trade, the financial sector and consumer and investor confidence.”

So, how’s that economic policy working out for you, Mr Balls?

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.

Another Prick in Whitehall

It's Sunday. I've had two small children around my ankles all day. Light relief as I can't be assed to write anything:

The Dark Lord

Following on from my previous Leveson post, I just HAVE to write about the evidence of The Dark Lord Dacre whom I watched twice this week, he having been recalled to give further evidence.

I have considerable contempt for Associated Newspapers and all its works – The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday.

Why?

1. It's hypocritical – It pretends to be as serious as a broadsheet whilst actually slumming around in the tabloid ‘z-list celebrity hell’ gutter. At least the other tabloids don’t pretend to be anything other than they are.

2. It's so arrogant – It seems to have decided what and who are acceptable and anything or anyone not on its approved list is to be vilified, denigrated and trashed.

3. It cheapens our culture – It plays to the very worst of that horrible part of middle England: homophobic, racist, right-wing, reactionary and xenophobic, desperately pretending there was some halcyon era when everyone was lovely to each other, crime was non-existent and there were no ‘darkies in the village’.

And the evil genius at the top of this foul smell is The Dark Lord Dacre. His evidence, both written and oral, underlines everything which is foul about Associated Newspapers and the rest of our tabloids.

First - and get this - his evidence actually says: “Self-regulation has been a success story.”

Excuse me. Did I miss something? Seems Lord Justice Leveson should just pack up and go home, the Dark Lord says it’s all OK. It’s OK to trash people. It’s OK to harass them. It’s OK to print lies and then apologise on page 49. It’s OK to hack, bug, burgle and cheat. All OK. The system’s working awfully well. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Second, his malevolent self. He was THE most shifty of all the witnesses to date. Arrogant. Antagonistic. Bombastic. Sneering. Supercilious. Rude. Sarcastic. He was contemptuous and frankly contemptible. He behaved like one of those deposed dictators, finding himself in the International Court, in complete denial that he had done anything wrong and pretending not to recognise the authority of the court.

And this leads me to conclude that nothing can change in print media land - our society cannot rid itself of their filth - until he and his ilk are deposed.

Simply, he is not a fit and proper person to run or edit a newspaper. I am desperately hoping that the twists and turns of Hugh Grant's brave campaign against him finally brings him to his end.

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.

Will Leveson Work?

There is a lot wrong in print media land.

There are currently 5 police inquiries into the behaviour of the print media - Op Weeting for phone hacking, Op Elveden for police bribery, Op Tueleta for computer hacking, Op Kalmyk for accessing computers and Op Rubicon for accessing computers in Scotland.

The Culture Select Committee is also carrying out its own investigation - remember ‘foam pie-gate’.

And all this follows on from the 2003 Information Commissioner’s Office inquiry - Op Motorman - which looked at similar issues and produced a report called What Price Privacy? It pointed out that all the print media were at it and that News International was not the worst offender.

As each day of the Leveson Inquiry unfolds (and this humble blogger has been following it very closely) the facts are now clear:

1. The print media, and principally but not exclusively the tabloids, has hacked, blagged, bugged, burgled and thieved its way through our society for some years. The swaggering arrogance of the editors and journos appearing before it has been breath taking.
2. Amazingly, no editors or journos can remember anything - emails they may/may not have written or calls they may/may not have made - and specifically they didn't see any hacking ever. None. Not once. Nothing to see here. Move along please.
3. Self-regulation has manifestly failed. One tabloid newspaper group - The Express - can’t even be assed to submit itself to the PCC in any case.
4. As with any organisation threatened with statutory regulation, the print media are desperately throwing up every reason they can, especially the ‘freedom of the press’ card, to pretend that regulation would be the end of the world as we know it.

The coverage in the media has been painted as a ‘News International are evil’ story by…guess who…all those who hate the Murdoch media, led initially by The Guardian which as ever wrapped itself in a cloak of self-righteousness rather forgetting that (a) its initial claims that New International journos hacked Milly Dowler’s phone have now been shown to be complete bullshit and (b) that it was identified as one of the main offenders of phone hacking in the ICO’s What Price Privacy? report.

So what should be done?

We have the best broadcast media in the world. Really, we do. Travel abroad and watch/listen to foreign broadcast news and compare. Ours is without doubt the best in class. By a country mile. Authoritative, accurate, fair and professional.

And it’s fully regulated.

QED. End of argument.

I am anything but a big government guy. I am instinctively against regulation. But print journalism has inhabited a nether world, often in league with politicians too craven to hold them to account and whose backs they scratch, along with a police community who illegally trade information with them and have until now refused to impartially enforce the rule of law.

Time to clear out the stable. These total tossers, who have cheapened so much of our society, should be regulated and Leveson should recommend that clearly.

There is only an upside. All the scaremongering by the print media and its acolytes about any negative effects of regulation is just lobbying by interested parties. Is our fully regulated broadcast media toothless and weak?

Demonstrably not.

I remember in 1992 when David Mellor as Secretary of State for National Heritage told the press it was “drinking in the last chance saloon” when the PCC was established. Nothing has changed since then. In fact things have become worse with more and more stinking evidence piling up of the print media’s misdeeds.

But I fear that the cautious Lord Leveson and the craven political class will once again blink and not do what is right.

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.

Limp Biscuit is a Knob

And to think, people used to take him seriously...

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.

Aid and Trade

So those beastly Indians have taken our Aid cash but not bought our Eurofighters. Bastards. And just to grind our face in the dirt even more, they’ve bought some planes from the cheese eating surrender monkeys. Double bastards.

And when this issue came up on the BBC’s Question Time this week, Alan Duncan - the Tory DFID minister - gave an impassioned argument as to why Aid should not be linked to trade. Good argument, well made, but wrong. Simples. If you want our Aid, then you must take our Trade. Why is that so wrong?

But, there is a much better solution: Trade not Aid.

Aid can be like benefits. The recipient can get used to it, quickly take it for granted and then stop looking for work. Countries can behave like the listless unemployed. And in any case, just chucking money at people is like renting a home. In the end, you are just wasting your money. And it seems they do not even want our money anyway. Much better to help our Aid recipients by investing our cash in businesses that create skills, employment and wealth, thus laying the ground for them not needing our Aid any more.