OneGuyFromBarlick

You got me David! But what I wrote still holds true. The arcane nature of Parliamentary remuneration has allowed quasi-legal practices to become established over the years and the first glimpse we got was when the expenses scandal broke. High time it was made transparent and I'm still in favour of giving the pay rise if the other matters are dealt with and the net cost doesn't rise.
I often talk about 'The Westminster Bubble' and the more I see of some of the recent court cases the more I think it should perhaps be the 'Metropolitan Bubble'. The phone hacking trial and the Saatchi/Lawson case reveal a different world. We keep getting glimpses of behaviour which seems to be regarded as normal but is totally foreign in my world. One thing is certain, high office and net worth are not automatically the key to a good life!

Syria Conflict.

I see that Syria is coming back into the news. Both the UK and USA alliance in backing the anti Assad rebels is coming unstuck. Our “good” guys have been overrun by the “bad” guys leaving the initial policy in tatters. Can we now see ourselves joining forces with the Russians to drive the “militants” away at the risk of upsetting our friends the Saudi’s or placate ourselves by offering more “humanitarian” aid to refugees. William Hague will be left stamping his feet but unable to do anything about it at all. A fine mess we’ve got ourselves in.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 05332.html

Dead right P, add to the list of countries we have interfered with over the years and caused trouble! Iraq and Afghanistan are basket cases as well but we don't hear the full story as the powers that be just want them to go away.
Why has the 2011 report on HS2 been suppressed by a rare Prime Ministerial Order. DafT says it's because it's out of date and all the issues have been addressed. Really? Then why not let us see it? (LINK)

We should be OK if Andrew Gilligan is on the case. I love this quote. . .

"Justifying the “exceptional” use of the veto, the ministers said the publication of the report would create “political and presentational difficulties at a crucial point in the HS2 project’s development”.

Diddums

Do you get the impression that there is no way this flagship project is going to be allowed to be stopped? 'Crucial to the recovery'.

We discussed Cameron's ability to think on his feet and engage his brain before opening his mouth recently. His response yesterday to the booby trap question on 'mission accomplished' in Afghanistan seems to be another example of a hostage to fortune. Surely he realised that since Dubya's notorious statement on the aircraft carrier that 'mission accomplished' is a minefield and should be avoided at all costs. I have a feeling this will come back to haunt him. There a many divergent views of what exactly has been accomplished. For instance, the opium crop this year is expected to be a record and nobody really believes that the Kabul government can hold the Taliban back when the troops leave. We are gradually learning the same lesson as all invaders of Afghanistan have from Alexander the Great to the Russians. It is a no-win enterprise and has cost the UK almost 450 lives.

What surprises me, or does it, is that when Mr Cameron opens his mouth on one of these impromptu statements it take a whole army of ministers and conservative MP's to explain what he meant. Why can't he say what he meant in the first place! Or is it a case of to quote from Alice in Wonderland " words mean what I want them to mean".

You're right P. In these days of 'spin' every utterance is examined forensically, I know I'm an old fart but I remember people like Atlee, Churchill and Bevan who said exactly what they meant but those days have gone I'm afraid. Today's politicians have a horror of definitive statements that will tie them down in future.
However, there are some exceptions, I love to hear Frank Fields speaking and that bloke Davies was pretty clear about the need for extra airport capacity. In both cases they have been asked to think the unthinkable and no doubt much of what is recommended will be ignored as too politically sensitive. Remember how Blair treated Frank Fields?
We are being treated to 'red line issues' again in the panic over the 'Rumanian Invasion'. Good job there is no pogrom against the Jews currently in Europe....

I listen to the euphoria over the latest 'employment' figures but I'm afraid I have problems with the news. How many of these jobs are in industry where value is added? Reports are that most are in seasonal jobs, estate agents and the house-building industry, largely in the SE. How come half of the 'employed' are claiming benefits? No mention of the fact that wages are rising at half the pace of inflation and note that this inflation figure is well below inflation in essentials which are the main spend of the poorest. How many of these 'employed' persons are on zero hours contracts? There is also the thorny question of productivity which remains stubbornly low. None of this fills me with hope for the future and listening to PMQs for enlightenment is a waste of time, it is a permanent pantomime.
Sorry, but I still believe that New Labour under Blair and Brown completed the ruination of the economy and the present government is pursuing an agenda based more on a hankering for 19th century laisser faire embedded in Tory DNA than any meaningful improvement in the lives of the vast majority of the electorate. We have massive debt in the system and the present growth is fuelled by even more debt in the housing market. Real interest rates are higher than ever and this fuels the financial markets giving the impression that the economy is doing fine. Sooner or later the bills are going to come in.

Today is sentencing day for Denis MacShane

A small reminder for those who don't believe that history has anything to teach us about current events. I've detailed many times how when the coalition first attacked Iraq various historians pointed out the dangers. If you remember, one thing that became clear as the dust settled was that warnings about links between Al Quaeda and Saddam were totally unfounded. Latest reports from Iraq suggest that Al Quaeda is now strong enough to take over the country and use it as a base for attacks on the West. Exactly what Simon Schama predicted.

Here's what I wrote in 2005.

YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE.

Politics is a fascinating spectator sport. It provides a constant stream of examples of the pitfalls and traps which await the unwary in real life. We are watching such an example now in UK politics and it is, at the same time, frustrating and instructive to witness.

It’s the resurgence of the massive disagreement about whether it was right to attack Iraq ‘riding pillion with the US’ as the Chatham House report put it in a statement issued today. [formerly The Royal Institute of International Affairs] They have given as their opinion that the incursion into Iraq undoubtedly made the UK more likely to be attacked by fanatics. I use the single word ‘fanatics’ because I fear it is far too easy to qualify any description of the suicide bombers using the adjective ‘Muslim’.

The big problem for the Blair government is that they have invested so much time and effort into burying criticism of their actions in backing the US. Faced with the proposition that actions in Iraq have made the world more dangerous and rendered us more likely to attack as allies of the US they are forced to attempt to refute it. If they don’t, they are tacitly admitting that forecasts that this would happen before the attack, and informed opinion that this is exactly what has happened, were right. Ergo, the incursion was wrong.

In the past few days the human shields have been rolled out, all of them singing from the same hymn sheet. The refrain is, and here’s a typical politician’s rhetorical trick, ‘it is wrong to put forward excuses for the bombers’. Seeking the truth is not making excuses. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary is the latest big gun to be wheeled out of the bunker and sang his chorus this dinnertime on R4. John Reid, the Minister of Defence even had the gall this morning on Today on R4 to claim the support of history in his assertion that because 9/11 and other bombings happened before the latest attack on Iraq it was obvious that any connection with that attack was wrong.

I’m afraid that once more it was Reid’s spurious arguments that pushed me over the edge. If he is going to use history he should read it first, it might save him from digging the hole they are in any deeper. The problem is of course that many people hearing him would believe him and say ‘well, that’s all right then’.

I would recommend that they go back slightly further and start by reading David Omissi’s article, ‘Baghdad and British Bombers’ published in the Guardian on January the 19th 1991. This was based on the research David had done on his book Air Power 1919-1938 in which he traced the history of the RAF in what was then Mesopotamia and the punitive bombing of the Kurds to force them to pay taxes. He also mentions the shelling of the tribesmen of the Euphrates when they rose in rebellion against British military rule in the summer of 1920, when the British army used gas shells - "with excellent moral effect" - in the fighting which followed.

This evidence blows a small hole in Dr Reid’s interpretation of ‘history’. It has evidently escaped his notice that there are tribal elders and younger people taught by them, in what is essentially an oral tradition, who have been bombed three times by the RAF in their lifetime. It seems to me that to assert that such experiences have no bearing on attitudes towards Britain is not only foolish but a gross distortion of the historical record. At the very least, the government is on very shaky ground if this is their only defence.

They are wriggling on a hook of logic that is entirely of their own making and just as all the efforts to discount criticism of the attack on Iraq have failed, this latest attempt to deflect blame will fail as well. They rely on a failure of memory on the part of the electorate and I’m afraid that in most cases this succeeds. It is the duty of those of us with slightly more retention to raise these matters even though we will be accused of acting as ‘excusers for the bombers’.

I hold no brief for George Galloway but do recognise that when a man speaks the truth he should be recognised and not vilified. In a recent speech he said that until the nations of the West renounced armed force as a tool of foreign policy they would continue to attract opposition and terrorist attacks. I can’t understand how anyone can argue that this isn’t the case. We aren’t talking here of armed force used in genuine defence against clear and present danger. We are talking about what we used to call ‘gunboat diplomacy’ and the concomitant damage it causes. It is generally agreed that 800 men, women and children are being killed in Iraq every month due to suicide bombings. This does not include ‘normal casualties’ caused by the activities of the security forces. These deaths are a direct result of the destruction of the Iraqi army, police and security forces by our troops because it opened the window to fanaticism.

In an article in the Guardian of February 19th 2003; ‘Blast from the Past’ by Matt Seaton, Simon Schama, when asked for his view on the proposed attack on Iraq as compared to WW2 refuted any comparison and ended his piece by saying; ‘As a consequence, if you were Bin Laden, you would be thrilled about the prospect of war: either there will be a great fat target of a western presence in Iraq for several years or there will be a broken and chaotic state: either way it will be a teddy bears' picnic for terrorism.’ Dr Reid and the rest of the Blair government should have been listening, at the very least they should note this and add it to their reading list. Here we have a historian applying the lessons of history and coming to a clear conclusion which has turned out to be exactly right.

To ignore the role of past actions in Iraq when seeking reasons for the recent terrible scenes in London is worse than simple ignorance, it is wilful distortion of the truth. This is of course not a complete answer to why young men with everything to live for were persuaded to take such violent action but it is a good place to start. What is even more important is the fact that until unpleasant facts are faced, until the truth not only of history but of recent acts is admitted, there is no chance of any successful strategy emerging in the fight against such acts because whatever action is taken will be based on ignorance and short term manipulation of the truth. This is not a sure foundation for policy.

SCG/18 July 2005

Although never a fan of Saddam Hussein I have never believed that the reason for the invasion was weapons of mass destruction or even the threat of Al Qaeda. My thoughts were that Saddam had defied the USA and British no fly zone for 10 years and that the sanctions embargo was gradually being broken down by some of our European allies. In setting this example Iraq demonstrated that the collective power of the oil producing nations could displace the US from its controlling position. This would place Iraq in a central role to challenge the US control in the Middle East.
Following this irresponsible invasion, America went on to blast Afghanistan in the vain hope of setting up military bases to control the whole area. As we can now see, none of this stupidity could possibly have worked. We are now left with a traditional power vacuum that the extremist factions are all too keen to exploit.
In my mind we have a lot to answer for.

How come half of the 'employed' are claiming benefits?

Probably because of the ways that Tax Credits are defined ( to some extent they are a replacement in part for what I think was income support ). Never mind , if not abolishing them as such , Tory policy will be to let them wither in real terms ( and the restriction on Child Tax Credit to 2 children max seems to be the previously undeclared means of financing free school meals for all children ). ( Think there is also the problem of housing benefits too ).

Not the happiest of times for the Tories. They have hammered away at the 'problems' looming when the 'flood of Romanians' arrives in January as part of their anti-EU strategy so successfully that the more rabid Tories are demanding caps on the numbers admitted. Leaving aside the inconvenient fact that the evidence is that migrants are more likely to pay tax than claim benefits, all the strategies they have proposed are illegal. Vince Cable mounted an extraordinary attack on the Tories yesterday, backed by Nick Clegg. Harold Macmillan once said "Events dear boy" and this is what Cameron is experiencing now. With every attempt to foil UKIP he gets deeper into the mire. Cable says it is a panic and on the face of it I tend to agree. He should take a leaf out of Asquith's book, he advocated 'masterly inactivity' as one of the most effective tools in a politician's armoury. However, I am afraid that the modern strategy of immediate response to what appears in the media precludes this sensible strategy.
I've just realised from later reports that he compared Cameron's utterances to Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech.

Mr Cameron had a Thatcher moment yesterday. He went on a glad-handing trip out into the backwoods to demonstrate his concern for people who were flooded and without leccy. See this LINK for the Sky News version. Things didn't go well! He was handbagged by angry residents who told him they had been totally abandoned. I wonder whether the message, that there is a real world out there, sank in? Imagine what his reception would be when confronted with any of the millions of people in the country who aren't fooled by the 'recovery'. All they can see is that in many ways their lives are being ruined. Time for a bit of thought?

Talked to a disillusioned mate of mine yesterday about the handbagging. We came to the conclusion that it is simply one more example of the almost total disconnect between the higher reaches of governance and real life down here at the grass roots. Think of the hidden food crisis in Britain today as just one example. How many politicians understand the concept of survival? Look at food banks and listen to the government reaction to them. One thing is certain, politics in 2014 is going to get down and dirty, too many problems building up and getting worse day by day and electioneering on top of that. Real incomes at the lower end of the scale are still falling with no end of this trajectory in sight. Distribution of wealth has always been the problem and is getting worse. It will be a rough ride!

Bits and pieces of news this morning. Reports that the government has abandoned plans for charging non-EU patients for emergency treatment as it would cost more to implement than it could save.
What intrigued me was this LINK, the head of the CBI calls for members to share the recovery by raising employees wages as things improve. Evidently 'trickle down' isn't seen to be enough. Could it be that they are beginning to realise the scale and severity of the drop in incomes and the problems this will lead to?

Well, we will soon know whether the dire warnings about a flood of Romanians overwhelming the country were justified or not. Expect some ducking and diving over the next week or two....

Welcome to the UK, I'm Keith Vaz.... (LINK)
Heard a factoid I wasn't aware of this morning. When the banks were refinanced in 2008 the government pumped a staggering 90% of 'the national wealth' into them to save the system. Comparable rates in other countries were around 30%.

The relentless 'good news' campaign boosting the economic miracle continues. There were some figures for house price rises in 2013. Instructive to note that some boroughs in London had rises of 25% while some in the NE went backwards. Two nations.....

Politics starts to warm up again after Xmas. Ossie gives us the good news message that further cuts to social services are going to be necessary while at the same time everyone gets behind the crucial election promise that the 'triple lock' on pensions will be maintained and Ossie even hints at tax cuts. The brave new future of the economic recovery continues! Meanwhile, in another part of the economy disposable incomes continue to fall, the rise in interest rates gets closer and thousands of families are increasingly at risk as they use more and more credit to simply survive. This is Alice in Wonderland policies.
Looking abroad, two names come back into the news, Faluja and Ramallah. I have been saying for years that what is happening in Iraq now was inevitable and I think we are looking at the eventual splitting up of the country into roughly the old states of Mesopotamia before we imposed the new structure on the country in the 1920s. Will we be hearing any comment from Blair et al? I doubt it. They daren't even publish the Chilton Report.... What a bloody waste of time, blood and treasure.

That's going well then:

http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2014/01/06/th ... y-in-2015/

Despite historic cuts to the DofE and recently announced cuts of 1500 jobs (500 in flood prevention) Patterson the Environment secretary insists all is well because he is commissioning a review. (Sound of can being kicked down the road)
I watched a porky but shifty Tory being interviewed about the latest cuts announced by Ossie. He steered away from the obvious question about the condition of the poor and cited the number of jobs being created. No mention of the fact that half of those in work are claiming benefits because of low wages. I ask myself two questions; what is the point of simply denying everything? Where is the Opposition?
Meanwhile, in Iraq, the US announces it is sending more arms to the government to beef up the attack on Al-Qaeda including drones. Great, that'll solve the problem! Do they really believe that having produced the conditions for allowing Al-Qaeda into Iraq by military action they can stop them with more of the same? 9,000 killed in Iraq in 2013, looks as though 2014 could beat that score in the first quarter!
There's another small puzzle, the US reckons they are self-sufficient in energy post Fracking. So what is the imperative for pouring even more money into violence in that country, or for that matter in the Middle East as a whole. Am I alone in suspecting that the new bogey man in the White House is the onward march of Islamic militants? They should read the history of the Crusades.....

They might be self-sufficient in energy but they still need petroleum as the raw material of the chemicals industry, and they aren't running many cars on biofuel, gas or electricity yet.

Mr Cameron appears to have opened his mouth and put his foot in it again. See this LINK for the ongoing repair job on Anglo Polish relations. Surely he must have realised that being specific about one country was going to cause trouble?
By the way, has anyone heard anything more about the great Romanian invasion? Vince Cable isn't happy, he's stirring things up inside the Cabinet.....