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It's Timmytime
When Tim Worstall is worried, we get worried. From his blog in the Spectator:
Blogging The Crisis
Is "Bin Laden" hiding under a Spanish mattress?
The Spanish government is trying to pump liquidity into the financial system by encouraging cash hoarders to start circulating their savings. According the the Guardian, over €54 billion in 500-Euro notes is believed to have been stashed away under beds or in safes. Much of the cash is a product of the black market, thought to represent a fifth of Spain's GDP.
One quarter of the Eurozone's €500 bills are in Spain, the newspaper reports. These very high denomination notes are rarely spotted, hence their nickname "Bin Ladens."
The finance minister and Spain's tax authorities have ruled out a tax amnesty for anyone arriving at the bank with suitcases stuffed with €500 bills.
But will Euros be worth anything by the time this crisis blows over? There have been rumblings over the weekend that the one-size-fits-all approach demanded by European Monetary Union is showing signs of strain. The premiers of France, Germany, Italy and Britain got together over the weekend to hammer out a response: The meeting ended in fiasco, and then disaster, as Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel announced German private deposits would be protected. Unless matched by other EU nations there is a risk of investors pulling money from banks in their own countries and depositing them in Germany's safe house.
The Waiting Game
It's nice to know that France is putting new media high on the list of technologies that will dig us out of this economic black hole. More than a day after our Paris correspondent put in a request for a .fr domain name (NB not buying, merely requesting permission to buy an unused URL) we still haven't heard from the approved agent who must contact the official French regulator before allowing the buyer to purchase the domain name.
We're running a spread on how many more banks will go down before our hapless correspondent gets his .fr domain and his Paris business started... any ideas?
See Naples And Die
The notorious Vele housing blocks in Scampia, Naples, ruled by Camorra drug gangs
Gomorrah, a film based on the murderous activities of Naples' Camorra clan opens this week in the UK.
TellyTories Say "Uh-Oh"
Peter Hitchens launches a classic attack on the Tories, accusing David Cameron's team of being a soppy bunch of liberals in thrall to the centre-left press and unworthy of the name conservative.
Protect And Survive
At the weekend, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel provoked chaos in European treasuries when she appeared to assure Germans that the government would cover their savings in the event of a banking collapse.
"We tell all savings account holders that your deposits are safe. The federal government assures it", she said. Other nations, such as Britain and France, were reportedly preparing statements to the same effect to head off a tsunami of deposits from their banks to German rivals.
Merkel has since backpedalled, claiming that the statement was a political rather than economic one. Still, neither reading has calmed the European stock markets, which have fallen around five percent (and counting) in the course of the morning.
Could this be because while Germans (and everyone else) are reassured that the government is guaranteeing their savings, they are unsettled by what Merkel's statement says about the scale of the crisis?
Rather like the government promising every home a nuclear fallout shelter. Whew, that's a relief we're getting one of those... but hang on... WHY DO WE NEED ONE? WHAT DOES SHE KNOW?
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Waking Up Europe
A couple of years ago, EURSOC published an article warning that the high-tech restructuring of the global economy could wash away the "rigid, high cost, no-growth" economies of Europe.
A disruptive age was coming, which could see the entire business world cast anew.
Amid today's banking crisis, we believe this still holds true.
Assisted Suicide?
The opening theme of the American 1970s black-comedic TV series MASH was : ‘Suicide is Painless'.
Well, in real life, it is very painful for Britons who wish ‘assisted suicide’. The practice is prohibited in the UK. Under the present law anyone who ‘helps’ another person – husband, wife, child, friend – could face up to 14 years in prison.
No Justice
Today saw the end of an era as judges in England and Wales stopped wearing the robes and wigs which have symbolised British justice for centuries.
From today, judges have been instructed to wear “the new civil gown without a wig (or bands, wing collar or collarette)”. Circuit judges are instructed to retain “their existing gown and lilac tippet”, but wigs, bands and wing collars are similarly forbidden, as they are for barristers and solicitors sitting in a judicial capacity."
The new robes are made of a blend of dark navy gabardine and wool, trimmed with velvet.
A new system of coloured collars denotes status and role, and doubtless caused some scenes worthy of that in Reservoir Dogs when the crooks were given code names: The Court of Appeal has gold, district judges blue, High Court judges red and pink for the High Court Masters Group. Wigs will still be worn in criminal court, but this tradition is rumoured to be a target for reform before long.
Reporting From Mahogany Ridge
What do you want from your newspapers in a crisis? Sombre, sober analysis - or hysterical raving? If the British press is responding to market demands, then it would appear that we want the latter.
The headlines make turmoil in the markets seem like the first day of the Somme: Carnage. Blood on the trading room floor. Black Holes. Commentary isn't much better. A few weeks ago, pundits in the conservative press denounced Chancellor Alistair Darling as a doom-mongering fool for warning that the financial crisis was the worst the world had faced for sixty years. Now Darling looks like a Pollyanna, and the hard men of the business pages are flapping like a flock of Chicken Lickens, trying to outdo themselves in prophecies of doom.
Here's EURSOC's take on why this might be. For much of the time, business journalists are the poor relations of their colleagues in politics and international news. A posting to the City might mean long claret-soaked lunches with red-faced business veterans, but it also means endless CBI speeches and reporting on dull briefings from the Exchequer's office. In good times, the only things most people want to hear from the City are stock reports, and these days you can get these from the web anyway.
When the action is in Downing Street or Washington, who wants to hear about City intrigue? When terrorists are blowing up trains or crashing aeroplanes into skyscrapers, then who cares about who's taking over from whom at some obscure bank?
War correspondents become household names. Think about the BBC's John Simpson marching into Kabul, claiming to have liberated it. Or the numerous journalists whose reports from Vietnam or the former Yugoslavia were published in books, and became cult classic or even studied in university. Or the specialists, like Robert Fisk, feted in exotic and dangerous parts of the world for explaining their ways to the West, their name becoming a byword for "The Struggle."
Or the various "Scud Studs" of the two Iraq Wars. Women swoon at the sight of these satellite megastars dodging bullets in their flack jackets. No-one is likely to go weak at the knees for a business reporter.
But now... yes, we are looking at a financial crisis, perhaps the worst for several decades. Now, it's the turn of the business hacks. Their editors, many of whom don't have a bloody clue what's going on themselves, free them from their pink pages ghetto and let them loose on the main newspaper. They're on the front pages, the lead bulletins and they have to justify their position. It's carnage out there, and they want you to know that they're in the thick of it, on the front lines, going over the top for their readers. The market, like war, is hell. See, business reporting is glamourous.
What effect this is having on traders - panicky herd animals, rather than strutting big beasts at the best of times - we can only speculate.
Postscript: One place where the financial crisis isn't dominating the headlines is Google News. In an instance of being out-of-step with the rest of the press, this morning the computer-generated headlines service ranked the crisis lower than the Temple stampede in India and the hunt for the Somali pirates who seized a ship carrying arms off the east coast of Africa. The main banking story concerned a city executive who was beaten to death for intervening in a fight in London.
In The Soup
The US markets tanked yesterday, to lows not seen since the Middle Ages (or so it would seem if you read the UK press). But amid the crash, only one company gained: Campbell Soup Co.
All those soup kitchens are going to need to run on something!
Oh, Dad, Not Again!
It has long been recognised that when teenagers perceive that their parents are making fools of themselves in public, or worse, in front of their friends, they begin to squirm.
Debating Europe
Margaret Thatcher tears the Labour front bench a new one, taking on the House of Commons during a debate on the European single currency...
She's Back!
"His majority was this big"
Ségolène rocks Paris
Former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal relaunched her bid for the leadership of the Socialist Party with a rock'n'roll style rally at the Paris Zenith concert hall, complete with a new relaxed relooking.
Ségo may be trailing in the polls behind Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanöe, "dinosaur" Dominique Strauss-Kahn and even Martine "trente-cinq heures" Aubry, but her dazzling spectacle this weekend demonstrated that she won't be slipping out of public sight without a fight.
How To Lead A Revolution On €1200 A Month
Not likely to be delivering your bills any day soon
Here's Michel Gurfinkiel on New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) leader Olivier Besancenot, one of France's media darlings. The 34 year old Trotskyite is said to work as a postie on just 1200 euros a month; yet according to Gurfinkiel, the NPA's financial policies aren't the only fantasy the party tries to sell..
This working class hero has some explaining to do...
"First, he has no working class background at all. His parents were solidly middle class (his father was a high school teacher and his mother a school psychologist). He went to college--Nanterre University in Greater Paris--and earned an M.A. in contemporary history. He is first and foremost a Revolutionary Communist League apparatchik who joined the working class at the party's request, first as a supermarket warehouse worker and then as a mailman, in order to acquire the politically necessary proletarian credentials. Tellingly, he was co-opted to the LCR's Central Committee in 1996, before he went to work for the postal service.
"Besancenot, moreover, never actually worked much as a mailman. Under French law, workers are entitled to long leaves, on full salary, if they serve as officers of unions or political parties. Besancenot is both. And he knows how to make the most of it. He has been on leave almost continuously, either as a union activist or as an LCR figure--assistant to an LCR member of the European Parliament, party spokesman, or presidential candidate. This was his real job, and it was much better paid than his nominal job at the postal service. As a European Parliament assistant, he apparently made 5,000 euros a month.
"Besancenot's private life is even more intriguing. His early rise within the LCR was due in large measure to the fact that he was living with a daughter of Alain Krivine, the group's founder and head, who himself ran for president as a Trotskyite in 1969 and 1974. Besancenot later separated from her, but remained Krivine's protégé. Then he met his current companion, Stéphanie Chevrier. A radical activist, Chevrier, 38, is also a top editor at the publishing house Flammarion and reportedly makes 10,000 euros a month with numerous perks. She owns an apartment in Paris on the exclusive Left Bank, where she lives with Besancenot. Her contacts in the French media have apparently been crucial in her common-law husband's meteoric rise."
The Great Bail-Out Swindle
Why do newspapers get it so wrong? It's bad enough columnists talking us into recession, but to exaggerate the scale of the government's fire fighting is plainly idiotic. Luckily bloggers are on hand to set the record straight. Tim Worstall corrects the Telegraph's claim that the bailout of Bradford & Bingley will cost the taxpayer £150 billion:
"No it won’t.
"The total loan book for B&B is £40 billion or so. So that is the total exposure. Add the Northern Rock exposure and that’s how you get to £150 billion.
"But for it to cost that much you have to value those mortgages at nothing. That every one of them will fail, that none will be paid and that the costs of repossession and resale will be equal to the value of the debt. That is, that all of those houses are worth damn near nothing.
"We might indeed be having problems but they’re not that bad as yet.
"It’s easy enough to believe that we taxpayers will take a haircut of 10%, 20 % even, just as it’s possible that it could be a wash, but it really ain’t gonna be a 100% loss.
"Or if you prefer, if events do lead to a 100% loss then we’ve all got much greater problems than that loan book."
The Wheel Of History Turns Again...
From The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy:
"In 1736, just as Abraham Darby's ironworks at Coalbrookdale were beginning to burn, the blast furnaces and coke ovens of Honan and Hopei were abandoned entirely. They had been great before the Conqueror had landed at Hastings. Now they would not resume production before the 20th century."
September 2008: Britain and the US introduce temporary bans on the short selling of certain financial shares. British PM Gordon Brown warns that the ban, due to be reviewed in January, will lead to stricter regulation of the City.
26 September 2008 (Bloomberg Asia): "China's cabinet agreed to let investors buy shares on credit and sell borrowed stock to help develop Asia's second-largest market after prices and trading volumes slumped, an official familiar with the plan said.
"The State Council signed off on a China Securities Regulatory Commission plan submitted this month to allow margin lending and short selling, said the official, who declined to be identified as he isn't authorized to speak on the issue.
"China's action contrasts with regulators in the U.S., Europe and Australia that have banned short selling in the past week to shore up financial shares battered by the global credit squeeze. China's government is betting the changes will boost trading without spurring further declines after state share buybacks helped the CSI 300 Index rebound from a two-year low."
Jobs For The Boys
After tours of duty in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ulster, the Conservative opposition has a different sort of danger zone in mind for returning soldiers: The great British classroom.
On the face of it, it's one of the more interesting ideas from the Tory front bench, coming as it does from one of the few stars of the parliamentary party, shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove. (While we're on the subject, whatever possessed the otherwise very respectable William Rees Mogg to crow that the current opposition is "the best Tory team in 50 years?")
Click-Thru
Spies are increasingly snooping on private Internet use. The polite term in the intelligence community is ‘data mining’.
The EU Blog Wars Have Begun
The EU gets tough on blogs
England Expects, the leading Eurosceptic "insider's blog", is no more.
Blogger Gawain Towler was the subject of complaints for breaching the EU Parliament's code of conduct and threatened with a loss of his livelihood (he is Press officer of the UK delegation to the Ind/Dem Group, the UK Independence Party, and as such an employee of the EU) if he continued to blog.
Gawain admits he was in breach of the code of conduct, though as Press Officer for an anti-EU party, "My job is to bring the institutions into disrepute, which I am doing, well if I am any good I should be doing."
First Against The Wall
Britain's Conservative Party has launched a shiny new website in time for Conference. One of the most interesting features is the Conservative Wall, where supporters are invited to leave video messages of support for David Cameron's party.
We like this idea... who hasn't dreamed of seeing a bunch of Tories lined up against a wall when the revolution comes?
Headline Of The Year
From The Sun's scoop that fanatical cleric Omar Bakri's daughter is a London pole dancer.
We'll Always Have Paris
Better a witch's hat than a wizard's sleeve
Would you like a new Paris? The existing one seems perfectly all right. It is the favoured city destination for international tourists, above New York and London. It can claim to be the most visited capital in the world.
The First Anti-Globalisation Protestor
"In my turbulent youth, nothing bothered me so much as having been born in a time that clearly would only erect its halls of fame for shopkeepers and civil servants. The waves of historical events appeared to have calmed, such that the future appeared really to belong only to “the peaceful competition among nations” – which is to say, a placid mutual swindling – with all violent methods of self-defense being excluded. Individual states began more and more to resemble commercial enterprises, which sought to undercut one another and to snatch away clients and contracts from one another….
"This development seemed not only to continue unabated, but (according to the universal recommendation) was even supposed to transform the whole world into one big department store…."
Guess Who?
Nigerian Capitalism
In the EURSOC postbox today:
From: Minister of the Treasury Paulson
Subject: Request for urgent confidential business relationship
Dear American: I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am minister of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of US$700bn. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you. This transaction is 100 per cent safe. This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as next of kin so the funds can be transferred. Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours faithfully, Minister of Treasury Paulson, Nigeria, Washington DC
A Good Season For France
The French are traditionally glum (well, more glum than usual) at this time of year. The holidays are over, the days are growing shorter and shopkeepers have taken advantage of the two-month summer break to sneak prices up again.
Throwing The Baby Out...
France is moving to strip privileges from graduates of its elite École Nationale d'Administration (ENA). Nicolas Sarkozy's government plans to remove the automatic right of ENA graduates to choose the top state jobs and to reform the school, broadening its intake to closer reflect French society today.
Mapping Big Brother
This map is worth a look. Using Google Maps, "Moongold" has tracked the growth of "the first fascist democracy", capturing those places where police and public servants have used extraordinary powers to arrest or punish law-abiding citizens going about their daily business.
This is the birth of the police state... keep watching, until it's banned too.
The Death Channel
Journalism can be a risky business. And not just for war correspondents trying to avoid sniper fire.
Where's Dave?
Conservative Party leader David Cameron has been quiet of late. It's not as if there has been a shortage of news in which an opposing view would be welcome, either, what with the small matter of "the biggest crisis in 200 years."
We know that some politicians like to keep their powder dry before their big conference speech. We know, too, that Cameron, more than any other party leader since Tony Blair, has been cagey about revealing policy, preferring to allow the government to keep digging its hole.
But what has he been up to? We've discovered one sign of activity. According to Tory sources, Dave has sent out orders to Conservatives warning them not to make this year's conference too triumphalist.
Seconds To Doomsday
Yesterday PM Gordon Brown warned that the world hadn't faced such a revolutionary crisis since the Industrial Revolution (1770s-1830s).
The financial crisis is big news, there's little doubt about that. But it is only a long line in a series of crises when the Chicken Lickens in power have warned us that the sky is falling down.
Here, EURSOC considers a few...
Ministry Of Silly Talks
“We haven’t seen anything this big since the industrial revolution. This last week will be studied by our children - as the week the world was spun on its axis - and old certainties were turned on their heads.”
- Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the financial crisis. The biggest thing since the industrial revolution? Nothing bigger has happened to the world since the the early 19th century? Less hyperbole, more hyperbollocks.
Brown's Immodest Proposal
Has Christmas come already? EURSOC is alarmed to discover that Gordon Brown - like his predecessor, Tony Blair - has promised to ensure that every child in Britain has a computer and broadband internet access.
Brown's Santa Claus act will likely cost the Exchequer £300 million, though going on the cost of its other dodgy IT initiatives, it could easily reach ten times that sum.
Brown argues - as Blair argued - that children without home access to the internet are at an educational disadvantage to those blessed with broadband.
A Lucky Escape?
As we've noted on these pages recently, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has been far and away the most pessimistic commentator on the oncoming financial storm. Many would argue that to date, he's been right.
So it's worth noting that AE-P's latest column suggests that the worst may have been averted, in the US at least: "An almighty crash has been averted, very narrowly. There is no guarantee that the revolutionary actions of the US government will prevent a full-fledged global slump, but at least we now have a fighting chance."
"Washington has forestalled a run on the world banking system, and may hopefully have saved the viable core of modern capitalism", he writes, "Hank Paulson's "Super Sink" is the "game changer" we have all been waiting for in this interminable crisis. It puts a floor under the toxic debt that is bleeding the banking system to death, and ends the downward spiral of CDOs, CLOs, HELOCs, and such instruments of leveraged excess that lie at root of the credit terror."
The US won't avoid a deep recession, he says, but the outcome could have been much worse. Sadly, he adds, the same is not true of Europe.
Don't Mince Your Words Mate
Gerald Warner, lately of Scotland on Sunday and now using the Daily Telegraph's blogs pages as his pulpit, is a man after EURSOC's heart.
The Big Sleep
The famous or infamous European Union Lisbon Treaty has achieved one key success. It is better than a sleeping tablet.
North By Northwest
Russia is making a nuisance of herself in what she believes to be her northern back yard. Moscow says it has the right to control an Arctic region the size of Western Europe. A Russian national flag was planted at the North Pole in 2004. This year a mini-submarine planted a titanium Russian flag on the seabed near-by.
Getting Serious
Nice to see a few weeks after our post on the lack of intellectual clout in the right-wing mainstream media that the Guardian is on the case. Brainy publications are booming, it says, from the Economist, Prospect, the Spectator and the new kid on the block, Standpoint. Sales of "lad's mags" are declining, it reports with some satisfaction (though it is unclear if readers of Nuts and FHM are switching allegiance to the Spectator.
The Guardian's guy argues that if the Tories win the next election, publications like the Spectator and Standpoint could lose their edge. Not sure. The Tories are short of ideas, and magazines are fine places to bang out new policies on the issues of the day. Secondly, the right-wing press and web media were on a mighty roll during the early years of the Bush presidency, with left-wing publications wrong-footed by the public's support for the war on terror. The blogs showed that it was possible to be pro-government and anti-establishment, something that conservative British pundits may have trouble balancing. To be fair, some of the most prominent US commentators were centrists or even liberals mugged by the reality of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the limp, self-loathing response of many left-leaning publications.
Finally (and in keeping with our earlier post on how a cosy centre-left coalition now governs Britain), it is a matter of debate whether or not the Conservative Party, and its supporters in the press, are right-wing at all. Newspapers have given plenty of column inches for moaners to make their case, but as soon as someone puts their principles before the party's deadening consensus, the right-wing press begins questioning their sanity.
This is new territory for the media: Whether we're seeing a "new seriousness" or not remains to be seen.
The Organ Grinder, The Monkey
More Richard and Judy than Punch and Judy
Look at this photo of PM Gordon Brown and the BBC's top political interviewer Andrew Marr in flagrante on Marr's broadcast. Have you ever seen anything so painfully posed? Brown, wooden, reluctantly mobile with his supposedly "natural" gesture as mannered as anything the Senate Crier from Rome came up with.
And Marr: Crouched, ready to pounce, as if the Prime Ministerial tete-à-tete was a gruelling physical bout, rather than a tame piece of media theatre. He looks like he's cringing before the Mighty Gordon and his Clunking Fist.
Has political debate ever been so artificial?
What Does £20 Billion Look Like?
It's worth reprinting this retort from the Guardian's comment pages in full:
"The NHS IT programme is a complete, utter f***ing mess. It doesn't work and it never will work. It will eventually be scrapped, and if Liebour were still in power it would promptly be replaced by something even more useless and expensive.
"It will end up costing the taxpayer twenty billion pounds. Do you understand what twenty billion pounds are? Let me help you:
"On the day that Queen Victoria died, I put half a million pounds in used fivers in a suitcase, took it out into the woods, and burnt it in a bonfire. There wasn't any good reason for doing this—in much the same way as there isn't any good reason for much of Liebour's 'public spending'—but I did it anyway.
"Then I did the same thing the next day. And the next. And the next. Every day of every week of every month of every year since the day that Queen Victoria died I have been burning half a million pounds in used fivers in a suitcase in a bonfire in the woods.
"And I'm still not at twenty billion. I've still got nearly two years to go.
"That's the sum of taxpayers' money that Liebour have spunked down the drain on one single foul-up in one single Department. If you're genuinely stupid enough to want them to carry on, then use your own money. Give them all of it. Tell them they can spend it on whatever they like.
They'll be delighted." — Cloutman
(Thanks to Devil's Kitchen)
Logan's Run Revisited
Unfortunately, there's little chance of Jenny Agutter making an appearance in Britain's dystopian future
A duty to die?
Remember the old sci-fi movie Logan's Run? A few centuries from now, population growth puts so much pressure on the world's resources, it is decided that the young should lead sybaritic lifestyles while the old - that it, anyone over 30 - are killed off to prevent them taking up space.
It could well be a parable for our times. It takes two centuries plus countless catastrophes for the Logan's Run dystopia to be created, but the idea that those who are a drain on resources should be eliminated would have to gain respectable currency somewhere along the way.
Who better then to speak the unspeakable than 84 year old Baroness Warnock, who has argued that euthanasia should not only be legal but that the elderly and infirm should be pressed towards death.
Baroness Warnock speaks as one of Britain's most respected and best-connected authorities on health and ethics. She is described by the Daily Telegraph as Britain's leading moral philosopher, and in the 1980s sat on a committee which advised on embryo research.
Why The Centre-Left Always Wins
A must-read article by Peter Hitchens in the Mail: 'Our political parties are corpses and democracy as we used to know it is quite dead."
Labour, he writes, stopped being true to its roots as a radical workers party in 1983, when Michael Foot was finished off by the first in a long line of spin doctors and spivs. The Conservatives had to wait until the political assassination of Iain Duncan Smith in 2003. IDS represented "the force and mind of the Tory Party" but was unloved by the party's "big beasts" who liked neither party voters nor members and were opposed to the Conservative's right-wing status.
No Time For Ideology?
"There are no atheists in foxholes and no ideologues in financial crises."
- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gives colleagues the bottom line.
On Tyranny
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C. S. Lewis
A Question For Cameron
Question: Winston Churchill on becoming Conservative leader in 1940: "Am I by temperament and conviction able sincerely to identify myself with the main historical conceptions of Toryism?"
Answer: Yes, because: "At all times, I have faithfully served two public causes which I think stand supreme: the maintenance of the enduring greatness of Britain and her Empire and the historical continuity of her Island life."
Labour Ordered On Offensive
Labour attacks Conservatives for not being "progressive" enough. They're lying
An opinion poll published today puts the Conservatives on 52 percent, the party's highest rating since the glory days of Margaret Thatcher's reign. Labour remain on 24 percent, the LibDems struggle on on 12 percent.
Were these results to be translated into seats in parliament, the Tories would be looking at over 450 seats, while Labour would be decimated, with only 160 or so MPs surviving.
Never mind economic meltdown. PM Gordon Brown has decided that Labour's meltdown is the greatest threat facing the country.
The C-Word
Whatever you say, say nothing
The creationism debate continues. Except that for The Royal Society, there is no debate. The 350 year old science institute forced its director of education, Rev Professor Michael Reiss, to resign. His crime? He argued that creationism should be discussed in schools, if there are children in class who believe it.
EU Budget Rejected Again
Dan The Man reports that the European Court of Auditors will refuse to sign off on the EU budget for the fourteenth consecutive year. He adds that he can't get his editor (at the mildly Eurosceptic Daily Telegraph) interested in this. Corruption on an epic scale surely merits a front page story, he claims.
Do You Wanna Be In My Gang?
Wouldn't like to meet this lot on a dark night. Anne Widdecombe is one of the few Conservative MPs who gives a damn about Britain's decline. She's also one of those even more exotic political creatures: An MP with ideas on how to go about reversing the decline.
For Everyone's Eyes Only
In John le Carré’s classic espionage novel, ‘A Perfect Spy’, there is a chapter devoted to ‘recruitment’. The procedure starts with an ‘informal’ lunch at the Travellers’ club, in Pall Mall, London, and ends with a covert vetting session at a safe house Somewhere in England.
Gurkhas Take Fight To High Court
Britain's Shame
Hundreds of Gurkha veterans and their supporters gathered outside the High Court in London yesterday as their last battle for settlement in Britain commenced.
Over 2,000 veterans may be subject to a government ruling that says that soldiers who were headquartered in Hong Kong before 1997 have "no significant ties" to Britain, and thus do not merit visas.
No significant ties. This is a government and court system which fights tooth and nail to keep people determined to undermine or even destroy the British way of life in the country - yet fights with equal vehemence to prevent the most widely admired warriors of all from staying in the country? Men who were badly injured in defence of the Crown, men whose comrades died for Britain? No significant ties? The Gurkhas won an amazing 13 Victoria Crosses in their two centuries of fighting for Britain; 150,000 men are said to have been badly wounded in those years.
What more evidence of strong ties do they need? There is no stronger demonstration of attachment to a country than risking one's life for it.
Words cannot express the shame and fury this issue provokes among the British public. A referendum tomorrow would see all Gurkha vets welcomed to the country with open arms: Yet once again, our petty and destructive government seems hell-bent on dragging the nation through the dirt, refusing visas and turning down requests for pension rights. Hundreds of Gurkhas have been refused medical treatment in Britain.
Think of how New Labour treats terror supporters; think of how it treats the Gurkhas. Why should this be?
In Print
A little plug. Some-time EURSOC contributor Armand Laferrère has a new book. L'Amérique est elle une menace pour le monde? looks at some (mostly) French myths about the world's hyperpuissance and addresses how the US guarantees peace and stability on a global scale.
What's Carla Smoking?
Last night, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy became the first French first lady to perform on a British pop music show with a fearsome heavy metal band, when she made a guest appearance on BBC-TV's Later... show.
Trickle Up, Trickle Down
Following on from yesterday's overview of Britain's financial reporting, we find Tim Worstall with some astute commentary on the commentariat.
The Pain In Ukraine
As Ukraine's governing coalition crumbles, the Guardian has a look at disputes on the Crimean peninsula, where the presence of Russia's Black Sea fleet is welcomed by a majority of citizens, but post-Georgia concerns over territorial integrity and nationalism are keenly felt.
70 Million's A Crowd
Well, it's official: England is the most crowded large country in Europe.
With 395 people per square kilometre, the English now beat the Dutch, traditionally the EU's most crushed-together population, to become "the Bangladesh of Europe." Indeed, it's now third most crowded country in the world, after Bangladesh! The population density in England is already almost double the level in Germany and quadruple that in France. Only tiny Malta is more crowded, and it's basically half a million people huddled on a rock in the Med.
Forecasts show that England's population growth, mostly fuelled by immigration, will rise to up to 80 million by 2050.
The Street That Is Straight
Did you realise that it's possible to walk along a street mentioned in the Bible? It's the Straight Street, or Via Recta in Damascus, Syria, which Paul visited according to Acts 9:11: "And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus..."
Roman era columns still line the street. In modern day Damascus, this Old Town street begins at the east with the Bab Sharqi Souq, by the Roman period 'gate of the sun' and passes westward through the Old Town to the covered Midhat Pacha Souq.
From Broon To Bust
Are we doomed? The fall-out from the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers continues, and the newspapers teem with unrelenting gloom.
It's not just the little red numbers at the corner of the BBC News website which show the world's major markets plunging to depths uncharted for years. The headlines, too, tell a grim story and the opinion pages seem evenly divided between people saying we have no idea how bad this is going to get and others who say "I told you so, months ago."
Oui, Je Parle English
As recently as the mid-19th century, British passports were written in French. Such was the pervasive power of the language, at least among those in the civilised world with a modicum of education.
Of course the tables have been turned . Maybe by the mid 21st century French passports will be inscribed in English. (It sounds fanciful but anything can happen in the grand scheme of linguistics).
Failing To Be Offended
This is good. Following Culture Minister Margaret Hodge's complaint that the Proms were failing to reflect Britain's diversity, the Guardian sent reporter Sarfraz Manzoor along to investigate and, one imagines, to be offended.
How would an Asian Britain fare in the Albert Hall, a lions' den of flag-waving Little Englanders?
Hang 'Em From The Yardarm
HMS Victory is one of Britain's greatest treasures. Built between 1759 and 1765, she is most famous as Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar. She currently sits in dry dock in Portsmouth, where she works as a museum ship - though, as she is still in commission, she could in theory be used by the Royal Navy again.
Few who have visited her forget the experience. From the cramped officers' quarters to the perilously low ceilings in the gun decks, from the beautifully maintained rigging to the plaque on the deck where England's great hero Nelson fell, the vessel is as much of a symbol of all that was great about Britain as it is a shrine to our glorious naval history.
How shocked we were, then, to hear that the Ministry of Defence feels that it is no longer capable of paying for Victory's £1.5 million upkeep. Reports last weekend said that it is considering handing Victory to another government department or public body, or putting it in the control of a charitable trust. There are fears that she could become "Disneyfied" if left in the hands of new owners.
I-Spy
Why does the British government need to expand its car surveillance operation (currently recording the journeys of 10 million drivers a day) to read a massive 50 million license plates every day?
And why does it say it needs to keep details on people's car journeys for five years?
And why will the database, once completed, be able to store 18 billion license plate sightings by 2010?
Answers on a postcard, please.
EU Parliament TV To Go Online
The European Parliament's dedicated TV channel, EuroparlTV, goes online on Wednesday with live coverage of events in parliament, committee sessions and profiles of MEPs. I suppose we ought to be grateful that they're not expecting us to pay for broadcasting spectrum.
Sharia Courts "Legally Binding" In UK
Well, Rowan Williams will be pleased, as will those prominent legal minds who said it was vital and inevitable that Sharia Law be introduced to Britain.
It is reported today that Islamic Sharia courts are exploiting a loophole in British law and pronouncing judgements on cases including divorce, financial disputes and even domestic violence.
Sorry, Darwin
Does Charles Darwin, whose Origin of Species became the foundation of evolutionary theory, need an apology from the Anglican Church?
Well, he's got one. To mark the bicentenary of Darwin's birth, the Church of England has launched a website to celebrate the man and his works. Part of the site features an "apology" to the scientist for "misunderstanding" him and "encouraging others to misunderstand you."
Small Is Not Beautiful
Every Englishman’s home is his castle. Or so the saying goes. The problem is that for many Englishmen their home is close to the size of a rabbit hutch.
Personal History
You really must read A.N. Wilson's idiosyncratic history of post-war Britain which is currently being serialised in the Daily Mail.
There may be more rigorous and academic histories of this tumultuous period out there - but there are unlikely to be many more entertaining.
The permissive society, defenders of the obscene, clueless pop idols, aristocratic socialist demagogues and the authorities who cower before muscular Islamism come in for colorful abuse (will Roy Jenkins's reputation ever recover from Wilson's depiction of him as the claret-soaked Balliol bore "Woy?"). Wilson is no less critical of those, like Margaret Thatcher ("the Punk Rock Premier", who did so much to halt the tide of Britain's decline.
Cold Comfort Farm
Few people give a thought about the beleaguered British farmer. He is considered a relic or a distant tourist attraction viewed through the window of a car speeding through the charming countryside of Yorkshire.
Quote Of The Day
"The destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals."
Winston Churchill
Wrong War
Timothy Garton Ash discusses the "New world disorder" in his column in today's Guardian, which marks the seventh anniversary of 9/11.
"Problems are usually not solved, they are just overtaken by other problems," he writes, "Those of 8/8, for instance. On August 8 2008, two mighty nations announced their return to history. Russia, invading Georgia, did it with tanks. China, launching the Beijing Olympics, did it with acrobats. The message was the same: world, we're back."
Pigs Might Fly
Do Republican-hating British columnists worry they'll be out of work if Obama wins in November?
High Times
Hard-core street drug addicts in Britain have a problem. And it is not confined entirely to AIDS and crime.There is a cosiderable shortage of acceptable heroin.
Think Tank
You can say what you like about the Guardian (we do, and little of it is complimentary): But the newspaper is leaving its British competitors behind in the commentary stakes. Why should this be, and why is the conservative press failing to rise to the challenge?
It's A Dog's Death
Last year contaminated pet food killed thousands of hounds and felines in America. The estimate is nearly 45,000 animal deaths.
Vote Obama - Or Else
Vote for him or the kittens get it
They just can't help themselves. A day after EURSOC argued that the British didn't understand the US Presidential election, Jonathan Freedland warns Americans that if they don't vote for "the world's candidate", its "verdict will be harsh.
EURSOC will offer a prize to any reader who can think of a better way to energise the Republican base.
Formula 1: Bias In Belgium?
Lauda: Hamilton Penalty Will Harm F1
Former world champion Niki Lauda says that the decision to penalise British driver Lewis Hamilton - effectively costing him the race - was a "stupid verdict" that will disillusion fans of the sport.
Tata Edvige Is Watching You
Forget Marianne: France's Big Sister comes to life and protests follow.
France's civil liberties groups are aghast following the creation of a computer database which will be used to spy on citizens - even those with no criminal record. The database, named Edvige, will contain personal information such as interests, sexual inclination, social circle and tax payments.
Edvige stands for Exploitation Documentaire et Valorisation de l'Information Générale. (The French authorities love acronyms (there is another, even more secretive internal security database, called CRISTINA (Centralisation du Renseignement Intérieur pour la Sécurité du Territoire et les Intérêts Nationaux).) Supporters of Edvige in Nicolas Sarkozy's cabinet argue that it merely puts into electronic database form details that France's sinister security agencies have gathered on citizens for decades. Opponents - who range from the libertarian right to the hard left - complain that very personal information will soon be at the fingertips of not only the police, but also the most lowly snooping fonctionnaire
Pondering Palin
This guitar kills liberals (and yes, we know it's a Photoshop job thank you)
The British press doesn't know what to make of Sarah Palin - or the people who will vote for McCain because of her.
John McCain's choice of running mate was greeted with surprise and some amusement in the UK papers. Here was a woman who kills her own food "just a heartbeat away" (to use the favoured cliche) from the most powerful office in the world. Indeed, her unnervingly intense smile hinted that she might not even need a gun.
Then came the laughter: Rumours of skeletons in the family cupboard, whispers of book-banning and creationist education, a belief in abstinence teaching which obviously fell on deaf ears, as it was announced that her 17 year old daughter had managed to get herself knocked up by the school hockey jock. Then worse gossip began to swirl around the candidate... what had McCain done? Hadn't the Vet done some vetting?
The fundamentalist headbangers who McCain was angling for when he chose Palin aren't going to buy this woman, the UK press argued. But their amused skepticism quickly turned to dread.
Whither Hillary?
What must Mrs Clinton be thinking about the line-up for the Presidential election, writes EURSOC's US correspondent Chris Timmers.
The nominating process for the Democratic Presidential candidate was supposed to have been her coronation. It was not. A young upstart, a black US Senator from Illinois, somehow managed to not just out-do her in fund raising, but accumulate more delegate votes. At one point in her campaign, she was even quoted as saying that she would accept Barack Obama as her running mate for Vice President. Oh, the folly! Oh the arrogance and…Ouch! The young upstart got the nod.
The Campaign Gets Serious
The party conventions are over, and we're entering the final weeks of the US Presidential elections. EURSOC's US correspondent Chris Timmers reports on the Vice Presidential candidates.
At last – the two conventions of the US major political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, are over. The candidates for president have been chosen and they, in turn, have chosen their running mates for the office of Vice President.
And what an interesting contrast in terms of VP running mates. For the Democrats, Presidential nominee Barack Obama has chosen Joseph Biden, a Senator from the state of Delaware and John McCain, the Republican choice for President, has tapped the governor of the state of Alaska, Sara Palin, for his partner.
Quote Of The Day
Mick Hume of Spiked! has little time for the foreign policy posturing of Brown, Miliband and Cameron (Obama and McCain get short shrift, too):
"Whether the Western wannabe statesmen’s standing will benefit from their diplomatic stunts remains to be seen. What seems certain, however, is that they are playing a dangerous game that risks alienating Russia and inflaming and internationalising a regional conflict. In current circumstances there seems no objective reason for any ‘new Cold War’ with such a weak and conservative power as Russia. Yet our leaders have lost sight of such broader strategic considerations in pursuit of petty political gain and propaganda stunts (...)
"There is no grand plot or plan involved. It is more a case of a purposeless, out-of-control political elite blundering into somebody else’s crisis in search of a cheap political victory. There are unlikely to be any winners when such a phoney war meets the real world."
Also worth reading in Spiked this week, a look at the "Glorious myth" of the AIDS epidemic so ghoulishly predicted for British heterosexuals throughout the 80s and early 90s. The epidemic didn't emerge, for reasons predicted by the column's author back in 1987. His warning set him against the government, medical and AIDS activist consensus, but time has proved its sense. Any sign of contrition or mea culpa in the memoirs of the activists who did so well from their doom-laden forecasts? What do you think?
Wonder if we'll be hearing the same story two decades from now, from activists promoting today's scientific consensus on climate change?
One-Way Traffic
Britain might be forced into another unbalanced extradition treaty, this time with the EU.
Remember when a government's primary duty was to protect its citizens? Not Britain's, that much is clear. Readers will remember the extraordinary eagerness with which the government signed up to a 2003 extradition treaty with the US following the September 11 terror attacks; one which, we were assured, was designed to expedite the extradition of terrorist suspects, but which was subsequently used to bring the "NatWest Three" fraudsters to trial.
High profile opponents of the extradition argued that the 2006 extradition broke the spirit of the agreement - and the British government's promise - as it was being invoked in a case that had no terrorist connection, and that the US had yet to sign the reciprocal agreement.
No other European nation had, or would, agree to such a one-sided agreement.
Now, the EU is getting in on the act.
I Am The Law
In the same week that one of the country's leading police chiefs claimed that government policy was damaging public confidence in the justice system comes one of the first investigations into Britain's new "accredited persons" - council appointed individuals who can act as judge, jury and executioner for a growing range of minor offences.
Ross Clark lists a series of horror stories in the Spectator: The mother threatened with a £75 fine when her four year old dropped a sausage roll on the pavement; the woman who dropped a cigarette, and was not only fined 75 quid but had her portrait plastered on the local newspaper as a warning to others; the eleven year old boy fined when an envelope bearing his name and address was discovered near a waste heap.
Clark also writes of his own brush with these quasi-policemen characters, whose powers to demand personal details and punish citizens with fines were once restricted to police forces. In this case, the only functioning staff on a Tyneside metro turned out to be a bunch of bull-necked thugs whose job it was was to extract fines from passengers prevented from buying tickets by understaffing elsewhere.
Bra Watch
Women who wear the 'wrong' type of bra could be causing damage to their breasts. This is according to analysis at the University of Portsmouth, based in the south of England.
Europe Round-Up
Baltic States: The Eurovision Song Contest could be in trouble. Russia won this year's competition, with the help of votes from its former satellites. This means the lucky Muscovites have the honour of hosting 2009's show. But thanks to tensions sparked by the invasion of Georgia, Baltic nations Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia may boycott the show in a display of solidarity with the Georgians. Poland is also considering snubbing Moscow.
The absence of the Baltic states and Poland may not seem like such a great loss for European music, but former Soviet Bloc nations have done well in recent years, winning four out of the last eight Eurovisions. The Eastern Europeans form a powerful voting bloc, much to the chagrin of Western commentators - and despite the fact that they're all supposed to loathe one another (and Russia most of all) they seem happy to award top marks to their fellow former Soviets.
Germany: From the ridiculous to the sublime. Who said opera plots were rubbish? The Independent reports on the resolution of a "Wagnerian feud" between the descendants of the great German composer.
Paris: Will Americans in Paris soon be no more? That's one of the worries of the French tourist authorities, writes Charles Bremner in his blog: The strong Euro has sent numbers plummeting by 20 percent in the first six months of 2008, though at just under 1.7 million visitors last year, they made up the second largest group of foreign tourists in the French capital after the Brits.
The Chinese, tipped as potential successors to the Yanks in terms of visitor numbers (and much else), also saw a smaller drop, which some commentators are blaming on France's frosty welcome to the Olympic Torch earlier this year. A boycott of French holidays was organised by some disgruntled Chinese. Despite their numbers and much-touted wealth, only 129,000 Chinese tourists spent the night in Paris in the first six months of the year.
Quote Of The Day
"So sick are we in Britain, with our centre left-centre right politicians of the centre, not one daring to have a view out of line with the very thin consensus that passes for acceptable opinion here, that we stand stunned by a woman who opposes abortion and shoots moose; who believes in creationism and drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge; who supports the aerial shooting of wolves and opposes same-sex marriage; who says to hell with the kids and just get back to work; who even campaigned against saving polar bears!
"(...)Nothing like Mrs Palin has, could ever, be seen in the British political system. She turns liberals into conservatives and conservatives into feminists. Stand back, Mr Obama, a new character is storming the ratings."
From Sarah Palin: a loveable woman, but an appalling candidate, Alice Miles, The Times.
Follow That Cow
In the recent past many bovine, in Britain and elsewhere, succumbed to a bout of depression. (This was known in popular parlance as 'Mad Cow Disease'). However, the animals were not actually 'mad'. They were going through a rough patch. It was an aberration.
Back To The Future
Former UK ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer argues that a return to the Congress of Vienna's concept of "spheres of influence" may be the best way to manage Europe's relations with Russia.
Despite being a diplomat by profession, Sir Christopher is what the British press have in mind when they describe someone as "no stranger to controversy" - and not just because of the lurid red socks which became his signature. His published recollections of Tony Blair's antics during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq won him the ire of New Labour's inner circle, while his views on European leaders proved that for Eurocrats at least, here is one ambassador who really isn't spoiling us.
His latest column, in the Times, is similarly controversial, but in the light of recent events consideration.
A central theme of the essay is how Professor Francis Fukuyama, who speculated on The End of History, got it wrong. This is not new. For many commentators, history started again seven years ago when the World Trade Centre was attacked by Islamist terrorists: The rise of Islam and the threat it posed to the West (if any) became the dominant narrative, while the discredited ideology of Communism decomposed quietly and unmourned.
What is new in Sir Christopher's analysis, however, is his assertion that history, or European history at least, demonstrates that the continent's bitter nationalisms have transcended countless attempts to manage them in the course of the centuries.
Right Talks Up The Economy
Yesterday we noted that the fiercest critics of Alistair Darling's claim that Britain faces the worst economic outlook for the past sixty years came from the right.
Several conservative commentators railed against the Chancellor's bleak analysis. They've been joined by more today. The Telegraph describes his claim as simply "wrong" and "bizarre", arguing "all evidence indicates a painful downturn that will be far less severe than events in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s."
Old Settlements Unravel
Some residents of the Isles of Scilly are demanding the right to buy their homes from their landlord - the Duchy of Cornwall, better known as the estate of Prince Charles.
The Duchy is refusing, claiming it is excluded from rules which allow residents to buy freeholds. It has set the scene for what the Daily Telegraph describes as "one of the first court challenges to the authority of the Duchy since it was formed in 1372 by Edward III to generate an income suitable for the heir to the throne."
Edward's heir, who became known as the Black Prince, was the first Duke of Cornwall.
Feeling Fruity
Ribston Pippin. Ashmead's Kernel. Irish Peach. St Edmund's Pippin. Wyken Pippin. Dutch Mignonne, Catshead, Boston Russet, Sturmer Pippin and Reinette Grise.
These are some of the rare varieties of apple eco-commentator George Monbiot has been planting, or hopes to plant, on his land in mid-Wales. He has, he says, become a fructivist and is determined to show British shoppers what they're missing by munching imported fruit rather than buy varieties which can thrive in the British climate. Monbiot has worked out that he can eat ripe British fruit all year round by planting varieties which ripen at different times (though he admits you need a decent plot of land to do so). You can do your bit to preserve a number of almost-forgotten fruits if you try the same.
Also,
"It's not just the produce I love. When you start growing fruit, you enter a world of recondite knowledge, accumulated over centuries of amateur experiments. You must choose the right rootstocks and pollinators and learn about bees, birds and caterpillars. But above all you must learn patience. Growing fruit forces you to think ahead, to imagine a sweeter future and then to wait. Perhaps it is this, as much as the forgotten flavours, that I have been missing."
EURSOC must be getting old. He agrees with every word in a George Monbiot column.
Heavy Metal Carla
Earlier this year, Carla Bruni shared a stage with the Queen. In a fortnight, the French First Lady will trade the Crown Jewels for a very different form of heavy metal, when she performs on the BBC's Later with Jools Holland show alongside hard rockers Metallica.
Sicily For A Euro
It's about time EURSOC had a property column, so here goes. According to The Times, the Mayor of Salemi – a Sicilian town 72km from Palermo - is inviting overseas buyers to invest in property in his town's historic centre.
Commotion Lotion
A Scotsman drives his carry-out home
The Independent profiles Buckfast Tonic Wine, the UK sweet wine which has become the tipple of choice among Scotland's anti-social classes.
Great Bear Hunt
One has to admit to a sneaking regard for the Russian president and prime minister. Western governments have condemned Moscow's invasion of Georgia in terms ranging from the strongest possible to mild rebuke, but it has become increasingly clear that there is next to nothing the west can do - or wants to do - about the resurgent Russia.
Typically, these mini-wars kick off when your correspondents are on holiday. Just as Israel and Hezbollah battled in Lebanon in July 2006, Georgia and Russia fought a short, dirty war this summer. The timing might have been similar, but the results were very different. Who "won" the Lebanon war - if anyone - is still being debated. But Russia crushed Georgia's forces, and set up camp well within the borders of the Georgia, within a matter of days.
The rights and wrongs of this war, and its parallels with the creation of the state of Kosovo, have been discussed elsewhere. What it means for European and western unity, however, could remain ambiguous long after a result for the Israel-Hizbollah war is settled.
What Have They Ever Done For Us?
The New Labour machine is coming off the tracks at an accelerating pace. Now even those achievements the party faithful crow are Labour's greatest legacy look set to crumble.
It took a while for Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling's comments in an interview published on Saturday to sink in for the mainstream media. But by Monday, the opinion columns registered their surprise that Darling, once thought to be little more than PM Gordon Brown's stooge, had blown the lid of the government's claim that the era of "boom and bust" had finished for good. Darling told the Guardian that the economic conditions facing Britain "are arguably the worst they've been in 60 years... And I think it's going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought."
So from no bust, only boom, we've gone to no boom, just bust?
